Research philosophy: A literature review

Research philosophy is an essential part of a study that defines the structure, purpose and even the approach of the research through which the researcher can develop appropriate research tools including data collection tools and analysis tools (Rohana and Zuraina 2017). In this paper a chosen article named “The Effect of Customers’ Social Media Participation on Customer Visit Frequency and Profitability: An Empirical Investigation” have been critically analysed considering the research philosophy. The authors of this article are Rishika Rishika, Ashish Kumar, Ramkumar Janakiraman and Ram Bezawada. The article was published in March 2013. This article shaded light on the social media participation of customers and its effect on frequency of consumer’s visit and its impact on the profitability of any business organisation. This study did not clearly convey it’s taken research philosophy. However, according to the structure, design, approach and perception of the article, the research philosophy of this study could be examined. In this chosen article the research philosophy is positivism. Therefore, in this paper the positivism philosophy will be reviewed. Therefore to analyse the article through the alternative lens the Interpretivism philosophy will be selected.

In this paper a literature review will be presented considering the research philosophy of the chosen article. After that, the research philosophy will be critically evaluated while analysis the significance of the research philosophy within the chosen article.  In the next part the philosophical influence on the chosen article will be explored with the critical analysis of the quality of the chosen research. In the next phase the alternative philosophical approach will be discussed. In this section the research philosophy of the chosen article will be also analysed through the lens of this article. The process of conclusion formulation and representation of findings will be analysed in this section. The purpose of this paper is to critically review of a research philosophy while evaluating the philosophy of the chosen research article considering the ontology as well as the epistemology.

Positivism is a philosophical theory that state that positive knowledge in based on the natural phenomena and their characteristics that can be perceived by sensory experience and can be interpreted by logical reasoning. The world ‘Positivism’ came from the French word ‘Positivisme’, which means the ‘imposed on the mind by experience’. As stated by Lou (2012), The traditional criteria of a positivist research is that it should contains some rigorous, well-argued and stimulating methodological discussion which should also has the validity, integrity and the conclusion as well as the reliability of the study. Positivism philosophy allows any study to measure the perceived reality and to validate a certain trough. The origin of the positivism philosophy is Empiricism philosophy established John Locke and Devid Hume based on either sensation and reflection. In the early age of 19^th century the Empiricism philosophy advanced to Positivism and applied in sociological study by Auguste Comte (Sultanova 2016). He is known as the founder of the positivism and sociological study. He explained the positivism philosophy through the universal, empirical method and observable facts. In late 19^th century Emile Durkheim applied this positivism philosophy in many sociological study where he discussed and critically explained many psychological factors involved in sociological perception as well.

Positivism: An overview

The meaning and implementation of positivism philosophy in research has been changed gradually over time. From the understanding of positivism at the time Auguste Comte has been changed throughout the 20^th century by several scholars and philosophers. Otto Neurath has reshaped the positivist approach of research philosophy by emphasising the truth as an internal coherence of linguistic assertion rather than facts of the real world (Adams et al. 2007). Through this change the logical positivism philosophy was born. Before this intervention the positivism philosophy are only implemented in social science and psychological analysis. However, the Logical Positivism opened a new way of validating the truth from numerical and non-linguistic analysis. According to Burrell and Morgan (2015), this is the first significant changes in the journey of positivist perception in modern research philosophy. With the justification of measurable values the positivism philosophy has opened advanced field for scientific research and tool based studies. At the middle of 20^th century Karl Popper advanced the conceptualisation of positivist philosophy by imposing the concept of falsification in the positivist philosophical approach in scientific research. Popper stated that “Science should be based on falsifiability. Experiments never prove a theory”. As opined by Bitektine (2011), this the stage where hypothetical analysis and explanatory design with deductive approach in research started its journey in the field of scientific study.

