Arbe6408 Research And Professional Practice Assessment Answers

This stage is describing your method/technique and your overall approach to answering your research question. Your overall approach is often unique to your question of study. It should include the following section:i. You could consider one of the following general research methodologies: survey, design and creation, experiment, case study, action research, ethnography or alternative methodology. (

Based on the method chosen in (i), a data generation method is how you produce data or evidence. Data can be either quantitative or qualitative.

Outlining possible Data Analysis you would be undertaking in analysing solution to your original questions. (for guidance, see chapters.

Answer:

1. Introduction and overview

Just walkout technology is premised on the advanced level of learning algorithm and makes use of the sensor fusion techniques that would enable the customer to consume products in a much more hassle-free manner (Pyshkin and Korobenin 2017). It is considered as the fastest technology that would minimize the time required to shop. The highlight of this technology is entering the card at the time of shopping and this will automatically include all the products that would allow the customers to buy the products. The aim of the research is to incorporate new technology in the market to reduce the amount of time spent on payment. Although, retail shops have made concerted efforts in through the introduction of M&S, TSCO amongst others to ensure that the time invested during the payment method is reduced, and the customers are contended, however introduction of this technology has not incurred the desired results (Lee, Tewolde and Kwon 2014). In that context the research becomes important to resolve the problem faced by the teeming customers as well as the companies. There has been sporadic situations where the customers came to purchase the products and had to waste a substantial amount of time in the queue (Charniak, Riesbeck, McDermott and Meehan 2014). Therefore, there needs to be the discussion about the Just walk-in technology. The rationale behind the research is to understand the demand of the market about the payment system, supportive system and the infrastructure for launching the activity. It is found that in the retail shop the customers who came to purchase the products and end up spending extended hours in the queue during the time of payment. The research questions that will be addressed in this study are the problems regarding the payment system in the retails shop, an understanding of the advantage of using Just walk-in technology, an understanding of the kind of technology that is used in the system and understanding of the stakeholders who will benefit from this technology. As it can be seen that the key questions that the study wants to understand is the problems regarding the payment system in the retail shop, detailed account regarding the benefits of the technology, the kind of technology that is useful for the system and the stakeholders who will benefit from the technology and through what processes. Based on the tone of these questions, it can be stated that adoption of the qualitative research design would be most appropriate for the study. As it has been stated earlier, the features of a qualitative research are to understand the phenomenon through the incorporation of in-depth examination of one person. The thrust of qualitative research is not generalize the finding for the research population but to contextualize the findings and emphasize on the particularity of the phenomenon.

1. Research sample

There is a fundamental difference between the term sample and population. The term population refers to all the individuals who would be of interest to the researcher. They are also referred to as the research population. It is difficult to study a particular phenomenon among the entire research population. Therefore, the research selects a particular group of people to study the phenomenon. This population is known as the sample population. The characteristics of the sample population are representative of the research population. The sample population is the subset of the research population. Since the researcher cannot study the entire population, it is important that the researcher select the sample population that is representative of the research population. In qualitative research, the sample population is known as the selected participants or the research participants (Berger 2015). This is one important discourse among the qualitative researchers. In this case, the study is interested in understanding the experiences of the customers who have availed the Just walk-in technology during the time of billing and payment. The sample population would be the customers, the managers in the retail shop and the people who are entrusted with the responsibility of billing. In qualitative research, the study is linked to more than one location. In case of qualitative research, the selection of the participants is purposeful (Lewis 2015). The sampling method in qualitative research is purposive sampling which is also known as judgemental sampling. The logic behind the adoption of purposive sampling in research is to select information-rich cases with the aim of eliciting insightful and perspicacious understanding about the phenomenon that is being investigated. This method of sampling is in juxtaposition to random sampling which is a chief characteristic feature of quantitative data collection. The reason why random sampling is not compatible with qualitative research is because this kind of sampling control and regulate the selection bias and allows for generalization from the sample population to the research population. However, in case of qualitative research, the intent of the researcher is to describe the a particular phenomenon in an in-depth manner keeping in mind that each research setting is unique and therefore, the purpose of the research is not to generalize the findings (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015). In case of qualitative research, representativeness is considered secondary and the goal of the researcher is to provide the information about the behaviour of the people and perspectives in relation to the specific setting. The sampling strategy for this research will be theoretical sampling; the participants who will be studied for this research will contribute to the evolving theory of the application and the benefits of just walk-out technology.

