CHAPTER 1 : Introduction

Abstract

This research explores the factor influence vendor at Baitulmal Building, Kuching using
focus group discussions conducted in Baitulmal itself which located in Kuching, Sarawak.
Then, we as researcher interview each of the vendor why they choose Baitulmal as their
choices. The themes identified were the retailers choose Baitulmal Building is the perception
about the management that fully provide, accommodation complete, buyers everyday came to
buy, competitive market and retail outlets that have a good and pleasant environment
shoppers. Despite the factor vendor growing every year in every place, not only in outside
Kuching still they choose Baitulmal Building as their first choice to rent a vendor for
shoppers.

Introduction

Retail is the sale of goods to end users, not for resale, but for use and consumption by
the purchaser. Retail involves the sale of merchandise from a single point of purchase directly
to a customer who intends to use that product. The single point of purchase could be a brick-
and-mortar retail store, an Internet shopping website, a catalogue, or even a mobile phone.
The retail transaction is at the end of the. Manufacturers sell large quantities of products to
retailers, and retailers attempt to sell those same quantities of products to consumers. It is
known as retailing, retail sale, retail transaction, retail business, retail trade ,retail industry
and many more.

In this modern era, retailing are most important since they are final link in the supply
chain between manufacturers and consumers. Retailing is important because it allows
manufacturers to focus on producing goods without having to be distracted with the
enormous amount of effort that it takes to interact with the end-user customers who want to
purchase those goods. Retailers should make the purchase of goods easy for the consumer.
That's why retail stores have salespeople, why internet shopping websites have customer
service instant chat popups, and why catalogues have descriptions, photos and toll-free phone
numbers. Retailing is about displaying products, describing the features and benefits of
products, stocking products, processing payments and doing whatever it takes to get the right
products at the right price to the right customers at the right time. Some retailers offer
additional services to the retail transaction like personal shopping consultations, and gift

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wrapping to add something extra to the retail customer experience and exceed the retail
customer experience.

Besides, retail is common word for global which means retail is everywhere. The
number of retailers keeps on growing and diversifying, for example the growth in retailers
who are trending online. Next, the factor of retailing is job benefits. Retail offers benefits job,
providing an interesting lifestyle and an exciting and varied carrier path. This is the reason
people can choose to work in sector of retail that suits to each of everyone personality,
hobbies and potential receive staff discounts on products we like. Most importantly many of
the skills acquired from working in retail will be beneficial to future employment and many
aspects in personal life.

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Background of the study

Baitulmal are distinctly different from the other two major locations. It is downtown
and local business strips. This building is pre planned as a merchandising unit for interplay
among tenants. Its site is deliberately selected by the developer for easy access to pull
customers from a trade area. It has on site parking as a common feature of the layout. The
amount of parking space is directly related to the retail area.

Customers like the shopping center's convenience. They drive in , park, walk to their
destination in relative safety and speed. Some shopping centers also provide weather
protection and most provide an atmosphere created for shopping comfort. For the customer ,
the building has great potential for customer attraction. Since have great potential, the
retailers service also helps to enhance a products image. By doing this, retailers participate in
the sorting process by collecting an assortment of goods and service from a wide variety of
suppliers and offering them for sale.

There are several factor that affect the Baitulmal building which is the variety. Talk
about variety meaning to say occupations, career streams, opportunity business and multitude
of opportunities will provide when retailers start to doing business. Besides, the another
factor is flexibility, there are not many industry that can offer the retailers same degree of
flexibility as retail. For many people, especially those with family commitments, the retail
factor is an ideal environment in which to work because of the flexibility of the hours and
shift patterns. This means retailers can be employed and earning an income whilst also being
able to attend to other commitments that might have.

Last, this will benefit customers from retailing is that, retailers perform marketing
functions that makes it possible for customers to have access to a broad variety of products
and services. Retailing also helps to create place, time and possession utilities. Lastly,
retailing in a way is the final stage in marketing channels for consumer products since retail
is everywhere also the will give impact on factor of retailing.

