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A Comparison of Methods in Business Research

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A Comparison of Methods in Business Research
By Song Gao
This essay compares the research method of case study with five other methods in business research. The five methods are focus group, in-depth interview, observation, questionnaires and field experiment. This essay provides the definition, advantages, disadvantages/limitations for each of the six methods. Moreover, five published articles related to case study method and two published articles related to each of the other five methods were found to further discuss their application in research.
Case Study
Definition
It is an understatement that there is confusion among students, teachers and researchers about the definition of case study research. In this essay, I use the …show more content…

The authors collected data from a major business communication provider, a networking infrastructure solutions provider, and a GPS technology. The topic of this article is very professional and difficult to understand for the audience who have no relevant background. But one advantage to their case study is it helps audience to better understand a complex organisational phenomenon. The authors also illustrated the limitations of their study.
Article 4 – DANAHER, P. J. (2013). Comparing the Relative Effectiveness of Advertising Channels: A Case Study of a Multimedia Blitz Campaign. Journal of Marketing Research (JMR)., 50(4), 517–534. 18p. 1 Black and White Photograph.
In this research, the authors developed an inexpensive method to help firms assess the relative effectiveness of multiple advertising media. Specifically, they used a firm's loyalty program database(Case Study) to capture media exposure, through an online media survey. At the end, not only did the authors demonstrate how to use their advertising response model to determine the optimal budget allocation across each advertising media channel, but also they pointed out the limitations of their studies.
Article 5 – Fahimnia, B., Farahani, R. Z., & Sarkis, J. (2013). Integrated aggregate supply chain planning using memetic algorithm – A performance analysis case study. International Journal of Production Research, 51(18), 5354–5373.

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