Research Proposal for Honda Malaysia - Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

1.0 BACKGROUND INVESTIGATION

The birth of Honda Malaysia (Honda Malaysia Sdn Bhd) can be traced back to 15^th of November 2000, from a partnership between Honda Motor Co Ltd of Japan, Oriental Holdings Berhad, and DRB-HICOM Berhad (Honda Malaysia 2011). The company was founded with the commitment of offering the “Highest customer satisfaction in Malaysia”, and has been a solid leader in the Malaysian Automotive Industry.

Their slogan “The Power of Dreams” was coined to signify the ever changing need growing need for a future with better technology and value for customers (Honda Malaysia 2011). Honda Malaysia has a plant (Pegoh plant) in Alor Gajeh, Melaka, where all Honda cars distributed across Malaysia are either assembled or completely manufactured.

Figure 1

Source as Adapted from: Honda Malaysia, (2011).

Figure (1) above portrays a constant increase in the unit of Honda products produced and assembled in Malaysia. This is a sign of constant demand for Honda products across Malaysia. This diagram can also explain their achievements in Malaysia through these years and the most recent is a total of 6 awards won in Malaysia within the automobile industry (Honda Malaysia 2011).

Honda Malaysia is headquartered at HICOM Industrial Park Pegoh, Meaka and currently offers 8 different Honda Models (see Appendix 1.1). Honda Sdn Bhd, is one of the largest employing industry in Malaysia and has over 60 dealers in Malaysia to ensure customer convenience and quality services.

2.0 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

Based on the information gather from both Honda automobile dealers and customer, the following problems have been identified to influence customer’s decision to purchase Honda products during recession. These problems include:

• Honda is automating their production service. While this is efficient and effective for mass production, the incurred costs which are imposed on their products will deter customer’s decision to purchase Honda products during economic downturn because they could be generally considered to be expensive.
• High government task on imported products. The Malaysian government like other government across the globe has implemented high task rate on Honda products because they are not a Malaysian product. Although Honda automobiles are assembled in Malaysia, the government task the company based on number of sales and in other to recover this expenses, Honda will hike the price of their automobile products which in turn could deflect customer’s decision during economic recession.

2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The objective of this research is to establish effective ways of marketing Honda Automobiles during recession in Malaysia. Upon investigation, it has been widely recognized that suitable marketing and management planning results in the enhancement of a company’s competitiveness and improved performance (Pearce and Michael, 1997). But, recession poses various types of difficulties to firms and departments alike. This makes understanding ways for marketing Honda’s products and services in Malaysia during recession a necessity in other to increase their survival strategy and chances during economic downturn.

3.0 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The recent global recession presented a new and difficult challenges markets wishing to consumer ethically, and manufacturers that seek to make available the products that allow them to do so. These have seen sustainable marketing and ethical consumption enter the mainstream of global business and political activity (Peattie and Peattie, 2009). Sequentially, this have resulted in public negligence about consequences associated with unethical behaviour in both consumer and manufacturer aspect (Harrison, 2006). 

A recent Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study of 9,000 consumers in 9 countries (Manget et al., 2009), including Japan, China, and Italy revealed that green and ethical issues still influences consumer’s purchasing decision during economic downturn. However, increased cost of living, stricter lending standards, growing rate of unemployment, and global recession have seen this growth in sustainable consumption deflect (Price WaterhouseCoopers, 2008), due to consumer’s increased desired to save. Thus, based on this argument we hypothesize:

H.1 Consumers will not purchase eco-friendly cars during recession because they are more expensive than normal cars. 

The 2008 financial crisis has been widely visualized as the most traumatic the world economy has faced in over seven decades (The Economist, 2008). The resulting global recession has had dramatic effects on the real economy, resulting to fall in consumer confidence, high unemployment and restrictions on credit. Wide range of industries has been affected, and they include property, raw materials, shipping to automobile manufacturing industries. Sequel to these economic issues, consumers have become more mindful on their purchase decision making especially on heavy products such as cars. Research shows that fuel efficient vehicles with low maintenance cost is the answer to consumer’s question. A clear example is the Tata Nano conquering of the Indian automobile market during the 2009 economic recession(Peter, 2009). Thus, from the argument above it can be proposed that:

H. 2 Consumers will purchase fuel efficient cars and cars with low maintenance cost more than cars that don’t offer these features during economic downturn.

