Quantitative methods

Question 1

What is quantitative research

Answer 1

Wilson 2019: research that is undertaken using a structured research approach with a sample of the population to produce quantifiable insights into behaviour, motivations and attitudes.

Question 2

Types of quantitative research

Answer 2

Types of quantitative research
* Surveys
* Experiments
* Time series

Question 3

Surveys

Answer 3

Surveys

Wilson 2019: surveying involves the structured questioning of participants and the recording of responses, can be done verbally, online or in writing.

• Can be self-administered through post, online, mobile or hand delivery
  Or can be interviewer administered through face to face or telephone

Question 4

Face to face surveys

Answer 4

Face to face surveys: Wilson 2019

• ADV: motivates answers, more genuine feel, ensure respondent eligibility before, improve understanding of questions
• Disadv: high costs and time consuming, interviews need to be clustered within geographical areas, training of interviewers, quality control is hard

Question 5

Telephone Survey

Answer 5

Telephone Survey
* Used for B2B and consumer-type research

• Adv: Control, easy to train, monitored, quality control, no travel costs, speed
• Disadv: respondents attitude to telephone, sugging (selling under the guise of research) germany have legislative controls on unsolicited calls, different cultures more private (arabic), may be multi-tasking reducing attention, MC and scaling hard to do

Question 6

Online surveys

Answer 6

Online surveys
* Most common

• Adv: large coverage of locations, cheap, no interviewer bias, fast delivery, convience, utilise images/ videos

*Disadv: only online users, low response rates, biased responses, lack of control of respondent, limited open ended questions, response time

Question 7

Mobile phone surveys

Answer 7

Mobile phone surveys

• Good for small amount of questions, fast responses such as a guest at a hotel asking customer satisfaction
• Not good for long or complex surveys Has to be simple and short

Question 8

Postal Surveys

Answer 8

Postal Surveys

• ADV: can select who receives the survey, more personal touch
• Disadv: cost of printing and postage, part left unanswered, time as has to be posted there and back, low response rates

Question 9

Hand delivered surveys

Answer 9

Hand delivered surveys
ADV: cheap, high response rate

Question 10

Improve response rates for online and postal

Answer 10

Pre-contact, existing relation, cover letter that explains about the company and research, appearance, incentives, reminders, questionnaire design

Question 11

experiments

Answer 11

experiments are
* “Lab-based” studies; thus lacking ecological validity
* Because of the limited number of variables you can keep as “constants” and control for
* Subject to bias from “experimental awareness”: Consumers may distort their behaviour because they know their behaviour is investigated!

Question 12

Time Series Analysis

Answer 12

Time Series Analysis
Time is often a crucial factor in understanding a phenomenon. This is because “time” is an important variable in the fields of Economics and Business; things happen “over time”; Especially when it comes to the understanding of the Macro- and Micro- environments