RESEARCH METHODS
For this research, two types of research methods were used. Methods refer to ‘instruments of data collections like questionnaires, interviews or observation’ (Bryman 2008). Two different methods were used to enable the author to find the most valuable and in depth research. These will be more fully described below.
FOCUS GROUPS
Focus groups can be defined as ‘small, structured groups with selected participants’ (Litosseliti 2003 pg.1) and are seen as ‘a way of eliciting customer preference’ (Hines 2000). The main advantage of using focus groups is the ability to capture opinions and attitudes towards carefully outlined topics. The purpose of focus groups is to listen and gather data. Krueger et al (2000 pg. 3) explains that the function of focus groups is to “clarify options, suggest ideas, react to ideas, recommend a course of action, to make a decision, to plan or to evaluate.” There are three main aspects of the focus group situation that the author needs to be in control of; research questions, participant selection and data analysis. Each of these sections is further discussed below.
Greenbaum (1998) suggested firstly using a details section to open the focus group then moving into the key content section. This allows the participants to be eased into the research, allowing them to begin in a moderately controlled manner which would then facilitate them feeling more comfortable voicing their own opinions. In order to aid the focus groups and help the participants to understand the purpose and direction of the research, the author used visuals of both editorial advertisements and internet screen shots for the luxury brands under question. In the initial details section, participants were asked to identify from the provided list which brands they were aware of and had experience with.
According to Mintel and KeyNote the focus group sample was identified as 20-34 year old urban dwellers. This age group was noted by Mintel (Market Re-forecasts 2008) as experiencing the biggest growth in the luxury segment and due to age this group is also more likely to form life-long relationships with brands. Gender in this instance was not an issue as the luxury brands defined as being the subject of this research are not gender specific. The participants chosen for this research were all none students, the main reason for this being that they had regular income and therefore expenditure to be able to recognise and in some cases acquire the brands in question. These selection factors help to increase the validity of the research as the results are based on pre-existing opinions and not formed by any moderator bias. For this research project, a focus group size of 6 was chosen and 5 sessions were completed, in full 30 participants were questioned over three weeks. Stewart (2007) states that a large number of participants in each group do not afford opportunity for all participants to individually actively participate. Equally, a large number of participants in one group becomes difficult for the moderator to supervise and therefore the research can become uneasy and awkward to conduct. The groups were conducted in a short space of time to not allow the researcher to lose momentum and stay focused on the research project.
The main question for participants in focus group was “Do luxury brands lose prestige through the use of internet marketing”. When conducting focus groups the desired effect was for ‘snowballing’ to occur whereby the participants form their own questions from the answers and insights they provide. This process enabled the author to gain large amounts of data and information which would not have been able to be found through observation or questionnaire. Key objectives for the focus groups was to expose participants opinions in the changing direction of luxury brand marketing practices as well as varying opinions to the brands themselves given the rise of celebrity culture and status purchases. Branding according to Keller (1998) means building perceived values beyond the observable physical value of the product. Using this as a starting point, the author firstly wanted to indentify general attitudes to the defined luxury brands and then to establish how effective both there editorial advertisements and there newer e-marketing practices are in terms of how they affect the consumer. Questions asked were open ended and vivid; participants therefore having to form their own conclusions and being somewhat forced to openly discuss their thoughts.
At the beginning of the focus groups, participants were asked to complete a semantic scale of brand awareness and complete word association. This process was repeated at the end of the research. This allows for the combination of both qualitative and quantitative data which provide the author with methodical and valid research findings. All focus groups were recorded and then transcribed verbatim at a later date. Recording the focus group interaction was necessary to capture everything voiced and prevent bias through the author writing down the findings. To complete the focus group a summary was provided to the participants, this finalised the session and marked the end of the recording to the participants.
A Dictaphone was used to record focus group activity which was then transcribed verbatim. This ensures nothing was missed out and also allowed the researcher to only pay attention to commanding the group. This would not have been achieved if everything was being written down as the researcher would miss things out and also would place bias on desired findings. ‘Note taking should not interfere with the spontaneous nature of the focus group’ (Krueger ….pg 105). ‘Tape recording sessions will ensure accurate recording of the data’ (Park 2007 pg 456) therefore they are the most appropriate method of capturing data and activity.
