sample research proposal for MBA

[

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2012

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Table of Contents

Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3

Research Aim:............................................................................................................................4

Objective and Hypothesis Development:...................................................................................4

Research Motivation:.................................................................................................................5

Limitation of the research:.........................................................................................................6

Literature review:.......................................................................................................................7

Methodology:...........................................................................................................................12

Research approach:...............................................................................................................12

Sampling:..............................................................................................................................12

Research instruments:...........................................................................................................12

Data Collection method:.......................................................................................................13

Data analysis:........................................................................................................................13

Ethical Consideration:..........................................................................................................13

Time Plan:............................................................................................................................14

Conclusion:..............................................................................................................................14

References:...............................................................................................................................15

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Introduction:

With the growth of internet technology- web site, search engine and social media, internet

users are also growing day by day. Innovation in internet marketing by the organization and

the interaction among friends, family and community people through social media

networking makes it more convenient for consumer to shop online.

In physical shopping environment, most of the shoppers share the product experiences in

order to make purchase decisions. This kind of sharing of experiences is missing in modern

online shopping environment. But nowadays, organization’s using social media website like

Facebook to facilitate customer to share their experiences. Some of the organization even has

started to keep option for product review, quality review, delivery review by customers so

that future customer can take decisions. This research therefore will try to investigate this

issue how use of social media networking helps bring customer confidence and help

organization grow its online sales.

UK is the most multicultural country in the whole world with people of different ethnicities,

colours, religion and languages. National statistics shows that with the course of time, present

immigrant minority will grow in such an extent that white British will become minority in

certain period of time. Most of the immigrant people need to communicate with their relative

back home. Therefore, they use cheap international calling cards, Mobile virtual network

provider sis like Lebara, Lyca, Now mobile, Vectone etc. User of these MVNO sims need to

buy top up voucher physically from retail store every now and then. This research aims to

develop an online platform to give better shopping experience through the use of social media

network like Facebook.

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Research Aim:

How Social media networking influences online shopping in UK and how Facebook can be

used to develop an online platform to sell international calling cards and MVNO top up

vouchers specially o2 calling card and o2 international sim.

Objective and Hypothesis Development:

To find out the solution of the above mentioned problem, it is necessary to develop

hypothesis and compare these hypothesis with primary data collection result.

H1: Social Media and its different plug in and application helps organization reach the new

customer faster than any other internet technology.

H1a: Lottery based application helps recruit new member in Facebook.

H2a: Social media plug in like Facebook like button and group share option help increase

members in Facebook page.

H2: Use of social media brings confidence on customer and minimise product quality

mismatch risk.

H3: Use of social media networks help reduce financial risk

H3a: Use of social media helps build brand identity of an organization

H3b: Use of social media gives confidence to consumer to provide bank details.

H4: Use of Facebook to build an online platform to sell international calling card and MVNO

voucher will get most of the user to buy online.

H5: Use of Facebook is the best medium to reach ethnic minority to sell both O2

international sim and calling card.

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Research Motivation:

Facebook has become the part and parcel of most of the internet user’s life style. With the

passage of time nowadays people get hardly any time for social interaction. Therefore, people

use Facebook as an alternative to stay connected with the friends and family. In the near

future, hardly any people will be left from using this social media website. The dynamic

nature of Facebook enabled users to share any information within a second crossing country,

border or any obstacles within. Most of the organizations now have a Facebook fan page,

group or application in order to interact with customers to give better customer service, to

take feedback from customer or to launch new promotional activities to recruit new

customers.

As UK is becoming more multicultural day by day, ethnic minority based market is growing

larger. Ethnic minority market is more than billion pound business now. VOIP (Voice over

internet protocol) use to make international calls by different means like calling card and

MVNO (Mobile virtual network provider) is more than million pound businesses now.

Main network like o2, Vodafone and 3g now understands this phenomenon and want to get

into this market. Recent launch of o2 calling card, o2 international mobile sim and Vodafone

international sim proves that this segment of market is growing every day and there is huge

potentiality of business in this sector.

Author has worked with some MVNO organization such as Now mobile and Lyca mobile,

calling card company such as Simplecall and mobile sim distribution company such as core

communication (dialacode) and GK telecom in UK.

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Author observed that o2 being a British telecommunication company is doing advertisement

and promotion with British mind set where its customer segment has different ethnic mindset

of its home country. Therefore author feel that even though o2 is far better company than any

other MVNO organization, it has failed to develop its product and advertisement and

distribution channel to reach ethnic minority efficiently.