H. 3 Consumers will purchase cars more during recession if they are offered significant discounts and cost supports such as insurance and warranty. 

VARIABLE IDENTIFICATION

The variables are basically classified into dependent and independent.

THE DEPENDENT VARIABLES ARE:

• Quality of cars
• Added features
• Benefits sought by customers
• Price
• Post purchase services
• Warranty and insurance
• Customer spending power
• Fuel efficiency

INDEPENDENT VARIABLES

• Customer’s desire
• Customer’s ability to afford the car
• Number of comparable substitutes
• Cost of maintenance
• Service locations

4.0 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This project is designed to establish effective ways Honda Sdn Bhd, can use to market their products during economic downturn in Malaysia.

4.1 DATA GATHERING

Participants will be both randomly and collectively selected to answer questions related to Honda Sdn Bhd (based on five strategic viewpoints on competitors, pricing, quality, brand loyalty/trust and marketing media, and innovative views: interests, culture, lifestyle, safety measures and design). After reading the questions, participants are to fill out their answers on a likert scale rating format. Other forms of data gathering include online information from Honda Sdn Bhd’s Official website (www.honda.com.my) and articles/journals related to the topic.

4.2 SAMPLING PLAN

The sampling method will be a probability based sampling (Deming, 1960), this implies that any race (socio-cultural and ethnic group) resident or residing in Malaysia has a chance of being selected to participate in the project. 

4.3 IDENTIFYING TARGET POPULATION

Population identification is the main element of sampling plan in research (Bazeley, 2004), because it gives a clear meaning to how the result can be applied. The target population will be both male and female between the ages of 16 to 60. This is to ensure that the research establishes effective ways to target future markets (teenagers), keeping current customers satisfied (working class individuals) and developing new ways to attract new customers (grey market).

4.4 SAMPLE FRAME

Figure 2

Figure (2) above demonstrates a sample of how the questionnaire will be designed in other to gather crucial data from all participants. The inclusion of foreigners is because some foreigners would like to have a car while in Malaysia. Thus, understanding their need is also important.

4.5 PROCEDURE AND SIZE

The survey will be a 15 question survey printed on scanner sheets, A4 size paper with Times New Roman format (size 12) and 2.0 line spacing. The main idea behind printing the question on scanner sheets is to ensure easy coding and the format used is to ensure easy visibility. The estimated size of the questionnaire is 15,000 (fifteen thousand) with 1,000 copies distributed in each state of the total 15 states in Malaysia.

5.0 DISCUSSION OF DATA GATHERING INSTRUMENTS

5.1 OPEN SURVEY

The questions included in the questionnaire will conduct an in-depth survey (Healy and Perry, 2000) on the general perception of Honda automotives from the participants, analyse their pre-purchase decision making process, determine their preferential features and designs in an automobile and compare Honda with their competitors. The questionnaire is designed into 4 response lists.

Response list 1: Demographic Data

• Gender.
• Race.
• Age.
• Citizenship (foreigner residing in Malaysia or a Malaysian).

Response list 2: Psychographic Data

• Interests.
• Income / revenue.
• Occupation.
• Innovation and efficiency.
• Purchasing decision making process.

Response list 3: Strategic Data

• Brand loyalty and usage rate.
• Customer’s trust on brand.
• Comparison with other automotive brands.
• Reasons and possibilities of purchasing a car during recession

Response list 4:  Managerial Data

• Ease of access to dealers.
• Time and cost of maintenance.
• Technical problems frequently associated with Honda products used (if any).
• General efficiency of gadgets contained in the automobiles.

6.0 DATA COLLECTION

6.1 PERSONALLY ADMINISTERED QUESTIONNAIRE

A personally administered questionnaire is a type of survey where the questionnaire is distributed directly to the responders who are required to offer immediate response to the questions (Woodward, 1997). This is to ensure a quick response rate, as well as assisting the participants if they need clarification with any of the questions contained within the questionnaire. To avoid biasness or misrepresentation of information, each distribution centre will have a supervisor with the duty of ensuring that all questionnaires are answered by participating individuals and not staffs.

6.2 STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

 The main purpose of the interview is to gather information from staffs and dealers. The information to be gathered from the staffs will include their production rate, managerial performance and their personal ideas on how to improve sales within the recession periods, while dealers will have to be interviewed based on their customer’s reaction and needs during economic downturn.

