Case analysis – McNamara Shopping Centre project – research proposal

Background

McNamara Shopping Centre (Fictitious) is located in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney on Anzac Parade. It comprises 2 major bank branches, 2 major supermarkets (Aldi and Woolworths), a number of chain and independent alcohol and food outlets (24 in total), and over 45 specialty shops. The shopping centre has been trading since 1982, at which time the McNamara Traders Association was established.

Over the last 10 years, and more so since Covid, the retailers have been experiencing a slow decline in business and the number of customers, meaning their incomes have been significantly impacted. They are all complaining to the Traders Association and want steps to improve customer numbers and importantly sales.

2 primary reasons for this concerning decline in trade has been the impact of surrounding shopping centres such as Bondi Junction, Oxford Street and surrounding centres, as well as the shift for customers to online retailing. Another factor impacting the sales and success of the McNamara Shopping Centre has been the lack of effective marketing coordination and campaigns for the past 15 years, meaning customers don’t see the centre as an attractive or fun environment to do their shopping – it is not seen as a “destination” for shopping like the Sydney CBD or Bondi Junction.

Your task for this assignment is to gain some vital marketing insights around the current issues for the McNamara Shopping centre, through the development of a research plan and some suggestions about developing a marketing plan for this struggling retail “dinosaur”.

You need to:

1. Develop a market research plan – with a focus on qualitative data, while not totally ignoring the importance of quantitative and relevant secondary data.

In this section you will outline the approach you will take in your research plan.

1. Provide details on how you would implement your plan – ie are you doing a survey / questionnaire? If so please give a sample of the survey clearly demonstrating sequencing, question types etc. You must justify your choices on the research implementation. You need to give 1 clear example of one key aspect of your research plan.
2. Make up a data set with at least 5 variables and 50 samples – this is fictitious and would be what you might find if you were actually doing the research.
3. Utilise SPSS to take some key findings from the research results outlined above.
4. Outline 4 important insights you have found from this research process – and how you would apply this to the McNamara Shopping Centre to help improve trading for the struggling retailers.