CHAPTER -I

1

Introduction

1.1 Introduction of topic

“Studying the effect of emotions on the Customer Satisfaction with special Reference for MCDONALD’S Product.”

Traditionally, Satisfaction definitions include “emotion” (feelings) elements. While it is accepted that satisfaction is closely related to, or includes emotions, it is not clear whether satisfaction is an emotion itself, or consists of several emotions that form the overall satisfaction emotional component.

High consumer satisfaction has been linked to positive consequences for the service organization. Hence, it is in the interest of every firm to monitor their customers’ perceived satisfaction with the service offer and the underlying factors that affect it. In services research, perceived service quality has usually been used as the only indicator of consumer satisfaction. However, there is a growing body of literature which clearly indicates that the positive and negative emotions that consumers associate with the service play an important role in forming satisfaction. Generally, positive emotions have been found to enhance satisfaction. On the other hand, it is also possible to combine high satisfaction with feelings that in other circumstances would have invoked dissatisfaction. The structure of emotions and consumer experienced emotions with advertising there is a lack of research on the linkage between emotions and post-consumption variables like satisfaction.

Different segments of consumers may react with different emotions to the same service, and because of service variability, one consumer’s perceived service quality and experienced emotions may vary from one service encounter to another. It is a challenge for service managers to understand the emotions that their customers experience, and to manage the service in such a way that positive emotions are promoted and negative emotions reduced. In order to better understand the role of emotions in services, research is needed on different types of service encounters. The present study seeks to increase our understanding of how experienced emotions affect consumer satisfaction with a McDonalds’ product.

The main aim of this study was to investigate the structure of emotions as experienced by consumers for McDonald’s products

2

1.2 Objective of the study

The objective of the present study is as follows:

1. To review statistics on people’s emotions eating at an establishment.2. To study customer preferences under different emotions.3. To study the impact of emotions on customer satisfaction.4. To study the supply chain management of McDonalds.

3

1.3 Literature Review

The word "emotion" dates back to 1579, when it was adapted from the French word émouvoir, which means "to stir up". However, the earliest precursor of the word likely dates back to the very origins of language.

Emotions have been described as discrete and consistent responses to internal or external events which have a particular significance for the organism. Emotions are brief in duration and consist of a coordinated set of responses, which may include verbal, physiological, behavioral, and neural mechanisms. Emotions have also been described as biologically given and a result of evolution because they provided good solutions to ancient and recurring problems that faced our ancestors.

Emotion can be differentiated from a number of similar constructs within the field of affective neuroscience. • Feelings are best understood as a subjective representation of emotions, private to the individual experiencing them.• Moods are diffuse affective states that generally last for much longer durations than emotions and are also usually less intense than emotions.• Affect is an encompassing term, used to describe the topics of emotion, feelings, and moods together, even though it is commonly used interchangeably with emotion.

Customer satisfaction, a term frequently used in marketing, is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals."[1] In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 71 percent responded that they found a customer satisfaction metric very useful in managing and monitoring their businesses.

It is seen as a key performance indicator within business and is often part of a Balanced Scorecard. In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy."Within organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have powerful effects. They focus employees on the importance of fulfilling customers’ expectations.

4

Furthermore, when these ratings dip, they warn of problems that can affect sales and profitability. These metrics quantify an important dynamic. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains positive word-of-mouth marketing, which is both free and highly effective."

Therefore, it is essential for businesses to effectively manage customer satisfaction. To be able do this, firms need reliable and representative measures of satisfaction.

"In researching satisfaction, firms generally ask customers whether their product or service has met or exceeded expectations. Thus, expectations are a key factor behind satisfaction. When customers have high expectations and the reality falls short, they will be disappointed and will likely rate their experience as less than satisfying. For this reason, a luxury resort, for example, might receive a lower satisfaction rating than a budget motel—even though its facilities and service would be deemed superior in 'absolute' terms."

The importance of customer satisfaction diminishes when a firm has increased bargaining power. For example, cell phone plan providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, participate in an industry that is an oligopoly, where only a few suppliers of a certain product or service exist. As such, many cell phone plan contracts have a lot of fine print with provisions that they would never get away if there were, say, a hundred cell phone plan providers, because customer satisfaction would be way too low, and customers would easily have the option of leaving for a better contract offer.

There is a substantial body of empirical literature that establishes the benefits of customer satisfaction for firms.

Sandra Kiffin-Petersen, and Geoffrey Soutar from University of Western Australia and Steven Murphy from Carlton University, Canada used a qualitative diary study with 276 sales employees to shed light on the sales experience from the employees’ perspective. In psychology, ‘affect’ is the experience of feeling or emotion. We often feel emotions in response to specific events, particularly social interactions. Affective events theory (AET) suggests that a salesperson’s thoughts about how they rate their interaction with a customer (appraisal) will then help determine the emotions they feel. Until now, studies of how an individual’s positive emotion appraisals fluctuate in real life, or organizational settings, have been thin on the ground.