7.0 TABULATION AND DATA ANALYSIS

The research will be analysed using “realism paradigm principles”. By realism, it implies that reality exist independent of the researcher’s mind (Bhaskar, 1978; Harre and Madden, 1975). This means that no matter what marketers or researchers do in their post-modern fashion, the real decision of purchase is made by consumers (Bronw, 1988), and this is why survey is used as a means of data gathering. The steps to be followed for tabulation and data analysis are discussed below:

7.1 HANDLING BLANK RESPONSE

For all questionnaires with less than 20 percent response, the whole questionnaire will be absolutely ignored and for questionnaire with more than 20 percent, the system will be programmed to ignore all blank questionnaires during data analysis.

7.2 CODING AND CATEGORIZATION

The questionnaire will be printed on scanner sheets to allow convenient data coding to reduce the time of cost of manually keying in data. And each variable representing a measurable concept grouped together and reversed to ensure that all answers are in the same direction (this will be done by using the Transform and RECODE statement).

E.g. where 1 denote “strongly disagree” and 5 “strongly agree”, the answer will be reversed so that 1 will denote “strongly agree” and 5 “strongly disagree”. This will increase reliability in the sense that if strongly agree is 80% and 20% for strongly disagree, when the data are coded and categorized correctly, strongly disagree should change to 80% and 20% for strongly agree. If the questionnaire are not corrected using the scanner sheet, the data will be coded and categorized respectively and repeatedly by 3 different coders (personnel) to ensure reliability.

7.3 DATA ANALYSIS

The 3 objectives considered in data analysis are: to have a feel of the data, test the goodness of the data and hypothesis testing (Hubbard and Armstrong, 1994). In the case of having a feel for the data, statistical measures will be used to check the central tendency and dispersion of the data, to ensure that responders really understood the question before answering them.

The goodness of the data will be tested on both reliability to measure how answers to the questionnaires are related (using any or a combination of cronbach’s alpha, split-half reliability coefficient, parallel form reliability and test-retest reliability) and validity to determine whether the theorized assumptions emerge (the validity will be tested using criterion-related , convergent, discriminant and factorial validity). The next step is to test the hypothesis already developed after having a feel the data and testing the goodness of the data. The hypothesis will be tested with either or a combination of t-Test, ANOVA, Chi-square test and Multiple Regression Analysis.

8.0 RESEARCH REPORTING

Research reporting involves presenting a summary of all the steps undertaking in conducting the research as well as the finding for managerial reference (Carson et al., 2001). The format to be followed is discussed below.

Research title – this will describe the topic/title to be studied about.

Table of content – will show pagination and easy referencing of topic discussed.

Research proposal – this will show the program and steps to be followed.

Authorization – this will serve as evidence of authority to conduct the research.

Executive summary – will show an overview of all the related topics to be discussed about.

Introductory section – contains the description of the problem to be investigated, research objectives and why the research is necessary.

Body of the report – this section will furnish the details of the interview, the survey and proposed hypothesis.

The final part – this will contain the conclusion, results and findings and either recommendation or implementation on the research.

Acknowledgement – is aimed at appreciating the efforts of contributors.

Referencing – provides evidence of all valid sources cited in the research.

Appendix – provide more information on the research.

9.0 TIME AND COST ESTIMATES

9.1 QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN FOR SURVEY

The typing, review and printing will take an estimated 5 working days and will cost RM 32,000 (Thirty Two Thousand Malaysian Ringgit) because the questionnaire will be printed on a scanner sheet as indicated above to ensure easy and convenient coding during data analysis.

9.2 DATA GATHERING

The personally distributed questionnaire – the estimated time frame for distributing and collecting the data from 15,000 responders is a maximum of 14 days and an estimated cost of RM 100,000 will be spent on transportation, accommodation and wages of staffs. The transportation will include flight tickets, since most of the Malaysian cities must be accessed by flight only. For example, transportation from East to West Malaysia must be done by air.

Structured interview – for the internal (staff) interview, there is no monetary cost as all employees will be obliged to undertake the interview as part of their responsibility, but that of the dealers will cost about RM 500 which is the cost of calling them on phone only, because the interview will be E-mailed directly to them through their respective email addresses.

