Final thoughts.

Overall, I feel that the Study Project has many shortcomings, not all of which were identified and acknowledged by the author.

• I think the framing of the questions that the Study sought to research could have been expressed more clearly.
• I think the secondary research relied too much on a newspaper article.
• I think the primary research questionnaire could have had more questions to test the link between website presentation and functionality, and customer loyalty.
• I think that the primary research (both the questionnaire and the Tesco.com website study) should have involved a wider range of people than the predominantly student group.
• I think the explanation of the analysis of results could have been clearer, particularly the explanations about how customer loyalty was proved.

I also think that the study could have been easily extended into another area that could impact on customer loyalty. The introduction of e-commerce websites linked to grocery sales has allowed supermarket companies to expand into all sorts of other sectors that are not traditional, such as financial services, electrical goods, and so on. I think it would have been interesting to test the customer loyalty link in connection with these services.

Presenting findings and drawing conclusions.

Convenience was identified as being the main reason as to why people choose to shop online. The author also explains that a correlation had been found between the use of online grocery stores and customer loyalty. I think as the survey only accumulated 80 responses that this statement is not actually representative of the public as a whole; therefore a more extensive research strategy will be needed to form a boarder response.

The findings from the self evaluation of Tesco’s website could have been more extensive and provided opinions of a boarder range of people.  Only having one person evaluate the feature on the website does not suggest to me in any way that the design and layout of a website can contribute to the retention of customers in an online environment.

The way the author has chosen to present the findings in histograms and pie charts is appropriate but I feel that there are problems with how some are labelled so that a reader would know exactly what the results meant. Examples of this are shown in the pie charts that show results of the survey. I feel that showing the number of respondents as a percentage does not give a clear explanation of results to a reader. Therefore I would suggest the percentage to be changed to a number so that it is easier to gain an understanding.

See next post……….

Analysing correctly.

The author states in the project that 80 responces is a relatively small study and that “a much larger proportion of respondents could have resulted in more conclusive results, but for the purposes of the study the number of respondents was sufficient to perform a useful statistical analysis.” I disagree totaly and think it is a big enough sample of people to identify the trends emerging from the quantative study of the data that has been gathered. However I feel that there is a problem with the profile of the statistical sample. It is in no way representitve of society as a whole. It is a narrow section of society since it is almost exclusively based on a computer literate student community. This is borne out by the answers to the first two questions which attempt to establish a profile on the basis of an analysis of gender and age only:

• 64% of respondents were male.
• 79% of respondents were in the 18 to 30 age group.

The survey does not attempt to profile socio-economic criteria, e.g. single, married/partner, family; employed/unemployed; income bracket; householder, car owner, etc.  These are factors that are usually crucial to market research in order to ensure that a sample is representative of the population as a whole.

It is reasonable to assume that the sample is skewed to a predominance of young, single males who are of middle class backgrounds but are currently low affluence and low income, and are highly computer literate.  It must also be assumed that the results are representative of the Portsmouth area rather than nationally.  As a result of this very narrow profile any comparison of findings in research by others would have to be heavily qualified and may be meaningless.

To some extent some of these shortcomings could have been overcome by undertaking the survey as face to face market research with random passers by in the street, but this was outside the feasible scope of the Project.

A histogram to show the number of respondents who have used online grocery shopping.  The population of the histogram is 80; in other words every respondent to the questionnaire had used online grocery shopping – no-one who responded had never used online grocery shopping.

Collecting Data

The author of the Study Project decided to use two types of primary research to gather data:

1. A survey to gauge public opinion of online grocery shopping. This to be in the form of an online questionnaire-based survey.

The data from the survey would inform a quantitative study to analyse standardised responses to the same structured questions, seeking to identify trends. The Study Project explains (para 4.2.1) that this method was selected for this research on the reasoning that it was a cost-effective way of collecting standardised data.  It was noted that lack of funding inhibited any further significant research.