According to Blumberg, Cooper and Schindler (2008), nowadays positivism is highly related to the empirical science where the positivist perception is used in scientific knowledge to make is definite, precise and feasible. Nowadays the scientific discoveries hold the objectification of the social interpretation and perceptions. The epistemology of modern positivism is based on finding the comparatively true where in the early age of the positivism it was based on the universal principals and facts independent from diversifications of a specific observation. According to (British Academy of Management, 2015), if the ontological difference can be considered it can be clearly visible that the early positivism was based on real and apprehendable facts. However, in this era of post positivism the positivist perception also accepts the conclusion based on the reality, which would be apprehendable by imperfectly probabilistically. In positivism philosophy, the reliability defines the overall consistency of measures, which is able produce similar results under similar condition in multiple experiments. However, the internal reliability is based on the approach applied by different studies with same construction while gaining the same results from it. On the other hand, external reliability is based on the studies that are conducted in same setting while generating the same finding.  As stated by Delgado-García, De Quevedo-Puente and De La Fuente-Sabaté (2010), the positivism philosophy is now more dependent on the external reliability and validity of findings.

From Verification to Falsification

As opined by Guba and Lincoln (2014), Falsification is the reshaped model of positivist philosophy that allows a alternative way of thinking in positivism philosophy by comparing all the possible realities and finding the optimum truth. The theory of falsification was discussed by Karl Popper as an idea of justifying the real fact by eliminating the alternative assumptions through falsification. This is the early phase of hypothetical deductive approach in modern scientific researches. In the early age of positivism, it was based on the persuasive facts and logical reasoning developed on collected information by sensory organs. In this early phase of positivism there was no place for alternative truth of probable assumptions. In 1930 Popper argued in his study of “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” that Science should be based on falsifiability that should not based on the singular perceptive experiments to prove a particular theory. According to Hansson (2006), the explanation of the idea of positivism proposed by Popper is a significant attack on traditional inductive method of research and problem solving. Poper’s argument logically proves that if a study cannot nullify all the alternative percentpions, theories and assumption, the study will not be able to prove anything by only providing absolute induction of proposed variables and supportive evidences.

In the concept of falsification the verification of the proposed hypothesis will not have any viability if the alterative hypothesis would not be nullified. According to Hatch and Cunliffe (2013), in this falsification approach the positivism philosophy, emphasise the scientific researches as the continual process of conjecture and falsification. This mode of verification is considered as provisional that claims that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever by proving all the alternative possibilities wrong. This philosophical intervention helped the modern scientific research to focus on inductive approach while explaining or proving any natural phenomena with logical reasoning. This approach claims that if a scientific research can find any assumption or hypothesis deductively correct therefore the chances of being nullified by other theories in near future will be zero. As opined by Hughes (2010), after this evolution from logical positivism to post positivism approach the scientific theories began to propose the theories with hypothetical deduction. Therefore, a theory or knowledge not open to refutation by observation cannot be regarded as scientific while falsifiability therefore sets science apart from non-scientific or pseudo-scientific claims.

In this section, the used research philosophy in the chosen article will be analysed while finding both internal and alternative influences of the positivism research philosophy in the chosen study.

In this paper a chosen article named “The Effect of Customers’ Social Media Participation on Customer Visit Frequency and Profitability: An Empirical Investigation” have been critically analysed considering the research philosophy. The authors of this article are Rishika Rishika, Ashish Kumar, Ramkumar Janakiraman and Ram Bezawada. The article was published in March 2013. This article shaded light on the social media participation of customers and its effect on frequency of consumer’s visit and its impact on the profitability of any business organisation. In order to explain the relationship between the consumer behaviour and the social media based activities of the business organisation the study developed 6 hypotheses. These hypotheses are:

Hypothesis 1 (H1). Participation in firm hosted social media by a focal customer will have a positive impact on the intensity of the customer-firm relationship.

Hypothesis 2 (H2). The impact of participation in firm hosted social media on the intensity of the customer-firm relationship will be greater for a higher level of message postings in the social media site.

Hypothesis 3 (H3). The impact of participation in firm hosted social media on the intensity of the customer-firm relationship will be greater for customers with a larger purchase amount.

Hypothesis 4 (H4). The impact of participation in firm hosted social media on the intensity of the customer-firm relationship will be lower for customers who have a greater focus in buying.

Hypothesis 5 (H5). The impact of participation in firm hosted social media on the intensity of the customer-firm relationship will be greater for customers with lower deal sensitivity.

Hypothesis 6 (H6). The impact of participation in firm hosted social media on the intensity of the customer-firm relationship will be greater for customers who have a greater share of premium product purchases.

