Proposal: Exploring Young Chinese Customers Attitude Towards Fashion Bloggers’ Evaluation of Cosmetic Fashion Retailers
Introduction:
Aim:
The aim of the study is to research the attitude of the Chinese students towards the evaluation of fashion bloggers of cosmetic brands.
Objectives:
- To evaluate the perceived usefulness of a cosmetic fashion blogs in its reader’s mind (Chinese students) for their purchase decision
- To evaluate the perceived trust on the cosmetic fashion blogs in its reader’s mind (Chinese students)
- Blog readers (Chinese students) feelings for the blogger
- Blog readers perceived authenticity of cosmetic fashion blogs
The significance of the Topic:
On average, about 900,000 new blogs are written and posted per day (Singer, 2009). One aspect of blogging is the review of products and services which bloggers post after they have used it. Exploring the attitude of the readers of these blogs will provide insightful details of how and what affects the reader’s purchase intentions. It will not only be important academically; covering an important research gap, but also for the cosmetic fashion industry as well, as it can be utilized for their marketing as well.
Own Interest:
Blogging has become a critical factor in the purchase decision. The attitude towards these fashion bloggers and their evaluation of the luxury brands is of interest to me because it could help develop relevant and specific studies in this area as the importance of blogging has raised and the attitude of consumers towards bloggers have become increasingly important.
Research Context
The focus of the study will be towards the attitude of readers of cosmetics fashion blogs. Blogging has become the new popular thing in the electronic media not only for personal recording of views, ideas, and opinions, but as a channel for marketing luxury brands as well. As reported by my Yearbook, it has shown that more than 80 percent of the customers tend to seek advice from social sites before making a purchase decision (Wegert, 2010). And about more than 70% of those who receive the advice on the products or services find it to be influencing.
The attitudes of the Chinese students towards the evaluation of the cosmetic fashion bloggers’ reviews of the retail blogs are important to be explored to understand the influence that these blogs create for the Chinese consumers (university). The Chinese university students are selected for the research purpose because of their rapidly increasing purchasing power and the increasing inclination of this market segment towards luxury products.
The research will explore at various Chinese bloggers and conduct an online survey to look at the response for the exploration of the attitude, concentrating on their usefulness and trust of the blog, their positive or negative feeling for blogger, and authenticity of these blogs.
Literature Review
From the perspective of marketing, blogging is thought of as the digital word-of-mouth by scholars (Osman et al., 2009). The perceived credibility of the bloggers is said to have a profound effect on the purchase decision of the reader. It is, however, not always the case. Not all bloggers are considered with similar credibility (Cheung et al., 2009). According to Brown and Reingen, (1987) recommendations have always been considered as an important part of a decision-making process). However, whether the blog readers consider the blogs as a recommendation or not needs to be understood. It can be done by understanding their attitude towards the blogger’s evaluation.
As compared to formal advertisements and marketing practices, blogging is considered as a neutral recommendation which is taken positively by the readers because of its non-commercialized nature (Hsu et al., 2013). Wu (2011) has described that the two-way communication channel provided in the blogs also tends to facilitate the blog readers to better understand and raise concerns about the blogs as compared to the commercial advertisements.
The Technology acceptance model is an empirically proved framework which explains the acceptance of the IT (Lee & Chang, 2011). It is known that this theory is the adaptation of the TRA (Lin & Lu, 2000) which shows that belief shapes attitudes of a person which in turn influences the behavior of a person (Bigne´-Alcaniz et al., 2008). A study has shown this “belief” as the “perceived usefulness” for the prediction of the user acceptance of the IT (Davis, 1989).
The usefulness is explained as the degrees of enhancement which a person believes will come after adaptation of the certain suggestion, recommendation, service, or product (Bernoff & Li, 2008). In this study, the usefulness is defined as the degrees of enhancement of shopping performance, which a person perceives after adapting to a certain blog suggestion (Youn & Lee, 2009). Past studies have shown that the usefulness has a substantial impact on the attitude of the consumers (Lin & Hsu, 2008).
Trust is another aspect which is defined by scholars as the perceived benevolence and credibility of the target of trust (Doney & Connon, 1997). The definition of trust in terms of online context is relevant as well. While consumers face transaction risk, they can turn to the online bloggers who they trust are there to give them advice (Deng et al., 2010). The customers tend to reduce their uncertainty risk by turning to reference groups and blogs. Blogs are so far from the most credible sources among many social media platforms (Hsu & Hsu, 2004). The target here is the blog. By frequently going through the posts of blogger, readers become well-known with them and trust them for their evaluations (Kaye & Johnson, 2009). It acts as vice versa as well. Any personal experience or evaluation of the blogger can lead to rank it as untrustworthy as well.
The credibility and authenticity of the bloggers have a significant impact on the behavior of reader and the trust on the blog. The reputation of the blogger can be established as positive through online social relations for development of convincing knowledge affecting consumer behavior (Casalo et al., 2008). These studies show that blogging has an instrumental role in the current world of luxury brands and the preference that readers give to it (Keh & Xie, 2009). The attitude of the blog readers towards these blogs have become increasingly relevant to the luxury brand industry hence making it important to study, and consequently better use it for their marketing purpose and creation of digital word-of-mouth (Youn & Lee, 2009).
The literature review has to lead us to the research question
General Question:
- What is the attitude of the Blog reader towards the evaluation of the cosmetic fashion bloggers of the cosmetic fashion retailers?
Research Questions:
- Do blog readers trust bloggers?
