Kuldeep Behera - Qmr Ia

QMR FORD INDIA RECALLS

Post Graduate Programme in Management

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

FORD INDIA RECALLS 1.66 LAKH UNITS OF FIGO, CLASSIC

11-DECEMBER-2013

QUALITATIVE MARKETING RESEARCH

TERM V

Course instructor: Prof. Bhavani Shankar

Submitted by:

Kuldeep Behera

2012PGP177

Individual Assignment | Expectations from the study 1


Introduction

Ford India had issued a recall of a total of 1.66 lakh cars to rectify issues related to Rear Twist Beam (RTB) and Power Assisted Steering (PAS) Hose. Till date there has been no reported injuries or accidents related to the RTB or PAS.

With respect to RTB, all cars will be inspected first and if necessary will be replaced while for PAS all cars produced and sold in that time span will be inspected and then replaced.

Ford has declared a potential crack in the RTB which manifests itself in the form of an abnormal noise from the rear. If the vehicle continues to be driven and the noise symptoms are ignored, it could lead to the RTB unit breaking, resulting in diminished ride and handling and brake performance - potentially rendering the vehicle inoperable.

In the case of the PAS Hose issue, the company had said there was a potential for development of an oil leak, which could result in potential fumes being emitted from the area causing the leak. It may also be possible for power steering fluid to come into contact with the vehicle's exhaust components creating a potential for smoke and, in extreme cases, fire.

The spate of auto recalls has increased since the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers announced a voluntary auto recall code, pre-empting the government’s own mandatory code.

Research Problem

It’s been reported that last year, 1.28 lakh units of Ford (all Compact Figo and Classic Sedan produced and sold in India) were recalled by Ford over the same problem and recalling for the same problem may lead to complete loss of customer’s trust.

Also Reuters reported that Ford Motor Co is recalling 2,618 Focus Electric cars because of potential loss of power to the wheels while driving. The automaker said nearly all the cars from model years 2012 to 2014 were sold in the United States.

Two recalls within two consecutive years for same problem of almost 3 lakh cars can really have immense effect on its future market and sales. Moreover recalling in other segments like electric cars can lead to change in customers overall perception about Ford quality.

With presence of market leaders like Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Tata Motors together accounting for more than 75% of passenger vehicles, GM with 5% and increasing such steps can create blunder for Ford.

Research Objective

The main objective is to study and determine customer satisfaction levels with Ford and their current perception about its quality.

How to retain customers’ value and change their current mind-set towards Ford’s quality aspect?

How to ensure customers’ safety and satisfaction level, what additional features to be installed? This question is answered partially by consumers as they may have not enough knowledge about safety technologies.



Research Methodology

Data collection approaches for qualitative research usually involves:

Direct interaction with individuals on a one to one basis Or direct interaction with individuals in a group setting

Qualitative research data collection methods are normally more time consuming, difficult to achieve and access. Therefore qualitative data is usually collected from a smaller sample than would be the case for quantitative approaches and hence, qualitative research are far more expensive.

The benefits of the qualitative approach are that the information is richer and has a deeper insight into the phenomenon under study and hence provides better understanding of the problems in term of customers’ perspective.

The main methods for collecting qualitative data are:

Individual In-depth Interviews Focused Group discussions Observations Other Data Gathering Methods

Data Collection

Focused Group Discussions – Customers/Car Owners

Focus group discussion (FGD would be useful to get information from customers in the context to figure out the relative importance of factors that can help Ford to target their audience in an effective manner. Customers sometimes cannot exactly figure out the reasons behind – “What went wrong?” in the particular brand. In such a case focus group discussion helps them reveal detailed information and generate deep insights into their buying behaviour. A well-executed FGD creates an accepting environment that puts participants at ease allowing them to thoughtfully answer questions in their own words and add meanings to their answers.

Defining a focus group

The first and foremost issue in conducting a FGD is recruiting the participants. In this case, I would first like to segment my target customers. The term ‘target customers’ here means any person who is well educated or knowledgeable about the product, market, environment and who is looking forward to buy a new car or is already having a car (may be Ford or difeerent)

The segmentation should be done on the basis of age. Mainly the categories would be Nuclear Family Member (for Compact Ford Figo) in the age group of 30-45 years and Executives for the Classic Sedan in the age group of 25-60 years. So basically we are dealing with Adults and Older Adults. These categories would be further classified into Males and Females.

There should be separate FGDs for participants in different categories and different gender. For example 1 FGD would have participants from Nuclear Family and Only Males. Here the focus is on maintaining the homogeneity of the group and at the same time trying to get



together participants who are unknown to each other. This would also help in capturing the issues related with individual group separately which may not come out in heterogeneous FGD. As the issue is safety of car and its influence on brand we need not divide men and women. It is to be done only in gender sensitive issues.

