7BUS2002 Business Research Method Assignment Sample

Proposed Title: – An investigation on the impact of covid-19 pandemic at online business in case of amazon

Introduction

The study will provide insight about the online business trends and how pandemic has resulted into increasing trend of e-business in present scenario. The theoretical concepts of the research outline that online business growth over the last few years are commendable and market share of e-commerce within UK retail sales are settling around 13-14% in year 2020-2021. It is also expected of continuing this trend in future as well (Hasanat et al., 2020). Basically, the concept of selling products online become helpful for people to fulfil their needs as per their preferences. The applicability of this trend will also grow because current generation is major into business or services so online shopping somewhere helps to balance their personal or work lives. Therefore, it is expected to the continuity of this concept post-pandemic as well.

The reason behind to select this topic as investigation on COVID-19 pandemic impact on e-retailers are important as before pandemic the online business existences is not too much so it become important to understand the factors that held majorly responsible for increasing trend of online business (Al-Omoush et al., 2020). Moreover, the research focus on online business would also reveal about the pros or cons about this concept in context to e-retailers. This could be justified with the example of Amazon as it would be better to understand what kind of impact pandemic has over Amazon. The research will focus on e-commerce’s industry in this study as e-business are capturing rise in its sales by 13.7% in 2021 to reach $908.73 billion. This is because of advancement of technology has made internet users to easily perform e-shopping by building their trust on e-business. Therefore, it would be important to focus on the e-retail business to understand how they have been managing its business in pandemic time or what kind of challenges or solutions adopted to cope up with it. Therefore, this proposal would help the readers to understand the impact of pandemic time over e-commerce’s business or what are the strategies e-business uses to retain people loyalty since pandemic situation is going stable as year passes (TAHERINIA et al., 2021). This proposal could help readers like new or existing entrepreneur to make understanding about the trend of e-business or how it will go in future post-pandemic.

Aims & Objectives

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of covid-19 on online business in context to case study of Amazon. To achieve the aim of the research, it is must to focus on the objectives in order to gain the proper understanding about the research topic.

Objectives

• To understand the current trends of online businesses
• To identify the factors which drive the growth of the e-commerce industry after COVID-19 pandemic
• To identify the challenges that affected e-commerce’s retail industry
• To evaluate the implication of pandemic on e-commerce business in future scenario

Research Questions

How covid-19 pandemic influences online business in present or future scenario? identify the factors that give rise to the trend of e-commerce’s business or how long it sustains post-pandemic.

Research Hypothesis

Ho:

There is a positive impact of pandemic situation over the growth of online business.

Ha:

There is negative impact of pandemic situation over the growth of online business.

On the basis of above hypothesis, the researcher must prove null hypothesis as it would help the reader to understand the growth rate of online business or how much it continues in future.

Literature Review

The review of different scholar empirical study would help to outline about the covid-19 impact and growth of online business or its implication in future scenario (Patma et al., 2021). However, the presentation of theoretical perspective of concept related to online business would help to present the market trends or factors that affect the businesses to carry out the online operations in the pandemic duration.

According to Pantano et al. (2020), E-commerce includes buying and selling of raw material, products, services or any kind of goods and services through electronic medium i.e., internet by the customer, retailer and business. Whereas, online business in retail sector can also be understood as an exchange of goods and services between an online retail company and consumers (end-users). The e-commerce transaction can be of different types such as B2B such as Alibaba & Cisco, B2C including Amazon, Walmart and C2C such as eBay or Olx etc.

There are different factors that drive the growth of e-commerce industry after hit of Covid-19 pandemic include strong and steady growth of internet users and rising awareness related to online shopping, increasing online launching of products, low price due to bulk purchase and so on. In addition to this study, Valaskova et al. (2021) that increasing number of products in online markets with lower prices of good due to the direct distribution channel and economies of scale which contribute towards the growth of the global e-commerce market.

Since after the pandemic hit in 2020, the online business growth has done exponentially due to covid restrictions such as social-distancing, staying home is further expected to push the consumers towards online shopping. Moreover, the covid-19 pandemic has made people realised the importance of internet as before pandemic people less into e-trading as they use for the purpose of information collection or other business purpose (Moreno et al., 2021). The growth of internet is recognised after hit of pandemic when retailers couldn’t find the way to smoothly function the business. Even, large retailers also face problem to communicate with the people in that case, the internet recognition has supported the business to include towards e-commerce’s industry which moves towards the growing side.

