An Investigation into Students' Attitudes towards Brand-named Products

Student ID: 2169191 Module Code: PM002 2T SS1 Tutor: Panos Dendrinos

An Investigation into Students’ Attitudes towards

Brand-named Products

1.What are students attitudes toward brand name products?The investigation into students’ attitudes towards brand name

products is to research student’s psychology when they buy brand

name products. Due to the different economic status with adults,

students’ consume attitudes are strikingly different with adults.

Meanwhile, according to students have more financial freedom than

ever before, students have more opportunity to buy brand name

products and students also would become potential customer in next

ten or twenty years (Yeoman, 2011). Therefore, in this research,

it is important to know what are students attitudes toward brand

name products. According to Kanuk (2009), consumers’ purchase

intention often depend on the brand’s value. After investigated

about 400 students in Taiwan, Chen et al (2012) report that brand‘s

equity have positive influence on students’ purchase intention.

However, this research focus on students’ attitude toward brand

name products, but Chen et al’s (2012) article focused on the

relationship between consumers’ opinion and brand equity, brand

image, involvement and consume intention. Meanwhile, Chen et al‘s

(2012) article did not report what influence students’ attitude

toward brand name products and what the different attitudes

between students and adults when they purchase brand name

products. Therefore, this question would find out what features

are belong to students when they purchase brand name products. On

the other hand, this question would fill the gap in students’

consume behaviour and add some extraordinary perspectives in

consume behaviour. of 11


2.What factors influence students’ attitudes to brand

name products?In order to investigate what are students’ attitudes to brand name

products, this research should find out what factors impact

students’ attitude to brand name products. Investigate and

understand what factors influence students’ attitudes to brand

name products could help company to attract new clients and

prevent customer defection in the future. Due to the different

economic status between students and adults, students would

influenced by other factors which compared to adults. As Gil et al

(2012) noted, since teenagers want to have an independent

identity, but they still keep connection with their own groups of

friends. Hence, teenagers’ consumption behaviour are more likely

influenced by others (ibid). In Gil et al’s (2012) article, it

explained some factors which influence students’ attitudes to

brand name products. Students’ Interdependent self-concept

clarity have positive connection with social consumption

motivation; social consumption motivation have positive influence

on students attitudes toward luxury brand (ibid). However, Gil et

al’s (2012) article did not discuss what features of brand name

products could influence students’ consume attitudes. Meanwhile,

the authors investigate 558 teenagers in Brazil, but this research

focus on the University of Glasgow’s student. This question would

provide more details about students’ attitudes to brand name

products, it could help company to know the main reasons why

students are more likely to choose a specific products.

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3.What kind of brand-named product are widely acceptable

by student in University of Glasgow, high end brand, mid-

range brand or low end brand?Due to the different market position of products, high end brand,

mid-range brand and low end brand have different influence on

consumers’ decision. According to Husic and Cicic (2009), junior

customers are happily to spend their entire month’s living

expenses to purchase luxury products. The high quality, fashion

design and as status symbol are the main reasons why teenagers are

more likely to choose luxury brand (ibid). But because of the high

price, teenagers cannot afford these products easily (ibid). In

mid-range market, due to the lower price than luxury products and

higher quality than low end products, lots of rational consumers

are likely to choose mid-range products (McCarrick, 2012).

Because low end products are considered as poor quality and not

fashionable design, people did not have purchase intention to

these products (Schmidt, 2004). Although these researches made a

contribution to understand the consumers’ attitude toward high end

brand, mid-range brand and low end brand, but they did not discuss

the students’ attitudes towards these products.

Meanwhile,students who have different financial status may have

different consume behaviours, this point also did not reported by

these articles. This question would help different company to

launch different market position’s products to attract students.

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Methodology

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to explore students’ attitudes

toward brand name products. Explanatory study is to form casual

connection between variables (Saunders et al, 2012). In addition,

explanatory study is usually to get a clearer view of the

connection between variables (ibid). Exploratory study is to use

open question and get insight about a topic (Saunders et al, 2012).

This research will focus on what are students attitudes toward

brand name products, what factors influence students choice to

brand name products and what kind of brand name products are

widely accepted by University of Glasgow’s students, high end

brand, mid-range brand or low end brand. This research would

explain students’ attitude toward brand name products, so it

should explain the cause-and-effect relationship between students’

attitudes and brand name products. Therefore, this investigation

is an explanatory study. On the other hand, because what factors

influence on students’ choice and what kind of brand name products

are widely accepted by students are unclear, there is little

research in students’ attitude toward brand name products. Thus,

this investigation is also an exploratory study.

StrategySurvey strategy will be used in this research.

According to Bryman (2011), survey strategy is to collect

quantitative data and analyse it by using statistics. Meanwhile,

survey strategy relate to deductive research approach which

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Student ID: 2169191 Module Code: PM002 2T SS1 Tutor: Panos Dendrinosusually answer the questions about ‘what’, ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘how

much’ and ‘how many’ (ibid). Survey strategy is usually used for

exploratory research (Saunders et al, 2012). Survey strategy gets

the structured collection of data from samples (ibid). Furthermore,

survey strategy also gets data by using structured observation and

structured interviews (ibid). Therefore, survey strategy will be

used to answer questions ‘what factors?’, ‘what are students’

attitudes’ and ‘what kind of brand name products’ in this

research. The collection of data by using survey strategy can be

used to report possible reasons for specific connection between

variables and to produce models of these relationships (Saunders et

al, 2012). Moreover, it is possible to get findings that are

typical of the whole samples at a lower cost than gathering the

data for the whole samples when sampling is used (ibid). However,

the data which collected by survey strategy is not wide-

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Student ID: 2169191 Module Code: PM002 2T SS1 Tutor: Panos Dendrinosranging which compare to other research strategies (ibid). The

questionnaire cannot contain too much questions, because it would

not be accepted by respondent if there are too many questions

(ibid). Due to the less data would collected by survey strategy,

sometime the data cannot reflect the exact result (Shields et al,

2012).

