Page 92 - DMGT209_QUANTITATIVE_TECHNIQUES_II

Unit 6: Research Design

6.4.1 Descriptive or Diagnostic Research Notes

Meaning

(a) The name itself reveals that, it is essentially a research to describe something.

Example: It can describe the characteristics of a group such as—customers, organisations,
markets etc.
Descriptive research provides “association between two variables” like income and place
of shopping, age and preferences.

(b) Descriptive inform us about the proportions of high and low income customers in a
particular territory. What descriptive research cannot indicate is that it cannot establish a
cause and effect relationship between the characteristics of interest. This is the distinct
disadvantage of descriptive research.

(c) Descriptive study requires a clear specification of “Who, what, when, where, why and how” of
the research.

Example: Consider a situation of convenience stores (food world) planning to open a
new outlet. The company wants to determine, “How people come to patronize a new outlet?”
Some of the questions that need to be answered before data collection for this descriptive study
are as follows:
Who? Who is regarded as a shopper responsible for the success of the shop, whose demographic
profile is required by the retailer?
What? What characteristics of the shopper should be measured?
Is it the age of the shopper, sex, income or residential address?
When? When shall we measure?
Should the measurement be made while the shopper is shopping or at a later time?
Where? Where shall we measure the shoppers?
Should it be outside the stores, soon after they visit or should we contact them at their residence?

Why? Why do you want to measure them?
What is the purpose of measurement? Based on the information, are there any strategies which
will help the retailer to boost the sales? Does the retailer want to predict future sales based on
the data obtained?
Answer to some of the above questions will help us in formulating the hypothesis.
How to measure? Is it a ‘structured’ questionnaire, ‘disguised’ or ‘undisguised’ questionnaire?
When to use descriptive study?

 To determine the characteristics of market such as:
(a) Size of the market
(b) Buying power of the consumer
(c) Product usage pattern
(d) To find out the market share for the product

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