Marketing Research Report Guidelines

Introduction

Your research report is a description of your research project based on:

• research question(s) and/or
• problem(s).

Your report tells the story of your research questions/ problems and how you found answers to them.

Purpose:

The main purposes of a research report are to demonstrate:

• a critical awareness of the previous work in your field exploring some additional questions (it may reproduce a previous study in a new context or with modifications)
• an understanding of basic research theory and techniques

Writing Style

You need to know whether it is common to use the first person (I) in your writing or you need to be more objective (third person – the writer). This varies according to different discipline areas. You need to image someone who is well-educated in your broad area but does not know about your SPECIFIC research. You will need to define and clarify some terminology and examples.

Questions That Relate to Report Structure

Major Parts to your report

You need to introduce the report, identify what is already known about your topic in the literature, let the reader know what methodology you used, state the results and discuss them, identify the conclusions.

The main sections in more detail

The following order of sections is used for most science-based discipline areas as well as arts-based areas.

Abstract (approx 150-200 words)

This should be a very brief overview of the WHOLE report covering 4 main areas:

• What you did (the topic)
• How you did it (methodology)
• What you found out (results – major only)
• What was the significance (conclusion/recommendations)

Introduction:

• Provide contextual information to the problem/questions, identifying the problem of research in this area
• Introduce the objectives
• Identify the specific research questions

Literature Review:

• Review previous work relating to research problem/questions (to define, explain, justify), and show the contribution that the present research will be filling.
• Should be structured
• May have a number of sub-sections to identify themes
• Research should be integrated and combined highlighting areas of similarity and difference
• Review previous work relating to methodology (to define, explain, justify)

Methodology:

• Perhaps discuss your justification and theoretical perspectives
• Use the literature (theory) to help you justify why you chose this methodology (if not done above)
• g. if you are doing a survey explore the theory of survey design, types of questions and delivery and advantages and disadvantages of different modes
• Explain how data was collected/generated
• Explain how data was analysed

Results:

• Present the results (using graphs, tables, etc where appropriate)

Discussion:

• Interpret and discuss the results
• Compare with results of previous research (link to the Literature Review)

Conclusions:

• Return to the research questions and suggest whether they’ve been answered or “solved”.
• Return to the objectives and whether they have been achieved?
• Indicate what has been learnt from the study and how it can be applied
• Indicate improvements for the research and future possibilities

Important Note:-

Please submit the hard copy in class and soft copy submission can be via Moodle (Turnitin) as per the dates mentioned in course syllabus. Soft copies will be run against anti-plagiarism tool to detect copied materials. Therefore, summarize points or paraphrase and make sure you reference the sources. Reports with more than 25 percent similarity (plagiarism) will not be accepted and marked zero. In addition, marks will be deducted from those who submitted reports with a lot of similarities with other work (journal article, website info, newspaper article or magazines and other people’s work). I will deduct 0.25 points for each single source similarity more than 4 percent. For example, if one source has more than 4 percent similarity 0.25 marks will be deducted, if two–0.50 marks will be deducted, if three– 0.75 marks will be deducted and so on. These marks will be deducted from the total marks received by the student out of 10 marks.

Group members – 3-4 members in each group

Last date to submit the project (hard copy and soft copy)                   25 Nov, 2020

No submission will be allowed after due date.

