Benchmarking: Field Evidence from Singapore

We will randomly assign the food courts to two groups, and only enroll individually-owned vendors into the experiment. All the enrolled vendors within each food centre would be assigned to the same manipulation condition.

A. Control group;
B. Benchmarking group

Stall owners in all groups will be given a report on four measures of performance -- sales volume (number of plates sold per week), average cost per plate, profit per plate, and profit per owner working hour (the latter calculated as sales revenue minus total cost divided by total hours worked by the stall owner). We would also offer all subjects with the same set of general business operation suggestions.

Apart from performance indicators, the report to stall owners in the benchmarking group will also include their performance relative to the first, second, and third quartiles of all stalls selling cooked food. Meanwhile, the benchmarking group will receive four practice suggestions: two front-of-house practices and two back-of-house practices, that are randomly selected from five front-of-house practices and back-of-house practices.

2019-08-01

2019-08-15

Sales revenue; cost; owner productivity; management practice implementations

1. Owner productivity: We measure food stall productivity by owner productivity, calculated as the sales revenue minus total cost divided by the number of owner-hours worked.
2. Management practice implementation
3. Change intiatives
4. Social aspirations

Our experiment will enroll individual vendors in each food court to participate in our study. We would approach about 20 hawker centres across Singapore and ideally we can recruit 10-20 subjects at each hawker centre.

At Time 0, we will conduct a pre-intervention survey to collect baseline information: sales revenue, cost, working procedures, management practices, adoption of technology, personal background, and psychological profiles.

We will compile the information from the pre-intervention survey and then calculate performance indicators as well as benchmarking information for all vendors. We will then randomly assign the food courts into control and benchmarking group.

At Time 1, upon completing data collection and analysis, we will contact the four groups and provide the corresponding information (control or treatment respectively).

3 month (Time 2), 12 months (Time 3) and 18 months (Time 4) respectively after the control/intervention visit, we will return to interview all participating vendors to collect information about changes in productivity and management and technology practices.

Randomization done in office by a computer.

Randomization by each section of stalls within one food centre.

Yes

20 food centres, 69 different sections, 200 vendors

vendors.

35% vendors control and 65% vendors treatment.