4.1 The Revision of Research Proposal Draft
In the process of developing my research proposal, I did some revisions regarding its draft. The first proposed topic that I chose seems highly extensive for master program and I do not have much time to research. Thus, I took the initiative to find the alternative topic as the replacement. In the topic alteration process, I was trying to find the inspiration in the real retail condition and I discovered that Pop-Up store is the interesting one. However, in order to develop my topic into more acceptable and not overly broad, I did some different steps to create it. From education video of How to Develop a Good Research Topic (2013), to make the topic narrow, the key is to add more context from the topic that researcher interested in; the context are geographical, historical, biological. In this case, I add geographical context and I change biological context to the type of business context. Therefore, my dissertation title is Pop-Up Store as Innovative Marketing Strategy for the United Kingdom Fashion Online Store Business.
4.2 Development Research Proposal Content
After I found the topic of my interest, I stepped to develop my background and research question. In the background section, I put more literature review that describes Pop-Up store and its performance and also show some phenomenon evidence of the existing Pop-Up store in United Kingdom territory. Moreover, I put the additional section that explains about what is the problem of my research and why the topic is important to be researched. Defining the research question is a notable step in order to narrow the research aim and objective into specific areas of the study that will be delivered (Cresswell, 2014; Christensen and Johnson, 2014). In response to this, I focused on type of qualitative research question. The type of the question is flexible (Cresswell, 2013) and determines the discovery of process or defines experiences (Doody and Bailey, 2016). The qualitative research question is suggested to have the central question for general inquiries and after that followed by the sub-question that specified the objective (Cresswell, 2014). Therefore, in my research question, I am asking about the Pop-Up store and its characteristic for central question and the sub-question is about the motivation of company management to choose Pop-Up store as the marketing strategy and what is the effect of it.
4.3 Literature Review Arrangement
Since the my topic does not have many literature publications, I attempt to find other terminology of Pop-Up store, which is temporary, and the result is in line with my expectation although I still need the other supporting resources. However, even though I have sufficient literature, I still have a job to organize the contents appropriately. Here, I obtained new method to arrange the literature by using a matrix that helps me to develop my literature review composition. The matrix categorized the ideas based on the journal sources. There is no the correct way to determine the matrix (Literature Reviews: Using a Matrix to Organize Research, n.d.) but the matrix suggested to:
a. Have limit amount about the information
b. Present the comparison about the study of each author’s study
c. Might provide new discovery about something wanted to explore
d. The location of the key ideas that we want to take as the part of our literature review.
Figure 1 Example of Literature Review Matrix
Figure 1 describes the example matrix format of literature review arrangement. In response to my visual learning problem, I overcome it by printing the resource that I think will be fit as my literature. It seems more costly but it works for me to absorb the point of the information because I can give a highlight for certain information and I can make source framework in the same paper with attractive design as I want it like to be.
4.4 Maintaining the Ethical Issues of Research
In step of ethical issues of the research, I need to understand this in order to assure that my research does not only sound ethical, but more than that this is about how I conduct the research in an ethical manner. Ethical issues commonly arise especially at data collection phase (Ghauri and Grønhaug, 2010). There are some main points that I learned after reading the guideline of ethical approval:
a. The confidentiality of the information gathered from the respondents
b. The respondents contribute to the research voluntarily and approve the voluntary consent which signifies that they fully understand about the research objective
c. Assure the risk will be minimal or no harm for the participants
d. Ensure the data is protected safely
After I consider those things, I decide to make my the data collection process more structured by creating the key information point and make list of risk assessment about the obtained data from my respondents. This creates the secure barrier for me before I conduct the research.
Figure 2 Risk Assessments
4.5 Defining The Research Positioning
The research philosophy determines the important assumption about the way of the researcher views the world (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2007) and it contains four aspects; positivism, realism, interpretivism, and pragmatism. The research philosophy also determines the direction of the research and the type of the approaches that I want to apply. In this context, I claim myself as interpretivism because it provides the entrance to the subject’s social world and understands their point of view (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2007). Moreover, for the research emphasis for the dissertation will be inductive approach because it is suitable for qualitative research (Crowther and Lancaster, 2009; Ghauri and Grønhaug, 2010). After I understand about this, I obtain clear direction about the things that I will do on my research. Also, this makes me easier to determine the methodology and method that I want to use in my dissertation.
4.6 Dealing with Interview
As interview becomes my main tools to gather the data, here I have to arrange the ultimate preparation for my materials and my confident before the execution. In order to have appealing performance, I am trying to familiarize myself about my target interviewee and understand the type of information that I really need to have. Moreover, since I am not native English speaker, I feel like I need more learn about some vocabularies that fit with interview.