Answer 1)
Saint Leo Core Values: Excellence, Community, Respect, Personal Development, Responsible Stewardship and Integrity
In the context of marketing research, our textbook describes marketing researcher, the client, the responder and the public as the four stakeholders. Although every market researcher has a modus operandi of performing the work, however, on the larger context, it appears to me that while completing the research work, an influential interest is shared by the researcher and the client as while the former designs the research layout, latter fund it. Henceforth, this influential relationship deviates the market researcher from the ethical path as in order to satisfy the client needs, researcher turns bias and many times disclose personal information of the respondents to the buyer.(Malhotra, 2010)
This issue was well discussed in Module 1 where te majority of the class consented that market researchers do favors client’s interest over respondent’s privacy. Henceforth, such unethical acts does compromise the objective of professionalism associated with the marketing research process. Accordingly, the two most important ethical issues when completing a research project are:
1. Adherence to the model/procedures while simultaneously encouraging objectively to limit bias.
2. Ensuring the reporting is never skewed toward personal gin, should be accurate, accurate, complete and unbiased
Both of these issues require integrity and excellence – which are two core values of St. Leo
Answer 2)
Unlike exploratory research, descriptive research is conclusive in nature and introduce a research design where nothing is manipulated. In other words, rather than making guesses about the target audience, descriptive research gathers the quantifiable information from the population either in the form of surveys or existing empirical data. It is post the collection of the quantifiable data, various statistical tools guides the researcher to understand the status quo, the relationship amongst variables and how the variables have changed over time.
Accordingly, under the given scenario, LEGO, which is seeking to enhance its brand equity amongst the college students should completely rely on the survey component rather than observational component. The survey may be initiated in the form of questionnaires including range of questions related to LEGO products and how these college students perceive them. Post the collection of the quantifiable data, researcher can then regress the data and establish the relationship between the Lego Products(dependent variable) and other independent variables. The outcome of descriptive research can then be studied at face value, drawing correlations amongst variables, benchmarking, et cetera.
Answer 3)
Unlike descriptive research, causal research is conclusive in nature and assist the analysts in establishing the cause and effect relationship between the variables. In other words, the outcome of causal research helps in determining as how the dependent variable will change with variation in the independent variable. Important to note,causal research can be conducted through two methods, such as laboratory experiment and field experiment. However, under the given scenario where we are interested in understanding the effect of change in variables, field experiment will be more suitable.
Works Cited
Causal Research: Identifying Relationships and Making Business Decisions through Experimentation. (2014). Retrieved February 8, 2016, from http://fluidsurveys.com/university/causal-research-identifying-relationships-making-business-decisions-experimentation/
Judeh, M. (n.d.). What do we mean by Descriptive Research? Retrieved February 8, 2016, from https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_we_mean_by_Descriptive_Research
Malhotra, N. (2010). Data Collection, Preparation, Analysis and Reporting . In N. Malhotra, Marketing Research: An Applied Orientation (pp. 44-49). Pearson.
