Research Design
The tourism sector of Singapore has witnessed a negative growth for the last few years. On the other hand, the tourism industry in Indonesia is flourishing. There are many causes behind these two scenarios. Although the growth in the tourism sector of one country was supposed to trickle down to another, but in reality, the facts are indicating differently. The food and beverage industry of Singapore has faced low and negative growth recently. The number of Indonesian tourists in Singapore has increased rapidly. This should have increased the income of the food and beverages industry as well as the tourism industry of Singapore. The purpose of this research is to show the discrepancy between these two facts. The reasons why the increased number of tourists from Indonesia is not helping the tourism sector of Singapore will be analyzed through the research. The research will incorporate both primary and secondary data. The research will also help the receptors in understanding the fact that might pull the Singaporean tourism sector out of the negative growth. For this purpose, exploratory, explanatory, and descriptive researches will be done. Each research design will give results of different studies. A predictive research will also be done with the help of the recorded primary and secondary data in order to recommend some solutions to the economic agents operating in the food and beverage industry of Singapore. In Singapore, the total arrival of visitors grew by 7.7 percent to 16.4 million, where the receipts of tourism ascended by 14 per cent. The receipt of tourisms resulted from the visitors expending more on food and beverage and shopping. Indonesian people accounted for 14 per cent receipts of the Singapore tourism.
In general, a research design a set that incorporates various methods that are used by the researchers to collect and analyze different variables. The design of the study can be of different types like descriptive, experimental, correlational, semi-experimental, meta analytic, review, and others. According to Wellington (2015), these follow the basics of the qualitative, quantitative, and hybrid designs. There are also subdivisions of these research designs available. A researcher chooses the research design based on the type of the research. The data that are collected and the research objectives are used as guidelines while choosing the research design. In this case, the purpose of the research primarily focuses on the effect and causes of increasing number of tourists from Indonesia and its effect on Singaporean tourism industry. As the tourism sector of the country is related with the food and beverage industry, the same attributes affect both these sectors similarly. More Indonesian people visiting Singapore would lead to more increase in the receipts of the Singapore tourism from Indonesia, as they would like to taste their home based food in the foreign soil.
The research that will be done for this project purpose includes exploratory, explanatory, descriptive, and predictive research. As stated by Marshall and Rossman (2014), the exploratory research is a commonly used unstructured research process. It records background information regarding the problem the research addresses. This research design is used when the researcher needs more information regarding the research problem, as there is not enough information available already, which can address the research problem. In this research, the exploratory research will help to identify the reasons for the increasing number of Indonesian tourists in Singapore and understand those.
Data Collection Methods
According to Bryman (2015), the explanatory research clarifies the relationship between various variables and their effects on each other. In this case, the explanatory research will help in order to understand the economic impacts of the increasing Indonesian tourists on the economy of Singapore. Apart from these, there are certain factors, which affect the tourism industry of Singapore. The role played by the Indonesian tourists is yet to be determined. According to Castonguay et al. (2013), the descriptive research looks beyond the observable facts in order to find deeper information. This research design will help the researcher in order to find out the behaviour of the Indonesian tourists towards the food and beverages industry of Singapore. Focus should be on whether the Indonesian tourists take a liking of their home based recipes or they like trying other cuisines. The research also plans to provide some policy measures to the receptors that can use the research in order to manage the food and beverage industry better. For this purpose, the predictive research is also incorporated. It is about predicting the number of Indonesian tourists that will flock the Singaporean market in near future
Data are required for this research, which will provide the data for the problem regarding how the increasing number of Indonesian tourists is affecting the tourism industry as well as the food and beverages industry of Singapore. For this purpose, both secondary and primary data will be collected. These data will help in providing both qualitative and quantitative researches. The quantitative data will be collected from the primary survey that will take place in on-site researcher-filled-in survey (Pham 2015). The quantitative data will also be recorded from the secondary surveys. The secondary data will be collected from several journals, articles, papers, and others, which are related to the research problem. The qualitative data will be collected in order to answer the research problem. The qualitative data will be gathered only from the primary research. For this purpose gathering data from a focus group will be considered. Qualitative data can take into account several information about the quality of the food and number of tourists expected to visit the country.
According to Chen et al. (2017), the quantitative data will be collected from primary research. It will be collected newly and hence will reflect present day scenario. The primary data can be collected through different processes. Firstly, it can be gathered from observational data. It is gathered by watching people. For this purpose, mechanical and electronic approaches will be considered. Test subjects might be approached personally. Secondly, questionnaire data can be incorporated in the process. According to Coleman (2013), it requires generating ideas through in-depth interviews with test subjects both individually and in a group. This will help in collecting data for both qualitative and quantitative purposes. It can also be done by evaluating ideas gathered by mail, telephone, online, and other personal surveys. The secondary data will be collected for the quantitative purpose only. The secondary data gathered are of past and thus might not carry any significant changes that have occurred in the economy of Singapore recently. Incorporating secondary data for qualitative research will bring in some old attributes in the research while excluding some significant new data from the process. In general, the quantitative data collected through primary and secondary sources will require less time. However, as more resources have to be engaged here, it will cost more. On the other hand, the qualitative data collected through observing groups through primary data collection process will require less allocation of resources, and thus require the researcher to incur less cost. However, following the views given by Takhar and Ghorbani (2015), it will take much more time than acquiring quantitative data, as the test groups will be observed for a long period.