2. A personal (i.e. by the author) evaluation of Tesco.com online grocery shopping site.

The evaluation would examine features of the website and how this could play a part in customer loyalty and retention. It would examine how the website design, layout and content affect the customer’s decision on whether to use again.

The author attempted to use the website from the perspective of a first time online grocery shopper, allowing an unbiased opinion to be formed and measured accurately. Once again, this method was chosen on the grounds that it was a low cost quantitative activity.

Framing research questions and hypotheses

The Study Project is titled “Investigation into the reasons why people choose to shop online rather than in store”.

Although not referred to in the title, the Study Project is confined to online grocery shopping, rather than general online shopping, and concentrates on four of the UK’s main supermarket chains.

Although the title states that the Project is an “investigation into the reasons why people choose to shop online rather than in store”, it actually deals more with the concept of customer loyalty through online shopping.  This is stated in the first sentence of the Introduction, “This Project looks into the relatively new development of online grocery shopping and the effect, if any, that a service like this can have on customer loyalty.”

The main research question is broken down in to to 3 main objectives that are studied in more detail throughout the project these are:

1. Identify the reasons why consumers shop online as opposed to in store for their groceries.
2. Identify a correlation between the use of online grocery shopping websites and customer loyalty.
3. Examine website features and the link they have to customer retention.

Week 4

Ethical considerations

How was the research carried out?

The author opted to carry out primary research in the form of a survey and personal evaluation.

An online survey was published in order to identify why consumers choose to shop

online for groceries and if they feel loyalty towards the supermarkets providing the

service. The survey contained a total of 12 questions. The first questions were aimed at finding out the customer profile e.g. asking for gender and age. The second lot of questions asked the customers to provide details of how frequently they shopped in their chosen supermarket and the levels of satisfaction they deemed appropriate when using the website.

It was sent out to 300 final year students via e-mail. Out of the 300 people there were only 80 respondents.

The second element of primary research was a personal evaluation of Tesco’s online grocery shopping service. The evaluation was taken out from a first time shopper point a view and examines features of the website and how this could play a part in customer loyalty and retention. In order to accurately evaluate the process customers follow when purchasing groceries online, actual products were purchased using the Tesco.com site whilst carrying out the evaluation.

Did it involve human subjects? (Did people get involved?)

Participation from final year students was needed by the research to gain feedback from the online survey. The self evaluation of Tesco’s website was carried out by the researcher himself.

Do think that all the ethical issues were covered? Were there any ethical dilemmas that you think were not adequately addressed?

In the introduction to chapter 4 the author makes the point that the online survey was carried out in accordance with the University of Portsmouth’s ethical regulations. This was used to ensure that all of the participants of the survey were in no way pressured into answering, put at risk and that it was carried out anonymously. The confidentiality of the information gathered was not stated nor was there any mention of how privacy issues were handled. I think he makes an effort to cover the ethical issues related to this research adequately.

Week 3

This week’s activity involved us searching for one of the titles listed, in the EBSCO database under journal articles.    

Fewer colds, less asthma? A hypothesis to explain the fall in childhood asthma in the UK

Authors: Urquhart D S; Anderson A-K; McKenzie S A

Journal: Journal of epidemiology and community health. Year: 2008 Volume: 62 Issue: 10 Pages: 921-925

What is the hypothesis being examined?

After reading through the abstract it became clear that the authors hypothesise “that the fall in asthma reflects a fall in respiratory infections, the most important proximal trigger for asthma exacerbations, and that this in turn may be related to a fall in household members to a number too low for effective virus transmission.”

Does it seem to you that the hypothesis would be easy to test?

Yes and no.

I believe that it could be easy to test to an extent due to the fact that medical documents could be examined and from them you could correlate findings.

It would be hard to test as it’s not necessarily the improvement in living conditions that effect if you have asthma or not. Someone could already have underlying health issues that could be a contributing factor to why they have asthma and living condition may not be one of them. Although the results look promising and the decrease in people having asthma is improving, not everyone would take their child to seek medical advice if they have a cold. This could result in inaccurate results; therefore the hypotheses may not be as testable as first thought.