In order to prove or justify all these hypotheses the research paper assemble a novel data set collected from the various social media participation and published reports of the consumer relationships of various farms. From the collection procedure this research was based on the secondary data collection method while formulating the findings with quantitative analysis. In terms of quantitative analysis the research applied statistical rogation and score based calculation module while presenting the identified relationships between the dependent and independent variables is graphical and tabular format. Along with the statistical rogation the study also uses distribution statistics to analyse the dependency of some specific dependent variables over another independent variables (Rishika et al. 2013). The graphical presentation uses both histogram plot and box plot method. From the hypothetical deduction based approach, it can be said that the research is clearly based on the explanatory design, which can be considered as the major significance of any positivist philosophical perception. Apart from that, the study is based on the numerical analysis which directly indicates its inclination to reality verification process through using measurable attributes. However, one of the most discrepancies in the research approach is the absent of alternative hypothesis. All the presented hypotheses are positive hypothesis, where no null hypothesis was mentioned throughout the research article.

After the reshaping of positivism philosophy from logical positivism the post positivism the falsification of alternative hypotheses became one of the essential criteria of any positivist research. In order to examine the positivist influences in the chosen research the progression of analytical tools and the selection of research method have to be analysed. “The Effect of Customers’ Social Media Participation on Customer Visit Frequency and Profitability: An Empirical Investigation” is a research that focuses both on social perception and the economic interventions or outcomes. Therefore, in this study the perception of consumers while participating any social media event could be analysed through only realistic and validate data analysis method, which has been done successfully in this research. At the same time, some segregated variables were also developed to justify the major independent variables. As an example, in the first hypotheses the study selected the participation of the firm hosted social media event and at the same time in second hypothesis the message posting has been chosen as the independent variable (Rishika et al. 2013).

One of the major specifications of this chosen research is it used separate data collection method for separated set of variables. However, the data set for this study comes from a large specialty firm that owns multiple stores and sells wine and like products in the north-eastern United States. On the other hand, in order to collect the data on social media participation of the targeted consumers the study explored several social media network and analysed the types of event hosted by the particular business organisation. Due to the data resources and their utility in the research paper, the study accumulated the data by segregating those in separate set of attributes. These attributes are the major regulatory parts of individual records collected from the resources. Therefore it can be said the influence of positivist approach is high in this chosen research article where the intervention of post-positivism philosophy can be identified with more prominence.

As per the history of positivist research philosophy it can be found that, the falsification of alternative hypotheses became one of the essential criteria of any positivist research. However, in this research there are some noticeable discrepancies in terms of post positivism approach selection and hypothec declarations (Rishika et al. 2013). One of the major issues in this study that, in spite stating the chronological examination of numerical data as the major strategy of verifying the hypothesis, in the verification section, the study did not focus on each and individual variable separately to find the relationships with the corresponding variables. Along with the quantitative interpretation and graphical representation the critical presentation of significant variable should be the essential part of the research. However, in this research there was no significance or validity of the data is verified. Therefore, after critical explanation of the t-test statistical report, the significance of the results can be questionable.

Another essential fault of the research is absence of proper falsification technique. According to Hughes (2010), the falsification research strategy should have at least two optional hypotheses. In post-positivism philosophy these hypotheses are called Null Hypothesis and Alternative Hypotheses. In quantitative analyse the significant value helps to develop the p value of the findings. If the calculated p vale is less that the critical value the null hypotheses can be rejected and the alternative hypothesis can be accepted. Alternatively, if the p value becomes greater than the critical value, the null hypothesis should be accepted and the alternative hypothesis can be rejected. However, in the chosen article the impact on social media based campaign has been proven as directly proportional to consumer loyalty while very close critical value with the found P value from regression analysis (Rishika et al. 2013). At the same time, each of the verified hypotheses regarding the intensity of consumer participation and social media based firm activity cannot be considered as the completely verified because of the absence of the significance. 

In this paper, the chosen philosophy is positivism philosophy. Therefore, in order to analyse the chosen article through the alterative perspective the Interpretivism research philosophy has been selected for the following discussion. In the following section the overview of the interpretivism philosophy will be discussed followed by the analysis of the approach of chosen article.

