Updated for week 7 and 8

Running head: RESEARCH DESIGN PROPOSAL 1

RESEARCH DESIGN PROPOSAL 14

Hi,

The signature assignment requires that you write a proposal for your intended research. Using a minimum of 10 scholarly sources and incorporating all of the feedback in the course, your proposal is to involve the use of a quantitative methodology and be 12-15 pages in length.

I appreciate the timely submission of the assignment, the work that went into it, and the effort being put in the course the past 8 weeks. While you generally adhered to APA formatting and the paper is well presented, you did not meet the expectations with respect to both the use of scholarly sources and page length. Remember that a scholarly source is one that is a peer reviewed journal article as you have been advised before. Books and government publications are not since they do not undergo the rigors of peer assessment. The length of the paper is indicative of a lack of details.

You can think of this research proposal as having two major parts. The first in the problem, purpose, research questions and hypotheses that were the major elements in the first assignment in which you were required to read and use the information in the School of Business Prospectus Template. In it, it is made clear that the problem needs to be grounded in the relevant literature. That is, you need to be able to demonstrate that experts in the discipline believe the study is worthy of scholarly research. This has not been done and the literature cited is scant. The introduction and problem statement is more of a description of market segmentation with many unsupported assertion made than the development of a problem. In fact, there is no identifiable research problem.

The purpose, that is to stem from the problem, does not include the information that belongs in the purpose as noted in the Prospectus and again is more of a description of market segmentation. You also suggest that the purpose is to “advance” an argument. That is not what scholarly research is all about. It is not about collecting information to support a particular position. Rather, it is critical that scholars be objective.

While you have two research questions that stem from the purpose, the difference between the two are not clear. You need to explain how you are defining financial “status” vs. “performance.” Further, the corresponding hypotheses are not appropriately formatted as null and alternative hypotheses.

Overall, your methodology is not clear. You have a section on Methodology and Research Design but are essentially stating the same thing twice, that you are conducting descriptive research.

Research Design Proposal

Submitted to Northcentral University

Graduate Faculty of the School of Business in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Business Administration

by

San Diego, CA

July 2020

Introduction

Technology has been on the rise in the recent past. The world has witnessed several technological advancements that have been helpful. Additionally, technology has lessened the burden on human beings to perform some given tasks. Technological advancements have been a plus to human life: in the sense that these devices have influenced the quality and quantity of work. Technological firms that manufacture health devices have speeded up how people receive treatment; however, profit is the ultimate goal like any other firm. Therefore, technological companies have to adapt to strategies that will enable them an edge to compete favorably in the market to realize maximum revenue collection and sell their products to the target consumers. Market segmentation is one strategy that can be adopted by technological firms to realize their full potential in the market.

According to Wang et al. (2016), market segmentation is defined as the process of grouping a market of potential consumers into similar traits. For instance, a technological company would group consumers into several traits that will give them a clue about how they should approach the market to make their sales. For example, consumers would be grouped in terms of their location, needs, and interests. This would enable the technology firm to make better decisions on how to package its product to guarantee customer satisfaction.

Demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic segmentations are the four types of market segmentation, as noted by Asiedu (2016). First, demographic segmentation is mostly used. This one group's consumers in terms of gender, age, education, income, location, among others. Secondly, psychographic segmentation relates to the personality of consumers. It looks at personal traits, lifestyles, interests, motivations, priorities, among others. Thirdly, behavioral segmentation focuses on how customers interact with the product. This segmentation considers purchase and spending habits, brand interaction, and user status. Lastly, geographic segmentation looks at the boundaries of a given region. This segmentation considers the urban or rural setting, country, climate, and ZIP code.

The idea of market segmentation is particularly significant to the marketing department to make informed decisions that would aid it to realize better returns. Better decisions by the marketing department will strengthen the financial capability of a given company (Kumar & Kumar, 2018). Market segmentation strategy enables the marketing managers to differentiate a company's brand from the competitors'' brand, identify opportunities, identify effective marketing tactics, and develop a more robust customer affinity. With such actions, customers' needs are met; hence the more profitable the company becomes as it realizes more sales. As Van Hoan et al. (2016) confirms a positive correlation between a company's financial performance and consumer satisfaction.