5

Emotions were also shown to be contagious – so as well as a great sales interaction making for a happy customer, it was also demonstrated that customer happiness can ‘rub off’ on the sales staff serving them.

"The customer interaction may need to be recast in the context of a dynamic interplay between salespersons and customers, where the affective state of each may influence the other," the authors of the study suggest.

6

Chapter-II

7

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH DESIGN

This chapter gives us an overview of the methodology, which describes how the research will be carried out. “Methodology” refers to how a research should be undertaken. In order to conduct a successful research, it is essential to collect relevant data from various sources and analyze it.

The study sets out to expand upon work on the topic of

“The effect of emotions on the Customer Satisfaction with special Reference for MCDONALD’S Product.”

Considering the nature of our research, we intend to use a questionnaire approach as research methods. This study further defines and discusses the following: the research design, the research approach, the research methods, the sample design and data collection and analysis of the research.

There are a number of different types of method available for the collecting research

data, for example:

• questionnaire

• observations

The Research Process

The first step of any research is to identify a subject area of research and design a clear objective within it to do further study on that particular research. Secondly, after getting secondary data from different sources on a similar subject has to be critically reviewed. To carry McDonald’s Customer Satisfaction with their emotion out proper research an ideal person has to be defined, out of which, a sample has to be dispatched for survey by different sources.

However, to make the research more authentic, qualitative research has to be carried out in the former of descriptive questionnaire. Lastly, before completing the report, the descriptive data thus collected has to be analyzed properly and then drive final conclusion.

Following charts will show a brief summary of the research process .

Formulating and clarifying Research Topic

Critically Reviewing Literature

Choosing Research Approach

Constructing Instrument for Data Collection

8

Selecting a Sample for Survey

Analysis Qualitative Data

Writing the Research Report

Research Approach

An effective strategy will be used to collect most of the information and data from various sources. The research will contain two parts, firstly “secondary Research” in which the researcher will go through various research papers, electronic journals and database. Whereas for “primary Research”, different methods that will be used to collect information from outlets of McDonald.

.

Sources of Data Collection

Data for the research project is usually either by using primary data, secondary data or a combination of both.

Secondary Data

Secondary Research will be aimed at focusing on existing sources of information such as an internal document, journal, magazines, internet etc. Research got permission from management to use internal material Data.

McDonald's Customer Satisfaction with the emotions. Collection from secondary research will be routinely evaluated to eliminate bias, check the accuracy of data, make sure it is current and not obsolete, fit the purpose for what it is collected , examine the content of the data and to make sure it is dependable.

Different statistical tools such as bar charts will be used to analysis data and to draw conclusions and recommendations. In order to make it more comprehensive, Ms Word document will be used. This research methodology is carefully selected after considering factors such as the purpose of the research, accessibility and the amount of the time available.

The secondary research does not provide statistical information about the subject and is purely based on qualitative analysis. It triggers generalized results not representing the actual picture of the research. For this reason, we cannot rely much on qualitative research.

Primary Data

Primary data can be defined as the new data collected for the specific purpose of the research. This usually includes the use for various forms of interviews and questionnaire. The main medium to obtain the primary data is through a questionnaire. A questionnaire is a written list of questions, the answer to which is recorded by respondents. The questionnaire will consist of ten questions for which descriptive answer have to be provided by the customers, to support my research.

Questionnaires

9

Questionnaires will be a mix of structure and unstructured questions. Structure questions will be used to find out the percentage of similar answer to a given condition while unstructured question will be use whenever there is a necessity for a wider view on the part of the respondent. Other forms of interview method such as postal email interview will be not used as the response rate is likely to low, additional time be needed to get a response and the lack of motivation/initiative on the part of the respondent will make the process frustrating. Further, it will not be possible for the research to read between lines of the response, due to the absence of observation of body language.

Questionnaire Survey

“Any person to person interview between two or more individuals with a specific purpose in mind is called an interview”. Research will collect primary data through the questionnaire duly filled in by the sample companies will be briefly informed about the research by the researcher before they will be given the questionnaire to be filled. The questionnaire will be mainly targeted to the customers who provide the most detailed information about the emotion which effect their satisfaction. All the respondents‟ agreements will be taken before using the provided data for research.

SAMPLING

McDonald’s Customer Satisfaction with the effect of their emotions.

Questionnaire Frame Work

To conduct research in the form of a questionnaire, a sample will be chosen. “A sample is a set of elements selected in some way from a population”. It is, therefore essential to choose a proper sample for any research. “The quality of the sample has a significant impact on the overall quality of research but designing an appropriate sample is seldom easy.”It is also important to choose a sample of respondents. To select sample, questioner will be distributed to the customers of McDonalds.

