Students perspectives on improving the quality of vending machines at solbridge international school of business

TERM PROJECT ASSIGNMENT Students' perspectives on improving the quality of vending machines at SolBridge International School of Business Course: Statistical Analysis Professor: Onur Özs

TERM PROJECT ASSIGNMENT

Students' perspectives on improving the quality of vending machines at SolBridge International School of Business

Course: Statistical Analysis Professor: Onur Özsoy, Ph.D

Student Name:

Le Hong Hai (201905041) Nguyen Thi Kieu Khanh (201905032)

MS Program

Daejeon, September 17th, 2019

Table of Contents

Abstract 4

Part One: Introduction 5

Background 5

Purposes 6

Research questions 6

Research hypotheses 6

Testable hypotheses 6

Literature review 6

Part Two: Methods 8

Research approach and sampling method 8

Questionnaire development and data collection 8

Part Three: Discussions and Results Analysis 8

Demographic characteristics of respondents 8

Behavioral characteristics of respondents 9

Results analysis 11

Part Four: Conclusions 14

Acknowledgements 15

Appendix 16

References 19

Table of Figures

Table 1: Demographics characteristics of respondents

Table 2: Behavior characteristics of respondents

Table 3: Reliability Statistics of level of customer satisfaction and students‘ perspectives Table 4: The value of one-way ANOVA between characteristics of students and their perspectives on using vending machine

Table 5: The result of Crosstab test between characteristics of students and their perspectives

on using vending machine

Table 6: The result of descriptive value in characteristics of students

Table 7: The result of Correlations test between characteristics of students and Students satisfaction on using vending machine

Figure 1: Reasons not to buy beverages at campus vending machines (percentage)

Figure 2: The percentages of the nationalities of the students

Abbreviations

VMs Vending machines

Solbridge Solbridge International School of Business

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the perspectives of students on university vending machines, and

to identify how satisfied Solbridge’s students in beverage choices from vending machines aimed to improve the quality of campus vending machines at Solbridge

Methods: A survey was conducted with 60 university students (n=60) within randomly method from Solbridge International School of Business Fifteen questions explored vending machine use, attitudes towards beverage products and price, the satisfaction of students to university vending machines, and criteria to improve the quality of university vending machines

Results: Based the SPSS, the authors detected the value of Normality test, Reliability test, ANOVA, Crosstab and Correlation coefficient From these analyses, the authors could understand and finalize which are the major factors that influencing in students’ satisfaction and the relationship between students’ perspectives and characteristics of students

Conclusion: Almost of all Solbridge students lack of knowledge in using university vending machines Thus, one of the important factors to improve students’ satisfaction is the quality of price and convenience in vending machines

Keywords: vending machine, Solbridge International School of Business, students’ perspectives

Part One: Introduction

Background

In recent decades, there has been a considerable increase in the development of the vending machine industry Also, people are more concern on fast and convenience than before; thus, vending machines have become one of the most critical and popular elements in the modern life1 According to a recent research report by KBV Research, vending machine market growth rate is expected to accelerate to 17.6% in the Asia Pacific region during the forecast period of

2017 - 20232 Along with that, vending machines are rising significantly these days in South Korea3 In details, the proportion of food vending machine sales in 2017 was 39.17 thousand

In this study, the authors mainly focus on current students from Solbridge International School

of Business, locating in Daejeon, South Korea as our target In details, Solbridge International School of Business is a private school established by Woosong University in 20077 In addition, Solbridge’s students include 18 BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration), 2 MBA (Master

of Business Administration) and 1 MS (Master of Science) class, with the total population of

1600 students in the academic year 2019-2020, pursuing their learnings in 14 floors at Solbridge campus

To address the issue, there is a considerable number of campus vending machines at Solbridge International School of Business, which are accessible and widely available However, there are some other popular choices of beverage supplement sources (such as cafeteria, Emart, etc.) which competes directly with vending machines at Solbridge Also, the crucial factors on beverage choices of Solbridge students at campus-based vending machines are not understood clearly