Data analysis and research reporting

This is one of the most crucial part of the research, because all data gathered are either useless or wasted if they are not well analysed and reported (Hyde, 2000). This will take 14 working days, as the data analyses have to pass through all the three stages discussed above in the data analysis, before the final report will be drafted then furnished. The cost is estimated to be about RM 10,000 because all business and marketing ethics are to be observed. This implies that all software to be used for analysing the data must be original copies from the licensed providers and the final report will be in an A4, coloured printing with hardcover.

10.0 LIMITATIONS

Reliability and Validity – since this is a primary research and using a questionnaire format, one of the limitations would be to the reliability and validity of the results. This is because; some of the participants might answer the question without clearly understanding what the question is talking about or based on their mood when answering the questions.

Applicability – since this is the first research (assumption) done to provide effective ways to market Honda automobiles during recession in Malaysia, the rate of the hypothesis applying to the reality is in doubt because each recession could potentially mean a transformation from one generation to another. For example assuming that the next recession happened 20 to 30 years after the research, it would pose a strong question as to whether the result is valid and can be applied to the current situation.

Language barrier – Malaysia is a multi-lingual country and the inclusion of foreigners in the research makes finding a definitive language more difficult. This is a limitation because potential responders could be ignored because they don’t understand the language (English) printed on the survey.

11.0 CONCLUSION

Research is a vital element in every organization, as they not only serve as a reliable means of developing solutions to problems, but also provide organizations with relevant information about their main competitors. The above research is a scientific research designed to find effectives ways of marketing Honda products during recession and it has been developed from through a methodical approach to better ease understanding of the steps applicable.

Economic recessions pose different forms of challenges to companies as they seek to maintain or enhance their previous performance. This is due to customer’s reluctance to spend as they try to tighten up their spending power and open to a more relative savings. This research method has been proposed for Honda to understand the consumer behavior and develop effectives ways of marketing their products during economic downturn.

12.0 REFERENCES (HARVARD FORMAT)

Bazeley, P. (2004), “Issues in mixing qualitative and quantitative approaches to research”, in Buber, R. and Gadner, J. (Eds), Applying Qualitative Methods to Marketing Management Research, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 141-56. 

Bhaskar, R. (1978), Realist Theory of Science, Wheatsheaf, Harvester, Coleshill.

Brown, S. (1998), Post-modern Marketing Two, Thompson, London.

Carson, D., Gilmore, A., Gronhaug, K. and Perry, C. (2001), Qualitative Research in Marketing, Sage, London. 

Deming WE (1960), "Sample Design in Business Research", John Wiley and Sons, New York.

(The) Economist (2008d), “Cars in emerging markets”, Special Report, The Economist, 13 November.

Harre, R. and Madden, E.H. (1975), Causal Powers, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Harrison, R. (2006), “Reflections on reaching issue 100”, Ethical Consumer, Vol. 100, May/June, available at:www.ethicalconsumer.org/CommentAnalysis/Features/100IssueofEC.aspx(accessed 3 March 2009). 

Healy, M. and Perry, C. (2000), “Comprehensive criteria to judge validity and reliability of qualitative research within the realism paradigm”, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 118-26. 

Honda Sdn Bhd (2011) About Honda Malaysia [online]. Available from: http://www.honda.com.my/abouthonda/aboutus/ [Accessed: 1 February 2011]

Hubbard, R. and Armstrong, J.S. (1994), “Replications and extensions in marketing: rarely published but quite contrary”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 11, June, pp. 233-48. 

Hyde, K.F. (2000), “Recognising deductive processes in qualitative research”, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 82-9. 

Peter, E. (2009), “Responding to global crisis: the contribution of emerging markets to strategic adaptation”, International Journal of Emerging Markets, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp 358-374.  

Manget, J., Roche, C. and Munnich, F. (2009), Capturing the Green Advantage for Consumer Companies, The Boston Consulting Group, Boston, MA. 

Pearce, J.A. and Michael, S.C. (1997), “Marketing strategies that make entrepreneurial firms recession-resistant”, Journal of Business Venturing, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 301-14. 

Peattie, K. and Peattie, S. (2009), “Social marketing: a pathway to consumption reduction?”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 62 No. 2, p. 260. 

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (2008), Sustainability: Are Consumers Buying It?, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, London.

Woodward, T. (1997), “Identifying and measuring customer-based brand equity and its elements for a service industry”, PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.