CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction
This chapter describes the research methods used for MCMT development. Research
methodology is a set of procedures or methods used to conduct research. There are
two types of research methodologies. These two types of methodologies are
qualitative methodologies and quantitative methodologies. Both methodologies will
be used during the MCMT development phase. Qualitative research involves the use
of qualitative data such as interviews, direct observations, survey and analysis of
documents and material. Questionnaire and documetnts review are the research
method used for developing MCMT prototype application. These research methods
are important to gather information such as users’ preferences, opinions and
suggestions. The Iterative and Incremental development process model is used in the
development of MCMT prototype application.
3.2 Research Methods
There are various methods in collecting information or more precisely data gathering.
It can be carried out by searching the related topic literatures, white papers, technical
papers, marketing reports, conferences proceedings, product data sheets, product
brochures, web pages, project focus groups, conducting interviews with experienced
personnel, distributing questionnaire, or even communicate to people. The research
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methods used for this dissertation purpose are the review of literatures and books from
the Internet, unstructured interview and data gathering by distributing questionnaires.
It is important to know the consumers’ experiences and personal preferences and by
doing these will definitely contribute greatly to the development of MCMT prototype
application.
3.2.1 Document Reviews Method
Document reviews could be reviewing the electronic documents or printed
documents. For example, reviewing documents, reports from the web or other pieces
of written information for content and themes. The reviewing process is where and
when the sticky notes were placed, writes on or even attached to other reading
materials to the copies that was read to make the document reviews more
comprehensive and easier for references. All these are useful sources for the content
of this dissertation. Those documents or reports are published based on the study of
current markets and trendings. The findings or the results from this research method
can be easily quantified and analyzed later.
3.2.2 Unstructured Interview
Unstructured interviews have been used in this research to gain a general
understanding of the requirements from the hypermarket operators’ point of view on
this development of MCMT prototype application. An informal discussion with the
hypermarket representatives has been done by allowing the discussion to be open. The
reasons to choose unstructured interviews for this research because unstructured
interview are flexible, simple, informal and time saving when preparing for the
interview. In addition, unstructured interviews allow spontaneity to the interviews and
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these discussions can sail to upcoming enquiries easily. Interviewer also has the
freedom to change some questions or the sequence of the questions according to the
responses or reactions from the interviewees when having the face-to-face
discussions.
3.2.3 Questionnaire Method
A questionnaire is defined as a form that people fill out, used to obtain demographic
and views and interests of those questioned (Brehob 2001). Questionnaire is used in
this research to elicit information and to get feedback from hypermarket consumers.
Questionnaire encompassed of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering data
or information from potentially a large number of respondents. One of the advantages
of questionnaire over other types of data gathering methods is that it is inexpensive
and does not require as much effort from the questioner as compared to face-to-face
survey or tele-conversation type of survey. These are the steps taken to design a
questionnaire for this dissertation purpose:
1) Objectives of the survey are defined
2) Determined the sampling group
3) Designed the questionnaire by creating the questions
4) Administered the questionnaire
5) Results interpretations
Questions are designed to gather either qualitative or quantitative data. Qualitative
questions are designed with more care and required well administration and
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interpretation, generally it requires more thoughts from the participant, whereas
quantitative questions are more exact if compared to qualitative questions.
The aim of this questionnaire survey is to understand the hypermarket consumers’
requirements in Malaysia. The results and information gained from this questionnaire
can help in designing the MCMT prototype application. This can ensure consumers’
satisfaction and meet their requirements after adopting the proposed MCMT
application.
The advantages of questionnaire are information can be gathered from a group of
selected people and the responses are gathered in a standardized way. Besides that, the
questionnaire method is used to study various aspects like consumers’ options, their
attitudes and beliefs. These aspects are useful before developing MCMT prototype
application.