Statement of the Problem

It is crucial to note that a company's financial performance is paramount for its existence. Financial muscle is the backbone of any organization that needs to thrive in the market, without which the firm would be in trouble of crumbling down. However, companies fail to understand the impact of market segmentation on the financial performance of the company. Organizations find themselves in the middle to use either sub-markets to sell products that meet customer needs or use market segmentation as a competitive advantage to market their products in the market.

Furthermore, variables are a thing that each firm has to deal with. Variables can be controllable and uncontrollable (Asiedu, 2016). Some of the variables that a company can control include pricing, product, and advertisement. Uncontrollable variables include customer behavior, competition, state of the economy, and other extraneous variables. Given the rise in the technological industries, market segmentation is necessary to improve their financial performance. Technology firms, therefore, identify market segments and their specific needs. However, firms will encounter problematic issues such as developing promotional/advertisement messages for each segment and if market segmentation permits to produce products.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this quantitative study is to expound on the effect of market segmentation on a technological company's financial performance. The study reveals the effect that market segmentation has on the financial performance of a company and how it influences the financial performance of the company. The descriptive research design will be adapted to explain the phenomenon. The descriptive research design is typically used to analyze the impact of a strategy, and it is a possible outcome. Besides, descriptive researches do not give room for a researcher to manipulate variables to suit the study. This study will use various market strategies and financial reports of the financial year 2018/2019 as raw data to advance the argument of this paper. The financial reports will be easily retrieved from the company websites. The study will consider technological companies based in the United States. The study will further reveal how market segmentation has affected technology companies in terms of financial performance.

Research Questions

To expound on the topic, the two research questions will guide the researcher during the study.

Q1. What is market segmentation's effect on the financial status of the technology firms in the United States?

Q2. What is the relationship between market segmentation and the financial performance of the technology firms in the United States?

Hypotheses

The hypotheses provided below will be crucial to guiding this study.

H10.:

Technology firms that adopt market segmentation have a healthier financial status than those that do not adopt market segmentation.

H1a.

: There is a positive relationship between market segmentation and financial performance.

Methodology

This research proposal considered several methodologies that the researcher would use in the research paper. A descriptive research design is the proposed method that would be used by the research to collect and analysis of data. The descriptive research design is essential to help the study discuss the information gathered in detail.

Research Design

The proposed research design is a descriptive research design that will be used to determine the effect of market segmentation on the financial performance of technology firms in the United States. The researcher will use available financial statements, market sentiments, and earning calls to dissect the issues that are raised in the paper. Additionally, this research will use random sampling to identify a company from many companies that have been selected. The random sampling technique will ensure the internal validity of the study. The data to be used by the research will be collected through document reviews and questionnaires. First, document review is a better way to get unfiltered information about the company since it is obtained from the company website. The information can also be trusted since its source is the parent company. In the United States, companies place their documents on their official website for public scrutiny; therefore, the required documents are easily accessible in such a scenario. Similarly, the questionnaires would be sufficient to collect the required data. This study chooses questionnaires because questionnaires are easy to prepare and administer. With short and straightforward questions, the researcher will be able to obtain important information about the company. The questions in the questionnaire will be framed to address the specific area of interest.

Operationalization of Variables

In the research questions, the following variables can be identified: the controllable variables and uncontrollable variables. This section will discuss how we shall measure these variables for this study. For instance, we look to what extent market segmentation impacts on the profitability of a company. The research question one has two variables, a controllable variable: market segmentation and uncontrollable variable: financial status. In the nominal scale rating, the study would grade into two, if it is financially healthy or financially unhealthy. The second research question, this study would measure it if there is a positive financial performance or a negative financial performance. Bell et al. (2018), in their research, used a similar method to grade the variables that in their study: nominal dependent variables include levels such as count/noncount, quit/ not quit among others. The nominal scale was comparing basic levels.

The first research question, for instance, in the nominal scale rating, the research would grade it if the firm is financially healthy or it is unhealthy. These will depend on the numbers gathered from the data collection methods. In the ordinal scaling, this research would use A=2, B=3, C=2, D=1, and F=0. From the data collected, the researcher would grade the financial status of a company to either A, which represents health or F, representing an unhealthy financial status. This scaling would be used to grade the variables in the second research question. Bell et al. (2018) assert that the order of data is symbolized with the use of numbers. In their research, they used a similar scale to grade smoking studies if they quit or not. Therefore, with such a measurement, we would define how high the profit of a technological company would be when it uses the market segmentation strategy.

