BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS. 21028760 (2)

SUBJECT CODE : 7BUS2002 SUBJECT TITLE : BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS STUDENT ID : 21028760 An investigation into the impact of customer dissatisfaction on brand image

2 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 3 Research background ............................................................................................................. 3 Research Rationale ................................................................................................................. 3 Research aim and objectives .................................................................................................. 3 Research Questions ................................................................................................................ 4 Chapter 2: Literature Review ..................................................................................................... 4 The impact of customer dissatisfaction on brand image in the case of MNEs ...................... 4 Main issues faced by MNEs that have impacted on the brand image of the companies ....... 5 The US based MNEs have developed strategies to gain customer satisfaction ..................... 5 Utilization of customer loyalty program can help the organizations to enhance customer satisfaction to improve the brand image ................................................................................ 6 Chapter 3: Research Design ....................................................................................................... 6 Research approach ................................................................................................................. 6 Research philosophy .............................................................................................................. 7 Research strategy ................................................................................................................... 7 Research choices .................................................................................................................... 7 Time horizon .......................................................................................................................... 8 Data Collection ....................................................................................................................... 8 Data Analysis ......................................................................................................................... 8 Ethical consideration .............................................................................................................. 8 References .................................................................................................................................. 9

4  To scrutinize how the US-based MNEs have developed strategies to gain customer satisfaction  To evaluate how utilization of customer loyalty programs can help the organizations enhance customer satisfaction to improve the brand image Research Questions  What is the importance of customer satisfaction to enhance the brand image of the MNEs?  What are the main issues faced by the US-based MNEs considering customer dissatisfaction that has impacted the brand image of the companies?  How the US-based organizations develop strategies for gaining customer satisfaction?  How customer loyalty program will be able to improve the brand image of the companies? Chapter 2: Literature Review : In the section literature review, the author will discuss on different objectives of the research by gathering information from the existing kinds of literature. The impact of customer dissatisfaction on brand image in the case of MNEs According to Abugre & Anlesinya (2019), the relationship between the brand image and the customer behaviour has explored the aspects of customer dissatisfaction with the brand image of the multinational companies. In the case of the international business development process, the organizations need to focus on customer satisfaction through developing different strategies to improve the brand image in the global context. Different driving forces include brand performance and brand image through establishing a relationship with the potential customers efficiently. Positive feedback from the customers towards the products of the brand and customer service offered by the brand has helped the international organizations to

5 improve the brand equity by implying customer engagement theories. Several studies have emphasized that customer dissatisfaction has impacted the brand image by reducing the profitability of the organizations in the global context. For an instance, in the case of the international hospitality sector, many hotels have faced challenges with customer service operations that have caused customer dissatisfaction by affecting the brand image that has reflected in the revenue of the organizations. International organizations have to focus on different issues that cause customer dissatisfaction by impacting customer behaviour (Foroudi 2020). Main issues faced by MNEs that have impacted on the brand image of the companies According to Liou & Rao (2021), international organizations have to focus on establishing an efficient corporate social brand image in the global market. However, the development of a sustainable brand image in the international context is very complex as it has considered many types of different business activities such as the establishment of proper business set ups, development of efficient corporate social responsibilities to develop an efficient brand image, designing efficient market planning, development of efficient promotional strategies to promote the products and services to the potential customers etc for improving the efficiency of the customer service as efficient customer service helps to increase the brand equity by improving the brand image in the international context. International organizations have faced issues regarding business activities and human resource management that impact the customer service operations of the company by reducing the brand image in the international market, It has been analyzed that, in the case of multinational organizations, inappropriate market research to identify the requirement of the customers, lack of efficient skilled employees, lack of implication of innovation management to improve the product development process and lack of training and development program for improving the performance of human resource management etc have impacted on the customer service of the international organizations that have impacted on a brand image by generating customer dissatisfaction. The US based MNEs have developed strategies to gain customer satisfaction The author in this section will try to analyse the topic of impact of the dissatisfied customers on the brand image. Brand image is a perception which allows the customer to perceive about the brands. This perception of the image on the brands are created over the time. The perception of the brands are created when the customer interacts and experience with the products of the brands and hence on this the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the customer