From the view of Terziev and Klimuk (2020), work-from-home method also work well in the growth of e-commerce’s industry as there are many people who are busy at their work then they feel to place order for their necessity through online platform only as contact to local retailers could take time. Then they prefer to shop via e-commerce’s business. This situation creates several opportunities for an e-commerce’s businesses to grow and since increasing large users of online shopping people also has started create trust on online shopping which was absent before the pandemic. Moreover, online business-like Amazon right branding strategy or transparent trading support the consumer to keep the trust on online buying. Likewise, Amazon has invested large amount on technology to create transparency in customer services. Likewise, It has introduced AI technology via chatbots system to make connection with customers. It also indulged in email marketing where from order placement to tracking of order facilities are provided to customers. These kinds of facilities assist the customer to perceive trust and faith on the e-commerce’s business during the pandemic time (Fiedler, 2020). That’s why, online business captured growth of around 12-13% which is surprising for industry as its was not gained before year 2020.

In contrary to this study, Hao et al. (2020) revealed that pandemic situation is equally proven worsen for the e-commerce’s industry especially retailers in a way to fulfil the demands by matching with supplies. Due to covid restrictions, the problem related supplies or distribution of products are largely facing by the e-retailers. It somewhere results into delay in the delivery of product to people. Therefore, the pandemic situation also brings several challenges along with growth opportunities for online business.

The review of different literature would help to fulfil the research gap of not addressed the challenges of pandemic in concern to online business. The previous studies revealed the positive impact of covid in concern to the e-commerce’s business but, its adverse side hasn’t explained well (Dannenberg et al., 2020). This research will critically investigate about the impact of pandemic situation in context to e-commerce’s firm in regards to get the growth opportunities and challenges that facing during pandemic time.

Discussion of the research Design

This section would outline about the identification of design within which research will be conducted and figure out the sources to analyse the data for the better presentation to reader (Song and Zhou, 2020). It will cover research philosophy, strategy, data collection source, analysis of data to reach out on the valid research result.

Research Philosophy

This philosophy will help to conduct the research as per making assumptions. As nature of topic demands for the qualitative research then interpretivism philosophy will suits well in a way to make deep-knowledge of topic through understand the relationship between two variables i.e., Covid pandemic and online business (Dougherty et al., 2019). The selection of philosophy is useful to develop the subject view in concern to the research topic to reach on the valid research outcome.

Research strategy

The research strategy in concern to understand the relationship between covid-19 and online business, there are various strategy to conduct research available such as survey, interview, case-study, journal articles or newspaper letter etc. Among these, researcher will focus on the journal article strategy to conduct the research study (Beck, 2019). There are numerous benefits exist with the selection of journal articles that researcher could present practical based findings based on real-time firm examples. It would help the reader to understand and interpret it properly.

Data collection method

The data collection is an important tool to consider as it guides to collect the relevant data for presenting the right findings to reader (Percival et al., 2017). There are two kinds of method exist for collecting of data. It includes primary and secondary. Secondary method would be selected for research study. It would help

Data analysis method

After deciding of method to collect the relevant data, the next phase of research methodology is to analyse the collected data efficiently so that the researcher can be capable to meet the research purpose. For this, the current study will focus upon the secondary source where chances to get wide array of data related to selected topic. This will be done through collect data via selection of 5 journal articles on pandemic impact on Amazon (Paradis et al., 2016). The article would cover both positive or negative side of pandemic to give critically evaluation to reader. The advantage of this method as it could support the reader to make logical decision about the findings. It equally supports to provide logical findings.

Research Limitations

The researcher with this research study could face problem related to high time-consumption which would become a cause behind overrun of budget. There are numerous articles are available over internet in which selection of best five would take large time of research team. Besides that, the application of secondary method could be reliable for providing detail facts about the research topic but it can’t provide practical approach to the study. It could only be achieved with the primary method (Yandell, 2017). But, at the same time, primary method is tedious to conduct as permission grant to conduct survey or interview could take over-time.

Ethical Issues

There are various ethical issues could occur with the use of secondary data. In this method, the chances of privacy and copyright issues of the scholars are high so it’s must to use the software like Plagiarism report so that dealing with such issue become easier (Arenas Moya et al., 2016).

