marketing essay

MARKET RESEARCH

Name

Course

Professor’s Name

Institution

Date

Market Research

Introduction

Social responsibility is a major part of any institution. Institutions tend to be responsible for the society that is around them. These institutions create teams or committees to help them create and achieve set objectives for social responsibility. The University of Leicester created a Social Impact Team (SIT) to develop and deliver their agenda on social responsibility. The Social Impact Team ensures the operational practices of the university do not harm the environment. The team has adopted the UN Sustainable Development Goals to help them achieve their agendas in social responsibility. One of the Social Impact Team goals is to incorporate sustainable development in university courses to equip the students with skills and knowledge about sustainable development. To do this effectively, the Social Impact Team wants to research consumers' perception of greenwashing and eco-anxiety. This will help the team understand the students' perceptions of greenwashing and how marketers use it.

Greenwashing is where a company claims to be environmentally friendly through marketing strategies while they do not make any positive impact on the environment. Companies and organizations use this tactic to attract customers to buy their products and diverting them from buying products from the actual environmentally friendly companies and organizations. Greenwashing term came up in the 1980s when environmentalist Jay Westerveld wrote about a marketing campaign by a hotel on reusing towels to save the ocean and coral reefs (Corcione, 2020). The hotel did not care about the ocean and coral reefs; they focused on attracting more customers to get revenue for their expansion. There are various companies known widely for being involved in greenwashing. Chevron is one of the companies that used marketing strategies to make claims that it is dedicated to protecting the environment while violating the Clean Air and Water Acts. Greenwashing can have an impact on a company’s reputation because when the environmentally-friendly claims are found to be misleading, these companies can face litigation, for example, Walmart company had to pay a large sum of money to settle a claim that the plastics they sold were environmentally friendly, but they were not. Greenwashing has made the fight for a clean environment difficult because it directs people away from the real fight.

Eco-anxiety is where a person fears environmental disaster. This is seen as a chronic condition of anxiety. This anxiety in people comes from either their experiences or knowing someone who has experienced floods, wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes. In recent times there has been a rise in eco-anxiety due to climate changes in the world. More people are now holding demonstrations and strikes to fight for the environment. Eco-anxiety does not affect people equally because people fear environmental disasters (Huizen, 2019). Eco-anxiety at a low level may have an impact on fighting for the environment and protecting it. Addressing these issues is important for the Social Impact Team because it will help them gain the students' perceptions of greenwashing and eco-anxiety and, through this, implement sustainable development in the university courses equipping students with skills and knowledge in green consumption.

Research objectives

The following are the research objectives:

· To understand the eco-consciousness of students.

· To understand what the students think about eco-friendly products and their attitude and opinions toward such products.

· To understand the role the students play in combating environmental issues.

The Social Impact Team research is focused on the students’ perception of greenwashing and eco-anxiety and implementing sustainable development skills and knowledge in the university courses. Therefore, the target population of the study is students at the University of Leicester. This population will provide the required sample for the study to get insights on the research topic.

Critical evaluation of methodology

The study focuses on gaining the perceptions of students in the university about the research topic. The suitable research design for this kind of study is the qualitative research design. The qualitative research design involves using non-numerical data to understand perceptions and experiences of the subject of research. Qualitative research design mainly focuses on the what and why (Bhandari, 2020). Since our research is focused on what the students think about greenwashing and eco-anxiety and why they have those opinions, it is best to consider qualitative research to provide more accurate results and insights. Qualitative research design is widely used in market research to understand customers’ opinions and experiences to give insights to brands on what to do to satisfy their customers. The qualitative research design will provide information on the research topic and open a door for more information not considered when conducting the research. Qualitative analysis will also provide flexibility in collecting and analyzing the data since not strictness in the processes. Various methods can be used to collect data for qualitative research. These methods are observations where a researcher observes the subjects without interfering, focusing groups where the researcher groups people and asking them questions. They discuss them, interviews where the researcher asks questions to participants either face-to-face or over the telephone, surveys that involve giving questionnaires to participants to answer them, and secondary research, which consists of collecting data that already exists from different sources. The data collected is analyzed using various steps, first preparing the data, exploring the data to look for patterns in the data, creating a coding system to categorize our data, giving the codes to the data, and identify repeating patterns in the coded data. This research design will help us understand the eco-anxiety of students by gaining their perception of eco-anxiety, help us understand the eco-consciousness of students by gaining understanding their perception and awareness of greenwashing, help us understand what the students think about eco-friendly products and their attitude and opinions toward such products, and help us to understand the role the students play in combating environmental issues by gaining perception on their responsibility in combating environmental issues.