This research will definitely add value to o2 to understand ethnic mindset and hence to

develop an alternative distribution channel through social media network such as Facebook.

Limitation of the research:

This research aims to develop a standard product for all ethnic minorities. But, as author is a

student has got the limited budget to spend to carry out this research. Author being a member

of Bangladeshi ethnic minority has mostly access to this ethnic minority. Therefore, data will

be collected mainly from this ethnic minority. As a result, outcome of this research may not

be appropriate for the other ethnic minorities.

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Literature review:

This research will be consists of a literature review where researcher will bring out all the

comments, theories, opinions, debate which support as well as contradict with the proposed

research problem.

Horrigan, John (2008), associate director of Pew internet-an America based research centre in

its research shows that

1. American people have embraced internet shopping for the convenience and time saving

2. Most of the American still have concern and doubt while using their credit or debit card

information online.

3. Most of the online shoppers have shown frustration because of lack of information,

confused by information or overwhelmed by excessive irrelevant websites about the product

they want to buy.

4. Most of the people will buy online if they can trust the e-commerce environment more.

5. Revenue for online shopping has growing in a very fast rate in America since 2000.

6. More than 95% internet user at least research online before buying any product and about

25% successfully do the online shopping.

7. The young generation is most likely to shop online than older people.

8. White English speaking Americans are most likely to buy online than black Hispanic and

English speaking Americans.

9. Improving online shopper’s comfort and security level to send their personal information

online will bring bigger payoff to the online industry.

These findings will definitely add value to the current research while collecting primary data

for UK market.

Haubl, G. & Trifts,V. (2000) who teach in faculty of business university of Alberta, Canada

has shown on their research that while shopping online consumers research online which can

be classified as two stage processes:

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1. In the first stage, consumers screen a large set of alternative products and use of

recommendation agent (RA) helps consumers efficiently screen potential alternatives and

then

2. An in depth study of selected products to compare the price and quality before making

final purchase decision. A comparison matrix (CM) designed to help compare selected

alternatives helps consumer in second stage in depth comparison of the products.

Their research shows that a combination of use of RA and CM helps consumer a quality and

efficient purchase decision which reduces time wastage and increases comfort level of online

shopper. Findings of this research will help this research on how to use both RA and CM

factor while developing online shopping platform for o2 international calling card and o2

international sim by using Facebook. As Facebook is the best medium to get RA but new

strategy need to make to build CM in facebook.

Senecal, S.et al (2003) has researched on a very interesting and different topic. Their main

concentration was to analyse click stream ‘’ how consumers browse page to page and how

much time they spent and the processes consumer follow depending on product

recommendation by others’’, This research shows that online recommendation can be

classified into three main broader categories;

1. Other consumers (Friends and family)

2. Human expert (Sales man, independent expert) and

3. Expert system to support consumer decision making process.

In their click stream analysis they have found that consumers who consult product

recommendation has to go through a more complex shopping behaviour than who do not

consult and who consult but do not follow the recommendation. In order to minimize the

complexity of the consumers who follow product recommendation, an e-commerce should

have facility to navigate between product recommendation and other information about the

product because consumers browse through these pages more frequently.

Hasslinger, A. Et al (2007) in their dissertation titled ‘’Consumer behaviour in online

shopping’’. This research was done to find out online shopping patter of students to buy

books and CD online. Researchers have found that price, convenience and trust are the main

three factors to consider for online shopping. Online shopping gives more chances to

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compare price online than offline environment. It brings convenience in the sense that if any

one searching for any sophisticated product with exclusive features it may be difficult find

online and easy search online. Trust is the vital element why people do not want to shop

online. They have suggested that the factor trust mainly depend on three attributes; perception

of safety, trust in the internet retailer and trust in the internet as retail shopping.

Researchers have found three different set of consumers in their research.

1. High spenders: This segment is of smaller percentage that spent a lot online but is not

influenced by any kinds of recommendation

2. Price Easers: This segment of consumer shop online to get the lowest price while buying

books. This is the biggest group in three segments. Consumers are affected by friend

recommendation before shopping online.

3. Bargain Seeker: This segment is the same size of high spenders but highly price

sensitive. They browse online mainly for price comparison. Trust is the second important

factor of this segment hence they prefer shopping offline than online. Researcher have

recommended that in order to attract student for online shopping a retailer should offer

Discounted price

A trustworthy retailer

Quick and easy transaction.

