Research Design
Research Design
• A research design is a framework or blueprint for conducting a marketing
research project
• Design is like a roadmap you can see where you currently are, where you want
to be at the completion of your journey, and can determine the best (most
efficient and effective) route to take to get to your destination
• It details the procedures necessary for obtaining the information needed to
structure or solve marketing problems
• It also ensures that research has been conducted smoothly & its reliability &
validity is not questioned
• Green & Tull (2000) “A research is the specification of methods and
procedures for acquiring the information needed. It is the overall operational
pattern or framework of the project that stipulates what information is to be
collected from which sources by what procedures”
Research Design
• The research design requires specification of procedures involving decisions
relating to:
• What information are to be generated,
• From which sources,
• By what procedures,
• How the information are to be analyzed?
• The research design ensures that the collected information is relevant to the
research problem and was collected by objective and economical procedures
Elements of Research Design
• Generally a good research design minimizes bias and maximizes the reliability
of the data collected and analyzed
• The design which gives the smallest experimental error is reported to be the
best design in scientific investigation
• Generally Research Design encompass with the following elements:
• Define the information needed
• Decide whether the overall design is to be exploratory, descriptive or
causal
• Design the sequence of techniques of understanding and/or measurement
• Construct and pretest an appropriate form for data collection or
questionnaire
• Specify the qualitative and/or quantitative sampling process and sample
size
• Develop a plan of qualitative and/or quantitative data analysis
Elements of Research Design
• More specifically, research design needs to address the following area of
research design
• Clear statement of research design
• Methods and techniques to be utilized for gathering information
• Approach to be applied for processing and analyzing the data
• Purpose of the study
• Type of investigation
• Researcher interference
• Time horizon
• Unit of analysis
Importance of Research Design
• Research design helps to reduce inaccuracy
• It helps to get maximum efficiency and reliability
• Eliminates biasness and managerial errors
• Provides the framework for the research tools, techniques, data collection and
analysis
• Provides information on type of resources required for the research
• Budget, Human Resources, Time, Efforts etc.
• Provides guidelines and direction to conduct the research in effective manner
• Averts misleading conclusions & thoughtless useless exercise
• Provides opportunity to anticipate flaws & inadequacies
Relationship Between Research Design and the Solution
to Management’s Problem
Exploratory Research Design
• Exploratory research involves a preliminary examination of a problem or situation
to identify parameters to be studied further and in some cases to even define the
problem itself
• Researchers will often launch exploratory research when the problem they are
facing is not clear
• There are symptoms, such as declining sales or a decrease in market share, but
do not fully understand what is causing the sales or market share to decline
• Exploratory research focused on in search of “clues” to reveal what happened or is
currently taking place
• Various sources might be used to provide insights and information, and the
researcher intends to find ideas, insights, and clarification
Exploratory Research Design
Exploratory Research Intends to:
• More precisely defining an ambiguous problem or opportunity
• E.g., "Why have sales started to decline?”
• Increasing the decision maker’s understanding of an issue
• E.g.: “What do consumers mean by saying they want a ‘quality beer’?”
• Developing hypotheses that could explain the occurrence of certain phenomena
• E.g., “Different ethnic groups seek different levels of spice in our canned
beans.”
• Generating ideas
• E.g., “What can be done to improve our relationships with independent
distributors?”
Exploratory Research Design
Exploratory Research Intends to:
• Providing insights
• E.g.: “What government regulations are likely to be passed during the next
year that will affect us?”)
• Establishing priorities for future research or determining the practicality of
conducting some research
• E.g.: “Should we try to survey all our salespeople on this issue or just talk with
the leading salesperson in each region?”
• Identifying the variables and levels of variables for descriptive or causal research
• E.g.: “We will focus our attention on determining the level of consumer
interest in these three product concepts because exploratory research shows no
interest in the other two.”
Descriptive Research Design
• Descriptive research seeks to describe something or some phenomenon usually
market characteristics or functions
• Such as the characteristics of users of a product, the variation in product use in
terms of age, income, life style or the number of consumers aware of
advertisement and so on
• This kind of research is characterized by a prior formulation of hypotheses
or research questions
• Information need is clearly defined
• Descriptive research presupposes much prior knowledge on the part of the
research regarding:
• Who will be targeted as a respondent, what issues are of highest priority to be
addressed in the study, how the questions are to be phrased to reflect the
vocabulary and experience of the respondents, when to ask the questions, where to
find the respondents, and why these particular questions need to be answered in
order to make decisions
Descriptive Research Design
• More specifically, descriptive research is conducted when seeking to
accomplish:
• Describe the characteristics of relevant groups such as the 20 percent
of our customers who generate 80 percent of our business
• Determine the extent to which two or more variables co-vary
• Does consumption rate vary by age of consumer?
