Marketing Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 2

Marketing Research - Essay Example This research method is flexible can easily adapt to the research settings (Newman, 1998, p.56). The aim of qualitative research is to get a clear understanding on how the participant’s develop an understanding of their surroundings, and how this understanding affects the participant’s behavior. The main method of collecting data in qualitative research is the use of observations (Goertz and Mahoney 2012, 78). Observation implies the collection and recording of the behaviors of the participants in their environment. This approach is useful in the generation of in-depth explanation of events or organizations; it is also practical in obtaining information that is not accessible and conducting research where other research methods are insufficient. The benefit of employing observation is that it reduces distortion between what is observed and the observer and can be produced by instruments such as questionnaires (Gray, 2007, p.126). The main features of qualitative researc h include the fact that they focus on natural settings and have a primary interest in real life situations. This method seeks to find out the meanings participants attach to behavior, their interpretations, and their perspectives on situations. Qualitative research also looks into the process involved and seeks to understand how things happen and how they develop. Additionally qualitative research follows an inductive analysis and seeks to generate a theory on an issue from the data (Martin, 2012, p.16). The advantages associated with using this method include the production of more detailed and comprehensive information. This method also seeks an extensive understanding of the situation by the use of subjective information and employs the observations of the participants in describing the situation (Singh, 2007, p.84). However, the disadvantages of using this method include complications in establishing reliability and validity of the methods and data due to the subjectivity of inq uiry. Researcher induced bias is also another challenge to the approach as it is difficult to either detect or prevent them. Furthermore, the scope of this process is restricted by the detailed and comprehensive approaches to data collection Punch 2005, 211. Quantitative research This research technique follows an objective, formal and systematic process in obtaining quantifiable information about a situation. The presentation of data on this technique uses a numerical form and employs statistics in analysis (MacDaniel,1998, p. 45). Quantitative research aims at providing descriptions and testing relationships. This technique also examines the cause and the effect of a relationship. The aim of the quantitative research aim is to elaborate how the independent variables relate to the dependent variables in a given situation. These research designs are either descriptive or experimental where the subjects are either measured once or before and after treatment. A descriptive approach es tablishes the associations between variables whereas an experimental approach establishes causality (Martin 2012, 16). Quantitative research methods take two approaches, which are experiments and surveys. In this, context experiments comprise real experiments with the unselective assignment of participants or subjects to research conditions and quasi experiments, which use designs that are nonrandomized (Vogt 2007, 120.)