Research philosophy is a belief on how the research should be conducted that is how the data should be collected and analyzed. There are four major philosophies in research, positivism, interpretivism, pragmatism, and realism. Positivism research philosophy entails looking at the data and research objectively; interpretivism research philosophy entails looking at data and research subjectively; pragmatist research philosophy deal with facts, and realism research philosophy deals with assumptions about a subject. The research philosophy that our methodology is based on is interpretivism. This is because our research is focused on gaining the perceptions and experiences of participants in the study. The study involves looking at the research subjectively hence the interpretivism research philosophy. Interpretivist research philosophy involves collecting data through interviews and observations, which are the main data collection methods in our qualitative research design.

Our research is exploratory because it is research that has not been studied before. Exploratory research is focused on answering questions about what and why and our research is trying to understand what the perceptions of students are on greenwashing and eco-anxiety and why these perceptions. Primary research methods for exploratory research analysis are surveys, focus groups, observations, and interviews, and secondary research methods are case study research, literature research, and online research. These research methods align with our qualitative research design, which will be using in our research. There are two types of observational studies in research, cross-sectional study and longitudinal study. A cross-sectional study involves collecting data from different participants at a specific point in time, while Longitudinal studies involve collecting data from the same participants over a long period (Thomas, 2020). Since our study involves collecting data from different students at one point in time, our research study is cross-sectional. Our research also involves collecting data from a large population and comparing the data between the participants hence cross-sectional research. A cross-sectional study also uses research methods such as interviews, focus groups, observations, and surveys used in qualitative research design.

Focus groups are the preferred data collection method in our research. It is preferred because our participants have the same characteristics, and it is easy to collect data in focus groups. Our study population is large, and it isn't easy to get data from it. Still, the participants can be grouped into several groups, and data collected from these groups with focus groups. This data collection method will enable us to address the research objectives since it is a data collection method that allows researchers to understand the participant's perceptions and experiences on greenwashing and eco-anxiety.

Developing Research Instrument

Focus groups provide a safe environment for participants to share their perceptions and experiences on the research topic. Focus groups also allow us to ask more questions and have a discussion to understand the topic of the research (Reams, 2018). The focus group will be designed based on our research. The first step of designing the focus groups will be developing the questions to use in the focus groups. These questions will be based on the research topic and the research objectives set before. The next thing will be identifying a moderator and an assistant moderator. The moderator will be one of the members of the Social Impact Team. The assistant moderator will also be a member of the Social Impact Team. The moderator's responsibility in the focus group is to lead the group, ask the participants questions, and facilitate discussions. The responsibility of the assistant moderator is to ensure the room is arranged, help with refreshments for the participants, take notes of the focus group, operate and manage the recording equipment, and observe the non-verbal cues from the participants. The moderator should possess skills and attributes such as listening skills, creating a friendly environment in the focus group, welcoming, managing groups effectively, and being objective. The moderator and assistant moderator were chosen from the team because they are familiar with the research and what insights the team wants to get from the participants, unlike outside moderators who are not quite familiar with the research. The next step of the focus group design will be identifying the participants of the focus groups.

Since the research we are conducting is to understand students' perceptions on greenwashing and eco-anxiety and help the Social Impact Team come up with a suitable sustainable development program to implement in the university courses, the participants will be selected from the university. The participants should be students undertaking a course in the university, be between the age of 18 to 35, and active in school volunteer programs. Participants will be recruited through advertisements on social media platforms and flyers distributed to the students. The participants will then be selected through purposive sampling, which is a non-probability sampling technique. Purposive sampling is used to enable us to select participants of interest and who will be able to provide answers to the research questions. The selected participants will then be informed on the purpose of the focus group, the use of the data collected from them, the time and locations of the focus group, and incentives. The composition of the groups will be heterogeneous. The participants of the group will be selected for a wide range of characteristics. This will enable us to gain a wide range of perceptions and experiences on the research topic. The heterogeneous group will also provide more insights from different views. The group size of the focus groups will be 10 participants. This number is reasonable since it is not too big and not too small. Small groups tend to make not speak because the participants are uncomfortable. Big groups tend to make it difficult to manage, and some participants may end up not sharing. The number of groups that will be used for the research is 6 groups each of 10 participants. Since our groups are heterogenous, it will be appropriate to use 6 groups to capture all the information required for the research. A small number of focus groups tend to work effectively in homogenous groups since they have similar characteristics and information is captured quickly. The duration of the focus groups will be one hour each. This duration is appropriate because long durations tend to be a burden, and the participants may decline to participate in the groups. Short durations may lead to inadequate information being collected from the focus groups. The focus groups will be held in the evenings after classes; this is to ensure all participants can attend without anyone missing out. The focus group will be conducted in the Social Impact Team boardroom. The boardroom is spacious and comfortable enough to fit more than ten people. It also has a round table where participants can sit around and face each other and enable discussions to happen easily. Before the focus groups begin, the participants will be required to fill in forms as they are arriving; also we will call the participants a day before to confirm their attendance for the focus groups. This form will be used to collect demographic data about the participants, such as age, gender, race, education level, and occupation. Refreshments will be provided to the participants during the focus groups as the discussions continue. Incentives will then be offered to the participants at the end of the focus groups. The participants will be handed envelopes with some amount of cash inside as incentives. Incentives are important because the participants feel appreciated and will be willing to participate in future studies.

