Marketers don’t have any machines to look inside a decision problem, so they may use certain research processes to “open up” the problem and look around. Investigators use these methods, which they refer to collectively as exploratory research, with a single purpose: clarify the research questions which guide the whole research project.
What are the Advantages of Exploratory Research ?
The key benefits of exploratory research design are:
Increased Understanding: The main objective of exploratory research is to improve a researcher’s knowledge of a topic. It shouldn’t be employed to draw definite conclusions, because of its lack of statistical strength, however it can help an investigator begin to determine why and how things happen.
Concept Testing: A typical basis for performing exploratory work is to check concepts before they are put in the marketplace, usually a very costly endeavour.
Assistance to Researchers: It assists market researchers to find potential causes to the signs or symptoms conveyed by decision makers. Researchers may carry out research to build up a list of possible causes to the problem. Additional more extensive study may then verify which possibility or possibilities are most the likely causes.
Flexibility of Data Sources: Exploratory studies use secondary sources for example published literature. Other resources utilized in exploratory studies include informal discussions, formal structured interviews, pilot studies or case studies. These may well include consumers, colleagues, patients or customers.
It can help to find out possible ways to achieve decision makers goals: For instance, assume a marketing manager is provided with a goal to boost product sales by 50 percent in the next couple of years. Selecting strategy might initially require creating a list of available strategies before evaluating which stood the best chance of success. Creating a set of realistic strategy options might first require exploratory study. Then, once created, a bigger more formal study could estimate which was most likely to achieve the sales goal.
Exploratory research provides answers to questions related to actually administering a big and costly research project: One example is, researchers can make use of exploratory study to understand words and phrases important to the individuals being researched. They can also get a feeling of how best to reach the people (e.g., email versus phone versus World wide web).
Figure 1 – Merits
Better Conclusions: It can be extremely beneficial in guiding future research techniques. A better knowledge of a topic helps hone subsequent research questions and will significantly raise the effectiveness of a study’s findings. It is also very helpful in figuring out the best approach to achieve a researcher’s objectives.
Over time it can assist decision makers and research workers cut costs: In spite of its expense, most often employed techniques cost considerably less than large scale formal research like surveys or experiments. Thus, if exploratory work aids researchers address the correct questions and avoid mistakes in the conduct of these larger research projects, then they merit their expenditure.
Strategic Planning: Exploratory design in some circumstances can save a lot of time and money by flagging dead ends early.
Read Also: Purpose of Exploratory Research
Disadvantages of Exploratory Research
The primary disadvantage is that they seldom offer adequate answers to research questions, even though they can hint at the answers and give direction as to which research methods could provide definitive answers. Precisely why exploratory studies are rarely definitive is because individuals studied may not be typical of the larger population of interest. That is, the sample is likely not a representative one.
In this article, we have discussed the disadvantages and advantages of exploratory research design. It is usually flexible and dynamic and can be rooted in existing literature. However, it costs a lot and may be unsuccessful.
Read Also: Disadvantages of Exploratory Research
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