Research Methods

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Table of contents

Title:

“Export of Pakistan Textiles from buyers’ and sellers’ Perspective between Pakistan

and Britain.”

Introduction/Background:

Textile industry has been the bulwark of Pakistan's economy. It contributes more than 60% to the total export earnings of the country, accounts for 46% of the total manufacturing and provides employment to 38% of the manufacturing labor force. The availability of basic raw material for textile industry, cotton, has played a principal role in the growth of the industry.

Although the growth in the textile sector has been impressive during the four decades after independence (but imbalanced in favor of narrow base of low value added products), stagnation has set in due to certain changes in the global and the domestic factors. With the movement of textile production from developed countries towards less developed countries, Pakistani producers are losing their competitive advantage.

Pakistan Textile export is mainly for USA and Europe. Pakistan stands in top ten textile export countries. Pakistan has good quality raw cotton which has a good demand in all over the world. The average growth of Pakistan textile industry is reasonably high at the moment Pakistan has more than 7,000 textile industries and their export is approximately 3,000 million square meters per year. Pakistan share of textiles in world trade is about 9 percent.

Aims:

The basic aim of my research is;

To explore the buyer’ and sellers’ perspective on textile trade between Pakistan and United Kingdom and to explore the future requirements of trade in the light of the global textile industry.

Objectives:

The basic objectives of the research are;

Explore main factors and also current state of global textile trade.
Interview five importers to asescertain their perspective of Pakistani imports.
Conduct postal survey with five Pakistani exporters to asescertain to their perspective to their service in Britain.
Identify the main factors that promote and restrict trade in the global market.
Identify the main factors that promote and restrict trade in the Pakistani market.
British market shares in the Pakistani textile.
Identify the major factors that will restrict or promote the future of Pakistani import into Britain.

Literature review:

Two major reasons exist for reviewing the literature. The first, the preliminary search that helps you to generate and refine your research ideas. The second, often referred to as critical review, is part of research project proper. (Sharp and Howard, 1996)

Most research books argue that this critical review of literature is necessary.

After through studies of different Export and import books and literature, I have found that only a small portion is dedicated to the buyers’ and sellers’ behavior and most of the focus is given to, how to export and import.

No doubt these were not adequate information to compete my research that’s why I decided to search more and more information on topic and now hopefully I have gathered adequate information to deal with my Research methodology and to support my arguments. And this information, gathered from journal and ...

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Most research books argue that this critical review of literature is necessary.

The literature used in this research will also help in analyzing the issues and results critically either by comparing different point of views of different authors or by quoting statements in the favor of results. To gain product’s knowledge I will use my observations and company documents.

Deductive approach:

“A theory/hypothesis is applied/tested by the collection of data.”

I shall use the literature to help me to identify theories and ideas that I shall test using data. I shall also develop a theoretical or conceptual framework which I subsequently test using data.

Inductive approach:

“Theory is developed after the data have been collected.”

I will be planning to explore my data and to develop theories from them that I shall subsequently relate to the literature.

Review purposes:

The literature review has a number of purposes. Many of these have been highlighted by Gall et al. (1996). These are

To help you to refine further your research question(s) and objectives;
To highlight research possibilities that have been overlooked implicitly in research to date;
To help you to avoid simply repeating work that has been done already;
To sample current opinions in newspapers, professional and trade journals thereby gaining insight into the aspects of your research question(s) and objectives that are considered newsworthy;
To discover and provide an insight into research strategies and methodologies that may be appropriate to your own research question(s) and objectives;
To discover explicit recommendations for further research. These can provide you with superb justification for your own research question(s) and objectives;

Literature sources available:

The literature sources available to help researcher to develop a good understanding of and insight into previous research can be divided into three categories:

Primary (published and unpublished)
Secondary
Tertiary

Primary literature sources (also known as grey literature) are the first occurrence of a piece of work. They include published sources such as reports and some central and local government publications such as white papers and planning documents. They also include unpublished manuscripts sources such as letters, memos.

There are so many published sources available from where I can get enough information about my research topic. Pakistani government published so much material on the export of Pakistan Textile industry. I read that publications and I got a good idea about the behavior of the Pakistani sellers’ and also about the buyers’ of the Pakistani Textile products.

I also reviewed the reports, which are published by the British government about the import of the textile products from different countries. This is also helpful for my research topic.

Secondary literature sources such as books and journals are the subsequent publications of primary literature. These publications are aimed at a wider audience. They are easier to locate than primary literature as they are better covered by the tertiary literature.

There is book by Nasim Yousaf with the title Export & Import Apparel and Textiles from Pakistan will be quite helpful for my research. In this book there is so much information about the Pakistani textile industry and there is also some information about the buyers’ and sellers’ behavior.

There is also enough information about the topic in so many articles and journals, which are written, by the Pakistani authors and British authors. From these articles and journals I got so much information about my topic. This will be helpful for me in the future.

Tertiary literature sources also called search tools, are designed either to help to locate primary and secondary literature or to introduce a topic. They therefore include indexes and abstract as well as encyclopedias and bibliographies.

Export Promotion Bureau of Pakistan has a uploaded a website and on that website I found so much relevant material about my research topic. In that website there is so much information about the, share of Pakistani textile products in the international market, the information about the main buyers and sellers of textiles products, about the quality of the Pakistani textile products, in that website they also discussed the buyers’ expectation from the Pakistani seller. So this website of Export Promotion Bureau Pakistan is also a good source or information for my research topic.

