1. What is meant by qualitative and quantitative research?
a) Qualitative essays are more subjective and focus on the researcher 's own inferences drawn from his study of the data.
The qualitative studies use data from focus groups or case studies that the researcher herself analyses.
b) Quantitative studies are more objective and concentrate on drawing conclusions based a statistical analysis of the data. Both types of essays seek to answer a question, called a hypothesis, about some aspect of social phenomena. The quantitative projects use surveys that provide a set of fixed responses that can be coded with numbers.
Springhill country Guesthouse is planning to increase his potential market into a new segment market which is very busy people wanting short holidays. They have the hypothesis that this kind of people is suitable to the business objectives of Springhill due to the fact there is a correlation between their high income and their lack of time to spend it and their interest to get very good quality services and products no matter the cost. This kind of people believe in high quality=high cost.
The business objectives of Springhill are: * Maintain its current growth * Continue to develop and strengthen the Springhill brand * Add new products (value add) to the Springhill brand
This last point refers to the interest to Springhill to introduce a new range of luxury services to the guesthouse making it a sort of spa where busy people can go and spend a short holiday and pamper their selves. So we can say that Springhill is basing his business strategy in two Porta´s strategy which are: creating a differential service to be perceived as a class leader in luxury service, and also his strategy is to focus in a specific market which is the very busy people (VBP).
Springhill in order to probe his hypothesis decided to do first a quantitative marketing research and after they