3.2.3.1 Questionnaire Design
A well-designed questionnaire is important, the clarity and the language use to
construct the questionnaire must be taken well care. This is because the purpose of the
clear and concise questionnaire helped to get best responses from the potential
respondents. To improve the responses gathered at the end, a guide to the design of
the questionnaire (Burgess 2001) was referred in the process of getting the
questionnaired done in a efficient manner. The following section basically will be
explaining the questionnaire design in details. It will be started with introduction page
stating the purpose and objectives of the designed questionnaire followed by types of
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questions asked, the layout and the sequence of the questions asked. A sample of
questionnaire designed can be found in Appendix D.
3.2.3.2 Introduction Page
The questionnaire survey form started with an introduction page that defined the
objective of the questionnaire. The objective of the questionnaire was to gather the
information from the potential respondents for their users’ habits and preferences on
the development of MCMT. Before the respondents actually taking part in the
questionnaire survey, there was an brief introductory section for them to understand
the background and purpose of this particular questionnaire and make the participants
aware of the information will be kept confidential and would not be used for any
profitable activities or against them, followed by some definations of what mobile
technology, content management and hypermarket environment is.
3.2.3.3 Questions
In designing the questions, it is important and needed to be careful that the questions
would not lead the respondents into ambiguity, confusion and vagueness. The
wording of the questions designed has to be clear, neat and consistent. In the
questionnaire, there were eleven questions altogether. The type of questions designed
was a mixture of close-ended questions and open-ended questions. Respondents were
required to select either one or more answers he or she thought were appropriate for
closed-ended questions asked in the questionnaire. Respondents were welcomed to
comment or give their suggestions for open-ended questions. Single and multiple
response were used by inserting the text “please check all that apply” to provide the
respondents the liberty to tick as many boxes as they thought were applicable. The
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other approach was using the rated responses likes scales from 1-5, 1 being strong
disagree and 5 being strongly agree.
3.2.3.4 Layout
Layout is rather important, the questions and answer choices should be laid out
attractively, neatly and avoided the lengthy questions that most probably would deter
respondents. Besides, the logical sequence was important too, the questions that
related to similar areas were group together to keep the flow through the quesionnaire
logical and simple (Burgess 2001).
3.2.3.5 Questionnaire Distribution
The survey questionnaires were distributed to respondents to complete manually. As
100 respondents were invited to complete the questionnaire. These questionnaire were
distributed to the public or the consumers at the hypermarkets in Malaysia randomly.
94 out of 100 respondents have completed and returned the questionnaire. Not all the
questionnaires distributed to respondents returned with full participation, some of
them refused to join reason being they didn’t show their interest on this topic of
survey, they had limited time allocated for this survey, they had limited knowledge of
this researched topic and there were no rewards earned upon completion of the survey
questionnaire.
The objective for this questionnaire survey is to understand the consumers’s opinions
and their requirements. The results and information gained from this questionnaire
can help in designing the MCMT prototype application. This can ensure satisfactionn
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to the consumers and meet their requirements after delivering the prototype
application.
3.3 Software Development Methodology
Software development methodology is referring to the documented collection of
guildlines, procedures and standards intended to ensure the development of quality
application systems that meet the users’ requirements in an efficient manner. The
system development methodology involves a series of operations and procedures that
are used to develop an application or system. In this section, the type of development
process model to be used for the MCMT development will be discussed. Many
process models are described in the software engineering literature (Sommerwille
2001). There are several types of development methodologies either liner or iterative
which are best suited to specific kinds of Information Technology (IT) projects will be
discussed here. They are Spiral Model, Rapid Application Development, Waterfall
Model, Phased Development Model (Iterative and Incremental Development) and etc.
3.3.1 Spiral Model
This is a combination of liner and iterative type of software development
methodology. It is focusing more on risk assessment as it provides the opportunity to
evaluate the risk and weigh consideration of a particular project continuation
throughout the life cycle. It traverses four basic quadrants, firstly determine the
objectives, alternatives and constraints of the interation, evaluate the alternatives,
identify and resolve the risks. Next, to develop and verify deliverables from the
iteration and lastly plan the next iteration. Usually it begins the cycle with
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identification of the stakeholders and ends with reviews and commitment (Boehm
2000).
