Business_Research_Methods

Wal-Mart currently has a program in place called Operation Impact. Operation Impact was initiated to try and keep the new customers the company attracted because of the poor economic environment. When people think of Wal-Mart they do not necessarily think of great customer service, quality products, clean environment, or fast service. The organization dilemma is how the company goes about keeping these new customers and changing the old perception. To answer this question, the formalized or descriptive research design should be used. According to Cooper & Schindler, formalized research design describes the population with who, what, when, where, and how, discovers the relationship between the variables, and helps to estimate the proportion of the population that relates to the question (Cooper & Schindler, 2006, p. 151). The advantage of descriptive research is the information is obtained from a natural, unchanged environment and the information can be a precursor to more quantitative research (Shuttleworth, 2008). While we are seeing descriptive research as quantitative research the information gathered for Wal-Mart’s situation can be viewed additionally as qualitative. Qualitative research will take into consideration the human behaviors and reasons of why and how decisions are made. In addition, qualitative research will allow the program to be evaluated based on statements from the customers or the feedback that was provided. Looking at the qualitative information about the customers’ feedback and views on the service they receive at Wal-Mart the management staff is able to take into consideration the changes that would be necessary to improve customer satisfaction and scores. Many factors can affect the research information obtained. Some variables to consider include the number of customers surveyed; their individual experiences while in the store, which store they visited, the customer’s mood that day, and the customers’ expectations of reward from a positive review. Taking this information and evaluating the defects in the current operations and what changes are necessary will help the Operation Impact project change the way customer’s view Wal-Mart and prove the organization can operate and be admired by more customers globally. The sampling design consists of several questions, which will be answered through this presentation. The first question that has to be answered, wants to know what the target population is. For the organizational problem of Wal-Mart’s operation impact, the target population covered by this sample design is Wal-Mart employees who work in the United States. The second question that should be answered is the sample designs parameters of interest. For this organizational dilemma, the parameter of interest is the perceived effectiveness of the operational impact. After putting together our target population and the parameters of interest, we can create the sampling frame. According to Cooper and Schindler, the sampling frame is defined as being “the list of elements from which a sample is drawn.” (Cooper & Schindler, 2006, p. 411) For the organizational problem the sampling frame is Wal-Mart employees who have been with the organization for at least six months; both employees from the management team and from the storefront. This will insure that opinions from employees at all levels will be collected. The next step of the sampling design is to find the appropriate sampling method. The sampling method the team will use is the random sampling method. According to StatPac, the random sampling method is “the purest form of sampling because every member of the population has the chance of being picked.” (StatPac, 2009) The last question in the process is the sample size. With the help of the sample size calculator from Creative Research Systems, a sample size of 4154 was calculated (Creative Research Systems, 2009). The confidence level used was 99%, the confidence interval used was 2, and the population used was 2.8 million. In conclusion, changing the perception and obtaining new customers is the primary goal of Wal-Mart within Operation Impact. In order to be successful in this endeavor, the formalized research design will be utilized. Along with this research, surveying a target population will guide the research to the answers that the dilemma seeks. References Cooper, D.R. & Schindler, P.S. (2006). Business research methods (9th ed.). Boston: McGraw – Hill / Irwin. Cooper, D. R., & Schindler, P. S. (2006). Research design: an overview. In Business research methods (pp. 135-161). Retrieved from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/content/eBookLibrary2/content/DownloadList.aspx'assetMetaId=9a635959-af94-4d79-b27e-311d14f4d182&assetDataId=a15f3c78-2ac7-463b-a27b-ee51e576d9ee Creative Research Systems. (2009). Sample Size Calcultor. Retrieved December 4, 2009, from Creative Research Systems: http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm#one Shuttleworth, M. (2008). Descriptive research design. Retrieved December 5, 2009, from http://www.experiment-resources.com/descriptive-research-design.html StatPac. (2009 ). Sampling Methods. Retrieved December 4, 2009, from StatPac: http://www.statpac.com/surveys/sampling.htm