Evaluating the literature:

For evaluating the literature two questions frequently asked ‘how do I know what I am reading is relevant?’ and ‘how do I know when I have read enough?’ both of questions are concerned with the process of evaluation.

You should, of course, read all the literature that is closely related to your research question(s) and objectives. The literature that is most likely to cause problems is that which is less related (Gall et al.; 1996).

After collecting all the information from all of the sources then I will evaluate my literature that what is much important for my research and which is less important for my research topic. I will evaluate the literature by keeping some important in my mind like how recent the item is, do it have enough references, does the item support my research topic etc.

Research Design and Methodology:

The research philosophy:

The research philosophy refers to the fundamental approach that research should be conducted. There are three views about the research process dominating the literature: positivism, interpretivism, and realism.

The mixed approach will be applied in my research work, primarily because the subject matter is largely intangible, open to subjective interpretation and based upon social interaction. As Saunders et al (2003, p99) point that: ‘there are two major advantages to applying multi-methods in the same study. First, different methods can be used for different purposes in a study. Secondly, it enables triangulation to take place’.

Qualitative Approach:

Secondary Research:

Published data that is

Books about the export of Pakistan textiles and also about the buyers’ and sellers’ behavior of the Pakistan textile.
Articles and Journals on Pakistan textile export for UK
Chamber of Commerce Documents
Internet Websites
Past conducted research
Print and electronic media

Primary Research:

Personal experience and observations:

As I have worked in this industry that’s why I know the trends in textile and the rules against conducting this business. I also have the idea of Britain buyers’ behaviors and about their needs and expectations.

Pure Research:

The research conducted for the topic will be pure and it will discuss the core issue for the sake of improving knowledge. It will directly discuss about the buyers’ and sellers’ behavior for the Pakistan textile industry in a theoretical way.

Inductive Approach:

My approach towards data gathering will be inductive, as it is a flexible structure to utilize all the data in your research findings and also based on qualitative data with a slight involvement of quantitative data.

Data collection from Pakistani exporters:

I will send a questionnaire to the about five Pakistani textile exporters to getting information about the sellers’ behavior. I will choose these exporters from the different parts of the country to get the more accurate information about the exporters’ perspective.

After getting information from them I will apply their perspective on the Britain buyers’ of the textile products.

Fully structured technique:

Questionnaire:

Questionnaire formulation is very cost effective and less time consuming technique in qualitative data gathering. It provides you with reliable and valuable information. It can be used with other data gathering tools like interviews, surveys to provide maximum information in little time by involving maximum population. Three types of questionnaire format can be used depending on the requirement. Yes/no, ranking, rating and multiple-choice questionnaires are used in research. Direct questionnaire can also be used to gather information, but on small scale otherwise one has to employ many people to conduct it

Format of questionnaire:

In the questionnaire the most of the questions will have the ranking form 1 to 5 and some some questions will have just two options YES/NO. I will discuss the exact statement of the questions with my supervisor and other persons who have enough knowledge about the export and the import of the textile products.

In the questionnaire the exporter will be asked to give a rank to the question. If he/she is completely agree with the statement then the rank for that question will be 1 and if he/she will be completely disagree with the statement then the rank will be 5 for the questions.

The mostly questions in the questionnaire will be about the quality, market, problems, UK importers’ behavior or requirements and there will also be some questions about the expectations of Pakistani exporters from the UK importers or buyers.

Face to Face Interview with the UK textile importers:

An interview is a purposeful discussion between two or more people

(Kahn and cannel, 1957). The use of the interview can help us to gather valid and reliable data that are relevant to our research questions and objectives.

This technique is very important in my research and most of my research depends on face-to-face interviews with the Britain textile importers or buyers, because these buyers are the potential customers of the Pakistani textile products. I will interview about 5 Britain textile importers or buyers to know about their point of view.

I will prepare some questions for all the 5 importers and I will also ask some questions out of that prepared questions. I will ask them some questions about the Pakistani exporters like what is their behavior or attitude, are they fulfilling your requirements, what you expect from them. As English is main problem for the international student that’s why I will prepare most of the interview questions by discussing with my supervisor.

Telephonic conversation:

Only used to back home country to gather some information about the textile export of Pakistan.

Quantitative data analysis:

Graphical representation:

To make comparison of textile import Pakistan in competition with other countries in UK
To show the average use of respective textile products in UK

Statistical analysis:

To prove self developed theory
To deal with sampled data
Probability of success in the Pakistan export for UK

SPSS statistical software package:

I like to use SPSS to analyze the questionnaire results, because it can store information in a database format, manipulate and calculate data (numeric, string, date etc.) like a spreadsheet and produce report of data correlated. It also facilitates with the statistical testing techniques like T-test, chi-square etc., and charts to show comparisons (pie) and trends (bar, line charts etc.) of data in given period of time.

References:

Gill J. & Johnson P. (2002) Research Methods for Managers (3rd edition), London, SAGE Publications.

Easter-Smith, M., Thorpe, R. and Lowe, A (2002) Management Research: An Introduction (2nd edition), London, Sage.

Robson, C. (2002) Real World Research (2nd edition), Oxford, Blackwell.
Saunders, M. Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2003) Research Methods for Business Students (3rd edition), UK, Prentice Hall.
Wheeler G. (2003) Research Methods: A Guide to Research Methods for Project Work on Masters Degrees in Management, UK, The Derbyshire Business School.
Zikmund, W. (2000) Business Research Methods (6th edition), USA, Harcount, Inc.
http://www.fpcci.com.pk/