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Problem statement

For retailer, it is very difficult to retain the potential buyer because the buyers are
scattered according to their convenience of purchasing. In order to keep possessions of their
sales volume, the retailer has to face a stiff competition in the retail business. Majority of the
owners themselves performed a limit less of resource. So, the researcher made sincere
attempt to analyse the prospects faced by retailers in the study, during the course of starting
and managing their enterprise.

Based on the above mentioned low per-capita consumption of retail brand products
and the market challenges that still exist in Malaysia for retail brand products purchases, this
study is trying to identify that intention to purchase retail brand products are expected to be
influenced by attitude and subjective norm of customers. The relationship of retail brand
attitude and subjective norm with purchase intention of retail brand would be tested in two
different retail brand products.

This study also identify whether perceptual factors influence on attitude toward retail
brand products. In spite of the significant growth happened in grocery market and over retail
brand, little studies have been done on customers perceptual factors. In this research
customers perceptual factors like price consciousness, perceived quality variation, packaging
perception, self-concept congruity have been chosen because the customers perceptual
characteristics are mostly connected to retail brand purchase behavior.

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Research Objective

The main objective of this study are to examine retailers choosing Baitulmal as their retailing
place. The aim of this study is to determine :
To identify the perception towards choosing the retailing as a career as their choice.
How satisfied retailer with the business in Baitulmal either their business is strong
hold within a year.
How does internal and external environment of Baitulmal impact on consumer choice
of shopping centers.
To identify the characteristics of retailing among the employees.

Research Questions

Is there any relationship how much retail space, storage area, or the size of the office
you need?
Is there any relationship as in know what you want to sell and what you want for your
business to be known for?
Is there any relationship that can relate as customers and delivery trucks can easily
get in and out of the parking lot?
Is there any relationship for the location how much additional marketing will take for
customers to find you?
Is there any adequate parking that Baitulmal will provide?

Research Significance

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 I. The researcher
From this research, the research is able to get an experience, increase more
knowledge and skill. On the other hand, by conducting this research, it can answer
the question and give inner satisfaction as researcher.
II. The retailers
It provides marketers and business owners with a metric that they can use to
manage and improve business.
III. Polytechnic Kuching Sarawak
This research can be used as a future reference by the students as well as the
lectures. The use of the findings of this research can give better understanding
about the problem matter and assist in developing a new model that is more
reliable for future action.

Research limitation

This research is restricted to the retailers of the Baitulmal areas only. Some of the respondents
may not give accurate information, as they may not like to reveal their actual sales and etc.
There may be some positive and negative biases of the respondents. Consumers would like to
portray themselves as trendy and elite and may not give their actual preferences to anyone.
The value of any research findings depend critically on the accuracy of the data collected.
Efforts to ensure that data is accurate is samples are representative and interviewers are
objective will all add to the costs of the research but such cost are necessary. For instance,
researchers must ensure that the data they obtain is kept source, is only used for lawful
purpose and is only kept for as long as it necessary. It must be made clear as data being
collected and the consent of the participants must be obtained.

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Chapter 2 : Literature Review

Introduction

This section reviews the customer satisfaction theories and models, and analyses the
reasons behind the customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction concerning the mobile telephony
service. First, a presentation of the customer purchasing process will be given in order to
provide a background how to achieve customer satisfaction.

Definition of Terms

The definition of terms is an idea or theory containing various conceptual elements,

typically one considered to be subjective and not based on empirical evidence. Customer
satisfaction is typically viewed as a predictor for such behavioural variables as loyalty and
purchase intentions (Jones and Sasser, 1995; Anderson and Sullivan, 1993). According to
Jones and Sasser (1995), complete customer satisfaction is the key to securing customer
loyalty and generating superior long-terms financial performance. Customer satisfaction also
appears to have a stronger and more consistent affect on purchase intention that does service
quality (Cronin and Taylor,1992). It is also widely noticed that high customer satisfaction
leads to relationship strength and a deep state of collaboration has been found profitable (e.g.
Storbacka et al, 1994).