1. Overview of Information Needed

The purpose of this section is to describe the range of information required by the researcher to answer the specific research questions and therefore, highlight the problem that is being investigated. In case of qualitative research, a researcher needs four main areas of information- that is the contextual, demographic, perceptual and the theoretical (Bloomberg and Volpe 2008). The term contextual information indicates the context within which the respondents inhabit or work. This kind of information provides description regarding the environment and the culture of the setting that can be an institution or an organization. It is important to collect relevant information to in the context of a case study or in particular site or the multiple sites. According to Lewin, it is important to remember that the fundamental proposition of the human behaviour is that it is a function of the interaction and communication of the individual with the setting. The contextual information is important as it provides knowledge about the history of an organization, the objectives and the operating principles. Along with the history of the organization, contextual informational also comprises of the information on the leader of the organization. The term perceptual information indicates the perceptions of the participants to their behaviour. In qualitative research, interviews are often used as a means of collecting the data and it is the most critical for assessing and understanding all kinds of information. The thrust of perceptual information is to depend on the interviews to understand the descriptions of eth participants and ascertain their experiential reality (Gioia, Corley and Hamilton 2013). This kind of information helps in understanding the ways in which experiences informs the decision of the person and in what ways the participants are motivated to change their mind. This kind of information further helpful in understanding the shift their attitude or whether the participants describe their purpose and the elements that are relative to the objectives of the participants and the degree to which these objectives are met. Perceptions should not confounded with facts. These are what is perceived by people as facts. The next information that is pertinent to a qualitative research is demographic information. This kind of information is important to understand about the profile information about the participant and description regarding the participants involved in the study, the background of the participants, personal information and the educational qualification of the participant. The personal information of the participants include the age, religion, ethnicity and the gender information of the participants. This demographic information is important to understand the underlying motivation behind the individual perception and also the convergences and the divergences among the participants. In other words, the demographic information helps in explaining the finding that emerged in the study. For the collection of the demographic information, the participants are given a personal sheet to fill up the data about themselves before the onset of the interview or before the data-collection methods take place (Neuman 2013).This information is the arranged in matrix providing an overview about the background of the participants. The demographic information of the participants is arranged into a demographic matrix. The fourth and the final information that emerges in the qualitative research is the theoretical information. Theoretical information connotes to the information that is collected and searched through the different sources of literature to evaluate what is known about the existing phenomenon that is being enquired b the researcher. Given, the nature of the research on just walk-in technology the contextual information for the study will be information regarding the context of the study. In this case, the context will be people who visit the shopping malls for purchasing their products and where the just walk-in technology has been installed. The perceptual information related to the study will be the perspectives of the participants regarding the just walk-in technology, the benefits they have incurred and apart from the customers how the other stakeholders (namely the store manager and the person in-charge of billing) have benefitted from the just-walkout technology. The demographic information pertaining to this research is the about the profiling of the participants (the various stakeholders) that would comprise of documenting their name (pseudonym), age, gender ethnicity and the income-group of the participants. The theoretical information pertaining to this research is concerned with the theoretical framework that would be deployed in this research and the deficiencies in the existing literature. From the intensive review of literature, it has been found that the existing literature does not discuss about the application of the just walk-in technology and its commercial usage. The theoretical framework that is pertinent for the research is the argument provided by Charniak et al. (2014) who is the view that artificial intelligence of the just walk-out technology and the computer software can process the advanced level of the information that are constantly used for artificial intelligence.

