what type research design to use?

Question

I am a newbie in research field and it happens that am having a unit on research methods. I have identified several scenarios which can help me grab soemthing.. the sample question....

a supermarket in a city sells a variety of products including household appliances,, electronics, kitchenware, perishable goods among other items. the Marketing Manager of the supermarket believes that the total profits of the supermarket can be enhanced by getting customers to buy in large quantities which could easily be realised by offering cash discounts on bigger purchases. since the MD is not convinced with the idea i am suppose to carry out a study with an objective of determining the margin earned when this discount is being offered and comparing with the margin when discount is not being offered.

what i think i know!

I would approach this study by using a correlation design, by selecting two categories of sales, the sales before the offer and the sales after the offer.

what i think I don't know!

...what other examples of data would be required of me to collect and how will I use in my study. anything else that can help me understand introduction to research methods?

Answer 1

type of research design to use is:

descriptive research design

1. to describe the characteristics of groups of interest to the marketer e.g. current users, potential users and possible receivers of promotional material by the company..
2. to estimate the proportion of people in a given population who behave in certain way e.g. those prone to deals.
3. to make specific predictions for specified future periods.
4. to develop inferences fro example whether certain variables are associated for example income and place of shopping place preference.

Type of data to collect

• sales in x currency to a selected number of customers when the offer is in place.
• sales in x currency to the same people when the same offer is not offered.
• the average order size in the two periods.
• the average margins earned in the two periods.
• the cost of promotional inputs regarding the discount.

  Analysis

• sales in period I (offer period) minus sales in period II (No offer period)