The Nature of Theory: Why We Need to Be Able to Think in Theoretical Terms - Assignment Example

Selection Criteria for Internet-Based Market Information Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Epistemology 2 Research Approach 2 Department that sponsored the dissertation 2 Foundations of the Research 3 Ontology 3 Theoretical Framework 3 The Topic, Scope and Boundary Conditions 4 Hypotheses formulated and Questions Asked 4 Contribution of the Research 5 Methodology 5 Main Methodology 5 Limitations and Constraints 5 Implications for theory 6 References 7 Epistemology Research Approach The objective of this research to identify and analyze the factors affecting marketing researcher’s decision to adopt or reject internet sourced data. The researcher then assesses the importance and value of such information. The first step in conducting the research was conducting intensive interviews with 20 senior professional researchers to complete the Quality Function Deployment for the quality that researchers use to assess internet based resource. Katz (2002) defined QFD as a formal process analyzing the relationship between criteria used to evaluate and those corresponding attributes that deliver the benefits of that information. This was followed by a survey of members of Market Research Association. The researcher performed statistical analysis to determine the importance of various factors on relative terms. Simple descriptive statistics such as mean, S.D., kurtosis was used to analyze the Overall Quality of internet based sources. ANOVA was performed to analyze the difference in the average of preferred source. Wilks Lambda statistics was used to test the significance of the differences between the means. This was followed by conducting a paired t-test to determine the attributes which had significant difference in means. Department that sponsored the dissertation The dissertation has been made for the College of Business Administration of Touro University International. The dissertation has been made in order to complete the requirements of Degree of “Doctor of Philosophy” in Business Administration. This means that the dissertation explores the subject areas of increasing the effectiveness of a business, and making it more user-friendly. In this case, it takes the case of internet data sources and analyzes the various qualities that such sources shall try to include in their website, in order to be more appropriate for use by professional market researchers. Foundations of the Research The research is based on the premise that managers take decisions regarding the operations of their company on the basis of theories. These theories are developed by analyzing case studies, or doing empirical investigation on primary or secondary data. This signifies the importance of market research for decision making process of the organization. This process of processing information into knowledge by three steps of information acquisition, information dissemination and shared interpretation (Deshpande, 1999) leads to the development of Marketing Information Systems (MkIS). These factors make the quality of information acquisition process of utmost importance. With internet emerging as a popular data source, it becomes important to analyze the various factors that impact a market researcher’s decision to approve or reject a particular data source. Ontology Theoretical Framework The author starts with a clear description and the models of the MkIS. This is done by reviewing the past literature on the same, and drawing out conclusions. This is followed by analyzing the internet as a source of data collection. However, the data collected from internet is subject to various issues such as: accuracy, reliability, precision, bias, validity, appropriateness and timeliness (Rabianski, 2003). This makes it necessary to analyze the following aspects of information collected from the internet: Source of data; Reason for data collection; methodology of data collection; classification; and time of data collection (Lamb, Hair, McDaniel, 1992.). There is a strong relationship between internal databases, marketing intelligence, and formal marketing research (Kotler, 2001). The QFD Analysis is then discussed, with analysis of the same covering: definition, steps in developing the QFD framework, example of the house of quality framework, and its application to data/information analysis. The Topic, Scope and Boundary Conditions The research analyzes the importance of the following qualities that the data shall have in order to be useful to a market researcher: Currency; Scope; Accuracy; Presentation format; Source Evaluation; Objectivity/ Independence; Source of funding; Purpose; Bias; Authority; Author’s standing; & Organizational credibility. The study is confined to the importance for only professional market researchers. The findings can’t be generalized for casual researchers. Hypotheses formulated and Questions Asked The researcher attempts to answer the following questions: What are the factors that determine market researcher’s perception of the usefulness of information collected from the web? What characteristics of data are used by market researchers to evaluate it? What is the relative importance of secondary data to primary sources? How do researchers use the data collected from the internet? Hypotheses tested by the researcher are: There is significant difference between the relative importance of the various factors while determining the quality of the data The probability of selecting a particular information source is functions of researcher’s perception of the risks, and the financial costs of the data. The researcher has formulated sufficient hypotheses, and proper testing of the hypotheses will enable the researcher to find out the answers to the questions raised by him. Contribution of the Research There has been no conclusive study to address the usefulness of internet based data for research, inspite of great interest in market research. The author has helped fill this gap by listing out the relative importance of all the factors that determine the quality of the data. This can be used by internet data providers, as they should try to inculcate these qualities n the databases they provide. Market researchers also can use the findings to evaluate and assess the usefulness of the information available on the internet. Methodology Main Methodology To verify the hypotheses proposed, the researcher makes use of paired comparison t-test to identify the variable pairs that have significant difference in the mean importance. This was accompanied by ANOVA test to test the degree of difference in likelihood of use for each particular category of application. Limitations and Constraints The researcher did not made any difference between the usage of free based and fee-based internet databases. Also lack of previous research in the field of internet data sources may also have affected by exclusion of some important variables. The inter correlations between variables might also have affected the final result. The attempt to reduce the length of the survey may also have resulted in the impact in the final findings. Also, the order of questions in the survey was fixed for all the respondents. Comparisons of adjacent qualities may affect a respondent’s answers. Besides, the first phase interviews were based on convenience sampling, which could have affected the results of the study. Implications for theory The research has been able to fill the gap that existed in analyzing the usefulness of internet data sources. It has been able to change the theoretical paradigm of the quality and relevance of internet sources. The research sets new theory in analyzing various factors that are suitable for use of internet data in research. References Deshpande, Rohit (ed.) (1999). Developing a Market Orientation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc Katz, R. (2002), “Shifting Innovation to Users via Toolkits”, Management Science, Vol. 48, No 7 (July), pp. 821-833. Kotler, Phillip (1999). Marketing management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc. Lamb, C.W., Hair, J.F., McDaniel, C.D. (1992). Principles of Marketing. Ohio: College Division, South-Western Pub. Co Rabianski, Joseph S. (2003). Primary and secondary data: Concepts, concerns, errors and issues. The Appraisal Journal, 71, 43-56. Read More