Recruiting and preparing the participants

For recruiting participants we would use the following techniques:

Nomination - Individuals nominate people they think would make good participants. The estimated time for FGD would be around 2 hours. So nomination criteria should be that the participant should be willing to devote 2 hours of his time

Random selection - If participants belong to a large but defined group (e.g. school children) then random selection could help

Volunteers - Incentivize people to volunteer for the FGD

Which method are you going to employ to get participants? How will you get access to the right respondents for selection? Once a group of viable recruits has been established, call each one to confirm interest and availability. Give them times and locations of the focus groups and secure verbal confirmation. To avoid short attendance we would invite 10- 20% more participants. The number of participants would be eight for FGD. But around ten participants are also fine.

Conducting the focus group discussion

Before starting a FGD a team consisting of moderator and assistant would be selected for conducting a FGD. A moderator would moderate the FGD whereas assistant would take notes and at the same time record the discussions for further analysis.

Starting off with the FGD

We would like to remind the participants that the response to the questions should be short and to the point. With all the above preparation we need to moderate the discussion with following questions. The questions would be adaptive in nature. The questions mentioned below will just serve as a pointer to moderate the discussion.

The questioning should be done in three ways as follows

1. Engagement questions:a. What is your favourite brand when it comes to buying a car?b. What do you notice when you look at other people cars?c. What is most important for you when it comes to driving? Is it safety, brand, mileage,

price, speed, style, colour, or class?2. Exploration questions:

a. Who in particular has influenced your choice of cars?b. How to do you define a good car? What attributes do you look for when buying a car? c. Does brand matters while buying a car?d. How do you differentiate between brands? Is it by the product specifications or by the

visibility of the brands?e. Are the events sponsored by a brand creates visibility for that brand?f. Is money a constraint in buying a car? Does a brand command a higher premium for

the similar attributes? g. Do you believe branded products are of high quality even if they are of similar

attributes?



3. Exit questions:a. Is there anything you would like to add to the discussion on your preference for a

particular brand?b. The most important thing is the customer reaction to the recall of Ford (Assuming that

the group is all Ford customers). You have solely focussed on the customers and their brand preferences. This does not answer your research question.

In-depth interview – Field Service Action (FSA) Employee/Worker

After FGD we would like to focus on the workers who were continuously interacting with our customers who came for repairing/inspection after the recall. The workers will be in a great position to tell what customer felt about the whole recall phenomena.

Whether customer felt that they were being cheated on quality and their safety was given least priority while designing.

Or they felt just the other way and now they are confident that not only Ford makes one of the best handling cars in the respective segments but also Ford's a very responsible car maker too.

You have to get grievance related data from customers, we should not ask what is the response of customers from service staff. They may give a partial and skewed picture. However, you can ask what all issues they face when it comes to address the recalling and issues related to that. What processes are in place to reduce the dilution of brand image?

Analysing the data

In order for all participant comments to be understandable and useful, they must be boiled down to essential information using a systematic and verifiable process. Begin by transcribing all focus group tapes and inserting notes into transcribed material where appropriate.

Clean up transcripts by stripping off nonessential words. Simultaneously assign each participant comment/quote a separate line on the page as well as each new thought or idea therein. Label each line with the participant and group number, e.g. a comment from participant 6 in group 1 would be assigned the number 1.6.

Each line is then entered into an Excel database as follows:

Compile data

Use a separate Excel data base spreadsheet for each group. Within each spreadsheet, use one sheet per question. Label three columns on each sheet. One column for coding, One column for the

participant ID#, One column for responses Enter each separate response or idea on a separate line with participant ID attached.

The coding column is filled in during the next phase - analysis.

Disassemble data and Analyse

When all comments have been entered, look for common categories or themes across the entries for each question. The most ideal situation is to ask several people to participate in this process.



Once consensus has been achieved regarding the best categories for organizing the data, assign a number or letter to each category.

Then assign the number/letter of the category that best fits to each entry on the sheet. Use Excel-Sort function to group entries by the categories you have assigned to them. If some entries seem inconsistent for their category, consider re-categorizing or

adding another category. It may also be apparent that one or more categories can be collapsed.

Arrange categories from those with the largest number of entries to those with the smallest.

Repeat for each group.

Synthesize and interpret results

Identify category and sub-category heading titles. Write a short paragraph summarizing findings for each sub-category possibly noting

similarities and differences across groups. Add powerful quotes to each sub-section

Analysis of data – Example

Group 1: Nuclear Family Member

Question 1: What is your favourite brand when it comes to buying a Car?

Category Code Participant ID Response Coding Categories

A 1.1 Maruti Suzuki A Nuclear Family Member

B 1.4 Hyundai B Executive

C 1.3 Tata Motors

The whole research should be focussed only on Ford, no need to include other cars.

Expectations from the study

The study is expected to generate correlation between the recalling events of Ford and related sales effect on its brand name and value perception and the recall of the brand at the point of purchase.

Secondly it should arrange the attributes and specific features that are important as per customer and FSA members as per their inspection of vehicles and interaction with customers.

The research would result in a solution to the gap between the current perception of customers about Ford’s Quality and the steps to be taken in future to safeguard customer retention and avoidance of such events.


Kuldeep Behera - Qmr Ia

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