1. Research Design Overview

The term research design refers to the overall strategy that the researcher selects to weave in the different components of the study in the different elements of research in a coherent fashion. This is done with the objective that the research will address the research problem in the most effective manner. The research design consists of the blueprint or the template of collection of data, measurement of the data and analysis of the data. The purpose of the research design is to ensure that the evidence elicited procured enables in the effectively addressing the problem without any ambiguity. One common mistake that is usually made by the researcher is engaging far too early in the research without critically intervening into the information that is required to address the existing research problem. can be primarily divided into two types- Quantitative research and qualitative research. The term quantitative research refers to the studies that generously make use of the statistical analyses to procure their findings. It is basically a formal and systematic measurement through the deployment of statistics. On the other hand, there is the qualitative research methodology. In qualitative research, the research does not quantify the findings into statistical data through the deployment of statistical summary or analytical framework. Apart from this, there is the nomothetic approach and the idiographic approach. In the nomothetic approach, the researcher studies a group of people with the aim of recognizing the general laws that can be applicable to the entire group. Here, the objective is to identify the average member of the group who are being studies. Another objective is to understand the average performance of the member of the group. On the other hand, there is the idiographic approach. According to this approach, the objective of the researcher is to study the individual (Bloomberg and Volpe 2008). The decision behind selection of the appropriate approach is contingent on the broader research questions that are being asked by the researcher. The aim of a well-developed research design is to locate the research problem and justify the selection of the research in connection to the valid alternatives in the designs. A research design should review and synthesize the formerly published literatures that are connected with the specific research problem that is being addressed by the researcher. Thirdly, it tries to clearly explicate and specify the hypothesis (the research questions) that is central to the problem being studied by the researcher. The fourth element of the research design is to effectively describe the data that would be necessary for the sufficient testing of the hypothesis and explanation of the strategies for procuring the data (Kazdin 2011). The fifth element of research design is to describe the methods of analysis that is to be applied to determine whether the hypothesis is false or true. The current study will adopt a descriptive research design framework with the aim of providing answers to the questions of what, when, who, how and where that is connected with the specific research problem. The objective of the descriptive research design is to elicit information about the existing status of the given phenomena and describe what actually persists with respect to the conditions of a circumstance or the variables.

5. Data-collection Methods

The term research philosophy refers to the source of knowledge or the knowledge of being. The research philosophy also known as the epistemology of research is Interpretivism. The central value behind the interpretivist philosophy in research is that the researcher is committed in understanding the meanings imbued by the social actors to their social actors to their social action. The researcher needs to understand the viewpoints of the participants from their perspectives by stepping in to their shoes (Glaser and Strauss 2017). The research philosophy or epistemology informs the methodological framework of the research. It has been found that the qualitative researchers are concerned with the validity of the communication. Collection of data in qualitative research can take place through triangulation an important method that will be deployed in the present study. Triangulation connotes to the deployment of multiple techniques for the collection of data. Some of the techniques for data collection include qualitative interviewing, survey, focussed group discussions, semi-structured interview amongst others. These are all illustrations of primary data collection. The usage of literature review can also be considered as one of the methods for the collection of data (this is known as the secondary method of data collection). Therefore, data collection is of two types-primary data collection and secondary data collection. In relation to this research there will be the incorporation of both primary and secondary data collection instruments. Survey and questionnaire that are otherwise known as part of the quantitative research will be deployed in this study (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015). A survey will conducted among the customers who have visited the retail shop that have just walk-out technology and also retails hops that have other forms of technology. Conducting this survey will be understanding the advantages and disadvantages faced by the customers whilst using both these technologies during the time of payment along with that the everyday challenges and ordeals faced by the customers during the time of payment in the retails shops. A survey will also conducted among the store managers of the retail shops and the person in-charge of the billing section to understand their views about the rate of customer satisfaction that can be measured through the incorporation of the ordinal scale in the questionnaire, increase in the number of customers after the incorporation of just walk-out technology, whether they have received complaints from the customers due to the amount of time taken during the billing or whether they had installed any other technology prior to the installation of the just walk-out technology. Interviews will be conducted with the store managers and the customers to understand about the incorporation of artificial intelligence in the payment procedure. The demographic profiling of the customers will enable in understanding the composition of the customers who visit these retail shops. A case study will be conducted on two retail shops one with just walk-out technology and another retails shop that has a different kind of technology during the time of payment. This will provide a comparative analysis through an intensive study into the organization.