Collection methodsThis research will use questionnaire and interview to collect

data. As Saunders et al (2012) noted, questionnaire should used for

explanatory research. Choose questionnaire as method to collect

data should influenced by variety of factors related to research

which are characteristic respondent who should involve in this

research; crucial respondents’ answer which cannot distorted;

number of questions need to ask (ibid). For this research,

questionnaire would easily collect the data of what factors

influence students’ attitudes to brand name products and what kind

of brand-named product are widely acceptable by student in

University of Glasgow.

According to Saunders et al (2012), interview are categorised as

standardised interviews and non-standardised interviews.

Standardised interviews are usually used to collect quantitative

data and non-standardised interviews are used to collect

qualitative data (ibid). Non-standardised interviews is helpful to

understand the context in exploratory study (Bryman and Bell,

2011). Therefore, non-standardised interviews will used to collect

the data of what are students attitudes toward brand name

products.

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Sample size and Sampling technique

This research will involve 30 respondents. According to Saunders

et al (2012), if the respondent size is less than 50, research

should use non-probability sampling. Non-probability sampling

cannot choose samples random, it usually choose respondent by

subjective judgement. Non-probability sampling provide a variety

of sampling technique which are quota sampling, snowball sampling,

volunteer sampling, self-selection sampling and extreme case

purposive sampling to choose samples (ibid). Therefore, this

research will use non-probability sampling. The advantage of

using non-probability sampling in this research is the sample size

depend on the research questions, what will be useful and what

will have credibility (Bryman and Bell, 2011). Furthermore, use

individual judgement to select cases that will best enable to

answer the questions when use purposive sampling (Saunders et al,

2012). Due to lack of time and money, this research’s sample will

only have 30 respondent. Because this research only have 30

respondents who are study in University of Glasgow, the

homogeneous purposive sampling will be used.

Ethical issues

Ethical issues is an important aspect which should be considered

by researchers in business and management research (Bryman and

Bell, 2011). Ethical issues concern about whether the research is

harmful to participants; whether the research lack of informed

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Student ID: 2169191 Module Code: PM002 2T SS1 Tutor: Panos Dendrinosconsent; whether the research would be invasion of participants’

privacy; whether the research contain deception information (ibid).

In this research, ethical issues might be invasion of

participants’ privacy and lack of informed consent. According to

Market Research Society (2014), researchers do not have a special

right to invade participants’ privacy and cannot disrespect

participants. Therefore, during the process of research, this

research will avoid to record sensitive information about

participants, like the wage level, personal details and other

privacy informations. Meanwhile, participants have genuine

opportunity to withdraw in this research. Moreover, in this

research, every questionnaire and interview’s record will put in a

safety place and only the researcher have right to check it.

According to Market Research Society (2014), if observation

techniques or recording equipment are to be used, every

participant should be told by researchers. Thus, in this

research, researchers will inform participant that their

conversation will be recorded before participants accept the

interview. Furthermore, participants have right to halt the

interview and destroy the record, researchers cannot keep any

record without permit by participant.

Credibility issues

The Credibility issues have two important parts, reliability and

validity. Reliability is an crucial factors of research quality.

According to (Saunders et al, 2012), reliability refers to whether

the analytic process and data collection would get stable findings

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Student ID: 2169191 Module Code: PM002 2T SS1 Tutor: Panos Dendrinosif it repeated on another time or reproduced by other researchers.

The participant error and bias and researcher error and bias would

influence threat reliability in this research. For instance, in

this research, in order to avoid participant error and bias,

researchers would find a suitable time and privacy space for

participants to answer the questions and keep participants’

details privacy. Meanwhile, researchers error and bias also

influence the result. Therefore, researchers should keep

objective view during they interview participants. Validity

concerns to what extend the findings in research is trusty. This

research only have 30 participants, the sample size is too small.

Furthermore, the findings may be influenced by other reasons, like

participant do not consider the questions carefully. Therefore,

this research’s validity may be weak.

Word Count (1859)

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Reference List

• Bryman, A., and Bell, E. (2011). Business Research Methods. 3rd

edition. Oxford: Oxford university press.

• Chen, C., Chen, P., & Huang, C. (2012). Brands and consumer

behaviour. Social Behaviour and Personality: An International

Journal, 40(1), 105.

• Cicic, M., & Husic, M. (2009). Luxury consumption factors. Journal of

Fashion Marketing and Management, 13(2), 231-245.

• Gil, L. A., Kwon, K., Good, L. K., & Johnson, L. W. (2012).

Impact of self on attitudes toward luxury brands among teens. Journal of

Business Research, 65(10), 1425-1433.

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Student ID: 2169191 Module Code: PM002 2T SS1 Tutor: Panos Dendrinos• Market Research Society : Code of Conduct and Guidelines .

Retrieved 26 November 2014 from

www.mrs.org.uk/standards/codeconduct.htm

• Saunders, M., Lewis, P., and Thornhill, A. (2011). Research methods

for business students, 5th edition. Harlow: Pearson Education India.

• Shields, Patricia and Rangarjan, N. 2013. A Playbook for Research

Methods: Integrating Conceptual Frameworks and Project Management. New Forums

Press.

• Schiffman, L. G., & Kanuk, L. L. (2009). Consumer behaviour (10th

ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

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http://www.mrs.org.uk/standards/codeconduct.htm

An Investigation into Students' Attitudes towards Brand-named Products

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