Feeling confused with mixed methods and survey analysis
Hi
I need some advice regarding what type of analysis I should do, maybe mixed method, using thematic analysis with quantitative analysis. I am a bit lost as it is quite confusing. In my study I have to investigate the marketing strategies adopted by the international fast food entrants in India and what difficulties they face. Also, I want to evaluate that why people prefer them over the local restaurants. For that, I am thinking to interview the employees of the restaurants and the customers who visit there. In this way, I will understand the opinions of both the sides. I am a bit lost here, should I interview the employees and conduct survey (like distributing questionnaire) with the customers? How much sample size should I take? In which method (interview or survey) can I do thematic analysis and quantitative analysis?
Posted in: Survey and Analysis
Danielle Veronneau 6:18 am on April 6, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Have you thought about other strategies like case studies and observations? If you are thinking about interviews and generating themes, are you allowed to video or record participants and generate transcripts? And what are you aiming at, I mean what all do you want to investigate in the marketing strategies? Have you identified your research questions?
Preeti Nirman 12:22 pm on April 8, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
@Danielle: You almost scared me with so many questions. No, I haven’t thought about case studies and observation method, I strongly believe that interviews and survey are the best options. I am planning to generate transcripts and conduct interviews with the managers of McDonalds, Dominos and KFC. I want to investigate the most popular and effective marketing strategy that they use (the reason behind their popularity). Also I want to find their shortcomings and how they can improve. My research questions are:
For what reasons do Indian consumers prefer foreign fast foods entrants over Indian restaurants?
What are the marketing strategies adopted by foreign fast food entrants?
How do the marketing strategies adopted by foreign fast food entrants differ from the marketing strategies adopted by the Indian marketers?
What are the challenges encountered by the international fast food companies learn about Indian belief and different cultural values?
Danielle Veronneau 11:04 am on April 18, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hey, sorry for scaring you. Questionnaires are best useful when you have to collect large amount of information. The data collected from then is easily quantified and analyzed more scientifically. However, they are not that could for validity and reliability as you don’t know what the respondents have interpreted from your questions and if they are honest about their answers or not. On the other hand, interviews are useful for in-depth research. You can get more detailed information about your respondent’s perceptions and then you can generate themes from them. Both the methods will be good for your research but time-consuming. The data will be large so its analysis will also require more time and efforts. Also, you have to decide on the type of interviews and questionnaires.
Preeti Nirman 10:06 am on May 6, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for that. I am settling for conducting structured interviews with the employees and quantitative questionnaire with the customers. I can then generate themes from the interview transcripts and do descriptive statistics on the data collected from the questionnaires. At least that is what I am planning. My next doubt is what sample should I choose?
Danielle Veronneau 10:02 am on May 17, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
What is your population? Determine that first. Then using a sample size formula, calculate your sample on the basis of population and confidence interval. There a lot of calculators available online, you can refer them or look for a formula.
Preeti Nirman 5:08 am on May 25, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
How to you settle for the population? I mean, there are so many people who visit the restaurant, how am I supposed to calculate that? Also, how to estimate the confidence interval?
Laura Urner 12:26 pm on June 1, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Population is simply the people who you need to survey or target. For example, you want to find out the perception of people regarding the safety in airliners. For that, your population would be those who travel in airplanes. You can get the statistics from the report of airline industry in a particular region. Say the population is 1000 people who travel via planes. Now as far as confidence interval is concerned, I don’t know what that is, but I took it as 95% as that’s the general way. So, I can’t help in that respect. However, once you understand your confidence interval, you can use this formula for calculating the sample size:
n=(Z^2*p*q)/e^2
Where, n is the sample size, Z is the value for confidence level (1.96 for 95% confidence interval), p is percentage for picking a choice (usually 0.5), q is p-1, e is the desired level of precision (I took it as 0.4).