Bus710DB2

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Southern New Hampshire University *

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770

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Management

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Feb 20, 2024

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docx

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Uploaded by fmalik89

According to Swaen, “conceptual framework illustrates what you expect to find through your research. It defines the relevant variables for your study and maps out how they might relate to each other.” Conceptual framework often includes multiple theories, along with other various concepts and findings from existing literature and is used to illustrate relationships amongst these theories/concepts in relation to the respective research. As stated by Imenda, “a conceptual framework may be defined as an end result of bringing together a number of related concepts to explain or predict a given event or give a broader understanding of the phenomenon of interest – or simply, of a research problem.” Conceptual research is important as it provides researchers a means of explaining the practical (and theoretical) importance of their research topic and helps researchers cultivate research questions and “then match the methodological aspects of the study with these questions” (Ravitch & Carl, 2021). It also helps guide research by helping researcher’s evaluation of how they collect, analyze, describe, and interoperate their data by “situate[ing] the research questions and the methods for exploring them within the broader context of existing knowledge about a topic even as the researcher seeks to generate new knowledge about a that topic” (Ravitch & Riggan, 2017). Below is a basic example of conceptual framework being used to understand the relationship between time spent sleeping (independent variable) and the overall quality of sleep (dependent variable). Within this framework includes a moderator variable of health/sleeping disorders, which a person cannot control, and mediator variable of sleeping schedules/environments which links the independent and dependent variables and better explaining their relationship.

Theoretical framework, on the other hand, is a more singular formal theory in which the study acts as the primary means by which the problem is understood and then investigated. Often described as conceptual model, theoretical framework is based on theories that have been previously tested allowing for a broader scope that supports the researcher’s investigations and offers the audience a justification for the respective study. As stated by Imenda. “A theoretical framework refers to the theory that a researcher chooses to guide him/her in his/her research. Thus, a theoretical framework is the application of a theory, or a set of concepts drawn from one and the same theory, to offer an explanation of an event, or shed some light on a particular phenomenon or research problem.” Theoretical framework is important, as it helps researchers clarify and define their implicit theories, allowing for consideration of other frameworks and avoiding potential bias. In terms of how theoretical framework guides research, it essentially acts as a blueprint for how a study is to be conducted. “It serves as the guide on which to build and support your study, and also provides the structure to define how you will philosophically, epistemologically, methodologically, and analytically approach the dissertation as a whole” (Osanloo & Grant, 2016). Below is a basic example of a theoretical framework of a study of the Liberty Online gift shop seeing in decrease in sales, in which we identify the problem and objective of the study and then develop research questions and subsequent sub-questions.  Objective o Increase sales and customer loyalty of customers of the Liberty Online gift shop  Problem o As the gift shop is fully online, many customers do not return to make subsequent purchases  Research Question o How can the satisfaction of Liberty’s gift shop online customers be improved in order to increase sales customer loyalty?  Sub-questions o Is there a relationship between customer loyalty and satisfaction? o How satisfied are Liberty Online gift shop customers currently? o What factors affect the satisfaction and loyalty of Liberty Online gift shop customers?  Literature Review o In a study performed by Bowen and Chen, there was no direct correlation between customer satisfaction and loyalty. “These results verified the nonlinear and asymmetric relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty” (Bowen and Chen, 2001). o However, a similar study performed by Hallowell showed that there is in fact a relationship between customer satisfaction, retention, and profitability. “The results encourage the inference of relationships between customer satisfaction and customer retention, and between customer retention and profitability. The consistency of the findings among the multiple measures reinforces this conclusion” (Hallowell, 1996).

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