Schneider, C. (Undated), a teacher of Washington state university has analysed online

shopping from different angle. His paper analyzed the issue how temporal proximity

influences impulses online shopping behaviour. His research was tested against two different

hypothesises;

1. First hypothesis shows that if there is any expectation of future benefit, consumer will wait

to take advantage of it.

2. But when temporal proximity is increased meaning when there is an offer (better price and

quality) when bought instantly or within a shorter period of time, consumer are most likely to

forget future benefit and act instantly to conclude the purchase.

Kanokwan A. & Okada, H.(1993) from Japan has researched on Japanese consumer’s life

style and online shopping behaviours. Their findings slightly contradict with finding of

similar research on other countries. Such as

1. Spending much time online does not mean a consumer most likely to shop online.

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2. Consumers with innovative lifestyle perceived more risk to online shopping.

3. Only the price sensitive consumers are most likely to shop online regardless the perceived

risk of online shopping.

Research shows that people familiar with internet research online when they intend to buy

any product. A good percentage of them do not conclude the purchase rather prefer to visit

the store and purchase physically. Once, any internet user hits the organization’s website and

then move to other sites, organization has hardly any chance to have personal relationship

with the visitor in future. But in social media networking organization not only keep

continuous link with the first visitor but may even influence that visitor to invite his friends

and family by alluring him with rewards through the use of social media tools and

application.

Consumer can browse for varieties and options; compare quality and price; saves time and

transport cost with online shopping. Even with so many benefits, customers tend to avoid

online purchase mainly for two risks; quality mismatch risk and financial and personal

information misuse risk. Quality mismatch risk comes from the fact that online customer

misses the experience of touch, see and feel like traditional physical shopping. Even if this

risk is ensured by money back or product returned guarantee, customer may feel insecure to

share personal and bank account details with retailing organization. But with the other

customer’s product review and recommendation, prospective customer may have confidence

on the retailer to shop online.

With the passage of time, new ideas and internet tools coming in; to ease internet shopping as

well as the tricks to misuse those tools to misguide customers are increasing. Retailers may

find paid people for false reviews and recommendation. Therefore, customers may get

confused and less confident to shop online. But in social media where people are linked up

with known faces, reviews and recommendation from friends in social media may help

overcome all the above risks, both quality and financial risk to take the final decision of

purchasing online.

Consumers want to win in every shopping by paying less for greater value. Therefore, no

matter what is the price, online customer will search as much as possible to find the best price

and quality and so may go to other web sites and will forgot to come back. They may even

decide to change the mind and visit local stores from other organization for better options or

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wait for new arrival or price cut. Therefore coupon or discount code with time limit may have

impulse on customer’s mind to purchase online on the spot. And this discount code is updated

more easily on social media. With the help of social media may have influences on increasing

conversion rate from being visitor to consumer?

Therefore, it is important for organization to research on this issue. The result of the research

will help innovates new tools and technique on social media to recruit new customer and

increase conversion rates.

Trust is the vital element before customer pay online to a specific retailer. Here brand identity

plays an important role to have confidence and trust from customer. If the organization does

not have a strong brand identity, then use of social media like Facebook may help

organization to buy brand identity and bring confidence of customer before customer click on

final check out and use payment gateway from these social media networks. Therefore,

Social media may help an organization reduce financial risk of customer by influencing brand

identity of the social media like Facebook.

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Methodology:

Academic research is done to add knowledge to the existing literature. In order to do that

researcher should have previous knowledge on the issue, find all related existing researches

and findings on the subject matter which works as the foundation for the future research.

Research approach:

There are mainly two research approaches for data collection method; Inductive and

Deductive. In inductive approach researcher try to establish a theory after the data is collected

and analysed. But in deductive approach, theory is set up first based on prior knowledge and

research results then researcher test the theory with collected data to confirm the theory. This

research will follow a deductive approach as related hypothesis for problem statement has

been already established.

Sampling:

The toughest job in this research will be to find out the appropriate sampling frame. This will

be the limitation of this research. As researcher is from Bangladeshi background, most of the

respondents reachable will be from same background. It is still undecided to set the sample

size. But researcher believe a set of at least 100 respondents from ethnic minority background

will be sufficient to draw decision about whether setting an online platform based on

facebook to sell o2 calling card and sim will be appropriate.

Research instruments:

A research can be a qualitative and quantitative or mixture of both. As this research is based

on fact finding and seeks to answer specific question, therefore it will be a mixture of both

qualitative and quantitative research. There are different research instruments such as

interview, survey, case study etc. As this is a mixture of both qualitative and qualitative

research survey is the most appropriate method which will be done by designing an online

questionnaire with both close and open ended questions.