Sample Design

As mentioned above, this research would use descriptive design for this research. For this research study, the researcher would take data from various companies within the United States to advance this study. The data would be from the technology companies in the united states that have been on the field for five years and above. The data from experienced companies will be useful for this study since the companies have been in the field long enough and have experienced highs and lows (Rahi, 2017).

Specifications of Population

The researcher will pick technological companies from the four cardinal regions: the north, east, south, and west. The researcher would pick two or one companies from this region for the study. According to Ng et al. (2018) such a criterion is necessary as each region is represented with its dynamic challenges and gains that would be insightful. This will also ensure that the study is objective in the information that it will discuss.

Procedure

The study will follow a thorough procedure: a careful drawing of questionnaires that will only be distributed to the intended population for feedback. The feedback will be collated and then sampled for analysis. The analysis would focus majorly on the effect of market segmentation on a technology company's financial profitability. The research design would as well as involve observing and describing the trends that will be noted (Van Hoan et al. 2016). The researcher would not necessarily be present at the companies. However, the researcher would observe the numbers in the company's documents and then describe the data from what the researcher would note. This procedure is quantifiable since the numbers will back up the observations that the research notes down.

Data Collection Procedure

Data is the core element to validate any study (Er et al. 2017). It is necessary, therefore, that this research would use trusted means to collect data. This study would use two ways to collect data. First, the questionnaires would be used to collect data. Simple questions would be used that people would quickly respond to. However, the questions will be relevant to the topic in the study. Questionnaires would be as well being administered since they take a few minutes for the researcher to collect information. Questionnaires would also be sent via email so that the researcher would not expense themselves.

Moreover, document review would be used by the researcher to acquire information. Company documents on their financial reports would be accessed from the company website. According to Agresti (2018), these documents would be necessary to obtain data that will aid this study. For instance, important decisions and financial reports of the company would be vital to advancing the study's argument. Most of the United States companies post their reports on their websites for the general public to review. This, therefore, would be effective for this study to get the required data. Company documents also have sensitive information that may not otherwise be gathered by other means of data collection.

Intended Data Analysis

According to Er et al. (2017), data analysis can be defined as a process of cleaning, transforming, and packaging data to vital information that will aid in arriving at a logical ending. This study will look through the following data analysis tools to analyze the data collected. First, text analysis has been a useful tool for analyzing data. According to Dolnicar et al. (2018), this method has been used in large data sets to transform it into useful raw data that would be easily analyzed. This tool offers a way in which user data would be extracted, derive patterns, and the researcher would interpret the data. For instance, the researcher would explain how effective those companies that have used market segmentation have realized in terms of profit. The data analyzed would prove the assertion as correct or misplaced.

Secondly, statistical analysis would be employed by the research to analyze the data sampled by the researcher. According to Liu et al. (2019), this research can be conducted at two levels: descriptive and inferential analysis. Descriptive analysis of the numerical for this research the numbers in terms of what the company makes. Descriptive analysis shows the mean deviation, percentage, and frequency of the data used. This tool would be useful for this study to determine the hypotheses presented in this paper. This tool would infer the positive relationship between market segmentation and the financial performance of the company. The percentages from this process would affirm this process. Inferential analysis analyses sample data from the complete data, according to Liu et al. (2019), such analysis results in different results from the same data but a different sampling. This would prove helpful for the research as it would prove the hypotheses otherwise.

Furthermore, predictive analysis can be used by this research to answer the research questions. As Rahi (2017) notes, the descriptive analysis uses the previous data to project the future. The hypothesis of the positive correlation between market segmentation and financial performance can be supported by this tool. For instance, if there was a positive correlation between the two variables in the previous year, which is a likely hood that the subsequent year such as correlation, would exist. However, other extraneous variables curtail such a prediction. This tool would help ascertain the hypotheses presented above.

Rationale

The researcher would benefit by using text analysis since it will enable the researcher to narrow down to the specific data that the researcher intends to use. This tool provides for sampling data, which is only useful to the study. Therefore, this justifies why the researcher decided to propose this tool for data analysis purposes. Moreover, the descriptive analysis would help break down the numbers. The researcher would use this tool to show the mean deviation and the percentage of increase/decrease in detail. Also, an inferential analysis tool would provide for alternatives that are necessary for the researcher to pinpoint the possible shortcomings of the research.