What does it mean when we say, a hypothesis must be testable?

The hypothesis must be able to be proved or disproved to get the required results set out for.  

Literature Search

I have started to work through my chosen project the “Investigation into the reasons why people choose to shop online rather than in-store”. The project focuses mainly on the topic of online grocery shopping and what aspects affect customer loyalty. I now need to come up with a list of key words that I would use if I were doing the same project. To test for suitability I will be using a database called EBSCO.

List of Key Words

Ecommerce

Online Shopping

Reasons for shopping online

Supermarkets and the Internet

Shopping websites and customer loyalty

Online grocery shopping

Tesco’s

Will now describe what i have found on the EBSCO Database.

Hourglass Notation (Project)

Hourglass Notation

I will now try and determine the broad area of interest relating to my project on the “Investigation into the reasons why people choose to shop online rather than in-store”

Broad area of interest.

“What are the reasons to why people choose to shop online rather than in-store?”

Narrow down, focus in

To gain research required for the project, the broad area question needs to be narrowed down to create a hypothesis that focuses in on the main question. Focus questions are created so the broad area question can be addressed more thoroughly.

The author of the project has identified a number of focus questions that he/she thinks will address the main question. They are as follows:

• “What is the link between online shopping and customer loyalty?”

• “Identify a correlation between the use of online grocery shopping websites and customer loyalty”.

• “Examine website features and the link they have to customer retention”

Operationalize

Only one method of research has been carried out to gather data. This is in the form of primary research. An online survey had had been generated to gather feedback from the public to determine their opinions of online grocery shopping. Also a personal evaluation of Tesco.com was carried out by a first time online grocery shopper to prevent any unbiased opinions.

Observe

The researcher decided to collect Quantitative data as this proved to be the most cost effective way. The survey contained a total of 12 closed questions, all with pre-set answers so that data could be standardized and easily analysed for trends. The survey was emailed to 300 students but only 80 responses were recorded. From the 80 responses there were 16 surveys that had not been attempted just submitted.

The personal evaluation of Tesco.com evolved analysing various aspects of the site for usability. This method also provided a cheap but effective way of collecting data.

Analyze data

The data gathered from the questionnaire was interpreted in to a series of bar charts and pie charts. A total of 80 participants were involved and all of the answers gathered were anonymous. The gender of the respondents was shown in a pie chart and it clearly stated that the majority was male. They accounted for 64% of the total compared with 36% of the total for female respondents. 79% of all respondents fell within the 18-30 age bracket. The remaining 21% were 31 upwards. The majority of respondents had not used online grocery shopping websites before and it also showed that only 50% of all 18-30 had. However 72% of respondents who had never shopped said they would consider it in the future. 39% of all the demographic stayed loyal to only one supermarket website and 23% said they would not be loyal to a single supermarket. Waitrose and Tesco scored the highest results on satisfaction. The majority of respondents scored satisfaction 4 or higher.

Each aspect of the personal evaluation was recorded as a number 1 to 6. 1 being the lowest and 6 highest. Search engine capabilities scored the highest mark of 6. Browsing ability scored the lowest mark with 2.

Week 2 – The “Hourglass” notation of research.

Last weeks tutorial focused on the way research can be structured effectively. We were introduced to the “Hourglass” notation of research which consists of several different steps.

The steps in the “Hourglass” notation of research are as follows:

• Begin with broad questions
• Narrow down, focus in
• Operationalize
• Observe
• Analyze data
• Reach conclusions
• Generalize back to questions

We were given a research paper titled: Student Awareness of the Privacy Implications When Using Facebook. After reading the paper we then had to refer to the “Hourglass” notation of research and decide how to break it down. The title of the paper suggests a very broad area of interest which is the question the researcher wishes to study. However to gain research required for a research project the question needed to be narrowed down. I narrowed the question to:

• Are they ignorant or aware of privacy settings already?
• Where is the trust coming from?

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/strucres.php

POST TO BE CONTINUED……………………………………………………….