- Do they perceive the evaluation of the blogs to be useful?
- Do they consider the blogs to be authentic?
- Do they have positive or negative feelings towards the blogger?
Methodology
Research Approach:
The figure shows the research model employed in this study. It is hypothesized that the Chinese student attitude towards the evaluation of the cosmetic fashion blogs can be explained regarding their perceived trust and usefulness of the blogs, the perceived authenticity of the blog, and the feelings towards the blogger.
Research Philosophy:
Qualitative Research:
Studies are to be conducted in the exact environment in which it happens naturally and utilize the social actions which are intended for understanding the phenomenon as substantive to qualitative research. Qualitative research focuses on the process by which meaning of the social structure can be found through the emphasis on the relationship between the inquiry topic and researchers (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007). Qualitative research focuses on the investigation of the phenomenon of interest and questions with the exploration of in-depth data, comparisons, and prescriptions. The qualitative research method is more concerned with the generation and not measurement of data, however, the qualitative method can be used to test rather than create theories (Saunders et al., 2016). The qualitative method can be used to collect data from the individuals on the relevant topics for development of the theories through induction method (Bryman & Bell, 2007).
Quantitative Method:
The quantitative research, on the other hand, consists of data as per research analyzed empirically (Saunders et al., 2016). The meaning of quantitative research is the collection of data in the form of numerals for the aim of forecasting, interpretation, and control phenomenon of the interest. It is in raw form and has not much meaning for the people if not analyzed and collected in context (Partington, 2002). The technique of quantitative analysis is supporting nature for providing diagrams, indices, and tables for the presentation of the occurrence, frequency, and use of statistics for comparison and relations. This research study as is based entirely on the exploration of the attitude of Chinese students will use quantitative research method by using primary data sources and in some areas secondary data sources. A survey will be conducted to gather data on online questionnaires targeted at university students from Chinese origin.
Research Strategy:
By using the research methods mentioned above, the exploration of the attitude of the Chinese students towards the evaluation of the cosmetic fashion blogs will be deduced. The qualitative method will use interviews and secondary data in the form of published articles to infer upon providing a theoretical framework for the relationship of the perceived trust, perceived usefulness, feelings for blogger, authenticity of the blog and attitude of the Chinese University students. The advantage of this methodology is that it provides a broader platform for assessing the attitudes of the Chinese university students in the context of internet blogging. It also gives liberty of assessment of the research questions regarding other factors as well. The disadvantage of qualitative research is that it depends on human inference and judgment of quality which can vary from person to person. The quantitative research methodology covers the disadvantage of the qualitative research method by giving the results in statistical form (Patton, 2002).
Research Methods
Data Collection Techniques
Web surveys have frequently been used by researchers for the aim of collecting data on participants for academic research. This study will also use online web surveys to collect data from Chinese university students on their attitude towards the Chinese cosmetic fashion bloggers and blogs. The famous Chinese bloggers are identified, and the attitudes of the Chinese students towards these bloggers and blogs are explored through their responses to the online survey. There is one possibility of positioning the surveys on the blogs; however, it will not necessarily provide the data on Chinese university students. Thus, it would be more efficient to target the survey of the Chinese university students and ask them about their attitude towards the blog’s evaluation of the cosmetic industry. Online interviews with open-ended questions will be used for the gathering of qualitative data (Bryman & Bell, 2007).
Sampling Strategy
Snowball sampling is expected to be employed for the quantitative and qualitative methods. It is the type of sampling, which is essential for containing the research sample to the people who belong to a certain experience. Snowball sampling initiates by identifying the individuals who qualify the standard. These identified individuals are then included in the study (Bryman & Bell, 2007). Due to the Chinese population vast size, the luxury consumer market is found to be around 160 million, i.e. 13% of the total population. Such a huge sample size can be very hard to control and analyze. Out of this 13 % of the total population, a particular section consists of the university students, i.e. our target population for both research methodologies. Approximately 100 university students are going to be included in the survey to analyze their responses for their attitudes towards the evaluation of the bloggers of cosmetic fashion retailers. Thus, the sample size for quantitative research will be around 100 individuals. The sample size of the qualitative research will be around 5 to 7 participant’s interviews.
Ethics
Every participant will be allowed to express his/her own views in interviews and select any answers in survey form. Other research ethics will also be taken into consideration.
Conclusion
The research is going to have potentially important implications for the firms who would be seeking to market their product and services through online social mediums. The positive results of the study will provide the foundation for the companies who want to propagate their brands from electronic word of mouth, i.e. through blogs. The results if found positive will create more importance for the bloggers, their authenticity, and their relationship of trust, positive feelings, and usefulness with the readers. The low or high trustworthiness, usefulness, positive feelings, or authenticity of the blogs, and bloggers will affect the marketing strategy of the firms.
There are certain limitations of the study as well. For example, it is to be noted that the respondents are internet users who will respond to an online survey. Furthermore, as the sample is going to be self-selected, the results may be biased as well. The statistical surveys are limited to provide only numerical relationships. There should be caution used while portraying the results of this study to other research and studies as it cannot necessarily translate the similar context.
Any future study can lead to the analysis of the attitude of the consumers whether Chinese or non-Chinese on the purchase intention. Online shopping or remote shopping has been studied regarding the influencing factors; however, the impact of the suggestion or recommendations of the blogs on the purchase decision is yet to be found. There have been some research studies conducted in this field. However, the analysis of the attitude of the Chinese consumers regarding the suggestions of the blogs on their purchase decision has not yet been found.
Time Scale
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