Information will be gathered on the basis of it; however, it will be kept in mind that a more varied the sample would lead to better accuracy to the finding to the research. Therefore, maximum number of questioners will be distributed, In order to come out with accurate outcome for the research.

Questionnaire Design

While designing the questionnaire, the main object will be that how customer addresses the effect of emotion . Also, what are the parameter how they decide their preference.

The researcher will utilize sampling methods in designing the research sample. Initially the unit analysis will be identified their preference and with that their emotions.

Furthermore, several sampling methods as appropriate and listed below will be considered bearing in mind the time and cost constraints at the time of study, accessibility of information, the scope of the inquiry and the desired accuracy. The researcher will take every precaution to make sure a credible scale has been developed for the study.

10

Data Collection

Questioners will be used as collection methods. The time will be managed.

Questionnaires will be distributed to the customers of McDonald products will be held. The respond will vary with the different questions of which adequate research analysis will be done.

We took 30 random samples from three different locations, CBD –VASHI- KHARGHAR outlets.

11

CHAPTER – III

12

DATA PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS

Age of the respondents: Age is an important factor in arriving at a good decisions and implementing the decisions. The respondents are classified into four groups viz, below 25, 26-35, 36-45, above 46.

Table 1.Showing age of the respondents

Age Group

Frequency

Percent

20-29

30-39

40-49

50 & above

From the table 1, it is clear that 20% of the respondents fall under the age group of below 25 years, 46.7% of the respondents fall under the age group of 26-35 years, 23.3% of the respondents fall under the age group of 36-45 years,10% are under the age group of above 46.

Gender Gender has been classified into two groups viz. male and female.

Gender Frequency Percent

Male

Female

Total

From the table 2, it is clear that 71.7% of the respondents are male and 28.3% of the respondents are female. The majority of respondents are belonging to male category.

13

Education : It is classified into two groups‟ viz. under graduation and post graduation.

Education Frequency PercentUnder GraduationPost GraduationTotal

From the table 3, indicates that 60% of the respondents are having under graduation, 40% of the respondents are having post graduation.

Status: It is classified into 5 groups viz, Students, Employee, Self Employed, Professionals & Other Table 4. Showing status of the respondents

StudentEmployeeSelf EmployedProfessionalsOthers

The above table 4 indicates that 16.7% of the respondents are students, 26.7% of employee, 18.3% of the respondents are self employed, 15% of them are professionals, 23.3% of the respondents are belong to other groups.

Annual income Income is an important factor because each and everything is based on income. The respondents‟ income is studied under four different categories they are less than 50000, 50001-200000, 200001-450000, and more than 450001.

Less than 5000050000-200000200001-450001More than 450001

The table 6, shows that 3.3% of the respondents are having annual income of less than 50000, 1.7% of having 50001-200000 income, 25% of them are having 200001-450000 income, 70% are having income more than 450001.

14

Table.8 Survey questionnaires provided to the respondents:

Questions

Are you aware that purchasing eco-friendly green products will contribute to sustainable future?

15

Chapter - IV

16

F INDINGS

As per our research, wherein we had 30 random samples at different outlets of McDonald’s. The respondents were 11 females and 19 males. Out of which 21 were in a happy mood when they visited the outlet, and 4 were sad and 4 were bored.

As per these responses we found out that 70% were in a happy mood and at the same time were satisfied with the service provided.

As per our findings, different emotions did not affect the customer satisfaction. We found that irrespective of the mood of the customer they were either satisfied with the service or not depending upon the service provided.

We also found out that after meals there was a definite change in the moods of the customer thereby changing the emotions.

17

Chapter – V

18

Conclusion

Concerning all types of business organization customer satisfaction is the most important issue, and considered as most reliable feedback, for the excellence of any business organization. Customer satisfaction is the part of marketing and play important role in the market. And for measuring the customer satisfaction and emotion effect on the level of satisfaction this study was conducted. Service quality, physical environment and emotion are the key determinant of customer satisfaction in the purchase of fast food industry. At the end it could be concluded that, there is a significant positive effect to customer satisfaction with the respect to their different emotions for McDonald’s product. As per our research proved that customer’s mood did not dictate their opinion about the service provided. Moreover it was clearly seen that they left with a positive feeling after a meal at McDonalds, in addition to it a good customer service provided left the customers with an overall good experience irrespective of the mood with which they walked in. According to our research our only suggestion would be for the companies to satisfy their customers with quality products that were promised to them and in return the companies can earn the loyalty of the customers, thus irrespective of the customers mood the company retains them for long.

19

20

Chapter – VI

21

Recommendations

Since we found out that the customers moods did not affect their level of satisfaction, we hereby suggest that the company’s need to concentrate on the services they provide. Good response and service from the employees towards the customers do change the mood of the customers, hence its extremely important for the company to concentrate on providing a good and efficient service.

This will ensure the company to have higher rate of customer retention.

22

Bibliography

Books:

23