The interview guide will be developed based on the research topic, research objectives, and participants. The language used in the interview guide will be simple to enable the participants to understand what is being asked. Ambiguous and jargon terms will be defined for the participants to know the meaning of the terms. The interview guide will be arranged from general questions to specific questions to give the participants the research feeling before asking more specific questions. The interviewing technique to be deployed is semi-structured interviewing techniques. This is a combination of structured and unstructured interviewing techniques. The technique involves having a set of structured questions and a set of unstructured questions that are asked to the study participants.

The flexibility of the technique is suitable for our qualitative research design. It also allows us to ask follow-up questions and ask for more explanation to gain as much information as possible. Questions suitable for our kind of research are open-ended questions. These questions allow for more information and insights from the participants. Open-ended questions also allow the respondents to give their perceptions without any limit, which is beneficial to the researchers. Yes or no questions will not be used because they limit the participants' responses and therefore limit the information needed in the research. The questions that will be used in the interview guide will not be leading to ensure there is no bias on the information collected because the participants were led to give a certain response. The questions will be categorized into two categories general and specific questions. The general questions will be asked first to familiarize the participant with what the research is about before diving into the more specific questions. To get further answers from the participants, the moderator will ask follow-up questions on issues that seem to need more information to understand. The moderator will also ask the participants to explain further the reason behind their answers; this will provide further information that might provide insights to the research that could not be thought of previously. The projective technique will be used in the research to gain more information. The projective technique will allow the participants to freely provide the perceptions and beliefs and give the moderator more access to the participant's perceptions and motivations. The type of projective technique that will be applied in the research is the thematic apperception test, where the participants will be shown some visualizations and asked to give their perceptions. Videos and pictures will be used to show participants market campaigns used as greenwashing strategies and show different environmental disasters to assess the eco-anxiety of the participants.

Critical Reflection: Limitations of the study

Qualitative research design is an efficient research design when dealing with research that requires one to gain perceptions of people on a certain research topic. Although it has been effective, it has some limitations. These limitations are time-consuming, expensive to conduct, subjective, labor-intensive, and unreliable. Qualitative research design is time-consuming because the research can take months to complete. In our case, the research will take a long time, from creating the design, recruiting and sampling the participants, conducting the focus groups to data analysis and interpretation of the results. Qualitative research tends to be expensive to conduct since interviews and focus groups require qualified personnel to conduct them. Qualitative research is also expensive because of the time they take to complete them. In our case, it is expensive to conduct qualitative research because money is required to print the advertisements for recruiting participants and conducting the 6 focus groups since equipment, refreshments, and incentives will be required for each of the focus groups. Qualitative research tends to be subjective since different participants give different responses, and the research is the person who decides which responses to consider in the analysis of the data. Qualitative research is labor-intensive to conduct since data analysis is mostly conducted manually. Qualitative research is also unreliable since it deals with a person's perception and cannot verify the data collected. These limitations cannot be mitigated in our case. Future researchers performing the same study can combine qualitative research with quantitative research to reduce the time used, expenses, unreliability, subjectivity, and labor. Despite focus groups being an effective data collection method in our research, it has some limitations. These limitations include expensive conduct, biasness, dishonest responses, and dominance by participants. Focus groups are expensive to conduct since they require participants' recruitment, supplies such as recording equipment and refreshments, and incentives for the participants. To mitigate this limitation in our research, we can decide to use surveys less expensive since it requires only questionnaires for the participants.

Focus can be biased if it has a biased moderator. Some moderators lead the participants towards an assumption altering their responses. To mitigate this limitation, a skilled moderator who is not biased will be hired to conduct the focus groups. Participants may feel uncomfortable sharing their perceptions hence giving dishonest responses. To mitigate this limitation, we can combine focus groups with interviews to interview respondents who seemed not comfortable in sharing their perceptions. Some participants in focus groups tend to dominate over others in the discussions. This can affect the responses given by the participants since they may tend to agree with the dominant participant than giving their responses. It can also cause other participants not to share their perceptions. It is difficult to mitigate this limitation in our current research. Future researchers can combine focus groups with quantitative research methods to get accurate data without the influence of the dominating participants.

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