Assignment On RESEARCH DESIGN IMPORTANCE

By, S. Krishna priya (1601-10-672-004)

"Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information - information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the methods for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes, and communicates the findings and their implications." Or Marketing research may also be described as the systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis, and dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in decision making related to the identification and solution of problems and opportunities in marketing. Marketing research is systematic.

Marketing research characteristics:

The stages of the marketing research process. The procedures followed at each stage are methodologically sound, well documented, and, as much as possible, planned in advance. Marketing research uses the scientific method in that data are collected and analyzed to test prior notions or hypotheses. Marketing research is objective. It attempts to provide accurate information that reflects a true state of affairs. It should be conducted impartially. While research is always influenced by the researcher's research philosophy, it should be free from the personal or political biases of the researcher or the management.

Research designs are concerned with turning the research question into a testing project. The best design depends on your research questions. Every design has its positive and negative sides. The research design has been considered as a "blueprint" for research, dealing with at least four problems: what questions to study, what data are relevant, what data to collect, and how to analyze the results. Research design can be divided into fixed and flexible research designs (Robson, 1993) others have referred to this distinction with quantitative research designs and qualitative research designs. In fixed designs the design of the study is fixed before the main stage of data collection takes place. Fixed designs are however, fixed designs need not be quantitative, and flexible design need normally theory-driven; otherwise its impossible to know in advance which variables need to be controlled and measured. Often these variables are quantitative. Flexible designs allow for more freedom during the data collection. One reason for using a flexible research design can be that the variable of interest is not quantitatively measurable, such as culture.

Examples of fixed (quantitative) research designs:

Experimental design:
In an experimental design, the researcher actively tries to change the situation, circumstances or experience of participants (manipulation), which leads to a change in behavior of the participants of the study. The participants are assigned to different conditions, and variables of retest are measured. All other variables are controlled Experiments are normally highly fixed before the data collection starts.

Non-experimental research designs:

Non-experimental research is almost the same as experimental research; the only difference is that non-experimental research does not involve a manipulation of the situation, circumstances or experience of the participants. The third Nonexperimental research designs can be split up in three designs. First, relational designs, in which a range of variables is measured. These designs are also called co relational studies, since the correlation is most often used analysis. The second type is comparative designs. These design compare two natural groups. The third type of non-experimental research is a longitudinal design.

Quasi experiment:
Quasi research designs are research design that follow the experimental procedure, but do not randomly assign people to (treatment and comparison) groups.

Examples of flexible (qualitative) research designs:

Case study:
In a case study, one single unit is extensively studied. This case can be a person, organization, group or situation. Famous case studies are for example the descriptions about the patients of Freud, who were thoroughly analyzed and described. Bell (1999) states a case study approach is particularly appropriate for individual researchers because it gives an opportunity for one aspect of a problem to be studied in some depth within a limited time scale.

Ethnographic study:
This type of research is involved with a group, organization, culture, or community. Normally the researcher shares a lot of time with the group.

Grounded theory study:

The aim of grounded theory studies is to make theories that can explain certain events. It signs the importance of understanding the concept of research design.

In our view, comparatively few books about educational research focus clearly enough on the research process as a logical process. It seems to us that good research is like a good argument, in the technical sense of argument (as understood by logicians). For logicians, an argument is an attempt to assemble a set of claims or premises and to arrange them in such a way that a conclusion follows logically from these premises, or can be inferred (deductively or inductively) from them in a coherent or non-contradictory manner. Good argumentsthat is, arguments that we are justified in accepting, even though they may subsequently be displaced by better argumentshave two general qualities: Their premises are strong, in the sense that we have good reasons for accepting them (e.g., they are supported by good evidence, or are widely accepted by experts or authorities in the area). Their premises are well organized, in the sense that we can accept the conclusion that is drawn from them without offending against reasonable standards for deductive or inductive inference. Similarly, good quality research investigations contain strong evidence in the form of data that is relevant to a question or a problem. In good quality research studies, such evidence has been collected and organized and analyzed in ways that allow us to accept that the findings based upon them are reasonable inferences. That is to say, they can be inferred reasonably from the data and the analysis of data involved in the research. Moreover, the data and analysis themselves are appropriate in terms of the kind of problem involved and the kinds of question(s) being asked.