The inferential analysis also helps the study confirm that it was not entirely correct in its research; therefore, it recommends further research. This enables the researcher to provide accurate information; hence, such a tool needed to be useful to the research. Furthermore, predictive analysis is a crucial tool to be used in this study. The predictive analysis provides for primary projections that the study is likely to reveal. Such projections set the study towards a predetermined end, which is otherwise substantiated. This tool provides more of a guideline that is vital for any research project. The researcher would use this to get foreseen implications of the study.

Limitations

This study does not consider that other factors would be influential in determining the company's financial performance. Market segmentation is a single variable that determines the financial performance of a company. This study leaves out other important aspects of the financial performance of a company. For instance, a technology firm would realize huge profits if its products are in demand. After people have made purchases, the financial performance of that firm would reduce significantly. This is one of the factors that this study does realize that it can impact financial performance.

This study also solely focuses on technology companies within the United States. The study, therefore, does reveal to what extent market segmentation would affect financial performance. It remains unclear if the findings of this research would apply to other countries, depending on that firms would thrive given the unique traits of a country. Therefore, the research does not offer measurable terms if this study is applied in other nations apart from the United States. The peculiar trait that this paper considers makes it a hindrance for this research to be applied elsewhere.

Furthermore, the research samples a few documents from some technology companies. The circumstances might be different for other technology companies. Therefore, this research is purely objective. The other companies may be successful using other strategies that would not be discussed in this study. These essential aspects would reveal the study's weakness and lay a foundation for future studies in this field.

Nonetheless, this research focuses on two variables: market segmentation and financial performance. There is more that explains the profitability of any firm apart from those two variables. This study, therefore, ignores other vital aspects that would determine the profitability of a company. It would be that profitability of a company is influenced by the products that it is selling, the value of the product to the consumers, and many more issues. The locality of the technology company would as well give it a competitive advantage over the other companies. This research proposal has mentioned some of the possible limitations, and there would be more limitations. Therefore, this research proposal would be more informative in the desired area.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this research proposal paper provides frameworks and parameters that can be used to substantiate the study topic. The research proposal provides the researcher with the tools necessary and procedure to collect data from the field. This proposal also provides tools that the researcher would employ to examine and evaluate the data collected. The paper as well as point to the possible limitations of the study hence laying the ground for further inspection of the topic. This research proposal equips the researcher with the necessary tools to conduct research and investigate the study topic.

References

Agresti, A. (2018). An introduction to categorical data analysis. John Wiley & Sons.

Asiedu, E. (2016). A Study of Use and Impact of Market Segmentation Practices on Bank Performance. With Special Reference to Commercial Banks in Colombia. Journal of business and financial affairs, 5(162), 2167-0234.

Bell, E., Bryman, A., & Harley, B. (2018). Business research methods. Oxford university press.

Dolnicar, S., Grün, B. &Leisch, F. (2018). Market Segmentation Analysis. In: Market Segmentation Analysis. Management for Professionals. Springer, Singapore

Er, R. K., & Er, K. K. (2017). Data Mining on Customer Segmentation: A Review. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, 8(5).

Kumar, R. R., & Kumar, C. (2018). A multi-criteria decision-making method for cloud service selection and ranking. International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence (IJACI), 9(3), 1-14.

Rahi, S. (2017). Research design and methods: A systematic review of research paradigms, sampling issues, and instrument development. International Journal of Economics & Management Sciences, 6(2), 1-5.

Liu, J., Liao, X., Huang, W., & Liao, X. (2019). Market segmentation: A multiple criteria approach combining preference analysis and segmentation decision. Omega, 83, 1–13. doi: 10.1016/j.omega.2018.01.008

Ng, G. Y., Beier, F., Giulieri, O., Yamamoto, Y., & Cheung, Z. (2018). U.S. Patent No. 10,050,990. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Van Hoan, M., & Mai, L. C. (2016, December). Pattern discovery in the financial time series based on local trends. In International Conference on Advances in Information and Communication Technology (pp. 442-451). Springer, Cham.

Wang, B., Miao, Y., Zhao, H., Jin, J., & Chen, Y. (2016). A biclustering-based method for market segmentation using customer pain points. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 47, 101-109.