Invented in 1883 by Percival Everitt, the first vending machines were introduced to purchase postcards, envelopes, and notepaper at post offices and railway stations in London, England Then, 5 years later, the United States installed the very first vending machines by the Thomas Adams Gum Company Also, beverage vending machines in the first time were displayed in Paris, France and allowed people to purchase beer, wine and liquor9 And until now, beverages are among the most favored and profitable items sold through vending machines10

Before this study is carried out, there were a number of authors studied about this field yet from various perspectives

According to Grech, A., & Allman-Farinelli, M (2015), vending machines (VMs) would be environmental components which contribute to the rising availability of nutrient-poor and energy-dense items purchased, being healthy choices hardly offered or totally absent11 Moreover, VMs are the main and most easily accessible source of foods for people working long hours12, due to time constraint Followed by Larson, N., Story, M (2010), the density of vending machine is commonly high at high schools and universities: approximately 75% to 80% of institutions sell foods and beverages at campus vending machines in the United States13 Otherwise, Shanthi Bavani and Choo Yen Peng (2016) stated that most of students prefer purchasing foods via vending machines, instead of going to canteen or cafeteria in Japan Also, vending machine is a creative and innovative technology which is helpful for young people to fill their hungers when they are in a hurry14

Callaghan, C et al (2010) argued that product price is described as a relevant variable influencing consumer purchasing behaviors and displays a possible barrier to buy healthy items15 Furthermore, tasty, convenient, and inexpensive high-calorie foods are quite abundant16, which consumers in many countries feel struggled to manage their calorie intake and beverage drinking habits17 Also, Melissa Matthews (2014) suggested that several main variables were found out as essential to accurately research the vending machine environment, such as price, accessibility, availability, healthfulness criteria18 Meanwhile, Caruso ML et al (2018) pointed out that young people are influenced by several remarkable factors influencing

on the most purchases sold from vending machine are driven by hunger (42%) and convenience (41%) vs taste (10%) and cost (1%)19 Furthermore, another study pointed that one of the most important factors influencing in food choices among college students was convenience20 The same as Brown (2012)’s opinion, he suggested “convenience-time” was one of the key reasons makes students purchase products via vending machine21, whereas Klaphekw and Brwon (2012) stated that college students are more intend to have items purchased via vending machine mostly due

to thirst and hunger22

Part Two: Methods

Research approach and sampling method

The total population of this study included all students enrolled in first, second, third and fourth years of undergraduate, master and exchange programs at Solbridge International school of Business According to data obtained from Departments of Student Affairs, there are approximately 1600 students enrolled which separated for 53 countries from 18 to over 30 years old Due to the limitation of time, we collected by random sampling techniques within the sample size was 60 (18 Male – 42 Female)

Questionnaire development and data collection

60 questionnaires (English version of questionnaire will be introduced in Appendix), each of which consists of 14 questions were distributed to Solbridge students The authors received 60 answers, 42 (27 females and 15 males) confirmed they have used university vending machines Moreover, Solbridge students were asked to complete the survey online or by paper version at Solbridge campus The questions in the online and hard copies were identical and both took 2

to 4 minutes to complete Demographic information consisted of participants’ age, gender, nationality, and years of study Participants were approached at the learning workplace and cafeteria by the two authors, who notified them about the purpose of this research and provided them with full information Also, all participants are volunteers, and data collected was anonymous

Part Three: Discussions and Results Analysis

Demographic characteristics of respondents

Illustrated with Table 1, a total of 60 participants, including 42 females (70%) and 18 males (30%) completed the survey Moreover, participants comprised freshman (12.7%), sophomore (11.3%), junior (1.4%), senior (2.8%), master students (29.6%), and exchange/transfer students (26.8%) The majority of participants were aged from 23 to 25 years old (39.4%), and 32.4%

of the students were aged between 18 to 22 years, along with 9.9% aged 26 to 30 years and only 2.8% aged above 30 years

Table 1: Demographics characteristics of respondents

Behavioral characteristics of respondents

Nearly forty percentage of participants (36.6%) used vending machines less than once a week Also, there was approximately 11% spent once a week and 8.5% two to four days a week for purchasing at university vending machines, displayed in the Table 2 as below

