Consumer behaviour in Cambodia Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6250 words

Consumer behaviour in Cambodia - Dissertation Example This section will comprise the justification and description of the research methods that are to be put into practise in order to determine the consuming behaviour in Cambodia. The methods that will be adopted have been explained in detail so that a suitable pathway can be determined. The chapter will shed light on the research design, the methods and the philosophical approaches of the study. The chapter then proceeds to highlight the sampling method and the sample size of the study. The target population or the intended participants who will be approached will be also highlighted. In addition, this chapter will also emphasize on the process of data collection and how the collected data will be analysed in the subsequent section. Lastly, the study will state the ethical issues associated with the study and the limitation of the study. 3.2 Research Philosophy It is necessary for a researcher to make certain assumptions regarding the nature of reality which is to be studies (Daniel, 2 010). Apart from that, assumptions are also made about the knowledge produced and the research perspective. Figure 1 The figure above summarizes the approaches that can be used by the researchers in a research study. The approaches have been summarized in the form of epistemology, ontology, theory, perspective, techniques and methods. Each of these different approaches entails to a different way of performing the research. In general there are two research philosophies namely interpretivists and positivist (Blaxter, Hughes and Tight, 2006; Guba and Lincoln, 2005). Positivism is a philosophy of research which is based on the view that sociology must use the natural methods (Tobin and Joseph, 2006). However, that does not mean only use of experiments as there are several problems associated with experiments. The biggest one comes in the form of ethical violations. The researcher who believes in positivist philosophy believes that research works must be conducted with the help of quant itative methods. They principally aim to measure the social structures (Mehrens and Lehmann, 1987). On the other hand, interpretivists or anti positivists takes the other way round. According to their point of view, human being perceives and reflects on that basis and scientific studies are not appropriate for the study of society. They also believe that unlike objectives human being has the ability to alter their behaviour. Hence, the inference is that in order to understand the social action, it is necessary to understand the meaning and reason people perceive about the environment around them (Abbott, 2010; Connaway and Powell, 2010; Gordon, 2007; Snieder and Larner, 2009; Wilson, 2010). Another important finding of the study is that researchers who follows interpretivism philosophy believes that social research must be conducted with the help of qualitative method (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009; Browne, 2006). This study seeks to investigate the consumer behaviour pattern of Cambodia and hence it clearly