Evaluating Customers’ Interest Towards Private Brand of Big C Supermarket

The most prestige supermarkets in Vietnam those have financial strength, wide distribution systems and the number of customers fairly “enormous”, which must include: Metro Cash & Carry Vietnam, BigC, and especially, BigC, are trying to develop and expand private brand in order to progress into the market. Most of private branded products are essential consuming goods such as processed food, frozen seafood, cosmetics and apparel. The advantages of this kind of products are : they are cheaper than the same products from 10% to 30%; because distributors located directly to the providers and it produces a large amount of goods for a specific segmentation. After a period of time BigC launched the private brands WOW, some of the individual products have attracted the attention of a large consumers. It’s a good premise to develop its private brands and expand in many kinds of products with private brandnames. However, there are still many controversies about the quality and image of the private brand products from BigC, the matter that whether customers are truly believe and actually buy its product labled private brand or how they evalute the private brand- label products of BigC are still un revealed by any offical research study.

As consequences, this research is crucial to meet that requirement. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and evaluate customer’s interest and responses towards the private brand developed by BigC supermarket and based on the result, give out some recommendations to improve the purchase intention of the consumers to its private brands, so that, the private brands can truly be the key to creating a healthy competition for providers, providing more opportunities for consumers to choice goods and successfully building a good image for BigC. Research Objective:

The consumers at BigC supermarket, who are over 18 years old and live at Ho Chi Minh city over 6 months. Research Design
We will pursue the following research design:
* Degree of research question crystallization: Formal
We have a clear research question and procedure as well as a data sorce specification * Method of data dollection: Communication
* Research control variables: Ex post facto design
* The purpose of study: Descriptive
* The time dimension: Crossessional
* The topical scope: Statistical
* The research environment: Field condition
* The participants’ perceptions of research activity: Actual routine
* Using qualitative and quantitative method.
Methodology:
Quantitative Research Method

Sample size:
According to Yamane (1967 – 1986) ‘s Theory
With:

n: The number of sample
N: Number of population = 5.920 mil
e: Standard Error = +-3%
=> The Number of sample is 1100
=> We will conduct collecting 110 sample questionnaires
Method:
Directly deliver 200 questionnaires to the buyers at 5 BigC supermarkets in Ho Chi Minh City, who are over 18 years old and live at Ho Chi Minh city over 6 months. The sample distribution will be devided according to 2 following variables: AGE | SEX |

From 18 to 29 yrs : 50 peopleFrom 30 to 39 yrs: 50 peopleFrom 40 to 49 yrs: 50 peopleFrom 50 to 59 yrs: 50 people| Male : 100 peopleFemale: 100 people|

In this step, i conducted 10 pilot quentionnaires, then worked with my team to find out some mistake and some ambigous points needed to be interpreted in the questionnaire, in order for us to brainstom to make the on time adjustment and fix it, considerated the following process:

* Contacted to others functional departments to approach contact information of students. * Invited junior and senior sudents to answer the online questionnaires via individual email address. Ditectly delivered questionnaires to 100 junior and senior students in University. * Filtering data : I rejected invalid questionnaires and encoded all the valid ones. Finally, I sorted them in a fixed arrangement and stored them carefully. Task II: Data processing

Step 1:
After collecting and filtering data, the next step are storing the valid data and preparing for processing data. We will use SPSS 18th edition and follow the proper process of Data – processing:

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Diagram 1: Process of Data – processing
* Quantitative coding: Encode for each factor and each element of a factor in every question of the questionnaire in a fixed order * Input data: Input data into a variable set in SPSS 18th version. Store it carefully. * Quality Control (QC): Run SPSS through all the variable to investigate any mistake appearing in the result. Check out the variable set and the questionnaire to find out and fix the mistake. * Process data by specialized software: Use SPSS 18.0 version software to process data and export results in kind of tables in excel file. * Decode and Process data: Edite those primitive data table into meaningful data table. Used all relevent tool in Microsoft Office Excels to arrange, highlight intersting figures and graph. * Analyze and Present the result: Write the quantitative report to summary all the important findings which has been explored, in which, we will explain and make various comment on interesting points in our opinion. Finnaly, we edit the graphs and present the whole report in word forms properly. Qualitative method:

Quanlitative method are conducted to explain the relationship between variables and investigate some important points found in the quantitative research as well as to consolidate the result drawn from quantitative research method. Step 1: Conduct Indepth – Interview

* Contacted and prepare the documents to invite : Senior and junior students of University of Technology, representatives of enterprises that used to recuit students of Universities and 11 deans and heads of falcuties to take part in the indepth interview. * Conducted the pilot indepth – interview, make adjustments in the interview outline * Conducted interview with 5 representative of enterprises and 6 dean of falcuties Step 2: Focus group

* Prepared the script for the group of female students based on the questionnaires and answers of the interviewee in the indepth – interview to investigate the main points found in indepth interviews. * Contacted to invite female junior and senior students. * Carried out the focus group, deeeply exploit the necessary information, bring out the meaning of those information and confirm the result from indepth interview. * Scripted the records of the interview and store them in an arranged flow. * Classsified and synthesized information collected in one flow to indentify the variable had been repeated. Indepth Interview : Conduct Indepth – interview with 5 consumers who are over 18, living at Ho Chi Minh city over 6 months and purchasing at BigC supermarket system, to examize: * How they define private brand

* How they regconize the private brand of BigC
* How they feel about private brands in general, and private brands of BigC * How they evaluate the privated label products of BigC in comparision with other product. * A list of factors that influence them the most when choosing a product in BigC supermarket. * The trend in choosing goods in supermarket.