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT, more correctly CSAT) is a term

frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a
company meet a surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as the
number of the customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a
firm, its products, or its sevices (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals.

Customer satisfaction is a marketing term that measures how products or services

supplied by a company meet or surpass a customers expectation. Customer satisfaction is
important because it provides marketers and business owners with a metric that they can use
to manage and improve their business.

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Service Quality

Service quality means an assessment of how well a delivered service conforms to the
clients expectation. For measuring the customer satisfation in regard to the quality of service.
It usually refers to the customer perceived quality as it is basically defined from a customers
point of view and not from the producers point of view. Consumers of product or service will
make the judgement about the quality of the product or service relative to what they want.
They view a providers service quality by comparing their perceptions of service experiences
with their expectations of what the service performance should be.

Price Perceptions

According to Herrmann et al. (1992), price perceptions directly influence satisfaction

judgements: The research demonstrated the influence of perceived price fairness on
satisfaction judgements empirically.

According to Xia et al. (2004), price fairness refers to consumers assessment of

whether a sellers price is reasonable, acceptable or justifiable. In a separate study on factors
affecting customer satisfaction, the authors found that charging a fair price helps to develop
customer satisfaction and loyalty. This is backed up by another study from Herrmann et al.
(2007), which concluded that customer satisfaction is directly influenced by price
perceptions, albeit indirectly, through the perception of price fairrness. The price fairness
itself and the way it is fixd and offered have a great impact on satisfaction. To improve
overall customer satisfaction, we need to be pricing our products high enough to give the
resources to offer amazing customer experiences.

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Theoretical Framework And Study

Based on the insights provided by the literature review and group, we propose a
framework for developing context-specific definition of consumer satisfaction.The purpose of
this chapter is to present a theoretical and conceptual framework and a preliminary model of
post choice satisfaction, which will be employed by this study.The theoretical and conceptual
framework is based on the findings presented in the literature reviewed earlier.

This section reviews the customer satisfaction theories and models, and analyses the
reasons behind the customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction concerning the mobile telephony
service. First, a presentation of the customer purchasing process will be given in order to
provide a background for how to achieve customer satisfaction. Thereafter, the measurement
of customer satisfaction will be presented. Then, the concept of a perceived value and service
quality will be examined. Each of the steps are described below.

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Figure 1.1

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 Oliver (1997) defined the customer satisfaction as the customer reaction to the state of
fulfilment, and customer judgement of the fulfilled state. Satisfaction is the customers
reaction to the assessment of the perceived difference between prior expectations that can be
seen as predictions about what will possibly occur in the future (Parasuraman et al, 1988).

According to Kotler et al. (2006), and Lovelock et al. (2007), customers are passing
through five steps of a decision making process when they make a purchase: need recognition
and problem awareness, search for information, evaluation of the set of available alternatives,
and purchasing and post purchase evaluation. Furthermore, Lovelock et al. (2007) developed
a model for service consumption which consists of three stages. The pre-purchase stage
which is a constituent of three components, first, the perception of need and the search for
information that accordingly clarifies that need, second, exploring the solution, the suppliers,
and alternative service products.

The customer satisfaction measurement is a useful means to meet the objectives of the
business organizations and to analyse the performance of an offering to customers to identify
the areas of improvements as well as customers priorities, which can serve as a base for
customer segmentation (Kotler et al., 2006). It is a predictive tool. It enables a business
organization to evaluate its ability to meet to the customers expectation, desires and needs
effectively (Parasuraman et al., 1988). The process of the customer satisfaction is a projective
way to get into the mind of the customers, and getting continues valuable feedback from the
customers. This process is considered as the key element in total quality management (Zairi,
1994).