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Case 2: Will China Continue to Be a Growth Marketplace?
Will China Continue to Be a Growth Marketplace? China is expected to have some 200 million people in
the middle- and upper-income categories by the early 2020s. This is a tenfold increase in people with
significant purchasing power in China in the last decade, from only about 17 million people in these
income brackets as recently as in 2010. China’s purchasing power for virtually all products and services
has strong potential, and foreign companies now strategically try to take advantage of these market
opportunities.
What have we learned culturally that can help companies establish themselves in China’s marketplace?
What went wrong early on? The experience of well-known companies such as Best Buy and eBay can serve
as a learning experience for others. From a retail perspective, the motivation for many foreign companies
to enter China some years ago—beyond those companies that have been in China for decades to achieve
low-cost production—was the triple growth of the Chinese economy that was seen from 2000 to 2010.
With this growth, China overtook Japan to become the second-largest economy in the world behind only
the United States, and its large population makes for an enormous target market. Investment from foreign
companies was the largest driver of China’s growth. Many companies also increased their exports to
China. The United States, for example, saw its companies increase exports to China by 542 percent from
2000 to 2011 (from about $16.2 billion to $103.9 billion), while total exports to the rest of the world by
U.S. companies increased by only 80 percent in the same time period. Exporting to China has become
somewhat stagnant in the last few years, now representing about $113 billion.
Interestingly, domestic consumption as a share of the Chinese economy has declined from 46 percent to
33 percent. This consumption decline—coupled with slower growth globally—has raised questions about
China’s momentum. Right now, around 85 percent of mainstream Chinese consumers are living in the top
100 wealthiest cities. By the early 2020s, these advanced and developing cities will have relatively few
customers who are lower than the middle- and upper-income brackets by Chinese standards. The
expectation is that these consumers will be able to afford a range of developed nations’ products and
services, such as flat-screen televisions and overseas travel, making the Chinese customer much more of
a target for a wide variety of consumption.
But can the unprecedented Chinese growth really continue, and would it come from increased
consumption? The resounding answer is yes, according to McKinsey & Company. McKinsey found that
barring another major economic shock similar to what we saw in 2008, China’s gross domestic product
(GDP) will continue to grow, albeit not at the historic levels seen between 2000 and 2010, when it grew
about 10.4 percent annually. The growth in the 2020s is expected to be about 5.5 percent per year (until
2030), which is still far above the expected growth for the United States (2.8 percent annually), Japan (1.2
percent annually), and Germany (1.7 percent annually). And the key is that consumption will now be the
driving force behind the growth in China instead of foreign investment. The consumption forecast opens
up opportunities for foreign companies to engage with Chinese consumers who are expected to have
more purchasing power and discretionary spending.
But culturally translating market success from one country or even a large number of countries to the
Chinese marketplace is not necessarily as straightforward as it may seem. Often, a combination of naiveté,
arrogance, and cultural misunderstanding have led many well-known companies to fail in China. Lack of
an understanding of issues such as local demands, buying habits, consumption values, and Chinese
customers’ personal beliefs led to struggles for companies that had been very successful elsewhere in the
world. And as global as China is becoming, cultural differences still get magnified in the Chinese
marketplace. Let’s take a look at Best Buy and eBay as two examples.
Best Buy, the mega-store mainly focused on consumer electronics, was founded in 1966 as an audio
specialty store. Best Buy entered China in 2006 by acquiring a majority interest in China’s fourth-largest
appliance retailer, Jiangsu Five Star Appliance, for $180 million. But culture shock hit Best Buy, best
described by Shaun Rein, the founder of China Market Research Group. First, the Chinese will not pay for
Best Buy’s overly expensive products unless they are a brand like Apple. Second, there is too much piracy
in the Chinese market, and this reduces demand for electronics products at competitive market prices.
Third, like many Europeans, the Chinese do not want to shop at huge mega-stores. So, these three
seemingly easy-to-understand cultural issues created difficulties for Best Buy.
eBay, the popular e-business site focused on consumer-to-consumer purchases, was founded in 1995. The
company was one of the true success stories that lived through the dot-com bubble in the 1990s. It is now
a multibillion-dollar business with operations in more than 30 countries. But China’s unique culture
created problems for eBay. Contrary to the widespread cultural issues that faced Best Buy, one company
in particular (Alibaba) and one feature more specifically (built-in instant messaging) shaped a lot of the
problems that eBay ran into in China. Some 200 million shoppers are using Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao
platforms to buy products, and the company accounts for almost 80 percent of online transaction value
in China. Uniquely, Taobao’s built-in instant messaging system has been cited as a main reason for its
edge over eBay in China. Basically, customers wanted to be able to identify a seller’s online status and
communicate with them directly and easily—a function not seamlessly incorporated into eBay’s China
system. Clearly, built-in instant text messaging is a solvable obstacle in doing business in China. It sounds
easy now that we know about it, but it may not always be the case when we take into account all the little
things that are important in a market. How can a foreign company entering China ensure that it tackles
the most important “little” things that end up being huge barriers to success?
Case Discussion Questions
1. Will China maintain its strong economic growth in the years to come? Some suggest it will until
2050. What do you think?
2. If China will go from 17 million to 200 million middle- and upper-income people by the early 2020s,
would the scenario presented by Best Buy not be applicable anymore? Would newly rich Chinese
customers engage in this purchasing in the 2020s?
3. With Alibaba’s ownership of the very popular Tmall and Taobao online shopping systems (similar
to eBay and Amazon) and its spread across the world, will a Western-based online shopping
culture ultimately infiltrate China?

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