BX2174 Report: Analyzing Digital Communication in Online Shopping

This report delves into the evolving landscape of online shopping, analyzing the significant impact of digital communication channels on consumer behavior and sales. The study focuses on how mobile technology, including SMS, email, and app-based notifications, influences consumers' purchasing decisions and overall online sales performance. The research employs a causal research design to identify the relationship between digital communication methods and online shopping habits, with a mixed sampling approach to gather data from both consumers and organizational members. Key variables examined include the impact of digital communication modes, such as social media and emails, and mobile technology, including SMS, phone calls, and app notifications, on consumer behavior and online sales. The report also explores the most effective and cost-efficient communication methods for reaching consumers, supported by statistical analysis to assess the use of mobile messages for informing customers about products and services. Ethical considerations, including the need for informed consent and data privacy, are addressed, ensuring the integrity of the research process. The findings aim to provide valuable insights for businesses seeking to optimize their online strategies and enhance their understanding of consumer preferences in the digital age.

Running head: RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
Research and Decision making in business
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
Table of Content
Analysing Business decision or problems..................................................................................2
Overall Research Design- evaluation of the options..................................................................5
Key variables and process to measure them..............................................................................7
Sample requirement and sampling options................................................................................8
Sampling size:........................................................................................................................9
Ethical issues..............................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................11

2RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
Topic – Analysis of the impact of digital communication channels on online shopping of
consumers and online sales made by company
Analysing Business decision or problems
There is no doubt that shopping habits of consumers have changed over the past
decade and likewise the use of digital technology to research, browse and action of
purchasing has become a mainstream practice of instead of being the segmentation.
Consequently, this often leads to an undeniable as well as non-reversible shift mostly in the
retail landscape. Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson (2014) performed a study and mentioned the
fact that customers today often use mobile technology and their demands of brands in the
emerging environment are subject to change. It is known that proactive brand strategies
effectively attract and influence Omni-channel shoppers and the shoppers often become
encouraged to become more loyal and they end up developing true brand advocates. It has
been identified that due to technology advances, market environment has been dynamic in
nature; this means that the shopping habit of consumers are being influenced by rapid
changes in the growth in digital technology. Mobile technology has even enabled small and
medium organizations to target consumers of a remote locations. Marketers send emails and
messages to consumers regarding their offers, deals and products and sometimes the action is
used just as the consumers. San-Martín, Prodanova and Jiménez (2015) mentioned that
brands are suggested to go with such trend and eventually execute emerging tools to respond
to the growing needs of mobile shopper. However, as entry to digital environment has been
easy and hassle free, online shopping platforms are crowded by numerous vendors or the
marketers. Consequently, marketers are in rush of developing a suitable online trading
strategies which would help the brands to remain competitive and maximize the consumer
base. In order to remain sustainable in the competitive environment, it is necessary for
businesses to implement the decision of reading changing consumers’ behaviours in the

3RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
online platform and this would help businesses to categorize the strategies (Wang, Malthouse
& Krishnamurthi, 2015).

4RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
The above presented diagram indicates that even though the marketers are able to directly
influence consumers or approach customers for purchasing their products and services but
crowd of marketers in the field is making the situation more competitive and creating the
need for an enriched business decision. It is not yet known how or to what the existing
approaches of marketers are in digital environment helping to meet their business goals. It is
also important to learn the impact of digital communication on online shopping behaviour of
consumers and online sales in such competitive landscape.
Overall Research Design- evaluation of the options
Research design is one of the most significant selection in the research as research
design determines how research questions should be answered. Research design refers to a
particular strategy which is selected to amalgamate multiple elements of paper in the most
effective and logical manner.Thus, it helps to ensure that the research questions are
effectively investigated and addressed. Kumar (2019) mentioned that research design builds
the blueprint for data collection, measurement and analysis of data. Research design can be
divided into three different categories namely descriptive research design, causal research
design and exploratory research design. As put forward by Mackey and Gass (2015),
descriptive research is used to explain and describe the phenomena. This means it is more of
a scientific method which involves observation and description of the behaviour of a subject
without influencing it in anyway. For example, if descriptive research design is considered
for the context of current analysis, it would help to analyse consumers’ behaviour towards
online shopping.
The design provides the scope for describing the characteristics of population- the
consumers. This means it particularly helps to collect data that are used to answer a broad
range of what, when and how questions related to a particular consume group. However, this
Online business platforms
Advances of
mobile
technology
Crowd of
numerous online
retailers
Consumers’
behaviour is being
influenced
Growing competition among
retailer
Need of suitable business decision for
ensuring business sustainability in
digital platform

5RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
research design will not provide answers to the question why digital communication or
mobile technology influences online shopping behaviour of consumers. Nonetheless, data
from descriptive research design can be used to examine the relationship among the variables.
On the other side, casual study design is applied to investigate the cause and effect
relationship and determine the impact of digital communication on online shopping and
online sales. There are two basic techniques associated with the cause research design such as
randomized experiment and quasi experiment. According to Flick (2015), this research
design fundamentally identifies the cause and effect relationship between the variables of the
topic. For example, if the study is required to identify the relationship between digital
communication and consumers’ online shopping behaviour, causal research design is the best
choice for the organization.
As stated above, there are two experiments such as randomized experiment and quasi
experiment, randomized experiment ensures that all participants have the same chance of
being in a given experimental condition. For example, if 50 customers are chosen to learn
about the online shopping behaviour, all 50 customers should be analysed. On the other side,
Quasi-experiments are characterized by lack of randomized assignment and they may not
have comparison groups. Hence, the groups might differ not only with respect to
experimental treatment they receive but also it could differ with respect to unknown way.
However, in the proposed study, causal research design will be selected because causal
research design will help to identify the relationship between the digital communication such
as the mobile technology and online shipping and sales. Moreover, this research design
specifically helps to identify the impact of mobile technology on online shopping and sales.
On the other side, descriptive research design will not be selected because, descriptive
research design will not address the concern of impact that mobile technology and digital
communicate modes create on consumers’ online and online sales of supermarkets.

6RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
Descriptive research design only helps to observe the issue without deriving the solution from
the investigation.
Key variables and process to measure them
Findings of the previous assignment imply that when it comes to digital mode of
communication, mobile technology plays a great role in influencing consumers’ behaviour
and online sales. So, in the proposed study, the major focus would be on impact of digital
form of communication on consumers’ behaviour and online sale, impact of mobile
technology on consumers’ behaviour and online sales. These two variable would be
compared and contrasted when performing the analysis in the study. Hence, in the discussion,
digital communication mode includes the social media platforms and emails, while the
discussion about the mobile technology includes SMSs, phone calls, and app-based
notification. Impact of mobile technology on platform-based business is an emerging context
of discussion both in academic and business studies. It was found in the previous assignment
that the use of messaged is relatively convenient due to the fact that when it is sent to
consumers, they could choose to consider it at their own discretion and their leisure time,
while refreshing pages to check new emails, or receiving commercial calls is certainly
unpleasant to consumers. So, to learn supermarkets’ approaches for convincing consumers
about the new products and arrivals, it is best to study both the areas –digital channels or
mode of communication and mobile technology.
In addition to this, the proposed study also covers the areas such as how supermarkets
use SMS or text messages in alerting its consumers and influencing sales, how organization
use emails in alerting consumers about the new products and services, and how brands use
phone calls to make consumers aware of sales. As the project is based on the digital
communication and trend used for trading in digital platform, all sort of digital

7RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
communication modes will be analysed in the study to derive and state suitability of
communication in business. Another significant area of the discussion is finding about a
cheaper way and fastest way of communication to consumers. Moreover, a statistical analysis
would be performed in the study to know the extent to which mobile messages or SMSs are
used to inform or alert clients about the products and services.
Sample requirement and sampling options
Sampling is mostly explained as a set of specific principle applied to choose members
of the population to be engaged in the study. Csikszentmihalyi and Larson (2014) mentioned
the fact that as when the size of population is large, population of interest could be large to
deal with. In addition to this, large population makes it more difficult for researcher to
perform then study because there is no scope but to investigate the number of case elements
within the population to represent members of the population to study the implication of
population. The sampling techniques can be divided into two categories namely probability
sampling and non-probability sampling method. As put forward by Etikan, Musa and
Alkassim (2016), under probability sampling, each population member has the chance to take
part in the data collection process and members are selected in a random manner.
Major techniques of using probability sampling is randomization. For example, in the
current study, if customers are selected to learn how they are informed about the products and
services of supermarkets through mobile and digital communication, they would be selected
randomly in a certain zone. On the other side, non-probability sampling method does not
provide an equal chance to take part in the study. This means that only a certain members of
the population who have knowledge about the context of the study can take part in the data
collection process (McCusker & Gunaydin, 2015). For example, to know about how
supermarkets today use digital communication strategies, it is always effective to interview

8RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
the organizational members and in this context, the members who have knowledge about the
context can take part in the interview.
However, in the proposed study, a mixed sampling method would be applied in which
means both probability and non-probability sampling method will be applied to collect data
from consumers and organizational members. Both the methods will be applied to the study
because, to learn the impact of mobile technology and digital communication on consumers,
audience of external market environment should be investigated in order to know how they
accept or react to mobile messages and digital communication mode (Emerson, 2015). On
the contrary, to know about how brand uses digital communication strategies to alert
consumers, it is effective to interview the organizational members. So, collection of data from
both internal and external market environment would help to make the analysis more relevant
and implication can provide an insight about current trends in business.
Sampling size:
Sampling size is a particular number of individuals from the sampling frame who are
supposed to contribute to primary data collection techniques and here sample size is usually
determined from the sampling frame. Hence, sampling frame refers to a list of people within
the target population (McNabb, 2015). In the proposed study, target population is consumers
of supermarkets in Sydney, so the sampling frame would include an extensive list of people
who often shop online from supermarkets and use mobile devices. Size of sampling frame
would be 60 consumers and out of 60, only 50 members would take part in the survey. On the
other side, to collect data through interview, 5 supervisors of the organization would be
selected.

9RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
Ethical issues
Ethical issue is another significant concern for the academic study especially when the study
involves primary data (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018). As study involves participants for
collecting information, it would be ensured that no respondent would be forced to take part in
the study and participants hold the right to withdraw their participation at any moment.
Moreover, it would be ensured that respondents’ identity are not revealed. Data collected
from the interview, would only be used for the academic purpose.

10RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
References
Bell, E., Bryman, A., & Harley, B. (2018). Business research methods. Oxford university
press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Larson, R. (2014). Validity and reliability of the experience-
sampling method. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology (pp. 35-54).
Springer, Dordrecht.
Emerson, R. W. (2015). Convenience sampling, random sampling, and snowball sampling:
How does sampling affect the validity of research?. Journal of Visual Impairment &
Blindness, 109(2), 164-168.
Etikan, I., Musa, S. A., & Alkassim, R. S. (2016). Comparison of convenience sampling and
purposive sampling. American journal of theoretical and applied statistics, 5(1), 1-4.
Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research
project. Sage.
Kumar, R. (2019). Research methodology: A step-by-step guide for beginners. Sage
Publications Limited.
Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design.
Routledge.
McCusker, K., & Gunaydin, S. (2015). Research using qualitative, quantitative or mixed
methods and choice based on the research. Perfusion, 30(7), 537-542.
McNabb, D. E. (2015). Research methods for political science: Quantitative and qualitative
methods. Routledge.

11RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS
Piotrowicz, W., & Cuthbertson, R. (2014). Introduction to the special issue information
technology in retail: Toward omnichannel retailing. International Journal of
Electronic Commerce, 18(4), 5-16.
San-Martín, S., Prodanova, J., & Jiménez, N. (2015). The impact of age in the generation of
satisfaction and WOM in mobile shopping. Journal of Retailing and Consumer
Services, 23, 1-8.
Wang, R. J. H., Malthouse, E. C., & Krishnamurthi, L. (2015). On the go: How mobile
shopping affects customer purchase behavior. Journal of Retailing, 91(2), 217-234.