INTERVIEWS
Kvale (1983, p.174) defines the research interview as "an interview, whose purpose is to gather descriptions of the life-world of the interviewee with respect to interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena". Interviews were chosen for this research project to enhance the results that could be found using focus groups and in order to provide insight into people in the marketing industry; although consumer opinion is important and form the basis of this research, having in depth knowledge of how the marketing world operates allows the research to gain more validity and more interesting and fulfilling results. Furthermore, research indicates that telephone interviews are as valid as questions asked through email or face-to-face (Dillman 1978 in Bernard 2000 pg234). The decision to use both interviews and focus groups was chosen as explained by Morgan et al (….. pg51) who stated that ‘there are many situations where a combination of methods will yield more useful data than any one method alone’.
Two 45 minute interviews were planned over the telephone. Telephone interviews were more suitable in this instance due to geographical limitations. Powell (1997 pg 115) states that telephone interviews have many advantages; the most obvious being the time and money costs. Similarly, telephone interviews also allow for the researcher to control the general tone and pace of the interview more as there are no environmental cues to influence both the researcher and the interviewee (McDaniel et al 1998 pg 168). ‘Telephone interviewing has become the most widely used method of collecting data over industrialised nations’ (Bernard 2000 pg234). A 45 minute time frame was allowed in order to try and reduce any time constraints that the interviewee may be affected by on the day. By allowing for extra time, the researcher was able to allow the interaction to flow more to accommodate for any issues that may be raised which had not yet been considered. The interviews conducted were semi-structured and ‘less-directive’ as described by Wright (1996) who goes on to explain that this interview structure ‘encourages respondents to express experiences, attitudes, needs and ideas’. By semi-structuring the interview, the researcher was able to recreate the atmosphere of the focus groups; by allowing the free fall of opinions and ideas to form responses and questions. Through doing this, the interviewee is inclined to feel more open with their opinions and not let stifling questions hold back their responses.
Further to this, the researcher allowed the focus group results to form much of the interview guide. The focus groups conducted enabled to researcher to form new questions which previously had not been considered. This accommodates for a link between the two research methods used and helps the research to gain more validity. In order to outline the basis of the research a small introductory speech was dictated using Creswell (2003 pg 96) as a basic guide. This meant all interviewees had the same information at the start of the interview, by both interviewees receiving the same information the researcher can assume that the research had continuity.
Another key advantage of using a telephone interview is that it means the interviewee is in an environment that he or she has chosen. The ability to do this mean means that the interviewee is in a place where they can feel comfortable and relaxed, therefore the answers they provide are an more accurate interpretation of their actual feelings and are not subject to any physical cues which may interfere with respondents feelings. ‘Phone interviews have the impersonal quality of self-administered questionnaires and the personal quality of face-to-face interviews……telephone surveys are unintimidating’ states Bernard ( 2000 pg 234) who goes on to explain that telephone interviews allow interviewers to probe and answer questions with ambiguity. Due to prior reading therefore the researcher felt assured that telephone interviews would be sufficient.
Due to unforeseen circumstances both telephone interviews had to be changed to email interviews. Although this is not desirable for the research, email interviews allowed the respondents to review their answers and provide in depth responses. Also due to the note taking method which would of been used for telephone interviews, email answers provide all information the respondents wants to give to the researcher therefore in theory nothing is missed.
LIMITATIONS
One of the first and most obvious limitations of this research is generalisation; as focus groups and interviews were conducted with small group samples in a localised area then the results have to be generalised to represent a larger population which is not necessarily an accurate representation of a larger size. This research therefore will not be representative of the general population. ‘As sample size is usually small…generalisation to wider populations is difficult’ (Jobber 2007 pg 243). It would be juvenile therefore to expect that throughout the country every single person would conform to the results found in this study. However, being able to research every individual would be inefficient and would offer highly varied results. Also, Morgan et al (1998) offer that all not research projects need to be generalised to larger populations and that rather in some circumstances ‘you may need an in-depth understanding of a particular setting or circumstance’ (pg 52).
One particular social phenomenon which would affect this research project is social conformity. Highly researched in the social psychology field, this area indicates that individuals in group situations will conform to stronger, more confident individuals as they feel intimidated to reveal their own thoughts especially if they differ from the group. Equally, some respondents often polarise their answers to either highlight anti-conformity behaviour or to set the norm for other participants. ‘…when a group is highly cohesive and when its members are closely identified with it, polarisation is especially likely (Sunstein 2006 pg96).This is mainly an issue in group decision making focus groups however, and is not as applicable in this case whereby the sole intention of the group was to reveal feelings and experiences. ‘Focus groups emphasise the goal of finding out as much as possible about participants’ experiences and feelings on a given topics’ as described by Morgan et al (1998 pg51) who goes on to add that ‘when participants realise that the research team is genuinely interested in learning about the full range of their experiences then conformity becomes less of a problem’.
