NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FASHION TECHNOLOGY, HYDERABAD

Benchmarking of post-sale
services and grievance
redressing
Research Methodology

NIKE

“Just do it!”

Submitted by:

Debajyoti Bhattacharya (08)

Karuna Munda (18)
Priyanka Ohatkar (23)

Department of fashion Technology

Semester – VIII
 The Project
The Project

 Title:

 Benchmarking of the post sales services and grievance redressing policy.

 Objectives:

 To develop a benchmark service level.

 To see if the benchmark is correct. If not, what adjustments need to be made?

 Collecting and analyzing the data.

 Country level and Category level comparison to see if there is any variance in
services as compared to bench mark.

Research design

 Secondary research

 The aim will be to study post-sale services followed across the industry as a whole
and then develop a benchmark which can be act as a reference to compare the
performance of a brand.

 Primary research

 To get real time data from the consumers and prospective consumers.

 To develop a standard service code for post sale operations.

 To develop a benchmark for the post-sale services and customer redressing system.

Research methodology

 The research will be done in three phases.

 The data will be collected by primary and secondary means available.

 The final phase will be to suggest changes (if any) in the current operational plan of NIKE
and evaluate the actuals with the benchmark developed.

Phase 1:

 Secondary research:

 Study of existing literature: Journals, Publications, Magazines and Trade

Publications

 Primary research:
  Make questionnaires and collect real time data.

 Observe the actual services of NIKE.

Phase 2:

 Data Analysis of previous available years services to collect information regarding various
redressing systems followed at NIKE and to know the post-sale services that have been
provided.

Phase 3:

 This involves a research aimed at developing a detailed sheet showing standard services to
be provided, developing a standard redressing system which can be used as a benchmark.

 Further, the benchmark is compared at country level, and product category level with actual
cost to know about the operations which go beyond the benchmark.
 Questionnaire
Dear Sir/Madam,

We are students of National Institute of Fashion Technology, Hyderabad. We are doing a project
on “Benchmarking of the post sales services and grievance redressing” as a part of a subject
called Research Methodology. We are conducting for the same. A questionnaire is attached
hereby.

We will be glad to have your feedback as it will help us in our research. Thank you for investing
your precious time with us. Any information provided by you will remain confidential and will be
used strictly for educational purposes. We value the information provided by you.

Regards,

Debajyoti, Karuna and Priyanka.

Section 1

1. Name: _____________________________________________________________________

2. Sex: Male Female

3. Age: <20 20-30 31-45 46<

4. Designation: Student Service employee Self-employed Unemployed

If employed what is your annual income?

<2lac 2-5lac 5-10 10<

5. Location: __________________________________________________________________

Section 2

1. What is your favourite sports brand?

Adidas NIKE Reebok Puma Others___________________

2. Which brand gives the best value-for-money?

Adidas NIKE Reebok Puma Others___________________

3. Products of which brand provide you with maximum comfort?

Adidas NIKE Reebok Puma Others___________________

4. Which brand provides the best customer support?

Adidas NIKE Reebok Puma Others___________________

5. The brand you think will be with you even after your purchase?

Adidas NIKE Reebok Puma Others___________________

6. The brand that provides value beyond its products.

Adidas NIKE Reebok Puma Others___________________

Section 3

1. How do you prefer to buy branded sports gear products?

Brand outlets Multi-store Online

2. How will you rate NIKE (on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best) terms of:

a. The smiles you received when you entered the store

b. They helped you buy exactly as you wanted

c. You were satisfied with the product after the purchase

d. The swiftness with which they attended your complaint

 e. When you had a problem, NIKE had a solution

f. The price range of the NIKE products

3. If you have a problem how will you communicate with NIKE?

Call E-mail Walk to a NIKE store

4. Something you like about NIKE other than its products?

___________________________________________________________________________

5. Anything in particular you want to suggest about the services of NIKE?

___________________________________________________________________________

Explanations
The questionnaire has been divided in three segments – Section 1, Section 2 and Section 3. The
first section is dedicated to collecting personal information. This will enable us to match our
collected data to the sample frame.

The second section is for the purpose of comparison of NIKE with other competitor brands. This
will aid us in the prime purpose of benchmarking because benchmarking cannot be done until we
take in account the whole picture of the market.

The third section deals exclusively with the brand NIKE. We have attempted to extract data from
the consumer without letting them know what exactly the questions intend to decipher. This
prevents the consumers from developing a bias in their mind and thus, the response recorded on
the questionnaire will be more credible.

We have also included a rating with a scale of 10. The numerical rating will enable us in
quantitative analysis of qualitative data collected.
 Sampling
Introduction

Sampling is that part of statistical practice concerned with the selection of a subset of individual
observations within a population of individuals intended to yield some knowledge about the
population of concern, especially for the purposes of making predictions based on statistical
inference. Sampling is an important aspect of data collection. Sampling is done instead of
considering the entire target population mainly for two reasons:

• The cost is too high

• The population is dynamic in that the individuals making up the population may change
over time.