Measurement of the customer satisfaction involves market techniques such as survey

methods, study of a focus group, standardize packages for monitoring customer satisfaction,
and different computer software. However, Feclikova (2004) idenified some problem at
different levels in measuring the customer satisfaction using these techniques. First, problem
can be encountered in analytical such as techniques, formal procedures and systems. Second,
type f problem encountered are behavioural such as attitudes, beliefs, perceptions,
motivation, obligation and outcome behaviour resulting from people involved in the process.
Third type of problem arise from, organizational issues such as organizational structure, flow
of information, management style and also the level in which the process is conducted.

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 Zeitthaml (1996) and Holbrook (2006) defined the perceived value as the results or
benefits customers receivein relation to the total cost (which include the price paid plus other
costs associated with the purchase), or the customers overall assessment of what is received
relative to what is given. Holbook proposed that the perceived value can be regarded as a
consumersoverall evaluation of the quality of a service or product based on the perceptions
of what is received and what is given. Holbrook referred to this evaluation as the comparison
of a product or services get and give mechanism. Moreover, in the study mobile
telephony services in Canada, Turrel et al. (2006) argued that the level of the perceived value
as a key factor which affects customer satisfaction.

Many scholars agreed upon the four features that are the main grivers of the customer
value on mobile telephony services. these features are network quality price, customer sevice,
and personal value and benefit (Danaber et al 1996, Bolton, 1998, and Booz et al, 1995 in
Eniola, 2006). Network quality includes network coverage (indoor and outdoor), voice
clarity,and connection quality. Price is the amount paid in order to access the service and use
the network. Customer service includes the quality of the service delivered to the customer
such as customer care, maintenance service, billing, etc. Finally, personel value and benefits
are the level of perception of benefits from using the mobile service by individual customers.

For measuring the customer satisfaction in regard to the quality of services delivered
to the customer, it is necessary to review the concept of quality of service. It usually refers to
the customer perceived quality as it is basically defined from a customers point of view and
not from the producers point of view.

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Chapter 3 : Research Methodology

Research Design

The main purpose of preparing the research design is to create relationships between
objectives and question regarding this research topic. Research design used to accomplish
this research is questionnaire. The questionnaire is being distributed to the respondents and
the analysis will be obtained from the feedback of the questionnaire. Other than that,
observation and interview is required to get a complete and proper information and data to
get a real picture or directly to the matters under review.

Qualitative Data : Interviews

Since this research would be adopting both quantitative and qualitative data gathering
techniques, qualitative data would be obtained through structured interviews. Qualitative
research methods provide flexibility and questions could be adopted as they went along
(Johns, 1998), and had become increasingly important modes of inquiry for te social sciences
and applied fields such as education and social works.More over the interview was an
alternative method of collecting data survey (Babbie, 2007) and were a useful method of
obtaining information and opinions from experts during the early stages of your research
project (Walliman, 2006). One of the strengths of interviews was their personal nature. If
respondents related to the iterviewers, they were more likely to be willing to share personal
opinion (Wolfer, 2007), yields data n quantity quickly (Marshall and Rossman, 2006) and
Glesne (2006) suggested that we might also interview in search of opinions, perceptions and
attitudes towards some topic.
The total of 7 interviews done was intended to investigate and identify the scenarion
that entrepreneur were going through towrds choosing Baitulmal as their retailing place.
Having met, talked and discussed with as few entrepreneur as possible at every opportunity
in the earlt stage of the research, the actual interviewss were carried out from the beggining
of November 2016 till the end of March 2017. The researcher conducted structured
interviews by visiting stalls at Baitulmal, Kuching Sarawak. The respondents were allowed
to express freely their own thought without any input or help from the researcher to avoid
any kinds of bias. The interviews were structured and guided in order to get the best possible
answers in tandem with the research objectives.

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 The respondents were made to realize that some of their verbatim statements would
be documented and used in the thesis as and when it would be necessary. They were also
given the highest assurance that te information collected would be treated with strictest
confidentiality. Ethical procedures such as informed and voluntary consent, confidentiality of
information shared, no harm done to the interviewees and reciprocity were observed.

