Chapter 3 – Research Methodology

Research Aims and Objectives

Research Aim

What is the impact of digital marketing on the purchase intentions of online customers?

Research Objectives

Lego, one of the leading international brand has been chosen for this study and following

are some research objectives related to the topic of research for the case of Lego.

1. Investigate the role of digital marketing for promoting the business of LEGO

2. Find the impact of digital marketing on online purchase intention of customers

3. Suggest strategies which can help LEGO in targeting new and existing customers and

improving its digital campaigns.

Philosophical Stance and Approach

As the entire review of literature was based on identification of the relationship of

different variables of purchase intention and digital marketing, therefore, this approach needs to

be qualitative and it should have practical approach based on theories and concepts that are

found after conducting research of previous scholarly research papers. The concepts and findings

that have been obtained through the previous literature related to the topic will be used and

applied to conduct research in the case of Lego. And, application of these concepts is basically
the philosophy that will be appropriate for this type of research. So, the philosophy which will be

used in this study is interpretive philosophy. Interpretive philosophy is based on qualitative

approach of research which emphasizes on the beliefs, reasoning and motivations of individuals

instead of emphasizing on quantitative data for obtaining understanding related to the topic of

research. The philosophy of interpretivism is being used because this research is qualitative in

nature.

Qualitative research method has been selected for this study and this method is the broad

term because it incorporates different approaches of research to study the natural actions. This

methodology’s nature is non-quantitative and embraces textural form like interviews. This type

of research method is appropriate for secondary research and for the approach of research

selected and also for the method of data collection that has been used to conduct this study. This

methodology will be helpful in evaluating and analyzing the findings of the research and will

help in obtaining effective and accurate results of the research.

Research Approach

There are three basic types of research approaches for the development of theory and

these are abductive, inductive and deductive approaches. These three approaches can be selected

for conducting research on the topic of digital marketing. However, out of these three

approaches, deductive approach appears to be most suitable for this research because we have to

do analysis of developed hypotheses. As this research revolves around the purchasing intention

of the customers, therefore, it is essential to use such research approach which assists in
understanding the interpretation of the social behavior of customers. And, the study conducted

by (Ramesh & Vidhya, (2019) reveals that the understanding related to people and their

behavior can be efficiently developed through the deployment of deductive approach if

hypotheses have been assumed for the study. This study is being conducted to analyze the

purchase intentions of online customers due to digital marketing and the use of this type of

research approach will be helpful for this study. Another study of Meuthea (2019) suggests that

the deductive approach is appropriate to be used for developing the hypotheses on the basis of

existing theory and it assists the researchers in the designing of research strategy for testing the

developed hypotheses. Since, our findings will be moving from more general to the specific case

of Lego, therefore, deductive approach is appropriate as suggested by Soiferman, L. K. (2010).

Deductive approach is used to when the researcher needs to begin with the theory and then

hypotheses is developed to be tested to find the outcomes of the study. Deductive approach

suggests the researchers to collect data and then analyze it in order to test the assumed

hypotheses of the study as stated by the study of Woiceshyn & Daellenbach (2018).

. According to Soiferman, L. K. (2010), it is found that deductive approach begins with

the theory which appears to be compelling to the researcher and then it is tested through

collected data to obtain results of the study. It means, deductive approach shifts from

generalization to specific. In this case, we will be testing the developed hypotheses and then the

outcomes will be formed for Lego and the purchase intention of its online customers. This study

intends to select previously conducted studies and the findings of those studies will be taken as

the data for analysis. This data will be analyzed to form the theory by determining the impact of

digital marketing on purchase intention of online customers in case of Lego.