Similarly, the subjects of the focus group were chosen through purposive sampling which further means that the members of the group were issued to personal bias of the researcher. ‘Purposive sampling is a type of sampling in which a researcher more or less handpicks cases’ (Stommel 2004 pg302).This is unavoidable and unconscious on behalf of the researcher but nevertheless should be mentioned in reference to the results given. Purposive sampling means that at maximum the results found could only be generalised to individuals fitting the same demographic as the research outlined. ‘The primary goal of purposive sampling is not to generate a sample which is ‘representative’……to represent certain characteristics that are considered relevant to the investigation’ (Stommel 2004 Pg303).
There are two similar issues with both focus groups and telephone interviews and these both relate to the physical environment of the research: physical environment of research and the cues available for respondents play a large role in the answers they give. Within the focus group environment, researcher behaviour and other respondents can influence how an individual reads the questions presented to them, and research has shown that individuals may answer differently depending on what they anticipate the researcher wants to find. Physical and environmental cues such as negative body language, tone of voice, external distractions all have a distinct effect on respondents. Amedeo et al (2008 pg1) point out that it is ‘necessary to consider social and environmental influences when investigating human-issue topics’ due to the impact they have on the respondents. On the reverse of this point, telephone interviews remove all physical and researcher cues. This can create a very stale and clinical communication and means the researcher has no direct control over the environment in which the respondent chooses to be in. Mann et al (2000) points out that telephone interviews promote egalitarian behaviour but on the positive social barriers are lost and therefore so are inhibitions.
As this as the first focus group the researcher led, there are issues in regards to how well the researcher could moderate the group and elicit good responses. Focus groups are at their most successful and responsive when the moderator steers the responses to an appropriate destination. In addition, respondents are in their most relaxed and comfortable state when they are responding to moderators they feel they can trust (Stewart 2007).
Furthermore, there are three central issues to the results gained with qualitative data of this nature; poor transcription, misrepresentation, and finally subjectivism.
As Langer (2006) points out the point of focus groups is too gain rich and in-depth data. Poor transcription of communications from focus groups has a detrimental effect on the research project. The aim of any research project is too gain a deeper understanding of a chosen subject, through not transcribing data efficiently and capturing all available information, the researches is losing validity. This is why it is important to transcribe recordings verbatim.
Additionally, focus groups allow free conversation between participants; it is these conversations that provide the research results. However, removing the context and taking snippets from conversations takes them out of perspective and can be misrepresentative of how the respondents actually answered the questions asked. In effect this means that a researcher can make any respondent appear to provide the perfect answer to either prove or disprove the aim of the research project.
Moreover, to connect the above two points together results gained from qualitative research methods is highly subjective and the context, environment and research pressure all contribute to the answers respondents give. As the research environment is not connected to the respondent’s everyday lives, it is hard to be able to know how accurate the answers are to the respondent’s actual feelings and opinions.
One issue with using email to conduct an interview is that as free flow of conversation is of importance to the researcher, this is completely removed with email. As the answers can be reviewed and gone over before sent, the respondent has time to think about what information they want to reveal to the author and therefore the answers may not be fully indicative of their actual opinions. Another problem is pointed out by Siskos (2009 pg 175) who points out that due to the nature of email the questions have to be simple and somewhat short as they have to be able to resist being lost in translation.
ETHICS
All forms of research hold certain ethical issues which must be taken into consideration upon reviewing results and data and also must be considered when determining the most appropriate research type and design.
There are seven issues which affect all areas of research; these are withdrawal, deception, protection, consent, confidentiality, colleagues and debriefing. Several of these could be applied to this research design and will be discussed further below.
The general premise of focus groups is too elicit response and information from participants. As the free flow of conversation desired occurs between participants in a group it is hard to determine that all members of the process will remain confidential after the activity. The researcher can agree to make all results gained confidential and therefore not release personal data about each of the respondents. This agreement must be adhered to however there is no definite guarantee that each of the respondents within the focus groups will also adheres to this: they may after the conclusion of the research find themselves revealing other responses to their friends and peers. The only way the researcher can try to reduce this is to ask the respondents to keep all details to themselves.
Providing a safe and secure environment in which to conduct the interview is of vital importance to both the author and respondents. This ensures that the respondents feel relaxed and at ease therefore feeling comfortable enough to freely talk to the author and others.
Confidentiality throughout this research has been adhered to and neither focus groups respondents or interviewees identities have been revealed throughout the research design, transcription or recommendations section.
The respondents were briefed and debriefed at the start and finish of the research respectively. Therefore the author can assume that all motives and reasoning for the research was fully understood by the respondents.