The General Nutrition Center is the best place to be for everyone who wants nutritional supplements and body exercise. The center has qualified staff. The center provides its clients with a gym for exercises and bodybuilding. It also provides nutritional supplements. Even after showing interest in clients and providing high-quality service, GNC clientele has been dwindling.
The purpose of this research is to show why the students have not been buying nutritional supplements at GNC and the reason for not going for physical exercise at the center. The findings should be able to help the organization to answer the management question, “How can we increase the gym participants?”
Another question is, “How can we promote better health information and facilities to encourage many people to enjoy our services?” Another important question to answer would be, “Why are the regular customers not coming for the services at the center?”
The purpose of this research is to determine the specific factors that contribute to the client’s drop in attendance to the organization’s services and the best marketing aspect to consider when looking for and retaining the customers.
The client has to help the researchers to determine what particular segment of the target market would be very important. The researchers would then tailor the strategies that best suit the client’s description of the problem. The main reason for this research is to enable GNC to get customers. The research is important because it can be the source of information for other institutions to use to solve the clientele problems.
The Research Strategy
The research was seeking to solve a management issue. There is already some background information that could be very helpful for the research. The discounts and gifts were some of the causes of customer numbers. The best research strategy was backward market research. The backward research would provide information on what kind of decisions the management should come up with to solve the research problem. The management would require significant help that only the backward research was able to offer.
Forward Research Strategy would only be important if there were no background information. For the Forward Design, there was a lack of direction, and the management would not apply the results until the very end, and, therefore, the whole work would not become helpful in the long run. The backward design determines the key decisions that would be helpful by using the results.
The analysis of the backward research required that the analysts should write a conclusive report on the findings. It would be essential for reference in the future. The report could also become useful for reference purposes by any other organization or individual. Therefore, the longevity of the research was certain. Members could also evaluate the research process and contributions. It could be prone to scrutiny before it became manifest for use.
There was a need to prepare a prototype report for the management to determine the best decision the management would make. The researchers had to analyze the questions so that they come up with the best analysis of the results. The researchers had to prepare the kind of questions they would use some weeks before the actual day of the survey. Every officer had to go through the questions at a time before convening the meeting that would enable the researchers to share information.
Even after conducting the research, they also had to meet again and ensure that the participants answered the very important questions. The client has to receive the design sample that the members shared with each other. When using Forward Design, the client would not know the decisions to make.
But the Backward research informed the client of the available decisions. It also provided the means for finding the best ways to come up with solutions. The advantages of using the backward design far outweighed those for the forward design. It was important first to define the problem.
Flexibility was also an important facet of the research. Backward research would indicate whether the proposed ideas had merit or not. Therefore, the client would be able to start using the results as soon as possible.
The type of research was descriptive research. If there were no background information at all as to what caused low attendance at the center, then the exploratory research would have been the best to use. There would have been no prior information at what kind of questions to ask and the types of topics to use.
The descriptive type of research normally uses rigid data collection because of the available options to help the research to narrow down to specific sources of the problem. And because the research focused on the cause and effect, the causal research was the most probable. There was a need to know how people would react to free samples and discounts.
The two designs would make the research more appropriate to the research problem. The results would help the organization to test the ideas using the causal methods. It would be helpful to learn how the students would react to the proposal to introduce discounts and free samples. The idea would benefit the business because it would be like launching the business fresh.
The cross-sectional study would be the best method to get the initial response. The cross-sectional approach enabled the researchers to get a good grasp of the population. It was then possible to identify the attendance to the center from each case study. For the longitudinal study, there would be the need to repeat the measurement on the same sample.
Many of the participants would not continue to the end of the study or would change their minds in the middle of the research. A longitudinal study is tedious and would wear down the researchers and hence giving results that were not accurate. It was necessary that the study needed a design that would complete the results once, and hence cross-sectional was the best choice.
Research Instrument
Descriptive research could work well with quantitative research. Descriptive research would describe the market and its characteristics and give quantitative information. It enabled the researchers to have knowledge about the market and the business before carrying out the analysis. The descriptive research covered the market characteristics.
The researchers also perused through the records to familiarize themselves with the trends of the sales in the business. They asked questions about product usage. The organization had to explain the main uses of the products they offered. The answers from the students will verify if the management has done enough awareness campaigns about product usage. The majority of the students believed that the company had failed in its pricing of the products and services.
The best approach was to use the survey method. The method was to include questionnaires. They had questions that would cover all the aspects of the study. The research clearly stated the people who would conduct the research. It also gave them information about the environment. The timing of the research was also very important so that it would cover a bigger number of students. After listening to the managers at the organization, the researchers understood what was very important and of concern to the organization.
The backward method required a specific segment of the population. The quantitative data collection describes the segment of the CSUN student population. The quantitative data provides clear information and explanation. It involves the correlation between the participants who get to the center willingly and those who need discounts and gifts to entice them to attend.
The qualitative data does not have a relativity or comparison aspect. The quantitative data does not provide all the information as the qualitative data does. The qualitative research supports interviews and or observations. Such forums enable the research to get detailed information on all the factors that relate to the causes of the students’ actions. The questionnaire method is quick and less costly. The research included both online and hard paper surveys.
Most of the students filled in the online questionnaire. It could have been because of the Information Technology and privacy considerations. Therefore, it was easy to reach the majority of the population in the sample size. The online plan worked because about 500 students participated from the intended number of 300 participants.