Research Design and data gathering methods The design process that will be implemented within the research will be exploratory followed by descriptive research. Exploratory would be the best fit as part of the initial stage of the research design as it provides further insight into what the managers needs are. Given that prior to the development of this market research design extensive research was conducted on the needs of training materials for small businesses. However even though prior research was conducted gaps still existed.

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Hence their remains a need to further implement exploratory research ensuring the lack of uncertainty and using descriptive research to offer conclusive result. Exploratory research would firstly be administered through secondary research, particularly published materials in order to better formulate the questions to be asked in the second method of data gathering, focus groups. Secondary research can be gained from internal data from within NRA, the case revealed previous statistics on small to medium businesses. External secondary data may be obtained from government websites such as The Bureau of Statistics, or The Bureau of Labour.

Applying focus groups in this case will allow researchers to attain vital information from respondents, regarding their needs and how they can be met. The focus group will allow the researcher to determine more depth within the issue of management needs not being met, as detailed discussion will reveal unknown factors. These factors can then be formulated in the next method of implementing a questionnaire. Subsequent to exploratory research descriptive research will be undertaken using the findings and associated hypotheses from the secondary research to formulate a questionnaire.

Questionnaires would be administered using the personal method of mall intercept, where retail managers under the NRA will be approached in a selected shopping mall. The questionnaire will only contain structured questions enabling detailed statistical analysis and increasing the likelihood of response. Although this method is high in cost, it is the most appropriate approach due to the researcher having good control over the environment in which the data is collected and its successful response rate.

As well as mall intercepts e-mail surveys could be sent to managers off-site, allowing them to complete it in a quick and easy manner without interrupting their busy schedules. There will be a sample size of 200 members of the NRA who will be sent these surveys. The E-mail method is a more cost efficient method and the combination of the 2 methods still maintains consistency. The analysed questionnaire results will provide evidence as to whether he hypothesis gathered from exploratory research was correct. Thus, results will provide the researcher with recommendations for the final course of action.

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