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Data Collection method:

Data will be collected from both primary and secondary sources. Secondary data will be

collected from recent articles, journals and books on the subject matter. Some of the research

and articles is mentioned in appendix A which is related to the proposed problem statement

of this research.

Primary data will be collected from online survey. There are many tools available on the

internet to do survey online. Researcher will use Survey monkey tools

(http://help.surveymonkey.com/) by designing a questionnaire with both close and open

ended question to collect data. Online survey is most appropriate because this research is

about online shopping. Therefore, it is natural that people with online shopping experiences

are most likely and easily found in internet.

As this research seeks to develop a facebook platform to sell o2 calling card and sim card,

therefore, it is most appropriate to distribute and advertise questionnaire through facebook.

Almost all of the respondents will be facebook user.

Data analysis:

Collected data will be analysed by the spreadsheet. Microsoft excel will be used to present

the findings in graphical format in order to give a better professional look to the report.

Ethical Consideration:

Author is well informed about ethical consideration. In any part of this research, there is no

requirement of asking any private information which can be sensitive of any respondents.

Respondents who fill up the questionnaire will go for a draw to win a £10 worth of o2

international sim card in order to compensate for their time. This will be informed before they

fill up the questionnaire. Respondents will be also compensated by giving chance to look at

the outcome of the research if they are interested.

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http://help.surveymonkey.com/


Time Plan:

In order to manage the research and finish it on time, help of Gant chart will be taken which

is the best instrument to manage a project (Andrew,J.D., undated).

Feb March April

Task/Time Week

1-2

Week 3-

4

Week

1-2

Week 3-4 Week

1-2

Week 3-

4

Finalizing Proposal

Finish writing

literature review

Design Questionnaire

Data Collection

Data Analysis

Finish Dissertation

Conclusion:

The result of this research will benefit all the organizations who want to sell online specially

UK retail organizations. It will give marketers a better understanding of consumer behaviour

for online shopping specially through social media networking such as facebook and twitter.

The researcher is very much enthusiastic and excited about this innovative and new

knowledge in the field. With proper academic guidance and following a strict time table

should bring a good result for this research.

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References:

Andrew,J.D., (undated) Essential of Management, South Western Senage learnig, UK.

Anthoney D. Miyazaki & Fernandez (2005) Consumer Perceptions of Privacy and Security

Risks for Online Shopping, Journal of Consumer Affairs Vol.35, Issue 1, pages 27–

44, Summer 2001, Available at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-6606.2001.tb00101.x/abstract

Constantinides, S. Et al (2008) Social media: A new frontier for retailer, European retail

research,Vol. 22, 2008, pp. 1-28.

Available at:

http://www.utwente.nl/mb/nikos/publications/ecpapers/constantinidessocialmedia.pdf

Gefen, D. Et at (2003) Trust and TAM in Online Shopping: An Integrated Model, MIS

Quarterly Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 51-90,

Available at : http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036519

Hasan Mirza (2008) Social Media’s influence on Purchase Decision?, Indiana Institute of

Management, Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/hasan_99/social-medias-influence-in-

purchase-decision

Haubl, G. & Trifts,V. (2000) Consumer Decision making in online shopping environment:

The effect of interatice decision aids, Marketing Science, Vol.19, No.1, Winter 2000, Pg 4-

21.

Hasslinger, A. Et al (2007) Consumer behaviour in online shopping, Department of Business Studies, Kristianstad University.

Horrigan, John (2008) Online Shopping, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Washington, D.C.

Kanokwan A. & Okada, H.(1993) How Consumer Lifestyles Affect Purchasing Behavior:

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http://www.slideshare.net/hasan_99/social-medias-influence-in-purchase-decision

http://www.slideshare.net/hasan_99/social-medias-influence-in-purchase-decision

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036519

http://www.utwente.nl/mb/nikos/publications/ecpapers/constantinidessocialmedia.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-6606.2001.tb00101.x/abstract

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joca.2001.35.issue-1/issuetoc


Evidence from Internet Shopping in Japan, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Journal of Entrepreneurship Research. June 2007, Vol.2, No.2, p. 63-78

Schneider, C. (Undated) Ordering versus Grabbing: The influence of temporal proximity on impulsive online buying behaviour, Department of Information Systems, Washington State University, USA.

Senecal, S.et al (2003) Consumers’ Decision-Making Process and Their Online Shopping

Behavior: A Clickstream Analysis, Journal of Business Research.

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sample research proposal for MBA