La clasificación de los diseños mixtos de John W Creswell

Hair et al. (2003) explained that, in determining an appropriate research approach (qualitative or quantitative), three questions need to be answered. These questions include: 1- The nature of the research problem, 2 - Whether the research tries to answer specific questions of why, when, where or how a phenomenon occurs in the market of a target population. 3- Whether the overall objective of the research is to identify or verify existing relationships. Accordingly, this thesis continues by explaining its position in relation to these questions.

1- Since this study deals with describing the influence of SMS advertising on brand equity (phenomenon) and generalizes the results to the whole population, a quantitative approach is more appropriate.

2- This research examines how dimensions of online brand equity are influenced by SMS advertising amongst students in the UK (target population). Therefore, referring to the second question, the application of quantitative approach for this study is supported. 3- The objective of this study is to identify the relationships between various constructs

and to verify the strength of these relationships. As a result, the chosen approach is valid.

In summary, the positivists’ view adopted in this study, which would enable the researcher to examine broad social phenomena by predicting and measuring its components, allows for selecting a quantitative approach for this research. Furthermore, the selected approach is supported by looking at the objectives of the research and required methods to fulfil them. In order to test the developed hypotheses and address the research objectives, this study applies a conclusive research approach. In this context, a single cross sectional descriptive research design is the best possible method for this research considering the financial and time constraints (Malhotra et al., 2007). A descriptive research design is applied when the research questions and hypotheses are clearly developed and there is a need to test these hypotheses

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with a large sample size (Malhotra et al., 2007). A single cross sectional study is used since all the information required and the sample groups are collected and tested in the same time frame (Malhotra et al., 2007).

Marketing researchers can collect data about consumers in three ways: observing consumer behaviours, surveying respondents, or conducting experiments (Hair et al., 2003). When descriptive research and causal relationships are investigated, surveys are the most widely accepted and applied technique among these three methods (Hair et al., 2003). Consequently, in line with previous studies in this domain, a survey approach is considered acceptable for this study due to the nature of the research objectives and hypotheses developed.

Questionnaire surveys are one of the most applicable research tools for both academics and practitioners in marketing research. When it comes to collecting data from large sample groups, questionnaires have been proven to be very practical and useful (Gratton and Jones, 2004). Generally, questionnaire surveys are of three types based on the level of administrations, namely personally administered survey, telephone administered survey and self-administered survey (Hair et al., 2003). While personally administered surveys and telephone surveys need the researcher to collect and enter the data, the self-administered surveys are done in absence of the researcher/interviewer (Hair et al., 2003). In view of that, it is important to choose among the various types of survey such as face to face, telephone, internet or postal. In order to choose the best survey method for this study, various factors such as sample size, sample group, questions type, questionnaire length, and duration of data collection need to be determined (Aaker, Benet-Martínez, & Garolera, 2001).

In this section, the advantages and disadvantages of self-administered structured questionnaire survey will be explained and the rationale behind the research methods selected are elucidated. The self- administered survey refers to the situation where the questionnaires are completed by

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respondents in the absence of the researcher/interviewer. The completed questionnaires/surveys are then collected at a later stage (Hair et al., 2003). Personally administered surveys, on the other hand refer to surveys where the interviewer asks the questions from the respondents and enters the data him/herself. There are advantages and disadvantages for each approach, for example while personally administered surveys provide the opportunity to contact the respondents directly and therefore presents the opportunity to obtain more information by asking for details about their responses, it is difficult to conduct this form of survey for large samples (Hair et al., 2003). However, self-administered survey are criticised because the meaning of responses or the respondents questions cannot readily be clarified in the absence of an interviewer (Hair et al., 2003).

The reason for choosing a self-administered survey is to capitalise on the advantages of this approaches. For example, Kolb (2008) showed that the presence of the researcher could negatively affect response bias. Self-administered surveys on the other hand can protect the respondents’ privacy and anonymity (Burns & Bush, 2002) and tend to be cost and time effective and less biased as the researcher cannot influence the respondents’ answers (Kolb, 2008).

This study has therefore adopted a survey based methodology using a structured questionnaire. The survey administration included two types of self-administered methods where questionnaires were completed by the respondents and returned to the researcher. It should be mentioned that after collecting the data, statistical tests were carried out to check for significant variations in the responses from these two types of samples.

In these self-administered methodologies, the sample groups (students) are asked to attend voluntarily either after/before their lecture, or in the university’s communal areas. Before asking students to fill out the questionnaires, the researcher explains the topic and purposes of

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the research to familiarize the students with the topic. However, explanations are provided in a manner that does not bias the students’ responses to the questions. Following the introduction, the researcher asks students about their mobile network service provider and hands them the questionnaires. The questionnaires are then answered and returned to the researcher after completion.