3.3.2 Rapid Application Development
This is an iterative type of software development methodologies with its objective to
deliver a qualitied system quickest possible at a relatively low investment cost. It
usually provides the ability to change the information system design according to the
users’ demands. Generally, it produces significant saving in terms of time and human
effort and of course money as mentioned earlier. It involves iterative development and
the construction of prototypes. RAD approaches may entail compromises in
functionality and performance in exchange for enabling faster development and
facilitating application maintenance (James Martin 1991).
3.3.3 Waterfall Model
Waterfall model is a type of linear software development methodology, basically a
project will be divided into sequential phases that are emphasized on planning, project
scheduling, budgeting and the implementation. The orderly sequence of development
phases is to ensure the adequacy of documentation and design reviews that help to
increase the quality, reliability, and maintainability of the developed software (Royce
1970).
3.3.4 Iterative and Incremental Development Model
Iterative and Incremental Development Model is also known as Phased Development
Model. Iterative and incremental development model is a combination of linear and
interative approach. This was made by Mr.Harlen Mills of IBM in late seventies. It
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started with defining software concept, requirements analysis, architectural design by
using the Waterfall approach followed by interative prototyping which culminates in
installation of the final prototype. This is appropriate for large projects where
requirements were not well understood due to changing of expectation, external
changes, budget changes or changing of technology rapidly.
3.4 MCMT Prototype Application Development Model
Choosing the right application development model could help in ensuring the success
of an application development project. The system methodology that has been chosen
to develop MCMT is the Iterative and Incremental development model. It is more
manageable as opposed to traditional waterfall model. This approach is broken down
into two development phases, the incremental and iteration. At incremental phase, it is
where the software specification, design and implementation are broken into serial of
increment which are developed in sequence. Each iteration is consisting of
requirements collection, analysis and design, implementation and testing phase and
result in the release of an executable subset of the final product.
Incremental and iterative model is an application development method used in
MCMT. The model is an iterative approach that begins by developing basic
requirements, building small simple prototypes, evaluating those prototypes and then
expanding into refined requirements until deliverable application prototype is created.
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The MCMT development model is divided into eight main phases as shown in Figure
3.1 below, they are the requirements study and planning, the system analysis and
design follow by implementation and deployment.
After the implementation, the users are required to test and evaluate the system
iteratively, modification will be made based on the inputs or feedbacks from the users
whenever there are new functional capabilities are added by the control of version
release in order to improve the functionalities of the application.
The reason to choose this model as development process model is that this model
provides iterative enhancement to develop an application incrementally. The iteration
will ease the analysis of partial implementation and making sure that users’ feedback
are solicited and analysed accordingly as each iteration is consisting of requirements
collection, analysis and design phase, implementation and testing phase until it is fully
tested and convert into executable application.
In itia l P la n n in g D e fin e th e g e n e ra l s y s te m
r e q u ir e m e n t s o f M C M T
U s e r e v a lu a tio n &
a c c e p ta n c e te s tin g
D a t a g a t h e r in g & a n a ly s is
of M C M T
V a lid a te M C M T
d e p lo y m e n t
im p le m e n t & in te g ra t e D e fin e s y s te m
in c re m e n t o f M C M T a r c h it e c tu r e o f M C M T
T e s tin g o r v a lid a te S y s t e m in c re m e n t
in c re m e n t o f M C M T d e v e lo p m e n t o f M C M T
Figure 3.1 : Incremental and iterative process for the development of MCMT
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3.5 Summary
This chapter discussed about the research method used in the development of MCMT.
Documents review and distribution of questionnaire have been used as data collection
research instruments. The Incremental and Iterative model has been selected as the
software methodology for development of MCMT due to it does provide a number of
advantages as stated below:
• It helps to mitigate integration and architectural risks as earlier as it could.
• It allows delivery of a series of implementations that are more complete by
stages and convert it to executable more quickly by incremental releases.
• Gradual implementation is capable to monitor incremental changes, easier for
problem isolation and make adjustment to avoid the negative impact.
• Early potential exists for exploiting knowledge gained will be as later
increments for application improvements.
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