In addition, only 17.2% purchased beverage products from vending machines, besides Café shop (first floor) and Emart 24 (third floor) at Solbridge campus

Behavior characteristics Frequency Percentage (%)

The average number of using vending machines

Less than once a week

Once a week

2 – 4 days a week

5 - 6 days a week

Once a day

Monthly average budget on beverage products

Less than 10,000 won (<10$)

21.1 26.8 15.5 8.5 12.7

Table 2: Behavior characteristics of respondents

Demographics Frequency Percentage (%)

Gender

Female Male

Years of study

Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior Master students Exchange/Transfer students

Age

18 – 22

23 – 25

26 -30 Over 30

12.7 11.3 1.4 2.8 29.6 26.8

32.4 39.4 9.9 2.8

In addition, nearly 27% of students spent their budgets of 11,000 – 30,000 won (around 11 –

30 dollar) per month on beverage items purchased The most frequently purchased beverage product was pure water (48.8%), followed by soft drinks (41.5%) and coffee, milk coffee (41.5%)

Moreover, Solbridge students thought the cost of beverage items in vending machines was relatively considerable (with 80.5%), compared to beverages sold in café shop and Emart 24 The authors also asked the participants that whether they have used or have not used university vending machines at Solbridge 70 percentage of Solbridge’s students answered they have used campus vending machines, whereas the rest said no

Figure 1: Reasons not to buy beverages at campus vending machines (percentage)

After collecting the survey, the authors found that almost of all students do not know how to use vending machines and do not find their favorite beverage choices from vending machines

at Solbridge campus, illustrated in the Figure 1

Furthermore, the authors tried to expand the percentage of nationalities for the survey, and received the majority of Vietnamese students (50 percent) and Chinese students (18 percent), along with some other countries such as Brazil, German, Nigeria, and India, showed in Figure

I do not know where

to find the vending

machines

I do not know how to use vending machines

I do not have any pence (coins or small value money).

I do not refer to use low interactive device.

I do not find my favorable beverage choices.

Reasons not to buy beverages at campus vending machines

(percentage)

Figure 2: The percentages of nationalities of respondents

Results analysis

Normality test and Reliability test

Following the procedure of using SPSS to calculate the p-value of Normality test with the Null Hypothesis (H0= Normal Distribution), the p-value result in normality test is approximately 0

or nearly 0 Compared with theory formula within Normality test, when P-value is lower than 0.05, that means the variable was not normally distributed and the authors have to use non-parametric testable method to calculate Thus, all variables were not normality distribution

In the reliability test, the Cronbach’s Alpha is used to detect the level of reliability of our test The value of Cronbach's alpha will normally rise as the intercorrelations among test items go

up Hence, it is known as an internal consistency estimate of reliability of test scores Therefore, the authors can observe and conclude that our test could be graded as the good test with the range (0.7 to 0.8)

Reliability statistics of level of satisfaction

Cronbach's Alpha Cronbach's Alpha Based on

The percentage of nationalities in the survey

Nonparametric One-way ANOVA

Detected the result from previous Normality test, the authors cannot apply parametric test as normal In this case, the authors have to use the Krusal Wallet test, its purpose is to test the hypothesis related to the distribution of student perspectives (Taste, price, thirsty, etc.) are not significantly different with characteristics of respondents The Kruskal-Wallis H test (also named as the "one-way ANOVA on ranks") is a rank-based nonparametric test that can be used

to determine if there are statistically significant differences between two or more groups of an independent variable on a continuous or ordinal dependent variable It is considered the nonparametric alternative to the one-way ANOVA, and an extension of the Mann-Whitney U test to allow the comparison of more than two independent groups

Displayed in Table 4, the authors can detect that the distribution of student perspectives are same across categories of the characteristics of respondents Also, the result with p-value was higher than 0.05 which means it retained the null hypothesis

Age Gender Study of

Table 4: The value of one-way ANOVA between characteristics of students and their

perspectives on using vending machine