Marketing Research and Strategies - Essay Example

?Today’s digital age has revolutionized the field of research. People thought that the digital revolution will only impact the products or services industry, but this notion is not true. Even the field of research has been severely change by the digital revolution. Internet, which is the most widely accessible digital vehicle, is the fundamental means by which digital revolution has brought changes in the field of research. Since the emergence of internet technology there have been developments in the field of research which can be classified as either positive or as negative (Saunders, Thornhill, and Lewis, 2009). The primary advantage of using internet as a means to reach target audience is that it is widely accessible; it is very quick in registering responses; it can catch response from a large number of audiences and last but not the least it has reduced the cost of carrying out research (Sekaran, 2006). These primary benefits of using internet as a tool for carrying out research are augmented by facts like: internet has inculcated in small and medium enterprises the habit of conducting or reverting to research when encountering an operational issue; internet has allowed students at various levels to extract information from previous researches and use that information in their own assignments; internet has also allowed researchers to seek responses from individuals who were reluctant to participate in focused group survey. Like these benefits there are other benefits as well of using internet as a means to conduct a research and gather responses. Internet technology has made it possible for researchers to reach geographically dispersed respondents. It has supporting technologies like video conferencing and instant chant rooms which allows researchers of a field to gather at a place simultaneously, without incurring any cost. This type of research is carried out by means of group ware technology and this method is known as Delphi method. Internet has freed sponsored respondents from the tedious process of registering their responses to the posted mail, containing the questionnaire. Now they simply can go online to fill out the questionnaire in a hassle free manner. However, as mentioned earlier there are some negative aspects of internet, encountered when conducting quantitative or qualitative researches. The most troubling negative aspect of internet research is that it is totally callous when it comes to respecting respondents’ private time, when they do not feel like answering to research question. This is not the only facet of this issue; sometimes online research agencies send questionnaires to respondents without their consent to participate in this research, which leads to respondent’s annoyance. If this scenario is removed from the picture, even then there are a number of problems which can come up, for instance the online questionnaire might not open on the browser used by the respondents. This further leads to respondent’s agitation. Other problems with this form of surveys is that there are chances that the expected respondents of this survey do not fill these questionnaires, while respondents who are not fit to form the sample population of the survey might go on to fill in these form leading to corrupt data being collected and presented during the research findings. The research findings based on this malign data will not be authentic and if published will lead to a spread of knowledge that is wrong. And if by chance this finding gets implemented that it may result in heavy losses for the party implementing it (Nancarrow, Pallister and Brace, 2001). Other issues of conducting research over the internet are that sometimes customers might feel agitated by a questionnaire in their inbox, they might think of it as an invasion to their privacy or as something having a malign content in it that might threaten the integrity of their personal computer. Also there are strict guidelines set by major research agencies and associations as to what questions can be asked from a particular segment of the population (Nancarrow, Pallister and Brace, 2001). But these set rule are continuously violated by online researchers who ask questions which can be classified as sensitive. Often children are asked questions which should not be asked from them. This raises ethical concerns over the use of internet to conduct a research. This ethical concern is not restricted to children only; it is also a point of contention for adults as well who find some questions as offensive and as a breach of their privacy. The most serious concern that one can think of while using a research from the internet is that of its authenticity (Jankowicz, 2005). This is a very serious concern and depends on the reputation of the author. Even in cases where it is found that the study has been conducted by a renowned researcher, there is no way to find out whether the study is actually conducted by that researcher. Another issue of such research studies is that of their reliability. In this situation the person using such studies need to thoroughly review the methodology of the study. Even than these studies do not muster the required confidence to implement their finds because there is no way to find if the audience to which the study is referring to is actually that audience. Online researches have become widely accessible due to the internet wide accessibility of the internet technology. This has allowed anyone having access to internet to get hold of these research studies and use it for their own purposes (Balnaves, and Caputi, 2001). But the issue with this is that people are losing their habit to conduct pure research, they are using previously documented researches as basis to carryout their own researches. The negative result of this is that researchers are losing the acumen to carry out pure research. The repercussions of this are numerous and of significant consequences. For instance when a hackneyed research is produced it does not add anything new to the body knowledge to which that research relates to (Nancarrow, Pallister and Brace, 2001). It is only by means of pure research that something new turns up in a domain area which has its own opportunities. When no one takes the effort to conduct a pure research than every other aspect of life that depends on pure research will stagnate. Reference list Balnaves, M., and Caputi, P., (2001), Introduction to quantitative research methods: an investigative. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Jankowicz, A., (2005), Business Research Projects, Thomson Learning, London. Nancarrow, C., Pallister, J., and Brace, I., (2001), ‘A new research medium, new research populations and seven deadly sins for Internet researchers’, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 4, no: 3, pp. 136 – 149. Saunders, M., Thornhill, A., and Lewis, P., (2009), Research Method for Business Students, Financial Times Prentice Hall, London. Sekaran, U., 2006, Research Methods for Business, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, NJ. Read More