Summary of the proposal

This proposal has successful given overview about the nature of research, methods to collect the data to conduct the research to analysis of data etc. It will be effective for reader to understand what will be addressing in dissertation and how will be the different sections undertakes. Therefore, this proposal set the foundation for the dissertation to make short discussion about the research problem or process to conduct the research study.

Gannt chart

This chart will help to plan out different activities so that researcher can perform the dissertation different chapters on proper manner without any delay. Basically, this timeline will guide about how much time each task requires (Ong et al., 2016). This supports the research team to make calculation about the completion of whole research work on decided time duration.

References

Al-Omoush, K.S., Simón-Moya, V. and Sendra-García, J., 2020. The impact of social capital and collaborative knowledge creation on e-business proactiveness and organizational agility in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 5(4), pp.279-288.

Arenas Moya, D., Plascencia Gaitán, A., Ornelas Camacho, D. and Arenas Márquez, H., 2016. Hospital malnutrition related to fasting and underfeeding: is it an ethical issue?. Nutrition in Clinical Practice, 31(3), pp.316-324.

Beck, C.T., 2019. Secondary qualitative data analysis in the health and social sciences. UK: Routledge.

Dannenberg, P., Fuchs, M., Riedler, T. and Wiedemann, C., 2020. Digital transition by COVID‐19 pandemic? The German food online retail. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 111(3), pp.543-560.

Dougherty, M.R., Slevc, L.R. and Grand, J.A., 2019. Making research evaluation more transparent: Aligning research philosophy, institutional values, and reporting. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(3), pp.361-375.

Fiedler, R., 2020. From corporationism to cooperationism: Reversed globalization, cooperative politics and expanding online communication in post-pandemic time. Society Register, 4(3), pp.161-168.

Hao, F., Xiao, Q. and Chon, K., 2020. COVID-19 and China’s hotel industry: Impacts, a disaster management framework, and post-pandemic agenda. International journal of hospitality management, 90, p.102636.

Hasanat, M.W., Hoque, A., Shikha, F.A., Anwar, M., Hamid, A.B.A. and Tat, H.H., 2020. The impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) on e-business in Malaysia. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 3(1), pp.85-90.

Moreno, C., Allam, Z., Chabaud, D., Gall, C. and Pratlong, F., 2021. Introducing the “15-Minute City”: Sustainability, resilience and place identity in future post-pandemic cities. Smart Cities, 4(1), pp.93-111.

Ong, H.Y., Wang, C. and Zainon, N., 2016. Integrated earned value Gantt chart (EV-Gantt) tool for project portfolio planning and monitoring optimization. Engineering Management Journal, 28(1), pp.39-53.

Pantano, E., Pizzi, G., Scarpi, D. and Dennis, C., 2020. Competing during a pandemic? Retailers’ ups and downs during the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Business Research, 116, pp.209-213.

Paradis, E., O’Brien, B., Nimmon, L., Bandiera, G. and Martimianakis, M.A., 2016. Design: Selection of data collection methods. Journal of graduate medical education, 8(2), pp.263-264.

Patma, T.S., Wardana, L.W., Wibowo, A., Narmaditya, B.S. and Akbarina, F., 2021. The impact of social media marketing for Indonesian SMEs sustainability: Lesson from Covid-19 pandemic. Cogent Business & Management, 8(1), p.1953679.

Percival, J., Donovan, J., Kessler, D. and Turner, K., 2017. ‘She believed in me’. What patients with depression value in their relationship with practitioners. A secondary analysis of multiple qualitative data sets. Health Expectations, 20(1), pp.85-97.

Song, L. and Zhou, Y., 2020. The COVID‐19 pandemic and its impact on the global economy: What does it take to turn crisis into opportunity?. China & World Economy, 28(4), pp.1-25.

TAHERINIA, M., NAWASER, K., SHARIATNEJAD, A., SAEDI, A. and MOSHTAGHI, M., 2021. The Evolution of the E-Business Value Cycle Through Value Co-Creation during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Empirical Study from Iran. The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business, 8(10), pp.19-28.

Terziev, V. and Klimuk, V., 2020, December. Impact of pandemic and post-pandemic factors on innovative development of industry. In 19th RSEP International Economics, Finance & Business Conference–Virtual/Online (pp. 1-2).

Valaskova, K., Durana, P. and Adamko, P., 2021. Changes in consumers’ purchase patterns as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mathematics, 9(15), p.1788.

Yandell, B.S., 2017. Practical data analysis for designed experiments. UK: Routledge.

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