• Estimate the proportion of a population who act or think a certain
way
• How often do childless couples eat at restaurants in a typical
month?
• Make specific predictions
• We might want to forecast the number of wholesalers who will be
converting to a new inventory tracking software system in the
next year
Descriptive Research Design
• Market studies describing the size of the market, buying power of the
consumers, availability of distributors, and consumer profiles
• Market share studies determining the proportion of total sales received by a
company and its competitors
• Sales analysis studies describing sales by geographic region, product line, type
of account and size of account
• Image studies determining consumer perceptions of the firm and its products
• Pricing studies describing the range and frequency of price changes and
probable consumer response to proposed price changes
• Advertising studies describing media consumption habits and audience profiles
for specific TV programmes and magazines
Developmental Research Design
• Sometimes researchers are interested in examining changes over time and will
need to consider a research design that will capture these changes
• Developmental research designs examines the phenomenon with reference to time
• This design is generally used as adjunct research designs with other research
designs such as cross sectional- descriptive, longitudinal correlational research
design
• Cross Sectional Studies
• Longitudinal Studies
• Trend
Developmental Research Design
• Longitudinal Research Design
• A longitudinal study follows the same sample over time and makes repeated
observations
• For example, the same group of people is interviewed at regular intervals,
enabling researchers to track changes over time and to relate them to variables
that might explain why the changes occur
• Longitudinal research designs describe patterns of change and help establish the
direction and magnitude of causal relationships
• The value of the longitudinal design is in its ability to demonstrate change over a
period of time
Developmental Research Design
Longitudinal Research Design
• What do these studies tell you?
• Longitudinal data allow the analysis of duration of a particular phenomenon
• Enables survey researchers to get close to the kinds of causal explanations
usually attainable only with experiments
• The design permits the measurement of differences or change in a variable
from one period to another [i.e., the description of patterns of change over
time]
• Longitudinal studies facilitate the prediction of future outcomes based upon
earlier factors
Developmental Research Design
• Cross-sectional research design
• It has three distinctive features: no time dimension, a reliance on existing
differences rather than change following intervention; and, groups are selected
based on existing differences rather than random allocation
• The cross-sectional design can only measure differences between or from among a
variety of people, subjects, or phenomena rather than change
• Researchers are interested in the relationship between intelligence and aging, they choose
individuals who are 20 years old, 50 years old, and 80 years old at the same time and
compare the data from each age group
Developmental Research Design
• Cross-sectional research design
• It provide a 'snapshot' of the outcome and the characteristics associated with it, at
a specific point in time
• It focus on studying and drawing inferences from existing differences between
people, subjects, or phenomena
• Groups identified for study are purposely selected based upon existing differences
in the sample rather than seeking random sampling
• It is capable of using data from a large number of subjects and, unlike
observational studies, is not geographically bound.
• It generally use survey techniques to gather data, they are relatively inexpensive
and take up little time to conduct
Experimental Research Design
• A blueprint of the procedure that enables the researcher to maintain control over
all factors that may affect the result of an experiment
• Experimental Research is often used:
• Where there is time priority in a causal relationship (cause precedes effect)
• There is consistency in a causal relationship (a cause will always lead to the same
effect)
• The magnitude of the correlation is great
• When observational or survey designs are employed, the researcher measures the
variables of interest but does not attempt to manipulate or control the variables
• For example, a retailer trying to isolate the influence of price changes on the sales
volume of a product, must identify the non-price variables such as location of the
product in the store, time period of the day/week, promotion etc., and control these
variables because they also influence sales volume
Experimental Research Design
• Experiment: An experiment is formed when the researcher manipulates one
or more independent variables and measures their effect on one or more
dependent variables, while controlling for the effect of extraneous variables
• Experimental design. An experimental design is a set of procedures
specifying:
• The test units and how these units are to be divided into homogeneous
sub-samples,
• What independent variables or treatments are to be manipulated,
• What dependent variables are to be measured,
• How the extraneous variables are to be controlled
Experimental Research Design
• Independent Variables: Variables or alternatives that are manipulated (i.e. the
levels of these variables are changed by the researcher) and whose effects are
measured and compared
• Test Units. Test units are individuals, organizations or other entities whose
response to the independent variables or treatments is being examined
• Dependent Variables: The variables that measure the effect of the independent
variables on the test units
• Control Variables: Variable the researcher controls so they do not affect the
functional relationship between the independent and dependent variables included
in the experiment
• Extraneous Variables. Extraneous variables are all variables other than the
independent variables that affect the response of the test units
Case Studies Research Design
• Case studies design aim to analyze specific issues within the boundaries of a
specific environment, situation or organization
• A case study is an in-depth study of a particular research problem rather than
a sweeping statistical survey or comprehensive comparative inquiry
• It is often used to narrow down a very broad field of research into one or a few
easily researchable examples
• The case study research design is also useful for testing whether a specific theory
and model actually applies to phenomena in the real world
• Useful design when not much is known about an issue or phenomenon
• Case studies in business research can be divided into three categories: explanatory,
descriptive and exploratory
Case Studies Research Design
• Understanding of a complex issue through detailed contextual analysis of a
limited number of events or conditions and their relationships
• A researcher using a case study design can apply a variety of methodologies and
rely on a variety of sources to investigate a research problem
• It can extend experience or add strength to what is already known through
previous research
• Social scientists, in particular, make wide use of this research design to examine
contemporary real-life situations and provide the basis for the application of
concepts and theories and extension of methods.
