It was a very productive day for today, as I read through two chapters, as well as, did a journal review. Not to mention, I also looked at how I am going to plan the overall thesis i.e. what philosophical paradigms, the layout, and what topics to cover.
Chapter 5 (Focus Groups)
Today this chapter covered Focus Groups, which are a type of group discussion that allows the generation of information from a group of participants who may share similar interests, experiences, or values.
There are various focus groups:
- The Classic Focus Group
- The Online Focus Group
- The Two‐Way Focus Group
- Dual-Moderator Focus Group
- Mini Focus Group
Chapter 6 (Diary Research)
This chapter covered Diary Research, which is a flexible tool that is compatible with virtually every philosophical position, from positivism to social constructionism. It adopts personal accounts to construct impressions of individuals’ experiences. For the wider social and behavioural sciences, diaries can provide a unique insight into the thoughts, experiences, and events encountered by a research participant. People’s daily activities reflect important aspects of social, psychological, and economic life and, because all our experiences are
located in time, being able to record daily happenings enables the capturing of indicators of economic activity, social coherence, health and wellbeing, and values.
- The solicited diary
- Solicited log
- Diary-interview
- Mass Observation Project directives
Journal Review: Impact of digitalization on retailers and its future trends
The latest journal review for my doctoral thesis was on the ‘Impact of digitalization on retailers and its future trends’.
The gist of the article is as follows:
- According to Barabara Thau, there are indications that brick-and-mortar shops are here to stay. Customers are more likely inclined to buy once they are physically in a shop, rather than visiting a website.
- This is also due to online websites not offering a tangiable shopping experience i.e. touch, smell and human interaction between customer and sales advisor. These experiences are hard to replicate in an online environment, hence why this dynamic aspect will mean the survival of the brick and mortar retailer.
- The demand for online shopping will increase for the foreseeable future, as delivery times are reduced by online retailers. This is especially true for the likes of Amazon, who are already contemplating 30 minute deliveries.
- Also the offline shopping experience will particularly stay for luxury goods such as watches, cars and so forth. It is expected that online shopping will increase for the cheap and basic products that are easily returnable. This is very much so when customers need to multi-task, some tend to rather do online shopping for say groceries, as that is convenient to order and will be pretty much what is ordered.
- Retailers will be forced to embrace the best of both worlds, akin to a hybrid model, online and offline, in order to survive and thrive. A agile attitude will go a long way.
- There is no direct evidence at this stage that the customers will entirely divert away from offline to online.
- The buying behaviour of the customer is influenced by numerous factors such as general buying habits, affection towards a particular brand, visual perception or even the credibility of the retailer.
- Online shopping enables customers to leave hundreds of reviews/feedback is they so wish , while they can pay for goods and have them delivered directly all from the comfort of their own home. Unfortunately, this is not possible when shopping through offline retailers. These provide certain obstacles for offline retailers.
- Online consumers tend to be younger, wealthier, more digital savvy, trust online purchases and find online shopping smarter way to purchase for goods. They are also less afraid of financial losses due to payment gateway safeguards.
- An added bonus for online retailers may be that they offer a larger inventory of goods for the consumers, than offline competitors.
- Online sales are leading the war between offline sales in the US. 91% of the companies have some sort of online operation.
- Online sales have not exceeded offline sales in China according to the study.
- The solicited diarySolicited logDiary-interviewMass Observation Project directives