The three main advantages of sampling are:

1. The cost is less

 2. Data collection is fast

3. It is possible to maintain parity in the surveyed population and to improve the accuracy and
quality of the data.

Process

The sampling process comprises several stages:

 Defining the population of concern

 Specifying a sampling frame, a set of items or events possible to measure

 Specifying a sampling method for selecting items or events from the frame

 Determining the sample size

 Implementing the sampling plan

 Sampling and data collecting

Sampling frame

A sampling frame is the source material or device from which a sample is drawn. It is a list of all
those within a population who can be sampled, and may include individuals, households or
institutions. In many practical situations the frame is a matter of choice to the survey planner, and
sometimes a critical one. Some very worthwhile investigations are not undertaken at all because
of the lack of an apparent frame; others, because of faulty frames, have ended in a disaster or in
cloud of doubt.

The most straightforward type of frame is a list of elements of the population (preferably the entire
population) with appropriate contact information. In our case NIKE is a premium brand and has its
stores in Hi-Tech city, Banjara Hills and Begumpet and to add a filter to this frame we will further
identify our frame to only the educated and socio-economically stable population of the above
mentioned places.

Sampling method

a variety of sampling methods can be employed, individually or in combination. Factors commonly

influencing the choice between these designs include:

• Nature and quality of the frame

• Availability of auxiliary information about units on the frame

• Accuracy requirements, and the need to measure accuracy

• Whether detailed analysis of the sample is expected

• Cost/operational concerns
Sampling methods are classified as either probability or non-probability. In probability samples,
each member of the population has a known non-zero probability of being selected. Probability
methods include random sampling, systematic sampling, and stratified sampling. In non-probability
sampling, members are selected from the population in some organized manner. These include
convenience sampling, judgment sampling, quota sampling, and snowball sampling.

The sampling method that we have chosen is cluster sampling. Sometimes it is cheaper to
'cluster' the sample in some way e.g. by selecting respondents from certain areas only, or certain
time-periods only.

Cluster sampling is a 'two-stage sampling' or ‘multistage sampling’: in the first stage a sample of
areas is chosen; in the second stage a sample of respondents within those areas is selected.

This can reduce travel and other administrative costs. It also means that one does not need a
sampling frame listing all elements in the target population. Instead, clusters can be chosen from a
cluster-level frame, with an element-level frame created only for the selected clusters. Cluster
sampling generally increases the variability of sample estimates above that of simple random
sampling, depending on how the clusters differ between themselves, as compared with the within-
cluster variation.

Nevertheless, some of the disadvantages of cluster sampling are the reliance of sample estimate
precision on the actual clusters chosen. If clusters chosen are biased in a certain way, inferences
drawn about population parameters from these sample estimates will be far off from being
accurate.

Multistage sampling is a complex form of cluster sampling in which two or more levels of units are
embedded one in the other. The first stage consists of constructing the clusters that will be used to
sample from. In the second stage, a sample of primary units is randomly selected from each
cluster (rather than using all units contained in all selected clusters). In following stages, in each of
those selected clusters, additional samples of units are selected, and so on. All ultimate units
(individuals, for instance) selected at the last step of this procedure are then surveyed.

This technique, thus, is essentially the process of taking random samples of preceding random
samples. It is not as effective as true random sampling, but it probably solves more of the
problems inherent to random sampling. Moreover, it is an effective strategy because it banks on
multiple randomizations.

Multistage sampling is used frequently when a complete list of all members of the population does
not exist and is inappropriate. Moreover, by avoiding the use of all sample units in all selected
clusters, multistage sampling avoids the large, and perhaps unnecessary, costs associated
traditional cluster sampling.

Population size calculation

A population can be defined as including all people or items with the characteristic one wish to
understand. Because there is very rarely enough time or money to gather information from
everyone or everything in a population, the goal becomes finding a representative sample (or
subset) of that population. The target population for our research can be categorized on the
following basis:
Population size calculation

Geographic location Hyderabad (Hi-Tech City, Banjara Hills, Begumpet)

People who are cosmopolitan in nature, brand conscious

Socio-economic group
and educated.

Population of Hyderabad 40,68,611

Literacy rate 79.04%

Assumed target population 40% of total population(16,27,444)

Estimated target market 16,27,444

The above numerical data are based on Census 2010.

Sample size calculation

Sample can be defined a small number of elements selected from a larger defined target group of
elements such that the information gathered from the small group will allow judgments to be made
about the larger groups. The larger the sample size, the more sure we can be that their answers
truly reflect the population.

The Sample size depends upon the confidence level and confidence interval. The confidence
interval (also called margin of error) is the plus-or-minus figure usually reported in newspaper or
television opinion poll results. The confidence level tells you how sure you can be. It is expressed
as a percentage and represents how often the true percentage of the population who would pick
an answer lies within the confidence interval. The formula to calculate the sample size is as
follows

Sample Size = (Z² X p X (1-p)) / c²

Where,

Z = Z value for the given confidence interval

p = percentage picking a choice, expressed as decimal

c = confidence interval, expressed as decimal

For sample size calculations, the assumptions made are as follows:

Sample Size Calculation

Confidence level 95%

Confidence interval 10

Probability of choice 0.5

Sample size according to the above assumptions is 96 samples. But the sample size advised for
this research is 50. To maintain a sample size of 50 we need to increase the confidence interval to
13. Thus, the final assumptions will be as follows:

Sample Size Calculation

Confidence level 95%

Confidence interval 13

Probability of choice 0.5

Sample size = 50 samples.