• The design can provide detailed descriptions of specific and rare cases
Causal Comparative Design
• Causal-comparative research attempts to identify a cause-effect relationship
between two or more groups (events and circumstances)
• It attempt to identify a causative relationship between an independent variable and a
dependent variable
• In other words, it finds out the causes of certain occurrences or non-occurrenceces
• The relationship between variable is usually a suggested relationship because the
researcher do not have complete control over the independent variable
• For e.g. a researcher wish to compare the body composition of persons who have only
trained with free weights versus persons who have only trained with exercise
machines
• Other factors such as diet, training program, aerobic conditioning could effect body
composition, casual-comparative research must be reviewed scrupulously to see how
these other factors were influenced
Causal Comparative Design
• Known as “ex post facto” ~ “after the fact”, since both the effect and the alleged
cause have already occurred and must be studied in retrospect
• In this type of research investigators attempt to determine the cause or
consequences of differences that already exist between or among groups of
individuals
• Causal-Comparative Research:
• Causal-Comparative Research is not manipulated by the researcher
• Does not establish cause-effect relationships
• Generally includes more than two groups and at least one dependent variable
• Independent variable in causal-comparative studies is often referred to as the
grouping variable
• The independent variable has occurred or is already formed
Qualitative Research
• Qualitative research includes “array of interpretive techniques which seek to
describe, decode, translate, and otherwise come to terms with the meaning, not the
frequency, of certain more or less naturally occurring phenomena in the social
world”
• Qualitative techniques are used at both the data collection and data analysis stages
of a research project
• Collection: Techniques includes focus groups, individual depth interviews, case
studies, observation
• Analysis: Content analysis of written or recorded materials drawn from personal
expressions by participants, behavioral observations, and debriefing of observers, as
well as the study of artifacts and trace evidence from the physical environment
• Qualitative research aims to achieve an in-depth understanding of a situation
• Why a person buy from certain store regularly
• Why some advertisements make us laugh and contribute towards brand commitment
while others generate outrage and boycotts
Qualitative Research
• Keith Punch ''empirical research where data are not in the form of numbers'‘
• Empirical means that data or research is based on something that is experienced or
observed as opposed to being based on theory
• Data could be in the form of videos, images, or artefacts
• Qualitative research aims to get a better understanding through first hand
experience, truthful reporting, and quotations of actual conversations
• How the participants derive meaning from their surroundings, and how their meaning
influences their behavior
Some Appropriate Uses for Qualitative Research
Qualitative versus Quantitative Research
Characteristics of Qualitative Research
• Qualitative research methods usually collect data at the sight, where the
participants are experiencing issues or problems
• Qualitative researchers typically gather multiple forms of data, such as interviews,
observations, and documents, rather than rely on a single data source.
• This type of research method works towards solving complex issues by breaking
down into meaningful inferences, that is easily readable and understandable
• Since it’s a more communicative method, people can build their trust on the
researcher and the information thus obtained is raw and unadulterated
Qualitative Research Methodologies
• Sampling
• Interviews: Individual depth interview, group interviews, Telephone
• Projective Techniques: World or picture association, Sentence completion
• Focus Group Discussion
• Observation: Participative and non- participative
• Case study
• Surveys
• Secondary research: collecting existing data in the form of texts, images, audio or
video recordings, etc.
• Reports and Other Methods: Juries, on-line interviews over an instant messaging
service, survey/questionnaire online or a physical hard copy or it may include
email
Assumptions Qualitative Research
• Qualitative researchers understand the importance of beliefs and theories and they
are in effect agreeing to its underlying philosophical assumptions
• Ontological (The nature of reality): Researchers embrace the idea of multiple
realities and report on these multiple realities by exploring multiple forms of
evidence from different individuals’ perspectives and experiences
• Epistemological (How researchers know what they know): Researchers try to get
as close as possible to participants being studied. Subjective evidence is assembled
based on individual views from research conducted in the field
• Axiological (The role of values in research): Researchers make their values known
in the study and actively reports their values and biases as well as the value-laden
nature of information gathered from the field
• Methodology (The methods used in the process of research): inductive, emerging,
and shaped by the researcher’s experience in collecting and analyzing the data