Data Collection

Random sampling method has been used to collect the data for this study. The process of

collecting secondary data started from accessing reliable and authentic data sources such as

databases of EBSCO, Google scholarly journals, educational research complete, ProQuest, Sage

Journals online etc. All the studies considered in this study helped in finding the relationship

between purchase intention and digital marketing. The relationship of the variables of brand

equity, brand awareness, product design, quality of products/services, brandand brand image

with the purchase intention has also been evaluated through accessing scholarly published

articles such as Al-azzam, A. F., & Al-Mizeed, K. (2021), Zarina, T. (2021), Hamdani N. A. et

al., (2022), Alwan, M., & Alshurideh, M. (2022), Omar, A. M., & Atteya, N. (2020), Jain, A., &

Sankaran, R. (2022), Haeruddin, M. I. W. (2021), Mohd, R. S. et al., (2011), Bakator, M., et al.,

(2019). Cozer, C. (2018), Hannu, D., & Johannisson, M. (2020) and Reddy, G. (2017). Access to

these scholarly articles had been helpful in determining the to determine their mediating impact

of these independent variables for between digital marketing and purchase intention. As stated by

Shadish et al., (2002), random sampling is used to make sure that the results which are gained

from the chosen sample must approximate the findings which are obtained if entire population

was taken into consideration. So, in this case, we will be choosing some studies and their

findings and these findings will be generalized to determine the relationship between purchase

intention of online customers and digital marketing for Lego.

Around twelve empirical and peer reviewed studies were included for the synthesis in

this study. No doubt, sample size of twelve is too small, but these twelve studies covered the
authentic and peer reviewed results which were adequate to obtain reliable findings for this

study. Although, small sample size can produce the risk of sampling error, but the use of

systematic method increased the credibility of the study and its findings. In addition to this, the

studies selected as the data of this research contain adequate knowledge and information related

to the topic, therefore, this can be assumed this research yielded theoretical saturation related to

the topic. It means that after this research, the qualitative data on this topic will be complete and

future studies will not need to add more things on this topic of research. The studies that have

been selected as the secondary data of this research included the quantitative, mixed as well as

qualitative data. The studies of Cozer, C. (2018) and Hannu, D., & Johannisson, M. (2020)

were qualitative studies. On the other hand, Jain, A., & Sankaran, R. (2022) and Bakator, M., et

al., (2019) were descriptive in nature. And, Reddy, G. (2017) used mixed approach and rest of

the scholarly articles used quantitative research method.

Table 1: Research Approaches used in 12 Studies

Research Approach No. of Studies % of sample

Mixed Methods 1 8.33%

Qualitative 2 16.67%

Descriptive 2 16.67%

Quantitative 79 58.3375%
Selection of Sample

Following standards were examined of each of the selected study to carry out data analysis for

this research.

● The selected studiesy should not be older than 10 years. These studies must be related to

purchase intention and digital marketing. And, all of the selected studies must have

published few years back so they provide updated information related to the relationship

between purchase intention and digital marketing.

● The chosen studies must be appraised carefully to ensure that the topic of the study does

not deviate from its main objective.

● All the selected studies must be authentic and peer reviewed and should have relevant

information related to the topic of research. International level studies can also be

considered in order to gather the data for this study. Analysis which have been conducted

to determine the factors leading to positive purchase decisions of the customers can also

be considered in this study.

● We considered different studies related to our topic of research and these studies were

authentic and very informative. This is because, some of these studies were based on

quantitative data, some used qualitative data and some used mixed data to obtain the

results.

● The data which was gathered from previously conducted researches had a pre-established

degree of reliability and validity and it did not need to be re-examined.

Research Design

Design of the research is basically the script which is used by researchers to carry out

their research. There are three major kinds of research designs and researchers can adopt any

research design according to their chosen research methodology. These three types include

casual research, exploratory research and descriptive research. According to Sreejesh, S. et al.,

(2014), it is found that researchers employ exploratory research to find out the unknown areas. It

can be said that it is used when the field of research is not formed properly and it is lacking an

effective framework. Researchers make use of exploratory design for developing the theory and

to answer the research questions.

On the other hand, researchers use descriptive research when potential facts and reasons

are available in existing researches, however inadequate data was available to prove that

literature. Descriptive research is employed to gather the data or facts for applying to present

literature (Manjunatha.N., 2019). And, casual research is employed for exploring the cause-effect

relationship between dependent and independent variables of the research. Mostly, casual

research answers such research questions which are based on ‘Why’.

This research has made use casual research design to explore the of cause effect

relationship research design because it has assumed relationships between purchase intention of

online customers and digital marketing. Moreover, there are certain moderating factors which

impose great influence of digital marketing on purchase intention of online customers. Therefore,

relationship between such factors with purchase intention of online customers is also developed

to explore the relationship between purchase intention and perception of online consumers due to

digital marketing. Casual research design is used when the impact of something is being
measured on another thing as stated by (Erickson G. S., 2017). Therefore, the selection of casual

research design is appropriate for this study.