Sample Selection
For this purpose, the data will be collected from the sample, as the population is huge in number. It is not possible to take in every tourist that visits Singapore from Indonesia as the figure would be huge. The population incorporates all the economic and other agents working in the tourism industry and food and beverages industry of Singapore. It also includes the tourists who are from Indonesia and visiting Singapore. For this purpose, the Neuman’s theory for quantitative survey will be used. From this population, samples will be drawn randomly to avoid any kind of bias in the research process. Following the views of Lewis (2015), as the number of population is huge, a certain small percent will be used as sample. The focus groups will incorporate the tourists from Indonesia who are visiting Singapore in a group. From all the groups available at the time of research, ten groups will be selected at random for the study. The reason behind selecting such a small number is due to unavailability of resources and time. It will also present great opportunity to study the samples.
Following the Neuman’s theory, the quantitative data collection will follow several steps. The first step will require deciding on the type of the survey. It will be followed by preparing the survey questions, creating the response categories, and designing a layout for the whole process (Neuman 2016). The second step will incorporate planning on how to record the required data. For this purpose, a pilot survey might be conducted at a selected area. As stated by Creswell (2013), the third stage is deciding on the target population. As stated above, from the targeted population samples will be drawn. The next stage will require locating the respondents, conducting the interviews and other process, and recording the collected data carefully. The fifth stage will incorporate rechecking the recorded data that has been gathered from primary and secondary surveys. Statistical analysis on the gathered data will be performed next.
The data will be analyzed using statistical and other graphical tools. Correlation, regression, econometrics, and other statistical methods will be used for this purpose. The results will be presented in different easy to understand formats. Following the views of Silverman (2016), for this purpose various dummy tables will also be constructed which will help in analyzing the data. The data analysis technique will incorporate few steps. The first step will be processing the data. Any discrepancy in the recorded data will be amended here. The second step will incorporate preparing tables and graphs. The tables and graphs have to be easy to understand. It should present the acquired information in a decorated manner. As stated by Ritchie et al. (2013), the third step will be finished after the analysis and interpreting of the data are done properly. The expectations regarding the results and the results will be judged. The statistical tools will be used again for this purpose. The next stages will incorporate editing for final review and preparing for the final presentation.
The data analysis techniques chosen here are descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, and predictive in nature. According to the ideas of O’Reilly and Parker (2013), these will give both quantitative as well as qualitative results. The statistical tools mentioned before will also be used if any bias is found in the process. These will be used for most of the quantitative research. Generally, statistical tools are used for quantitative researches. For qualitative research purpose, several literatures will be reviewed, mostly from which the secondary data will be collected.
The research that incorporates human subjects and participants raises issues on the legal, ethical, and socio-political grounds. Ethics are standards of behaviour that are adopted during interacting with the human subjects in such a way that people are respected. The rights and welfare of the subjects has to be protected. According to Shapiro (2014), any kind of physical and psychological harm has to be minimized. These will increase the integrity in the conduct of the research. For this purpose the research has to be done based on the informed consent of the research subjects. They have to be informed about the purpose of the research. Their involvement in the research process has to clearly elaborated to the subjects. They should have the option of withdrawing information at any point in time. Every information should be kept secret. Anonymity of the research subjects has to be ensured by the researchers. The potential benefits and losses of the subjects are required to be discussed prior to the information gathering process. The ethical issues have to be addressed in such a way that the research serves the needs of the participants and of the society as a whole. The whole process of ethical considerations has to be applied before the research is conducted. While conducting the sample study the researcher cannot harm or disrespect any custom or religion in the process. Everything needs to be done ethically.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, it can be said that the research headed “The economic impacts of growing numbers of Indonesian tourist on Food and Beverage in Singapore” requires a lot of research and the population incorporate here is huge. To simplify the process, samples will be taken from the whole population. Both individual as well as groups will be considered for the research as the qualitative and quantitative researches are done. For this purpose, both primary and secondary data will be recorded. The research will also incorporate a delicate research design as it incorporates various dimensions. The research design is constructed with exploratory, explanatory, descriptive, and predictive researches. Each of these sub-designs is targeted towards understanding the topic in a more explained way. The predictive research will be used in order to make recommendations for the receptors. The research will also help the receptors in understanding how the food and beverage industry can increase its sales. It will also show the ways in which the tourism sector of Singapore can benefit. It might happen that the Singapore food and beverage industry would be a reason why the Indonesian tourists love coming to Singapore. The primary and secondary data will facilitate the quantitative as well as the qualitative findings of the research.
References:
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