Research methods are used to determine, discover, interpret, and formulate facts.
The concept of research represents a thorough investigation. Through investigation and
discovery processes, research methods help to advance many different fields. In this
methodology chapter, the action research methodology which intends to be used in this
report will be presented, as well as the other forms of research that will be explored.
The main sources of information used throughout this master thesis were issued
from Internet articles and online blogs on Social Media Marketing, in order to always read
up-to-dated information. Indeed, the main issue related to the use of books on Social Media
Marketing was that they always needed to be the last editions, as the domain of Social
Media Marketing is evolving so rapidly. Also, these approaches to knowledge acquisition
were chosen because of the new aspect of the Social Media Marketing, still lacking many
proven results of analysis. The creation and submission of a survey directly to businesses was
considered as an alternative option, but it was decided that the results would have been
complex to evaluate, and certainly less efficient than the surveys’ results already
implemented and published online. On the whole, the methodological approach chosen for
this report was aiming at providing study results as a synthesis of the literature review in a
more structured and academic perspective.
In this following methodology section, we will be looking at the research process of
the report, presenting the three stages of exploratory, constructive and empirical research.
Then, the paradigm study will be defined, distinguishing the use of positivism and
interpretivism research traditions. Besides, qualitative and quantitative research used
throughout the project will be detailed in relation to the study design. And finally, the
structure of the project will be explained, with an illustration of the project’s table of
contents.