Interpretivism is a specific philosophical understanding that interpret the subjective experience of individuals engaging in social interaction. According to Musteen, Datta and Kemmerer (2010), the social world that is formed with complex psychological interventions cannot be analysed with objectified perspective. To make a factor object the study has to know all the associated variables and influences. However, in sociological analysis the study can have only the sociological outcomes with some relevant corresponding. Therefore, from interpretivist  perspective the social study is a anti positivist approach that cannot be completely verified with sensory organs and measurements. At the end of 18^th century, a scholar named Immanual Kant justifies the new process of conceptualisation in research philosophy known as German Idealism. As per this theory, human mind is an originator of experience rather than a passive recipient of perception where knowing something is dependent on the previous knowledge. Nietzsche argued that to utilise the human interpretation and values, it should be universa and constitutive. As opined by O’Leary (2010), one of the major differences in interpretivism and positivism philosophy is positivism philosophy is a persuasive human reality with objectified entities, however, Interpretivism is the holistic views of situational reality that can have variable meanings. Between end 18s and early 19s Max Weber developed his concepts to formulate the meaning of individual’s action and attributes.

According to Remenyi et al. (2015), the major consideration of the interpretivism philosophy explained by both Weber and Durkheim is it is an idea of motivating actions of individuals through interpretable outcomes. As per the interpretivist concepts, social actions and outcomes can be justified with the object oriented reasoning, where it can be analysed and verified from depth by subjective view and interpretation. With this concept the two essential approaches of the interpretivism was born namely Hermeneutics and Phenomenology. Hermeneutics is the study of cultural artefacts that people create with their value, understanding and perspective. On the other hand, the phenomenology is an analytical approach on experiences which are entrepreneurial learning. As opined by Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2013), the most modern approach of interpretivism is Symbolic Interactionism. This theory has emerged at the early phase of 20^th century by Blumer and Mead. The major idea of this approach is social self that results from interaction between the human organisms within a social environment.

In this section, the chosen article will be analysed by the alternative view of interpretivism philosophy. In order to do so, the major subjects of the article have been segregated into two divisions namely the Consumer behaviour and the Numerical analysis respectively.

Consumer behaviour is one of the most essential considerations in any business development that include both social and psychological interpretation, verbal and non verbal interaction and subjective understanding. Therefore, when it comes to considering the consumer behaviour part of the chosen article, it can be easily presented in the form of interpretivist approach. To make this topic aligned with all the available approach of the interpretivism philosophy the most appropriate one would be Symbolic Interactionism, which is the most advanced approach than the others. In the chosen article the perception of the consumers and their behaviour were analysed with the quantitative method. According to Burrell and Morgan (2015), Interpretivism research philosophy can be applied to formulate the appropriate interpretation of the noticeable outcomes of the social media based activities of the business organisations. In this situation, the number of the participants could be reduced in order to expand the possible area of in-depth interpretation of the opinion of the consumers.

According to Cunliffe (2013), interpretivism philosophy is widely used in consumer behaviour based study. However, the major difference of those interpretivist approach and the approach of the chosen article is this article selected a huge sample size to make the statistical outcome viable and unbiased. On the other hand, the traditional interpretivist approach of consumer behaviour related study focuses on small sample size while taking structured or semi-structured based interviews. In this chosen article, the authors could conduct an interview session on a stipulated sample size and could interpret their opinion with Symbolic Interactionism approach. This approach would also help to examine the existing situation while considering more social and external influences.

The chosen article followed the positivist approach and therefore it has a statistical analysis based deductive approach. The quantitative approach is not utilisable for an interpretivism research. The most appropriate data analysis format of interpretivism research is qualitative research. The qualitative research can interpret the findings of the data collection process through thematic, narrative, case study based and other. If this research could collect the qualitative data from the interview based data collection process, the most suitable analytical approach will be the thematic analysis, where the response of the selected despondences could be interpreted by subdivided the main variables within different themes.

