Mr. Z has a plan to open a new fashion shop in Sydney with an ambition to grow h

Question

Mr. Z has a plan to open a new fashion shop in Sydney with an ambition to grow his business rapidly via using social media and online shopping but he does not have any idea about the impact of social media on online sales. However, he would like to conduct a research only to focusing Sydney based customers to know about such impacts.

Q. If Mr. Z likes to test a hypothesis “The more the people use Facebook, the more they do online shopping” – then what type of methodology that need to be considered for this study?

Explanation / Answer

The knowledge, observations and interest on a topic help to finalyse the topic. After that, theories and literatures have been searched to support the research. Next, the problem and the research question has been developed and research method has been selected. The next step is to collect data with using the methods planned. After the data is collected, I analyse the data with selected theories. At last, the conclusion is drawed.

This research started with exploratory study however developed into an explanatory study since the first aim was gaining knowledge about consumer behaviour and following with being able to gain information toward online consumer behaviour. After that specific factors have been identified which are the important during the online purchase. This knowledge is then used to find relationship between these factors.

Research Approach and Research Philosophy

To start a research, there must be an understanding of in which way the research wil be approached. Philosophies and approaches are the first and second layers of the 'research onion' respectively .

To be clear about the theory in the early stages of the study, has brought out a decision, it is to decide in which approach the study should be conducted. There are two main research approaches have been using. A deductive approach have been chosen for this study. The deductive approach attempts to figure the theory first and then moving from the theory, the collected data is tested.

Data Collection

In order to accomplish the research objectives and to address the research question this dissertation draws on both primary and secondary data collection methods. Secondary data also provide a useful source to answer the research question (Saunders et al, 2009; 256). Furthermore, secondary data allows to understand the topic area while informing the primary research design.

Primary Data

Survey

In order to collect data from viewpoint of consumers, the strategy of the research is the survey. To investigate consumer behaviours and purchasing decisions, a quantitative approach is used to analyse the results from the survey. Survey in the form of questionnaire is chosen for this research. Surveys are a kind of research which are more rigid than interviews. They are usually used to gather ideas from a large population. Each respondent is asked to respond to the same set of questions, it provides an efficient way of collecting responses from a large sample prior to quantitaive analysis. The questionnaire were prepared as self-administered and published electronically using the Internet, Internet-mediated questionnaires. Since the nature of the questionnaire help to reach a large population, Internet-mediated questionnaire makes that one step further and it was possible to reach more respondents. After finalysing the questionnaire, before the distribution of them, the questionnaire presented to three participants to test it. Pilot test provided to receive suggestions from respondents to enhance the questionnaire.

Sampling strategy

In order to address the research aim the participants were selected using a non-probability sampling two types of this sampling method are sufficiently used in this research; snowball sampling and purposive sampling. Snowball sampling is used when it is difficult to identify members of the desired population (Saunders et al, 2009; 240). This kind of sampling starts with small group of people who are appropriate with the research topic and these small group identify further members and then they identify further members and so the sample snowballs. However, the problem with snowball sample is that it is very unlikely that the sample will represent the whole population.

Methods of spreading the questionnaires

Since the topic deals with behaviour of online consumers, online questionnaires were used. A free service website, Google Spreadsheets, used for the survey and allow participants to answer the questionnaire online. After the online questionnaire have been created, the questionnaire link was emailed to participants. At the same time, it is also asked them to forward the questionnaire to their cases. Secondly, the questionnaire distributed through Facebook. The respondents could easily click on the link which directly lead them to the questionnaire. To be a participant of this survey, respondents were expected to have minimum one online shopping experience. This limited participation and lowered response rates; however, this condition was necessary because of the topic of the study. The results are then recorded into an excel document by the Google Spreadsheet. The link of the questionnaire have been sent online between July 30 and August 13, 2012. 176 were responded and within the responded questionnaires 170 were usable for analysis (six incomplete responses have been eliminated). The sample consisted of individuals Turkey and UK.

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