Quantitative Method
Subsequently for the quantitative method, the self completion questionnaire was used
as the instruments for the survey. An advantage of using self completion questionnaire was
that they were an entirely standardized measuring instrument because the questions were
always phrased exactly in the same way for all respondents (Sapsford,2007). Questionnaire
were often used in sociological. Opinion, psychological and in marketing research
(Richardson,2005)

Research sample
This study sample consisted of retailers who do business under the premises
Baitulmal, Kuching, Sarawak. From our place which is polytechnic to Baitulmal area took
about 30 minutes if drive. There are 10 retails there but only 7 retails are operating. Retailers
are doing business on the premises by selling variety item, clothes, herbs, and many more.
The questionaire are distribute among the retailers who we interview before we distribute it.
The selection of respondents based on their willingness to take the time to answer the
questionnaire. The data were collected as an open ended question in order to make the
respondents answer from their own experiences at Baitulmal area.

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Research Instruments
Instrument is a questionnaire thtat has been used by other researchers before.
According to Mohd Majid (2000), in his article said thta the questionnaire is the best way to
colect information. Questionnaire that been used contains of four section. For Section A, it is
the background of the respondents, while for Section B, Section C and Section D are the
question related to the research objectives. Question posed in the questionnaire was based on
the findings of previous studies that analyzed a paragraph that allows the respondents to
answer the questions. Items of the questionnaire is using the Likert Scale ranging from
strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree and strongly agree. The objective is :
To identify the perception towards choosing the retailing as a career
How satisfied retailer with the business in Baitulmal.
How does internal and external environment of Baitulmal impact on consumer choice
of shopping centres.
To identify the characteristics of retailing among the employees

Data Collection Procedure

The data obtained in this study is from two sources, namely primary and secondary
data. Primary data is data obtained from questionnaire and secondary data is obtained from
the books, theses and journal related to the topic. Data are usually collected through
qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative approaches aim to address the how and
why of a program and tend to use unstructured methods of data collection to fully explore
the topic. Qualitative questions are open-ended such as why do you go to Baitulmal as your
business retailing? and How much you rate the satisfaction level of product and services at
Baitulmal? Qualitative methods include focus groups, group discussions and interviews.
Quantitative approaches on the other hand address the what used in certain situation. They
use a systematic standardized approach and employ methods such as surveys and ask
questions.

Primary data

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Questionnaires and interviews were conducted with respondents from Baitulmal itself which
is from the retailers.

Secondary data
Secondary data obtained from library and internet, books, magazines, newspaper articles,
journals and other scholarly materials.

Data Analysis
Analysis of data, also known as data analytics, is a process of inspecting, cleansing,
transforming, and modelling data with the goal of discovering useful information, suggesting
conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Data analysis consists of qualitative analysis
and quantitative analysis. Qualitative data analysis involves method of interviews, focus
group and experiments. For example, data analysis involved identifying common patterns
within the responses and analysing them in order to achieve research aims and objectives.
Quantitative data analysis involved critical analysis and interpretation of figures and
numbers, and find rationale behind the emergence of main findings.

Data analysis is a process for obtaining raw data and converting it into information
useful for decision-making by users. Data is collected and analysed to answer questions, test
hypotheses or disprove theories (Judd, Charles and, McCleland, Gary (1989). Data Analysis.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-516765-0).

15

Define your question
Set clear measurement Collect data
priorities Determines what
Decide what to measure information could be
Decide how to measure collected
Keep data collected
organized

Interpret Results compare Analyse Data

the consideration and
question to provide
productive conclusion - use
the results of your data
analysis process to decide
your best course of action
manipulating your data in a
number such as plotting
and finding correlation by
creating a pivot in a table.

Two types of content analysis are relational analysis and conceptual analysis. Conceptual
analysis used to analyses the literature and the interview done in the retailing sector.
Relational analysis was used to develop relation between literature and findings from
interview and questionnaire to produce analysis and conclusion for the research question.

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Research Planning Table (Gantt Chart )

Activities Weeks

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Discuss research title

Research tittle approval by the

supervisor and discuss about
proposal

Prepare questionaire

Prepare research report

Submit research report

Presentation

References
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