Research Framework

This thesis intends to explore the impact of digital marketing on the purchase intention of

online customers. This thesis has further identified the relationship of some moderating factors

with purchase intention in order to determine that how these factors can be considered while

conducting digital marketing to attain positive purchase decisions of the consumers. Some of

these moderating factors included brand equity, brand image, brand awareness, quality of

products or services and product design. Hence, all these factors have also been incorporated to

develop research framework for this study. Following figure is depicting the research framework

for this study.

Data Collection Approach and Synthesis

Secondary data has been gathered for conducting this research in order to identify

theoretical background of the purchase intention of online consumers and digital marketing by

considering moderating factors. All the authentic and reliable previously conducted studies were

considered to identify the relationship between purchase intention of online customers and digital

marketing. Search words which were used in this study included purchase intention of online

customers, online consumer’s perceptions, behavior of online consumers, brand image, brand

awareness, quality of products or services, product design, and moderating drivers towards

purchase intention of online customers.

Data Analysis

This study has selected 12 peer reviewed articles in order to determine the relationship

formed in hypothesis. Table 2 is depicting the matrix containing the authors, findings and

purpose of each selected peer reviewed article. The researcher has further developed summary of

pertaining articles for generating matching codes and for the development of themes of these 12

peer reviewed articles. Afterwards, the process of forming thematic map was carried out and

unifying themes were developed. This study used deductive approach for the purpose of analysis

and data coding which is top-down approach. This approach brings different ideas, topics and

concepts together which are used for coding and interpreting the data. This study intends to use

deductive thematic analysis for interpreting the collected secondary data and utilized experiential

and constructionist learning for developing theoretical framework which will be understandable.

In the deductive thematic analysis, this study has used four phases and first phase of the

study is associated with the familiarization with the collected data in order to ensure that all the

12 peer reviewed articles are read properly and profoundly. It was followed by making notes and

significant aspects were noted for future references. All the articles were summarized after

profoundly reviewing each article and marked with corresponding numbers for gaining quick

reference. In the second phase, initial codes were created which helped in conducting systematic

analysis for the research. These codes are considered as the building blocks of thematic

analysis as these codes helped in delivering and classifying the characteristics related to the

data which were pertinent to the research questions of this study (Terry, G. et al., 2017).

Exhaustive reading was then conducted of all the articles and each area was coded for

identification of the theme relevant to each research question. In the third phase, theme search
was conducted and in this phase reviewing of coded data was carried out for identification

of overlap and similar concepts. Such technique assisted in capturing crucial data which

was relevant with the research pattern and research questions (Tuckett, A. G., 2005). The

development of these themes had been helpful in the fourth phase of thematic analysis in which

the researcher needs to review potential themes. It helped in the process of quality checking and

the researcher checked the developed themes in accordance with the coded data set and data for

determining that the theme are in accordance with the data. And, in the final fifth and sixth

phases of thematic analysis, the themes were formed. With the help of this, entire data connected

and interpreted with the research questions. All the six phases of thematic analysis have been

followed as mentioned in Joffe, H. (2012).

Limitations of Research

One of the major limitation of this study is the small sample size. Small sample size is a

limitation of the study and it cannot act like a dampener on the outcomes of the research. Small

sample size was selected due to the availability of limited literature on this topic and this much

small sample size cannot effectively help in generalizing the outcomes of the research. This is

due to the fact that there is a theory which suggests that researches with larger sample size

provide more reliable and valid analysis and results of the study. However, the selected peer

reviewed articles were extremely reliable and these studies were based on authentic, reliable and

large sample size, therefore, the results of this research will also be reliable and will be based on

realistic data.
Ethical Considerations

The data which was collected from previously conducted studies was authentic and

reliable and we used the references of all the studies used in this research to prevent copyright

issues. We considered confidentiality rules, the policies of data sharing and copyright policies to

make our research free from any ethical issue. References and in text citations have been used to

give credit to the primary researchers and also to clear that their ideas have not been stolen,

rather they are just used to answer the questions of this research.

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