The key concept involved here is the idea of a design. A design can be thought of as an appropriate procedure or guideline for doing something under certain conditions. For example, a particular building design that may be very acceptable for areas where earthquakes never occur are might not be acceptable for areas where earthquakes are common. Alternatively, we might think of different kinds of designs for convincing people about certain things under different kinds of conditions. Suppose that our purpose is to convince people under discursive conditions where they can be expected to be reasonable, and where we define reason in terms of being logical. Under such conditions, inductive or deductive forms of argumente.g., the syllogismmight be highly appropriate designs for obtaining consent or agreement. In other words, we can look at inductive and deductive arguments as designs for the purpose of trying to convince (reasonable) people to accept something on the grounds that it is reasonable. If, however, we are trying to convince people who are quite unreasonable, and who never accept something because it is reasonable to accept it, we may have to adopt other designs for convincing them in order to obtain their agreement or consent. In such contexts appropriate designs might include things like manipulation, bribery, coercion, force, and so on. This is relevant to how we think of research. Our concept of research is the idea that we try to understand aspects of the world more clearly, accurately, and predictably by assuming (i) That there is some kind of order to things, and (ii) That this can be revealed by approaching the world in systematic and reasonable ways.

Research aims to identify those aspects of the world we want to understand more clearly and, having identified these, to set about examining them methodically, systematically, and with the assistance of what we already know about the world. What we already know about the world has been organized, summarized, and made meaningful by use of theories, concepts, and bodies of information. In order to conduct further research into aspects of the world we need to find ways of (i) locating gaps in knowledge and understanding (ii) framing these gaps clearly and concisely as problems and questions (iii) working out systematic, methodical, and reasonable ways of exploring these gaps (iv) Seeing how we can assist our inquiries by using whatever relevant concepts, theories, and information we already have available. Another way of saying this is to say that we need to find ways of arranging these four aspects into a research design. Our research design will build on clearly and concisely framed problems and questions and a clear sense of our research purposesthat is, what we hope to achieve through our research. Our research purposes might be identified as a set of aims and objectives that relate to our research focus in the form of our research question(s) and/or our r problem. A clear and concise statement of our research purposes is absolutely essential for doing good quality research. The research design will also contain a theoretical and conceptual framework that helps clarify the questions, problems and purposes we are concerned with, tells us what is already known about these matters, and helps us understand how particular concepts and elements of theory might be useful for our own inquiry. Guided by careful analysis of our research questions and problems, by our conceptual and theoretical framework, and by our reading of the research

literature, our research design will also contain a strategy for collecting and organizing data that is relevant to our research problem(s) and/or question(s). This will be a strategy that enables us to collect the right kind of data for addressing our research focus, for collecting good quality data of an appropriate kind, and for collecting an appropriate amount of data for investigating our research problem and question in a rigorous and illuminating way. To be more precise, our research design will contain as one of its key components a data collection design. On the basis of this data collection design, and in accord with the various resources of time, money, energy, etc., available to us, we will eventually develop a data collection plan. In addition to a strategy for collecting and organizing our data we also need a strategy for analyzing our data. This may be thought of as a research analysis design. The most important thing about our data analysis strategy or design is that it must cohere withor be consistent withour research purposes (our research question/problem and our aims and objectives), as well as with our theoretical and conceptual framework and the kinds and amount of data we collect. For example, if we want to collect and analyze a large amount of data we will need to use forms of data analysis that can handle large amounts of data and give us the kinds of findings we seek. Otherwise we will not be able to complete the research. On the other hand, if we want to concentrate on less data but analyze it in great depth; we need to use forms of data analysis that will give us the kind of depth and detail we seek.

Finally, our research design must contain a strategy for interpreting the analysis of our data in order to provide us with findings and conclusions from our research, and which may allow us to advance recommendations or implications based on our investigation.

The important point to note here about the idea of a research design is that all of its components must fit with each other or go together with each other in a coherent manner. Our theoretical and conceptual framework must fit with our research goals and purposes. Likewise, our data collection strategy must fit with our research purposes, our conceptual and theoretical framework and our approach to data analysis. Our data analysis strategy must fit with our data collection strategy, our conceptual and theoretical framework and our research purposes. And our interpretive strategy must allow us to relate what emerges from our data analysis back to our research purposes, and forward to whatever recommendations and implications we want to suggest that pertain to our purposes.

References:
Marketing research by Naresh k. Malhotra, www.wikipedia.org