3.3 Secondary Research Literature Review: To begin the research process a literature review was crucial to gain an extensive understanding of AI and EI and meet the objective of how it can encourage/discourage customer relationships and the societal impacts it will create. This included critical analysis of academic journals, books, case studies, news articles and industry reports to highlight the key themes surrounding the topic and any gaps in knowledge that would lead onto primary research. The advantages of this method include saving resources like time and money (Ghauri and Gronhaug, 2005) and complex issues and theories surrounding the topic can be clearly analysed. It also presents far larger data sets that are higher-quality than personal primary research (Stewart and Kamins, 1993) meaning that a wide scope of professional ideologies can be identified efficiently. Limitations: The research question could only be partially answered from the use of secondary research as primary research was needed in order to fill the gaps in knowledge. However, these gaps were clearly identified, therefore it was an extremely beneficial approach to be able to focus the primary research specifically to the unidentified knowledge. This links to the other limitation of it being very time consuming and therefore not leaving a lot of time to conduct primary research due to the time constraints of the project. Thus, the use of precise criteria needed was vital in gathering the data in a small time frame. Saunders et al (2009) also argues that due to these documents being revisited over time, definitions may differ and represent the interpretations of those who wrote them, rather than offer a true reflection of reality. Deliberate distortion could also occur to play down negative comments to make the service appear better. Therefore, this was taken into consideration when using data from organisations who may have unreliable intentions.
Case study: Robson (2002) defines a case study as “a strategy for doing research which involves an empirical investigation of a particular contemporary phenomenon within its real life context� (p.178). Therefore, case studies were utilised in this report to add context and showcase innovative implementation of brand strategy. One example of a case study was combined with an expert interview from the owner of the case study brand to triangulate multiple sources of data. Case studies are useful in exploring existing theories and a valuable tool for explaining how these theories are being successfully implemented into everyday life. Two case studies were analysed to examine their success but also highlight possible improvements that could be made. Limitations: Case studies have an unscientific feel (Saunders et al, 2009) meaning that when trying to prove a hypothesis the evidence it offers will not be convincing enough on its own. This can be improved by triangulation, by combining the case study with a different research method and as mentioned previously, this was carried out with an industry expert interview. A specific limitation to this report includes the premature nature that it reflects, therefore it proved difficult finding case studies that had already been tried and tested as lots of the businesses strategies relating to this topic are not commercially available yet.
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