7 being adopted, instead, there will be a new theory designed which will be used to view certain hypothesis. The term deductive means that it will reason from particular observations to the generalized view (Naumovska & Zajac 2022). The casual relationship or the link will be implied on the basis of a particular theory or even on the case studies which will be used to create a relationship between the two variables which are often true in the most of the cases. Research philosophy The researcher in this case will be using the philosophy of the positivism. The philosophy of positivism will actually adhere to the knowledge which is factual and which is gained through observation, which can include certain measurements which can be considered trustworthy (Botha 2021). In this case, the role of the researcher will be very much restricted to the process of the data collection and the interpretation of the data in an objective way. The aspect of the positivism will depend a lot on the quantifiable observations which will lead to the statistical analysis. The researcher in this case will be using its own experience to decide a certain solution to the problems. Research strategy This research will adopt the strategy of the case study research so that it can generate a certain theory which will be used in the findings of this research. In this case there will be collection of several case study reports from which most of the information will be extracted. A case study analysis is basically an in-depth study about a particular individual, a family or a group of organization (Paasivaara et al. 2018). This will be indeed helpful for the researches where the questions how and why will be asked. In this case the most important question which will be asked is what are the impacts of the dissatisfied customers on the brand image. Research choices This research will apply a mono method to conduct the research. This is because only the qualitative research method will be used for the research purpose. This research will not require any other methods because there will be no relevant informat6ion which could be gathered from the interview analysis or the survey analysis. Instead it will be through the analysis of the case study, from where all kinds of relevant information will be gathered and will be used further in the research for the purpose of the research. This research will be adopting qualitative case study and a structural literature review for the purpose of the research process of the analysis.

8 Time horizon This research will be adopting cross-sectional time horizon for the purpose of the research analysis process. This is because the research will consider data of a certain period of time, which will be used for the purpose of the analysis process. Data Collection The author is going to use the secondary data collection method for collecting data from secondary resources such as existing peer-reviewed journals, books, theses papers, articles, news, business case studies etc that are available both offline and online platforms (Trinh 2018). The author will collect the data from the authentic resources by using some efficient keywords and utilizing efficient search engines like “ Google Scholar”. Data Analysis In this research, the author is going to use qualitative data analysis to generate new concepts and ideas by measuring the frequencies of the gathered data. Qualitative data analysis is significant to formulate the answers to the research questions from the secondary data and the existing theories (Azungah 2018). Ethical consideration This research will be following all the guidelines which are ethical and that will be required to complete the project in an ethical manner (Arifin 2018). This research will be using the i secondary data, which will be gathered from the reputed governmental website and hence it will signify the results which will be obtained can be accurate and authentic. This research will make sure that none of the data will get manipulated to the liking of the researcher and the data will be kept to improve the authenticity of the outcome. Besides, this research will be of recent information related to the impact of the customer dissatisfaction on the brand image and hence this research will be extremely useful.

10 Naumovska, I & Zajac, E.J (2022), “How inductive and deductive generalization shape the guilt-by-association phenomenon among firms: Theory and evidence”, Organization Science , Vol. 33 No. 1, pp.373-392. Botha, M (2021), “Critical realism, community psychology, and the curious case of autism: a philosophy and practice of science with social justice in mind”, Journal of Community Psychology . Paasivaara, M, Behm, B, Lassenius, C & Hallikainen, M (2018), “Large-scale agile transformation at Ericsson: a case study”, Empirical Software Engineering , Vol. 23 No . 5, pp.2550-2596. Arifin, S.R.M (2018), “Ethical considerations in qualitative study”, International Journal of Care Scholars , Vol. 1 No . 2, pp.30-33.

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