As stated by Guba and Lincoln (2014), if any research needs to validate the declared hypotheses the most appropriate approach would be the statistical approach in quantitative analysis. Arguably, there are many socio-psychological researches that are based on the qualitative based hypo-deductive approach. According to Hansson (2006), most of these studies have field to point out the verified parameters of the proposed hypothesis. Therefore, if the research has the deductive approach the most suitable approach is quantitative. As mentioned earlier the major discrepancy of the quantitative method of this chosen research is it did not verify the outcomes through significant value and p-value comparison.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that Research philosophy is an essential part of a study that defines the structure, purpose and even the approach of the research through which the researcher can develop appropriate research tools including data collection tools and analysis tools. In this paper a chosen article named “The Effect of Customers’ Social Media Participation on Customer Visit Frequency and Profitability: An Empirical Investigation” the positivism approach has been taken. It has been found that Positivism is a philosophical theory that states that positive knowledge in based on the natural phenomena and their characteristics that can be perceived by sensory experience and can be interpreted by logical reasoning. Along with that, it can be said that the meaning and implementation of positivism philosophy in research has been changed gradually over time. The authors of this article are Rishika Rishika, Ashish Kumar, Ramkumar Janakiraman and Ram Bezawada shaded light on the social media participation of customers and its effect on frequency of consumer’s visit and its impact on the profitability of any business organisation.

From the critical discussion of the possible alternative philosophies it has been found that, consumer behaviour is one of the most essential considerations in any business development that include both social and psychological interpretation, verbal and non verbal interaction and subjective understanding. Therefore, when it comes to considering the consumer behaviour part of the chosen article, it can be easily presented in the form of interpretivist approach. From the background of the interpretivism philosophy it has been found that, Interpretivism is a specific philosophical understanding that interpret the subjective experience of individuals engaging in social interaction. Interpretivism is a specific philosophical understanding that interpret the subjective experience of individuals engaging in social interaction. Moreover it can be said that, in this chosen article, the authors could conduct an interview session on a stipulated sample size and could interpret their opinion with Symbolic Interactionism approach. As per the critical analysis of the research philosophy of the chosen article it has been found that the essential fault of the research is absence of proper falsification technique. In the chosen article the data analysis and hypothesis verification process did not consider the p value and did not present the comparison with the formulated critical value

References

Adams, J., Khan, T.A. H., Raeside, R., White, D., 2007. Research Methods for Graduate Business and Social Science Students

Bitektine, A., 2011. “Toward a Theory of Social Judgments of Organizations; The Case of Legitimacy, Reputation, and Status”, Academy of Management Review, 2011, 36, (1) 151-179.

Blumberg, B., Cooper, D.R. and Schindler, P.S., 2008. Business Research Methods, 2nd European Edition, McGraw-Hill.

British Academy of Management, 2015. About BAM [Online] Available from: https://www.bam.ac.uk/about-bam [Last accessed, 27/11/2015]

Burrell, G. and Morgan, G., 2015. Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis, Ashgate.

Delgado-García, J.B., De Quevedo-Puente, E. and De La Fuente-Sabaté, J.M., 2010. “The Impact of Ownership Structure on Corporate Reputation: Evidence From Spain”, Corporate Governance: An International Review, 18, (6) 540–556.

Guba, E. G., and Lincoln, Y. S. 2014. Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 105-117). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hansson, S., 2006,  “Falsificationism Falsified”, Foundations of Science, 11 (3) 275-286

Hatch, M. J. and Cunliffe, A., 2013. Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives, Oxford University Press.

Hughes, J. A., 2010. The Philosophy of Social Research. 2nd edn. New York: Longman

Lou, J.I.A.N.G., 2012. Thoughts on Theoretical Prerequisite for Innovation and Transformation of Marxism Phylosophy Research Paradigm. Journal of Wuling, 2, p.006.

Musteen, M., Datta, D. K. and Kemmerer, B., 2010. “Corporate Reputation: Do Board Characteristics Matter?”, British Journal of Management, 21 (2), 498–510

O’Leary, Z., 2010.  The essential guide to doing your research project, Sage, London.

Remenyi, D., Williams, B., Money, A. & Swartz, E., 2015. Doing research in  business and management: an introduction to process and methods. London:  Sage Publications

Rishika, R., Kumar, A., Janakiraman, R. and Bezawada, R., 2013. The effect of customers’ social media participation on customer visit frequency and profitability: an empirical investigation. Information systems research, 24(1), pp.108-127.

Rohana, H. and Zuraina, A., 2017. Phylosophy of science (plus ethics in research).

Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A., 2013. Research Methods for Business Students, 8th Edition.

Sultanova, G., 2016. Metodology and way of thinking in postnonclassical phylosophy (epistemological analysis). ??????????? ???????? ??????, (6 (3)), pp.94-96.