6. Data Analysis and Synthesis

The data analysis process commences with putting the plan into action by learning how to manage and organize the large volume of data that is obtained through the fieldwork. This process is completed through the identification of the patterns of the data collected and thereby organizing them into chapters through transcription of the data following the appropriate theoretical framework. The conceptual framework that was revealed during the review of literature becomes pertinent during this stage. The raw data in this stage will be categorized into the different themes that have emerged through the review of literature needs to be categorized within the given conceptual framework. In this case, the incorporation of artificial intelligence and automatic shopping will be the conceptual framework within which the raw data will be organized (Creswell and Creswell 2017). Open coding will be adopted for this research as it leads to the refinement of the data that is later arranged into the final coding schema. The process of data analysis in qualitative research will be both inductive as well deductive. The deductive section of the research will be obtained from the review of literature, whereas the inductive section of the research will be done through the primary data collection. A pilot study will be conducted to test the validity of the research instrument in this case the questionnaire and the interview schedule. Based on the pilot study, the questions in the questionnaire and the interview schedule will be modified and restructured to suit the purpose of the research. There may be discrepancies in the findings with that of the literature review that may be resolved through discussion and reconciliation. The discrepancies that will emerge will be used in further exploration to refine the condition of the findings of the data, analysis and for future recommendations. In case of the results obtained through the survey, computer software programs like SPSS will be used in management and analysis of the data. Data may also be analysed manually through the visual display of the data. Visuals in data analysis help in the development of thinking of the researcher by drawing different charts and devising creative methods in the formulation of these charts. Data summary tables will be generated to thematically arrange the raw data. An interpretation outline tool will be used with the aim of probing beneath the surface of the findings to uncover the deeper meanings associated with the research problem. The traits of flexibility of qualitative research that have been adopted for the purpose of the research allow the qualitative researcher to approach the research in a different manner according to the convenience.

	Research questions	-	-	-	-
Interview questions	1	2	3	4	5
1
2
3

7. Ethical Considerations and Limitations of the study

During the course of the research, a researcher is morally responsible to abide by the ethical guidelines and professional conduct that us to be followed by the researcher. The motivation of research should to be to produce ethically designed research that are coherent, cogent and compelling. There are institutional review boards that examine and supervise the ethical issues in research. Ethical issues guide and inform the researcher during the course of data collection, analysis of data, interpretation of the data and dissemination of the research findings (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015). Ethical issues in research is concerned with the safeguarding of the rights of the participants and ensuring that no participants are harmed, threatened or coerced to participate in the research. Some of the ethical considerations of this study would be seeking the informed consent from the participants, providing them with the option that they may discontinue their participation at any time of the research, ensuring that confidentiality, privacy will be maintained throughout the course of the research, and participants will not be coerced to participate in the study (Ritchie, Lewis, Nicholls, and Ormston 2013). Another ethical dilemma that will emerge is that during the time of survey and interview, the participants will have to provide time from their daily schedule and therefore, it will interfere with their schedule. On limitation of the research will that the number of participants selected for the study (60 male and 60 female for survey and 10 male and 10 female for in-depth interview may not be sufficient.

8. Chapter Summary

Therefore, it can be stated a qualitative research design will be deployed for this research. A sample population of 60 female and 60 male for the survey and 10 male and 10 female for the interview will be selected. Ethical and legal considerations will be followed during the time of the research.

Reference

Bloomberg, L.D. and Volpe, M., 2008. Presenting methodology and research approach. Completing your qualitative dissertation: A roadmap from beginning to end, pp.65-93.

Berger, R., 2015. Now I see it, now I don’t: Researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative research, 15(2), pp.219-234.

Charniak, E., Riesbeck, C.K., McDermott, D.V. and Meehan, J.R., 2014. Artificial intelligence programming. Psychology Press.

Creswell, J.W. and Creswell, J.D., 2017. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.

Gioia, D.A., Corley, K.G. and Hamilton, A.L., 2013. Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: Notes on the Gioia methodology. Organizational research methods, 16(1), pp.15-31.

Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L., 2017. Discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Routledge.

Kazdin, A.E., 2011. Single-case research designs: Methods for clinical and applied settings. Oxford University Press.

Lee, S., Tewolde, G. and Kwon, J., 2014, March. Design and implementation of vehicle tracking system using GPS/GSM/GPRS technology and smartphone application. In Internet of Things (WF-IoT), 2014 IEEE World Forum on (pp. 353-358). IEEE.

Lewis, S., 2015. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice,16(4), pp.473-475.

Neuman, W.L., 2013. Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson education.

Pyshkin, E. and Korobenin, P., 2017, September. Just walk: Rethinking use cases in mobile audio travel guides. In Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), 2017 Federated Conference on (pp. 281-287). IEEE

Ritchie, J., Lewis, J., Nicholls, C.M. and Ormston, R. eds., 2013. Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science students and researchers. Sage.

Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M., 2015. Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.