Types of research strategies Essay

There are different types of research strategies that can be employed in a research. According to Yin (2003) each strategy can be employed for exploratory, descriptive and explanatory research however some are distinct to the deductive approach and others to the inductive approach (Saunders et al., 2009). The different research strategies that can be adopted in a study are experiment survey case study action research grounded theory ethnography and archival research (Saunders et al., 2009).
Experiment is a research strategy owing much to the natural sciences with the purpose of studying causal links to determine the relationships between variables. (Hakim, 2000) cited by Saunders et al., (2009). Experiments are usually carried out in laboratories rather than in the field. The research seeks to understand the issues in real-life that influences or impedes the adoption of digital marketing in small charities. The nature of laboratory settings cannot be related to the real world of organisations (Saunders et al., 2009). It is also not possible to hold any variable constant in a real-life or natural setting (Shang, 2014). Based on these reason this strategy cannot be adopted.
The survey strategy is usually related to the deductive approach and employed in descriptive and exploratory research. This strategy allows large amount of data to be collected from a population through the use of questionnaires. Data is standardised for easy comparison (Saunders et al., 2009). The survey research will not be appropriate to address the research problem as it seeks to derive deep insights from the social interactions between the researcher and small charity to discover specific issues in their context.The case study strategy involves empirical investigation of a specific recent phenomenon within its real life context using various sources of evidence. It is mostly used in explanatory and exploratory research and the data collection technique used may include interviews, observation and documentary analysis (Saunders et al., 2009). Yin (2003) identified four case study strategies and distinguishes them based on two separate dimensions single case versus multiple case and holistic case versus embedded case.
Action research strategy requires four distinct foci the purpose of the research collaboration between researchers and practitioners clarity in results to inform other context and the iterative nature of the process of diagnosing, planning, taking action and evaluating (Saunders et al., 2009). The action research methodology requires a high-level of commitment from participating organisations of their intention to embark on digital marketing developments. This is not suitable for this study as the small charities may have various strategic plans that may not incorporate digital marketing during the time of this study.
Goulding (2002) states that grounded theory enable prediction and explanation of behaviour, with emphasis on theory building. As much of business and management is about the behaviour of people, a grounded theory strategy can be used to explore a wide range of issues in business and management (Saunders et al., 2009). This study could not be undertaken using grounded theory methodology because it is not developing or building a theory.