You are a business consultant at a small consulting firmin Sydney Australia. A client Ben McDonald from office supplies retailer Office Storeroom has contacted you to ask for your help. Ben is the newly appointed sales manager at Office Storeroom. You arrange a meeting with Ben at a local coffee shop. During the meeting Benexplains that Office Storeroom is the longest running office supplies company in Australia, having started business in 1973.They pride themselves on providing the most affordable office supplies available. They sell office supplies to businesses and personal shoppers.

They have 15 retail outlets across Australia, one store in each of the major cities and a few in some of the larger regional areas. Office supplies are also sold online, via the Office Storeroom website. Interestingly, despite limited investment in online website and logistics, almost 65% of their business is now online. Online sales havesignificantly increased since Office Storeroom went online in 2013. However, during the same time-frame sales at retail outlets have declined.

Overall, sales at Office Storeroom have been declining for the past 3 months. Sales figures for the past 5 months are shown in the table below.

Month	Sales
June	$91,199.00
July	$165,601.00
August	$147,747.00
September	$119,699.00
October	$89,493.00

Table 1: Monthly Sales Figures

As the new head of sales (Ben joined in year 2023) at Office Storeroom, Ben is responsible for improving the sales of office supplies. During the meeting Ben explains that he knows it is his job to improve sales but he is unsure how to do this. He has asked for your help to conduct some research to investigate 1) What are the reasons for sales decline at Office Storeroom? 2) What could be done to improve sales at Office Storeroom?

Questions (Total 35 Marks)

Q1. What primary data collection method(s) can you use to answer the research questions? Justify your choice(s) and describe how to collect data with the chosen method(s). (12 Marks)

Q2. Discuss the most appropriate sampling technique for each of the research method(s) you proposed in Q1. Justify your choice and describe how to obtain your sample based on the chosen sampling technique. (12 Marks)

Q3. Identify limitations in the research design you described in Q1 (relating to data collection) and/or Q2 (relating to sampling). (6 Marks)

Q4. What are the key ethical principles you should follow when conducting this research?