The usage of networking research methods in marketing

<p>The subject of graduate qualification work is&ldquo;The usage of networking research methods in marketing&rdquo;.</p><p>The volume of the graduate qualification work is 98 pages. It contains 7 tables, 7 figures, 2 histograms 2 diagrams, 1 schemeand 30 literature sources.</p><p>Keywords: online research, sampling methods, RDS.</p><p>Today increasingly greater expansion of the Internet gives a special impulse to the development of the online-research area.&nbsp; Web-investigations are no longer considered as a kind of theoretical innovations and are increasingly being used as a real practice of sociological and marketing research.</p><p>In this graduate qualification work we try to identify the main features of modern methods online marketing research in the context of a constantly evolving virtual space, focusing on the characteristics and potential of the respondent-driven-sampling method in online research. According to the aim, it is necessary to:</p><p style="margin-left:71.45pt;">1.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Identify the content, structure and characteristics of the modern virtual space;</p><p style="margin-left:71.45pt;">2.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Conduct a critical literature review and define the advantages and disadvantages of modern methods of online marketing research;</p><p style="margin-left:71.45pt;">3.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Investigate the basic principles and outline perspectives for application of the methodology of sampling RDS;</p><p style="margin-left:71.45pt;">4.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Conduct online research using the method of RDS and to evaluate its effectiveness;</p><p>Graduate qualification work consists of an introduction, three chapters, conclusion and bibliography. The Chapter 1, &quot;Approaches to market research in virtual space&quot; examines the current realities of the virtual space in Russia, presents a comparative analysis of methods of online marketing research and highlights some features of the domestic market of online marketing research. The most significant sources of information are the Fund &ldquo;Public Opinion&rdquo;, the collection of materials &ldquo;online research in Russia&rdquo; edited by Shashkina A. V., DevyatkoI. F., Davydova S. G., and articles of the web portalResearch&amp;Trends. Chapter 2, &quot;The method RDS in online research&quot;, focuses on issues of representativeness and validity of the data collected in the online mode in terms of the main sample-constructing methods in online research, its features and the essence.&nbsp; For the purpose of this chapter the issue on how to improve the quality of online data in terms of the method of online survey of rare and &ldquo;closed&rdquo; samples &ndash; samples driven by respondent RDS. Theoretical and methodological basis of this chapter is the work of Devyatko I. F. and Heckathorn D., and the studies of Galitskiy E. B. and Galitskaya E. G. and classification methods for constructing samples offered by them. And finally, the empirical part of the graduate qualification work is reflected in the third chapter &ldquo;Application of the RDS in marketing research on the &nbsp;example of students of National Research University Higher School of Economics, who has bought any&nbsp; written works&rdquo;. In Chapter 3 the potential of the usage of RDS method is identified.&nbsp;</p><p>Empirical study was conducted using the method of sampling RDS. The object of the research students of National Research University Higher School of Economics, who has bought any written works &ndash; rare and &ldquo;closed&rdquo; samples &ndash; a group suitable for the application of the RDS method. The assumption that this group of students will be prone to hiding such activities was the rationale for the use of the RDS method. Online approach to sample design ensures the safety of respondents&rsquo; anonymity, which in turn allowed covering 51 respondents in 3 days. The collected data were analyzed by means of the statistical package SPSS. One of the results of the research is there is connection between student performance rating and the amount of purchased works.</p>