Observational Research

The textbook defines observation question is the systematic process of recording regulations of occurrences or manners without questioning or normally communicating with the raft involved. Additionally, we define observational research as a blanket term for a variety of techniques that argon used to gather important data pertaining to optimizing commercialize share in both the business to consumer and business to business world. Information for observation research must be repetitive, frequent, or in some federal agency predictable in ball club for observing techniques to be successful.We discuss several categories of observational marketing research including (1) Naturalistic situations, (2) contrived situations, (3) human observation, (4) Machine observation, and (5) restrain and indirect observation. Observational research for marketing purposes has roots in experimental psychology. Famous experiments on conformity from the psychology lab can either today or indirectly ap ply to marketing research that is done today. Three examples discussed are as follows * Study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. (1973) * Environmental and complaisant Correlates of Physical Activity in Neighborhood Parks An observational Study in Tampa and Chicago. (2008) * An Observational Method for Tim Use Research Lessons Learned from the Middletown Media Studies. (2009) The biggest advantage of observation research is that researchers can see how people actually behave rather than having to rely on what they say they did, which eliminates many biasing factors.Also, some forms of data are more quickly and accurately gathered by observation. The primary disadvantage of this type of research can only examine the behavior and physical characteristics of research participants. The researcher learns nothing about motives, attitudes, intentions, or feelings. People watching or objects can take the form of ethnographic research, mystery shopping, one-way mirror observati ons, shopper pattern and behavior studies.For our hands-on project, we conduct a disguised observation where we monitored shoppers in two Wal-Mart stores without them knowing they were being watched. The study was designed to analyze consumer buying behavior based on gender, age, number of people shopping together, and brand name vs. store brand. Two products, soup and laundry detergent, were chosen to observe consumers in order to perform our observational research study.