Fedex Research Planning for Decision Making

CORE SECTION

Research Planning for Decision Making

Question One

June 2005

a. Brief

A marketing research brief to examine the attitudes of customers, non-customers and employees to FedEx Express with regard to environmental issues

1) Background

FedEx Express is the world's largest express transportation company, providing delivery to every U.S. address and to more than 220 countries and territories. FedEx Express uses a global air-and-ground network to speed delivery of time-sensitive shipments, usually in one to two business days with the delivery time guaranteed.

FedEx Express is part of FedEx Corporation, which provides strategic direction and financial reporting for a group of companies. This report is only concerned with FedEx Express.

FedEx Express Facts

History Founded June 1971 as Federal Express Corporation

FY04 Revenue $17.5 billion (includes FedEx Trade Networks

Workforce More than 138,000 employees worldwide

Average Daily Volume More than 3.2 million packages daily

Service Area More than 220 countries and territories, including every address in the United States

Air Operations More than 375 airports served worldwide

Delivery Fleet Approximately 41,000 motorised vehicles

[Source: www.fedex.com]

The FedEx Express product range is broken down into the following services: FedEx Express: U.S.; FedEx Express: International; FedEx Express Freight.

2) Project Rationale

FedEx is among the best Fortune 500 companies for its initiatives in environmental issues (source: fedex.com)

FedEx Express recognises it has an environmental impact. It uses resources, disposes of waste, and produces greenhouse gases from energy used for heating, lighting, equipment and transport.

These days national and international bodies urge organisations to go beyond specific environmental protection legislation, FedEx Express is one and intends to continue to be one of those organisations.

Reasons for FedEx Express's Proactive Environmental Management

* Improve reputation

* Aid communication with a wide variety of stakeholders

* Improve management of risk

* Help to identify opportunities for savings in resources used and operating costs

It is important for FedEx Express to assess stakeholder attitudes towards FedEx Express's management of the environment. Ignoring this would be potentially damaging to image and unnecessarily costly.

It is therefore understandable that effective environmental management is and has been a global corporate priority for FedEx Corporation, and is actively involved in environmental innovations and technologies designed to support this priority. This is illustrated by the company's environmental policy statement (see appendix 1). The research programme is expected to show how well this policy and it's activities are being received by stakeholders.

Ultimately the aim is to learn whether FedEx Express's environmental policy is correctly aligned with expectations of three stakeholder groups:

1) Customers

2) Non-Customers

3) Employees

3) Objectives

Objective One

Assess the selected stakeholder perception of FedEx Express's environmental image.

Essentially, this first objective to ascertain how environmentally friendly people feel FedEx Express is. It hopes to answer the following questions: Is FedEx Express environmentally responsible? Does it have an environmental policy? If any, what environmental initiatives have the company tired to carry out?

Objective Two

Assess how appropriate stakeholders view FedEx Express's current position on environmental issues is.

This section seeks to gauge how committed the selected stakeholders feel FedEx Express is towards it's environmental policy. Possible questions might be: Do FedEx's environmental policies make a genuine difference?; Does FedEx Express simply pay lip service to being environmentally responsible?; Is the company committed enough?

Objective Three

Measure FedEx Express's perceived damage to the environment.

Objective Three is looking establish how much the selected stakeholders believe the company is damaging the environment, if at all. Some broad based questions might be: Is the company damaging the environment to a dangerous extent? Is the damage a necessary evil? Which element of the company's activities is most damaging to the environment?

Objective Four

Assess FedEx Express's environmental policy in comparison with the rest of the transportation and business sectors.

This part is discovering attitudes towards FedEx Express's competitors and other types of businesses. It is important for the company to know if the stakeholders look upon FedEx Express favourably or unfavourably in comparison to others. Suitable questions might be: Is the company more responsible that other shippers? How does it compare to other types of business (E.g. Starbucks, BP, Gap, etc)? Should the company aim to be more environmentally responsible that it's competitors?

4) Outline of Possible Method

FedEx Express is looking to use a full-service agency rather than a specialist service agency. Preferably, the selected agency would be capable of supplying the majority of marketing research services and techniques required. Although a few of the elements could