Marketing Research for Costa Cafe in Order to Identify who Are the Typical Customers of Coffee Outlets and Ascertain Their Needs, Expectations and Buying Behaviour

8.LIMITATIONS
The current research design has many limitations caused by time, budget and other constrains.
The sample size of the research is very small relatively to the market that the research had to be done. Coffee market is a huge market and coffee drinkers exist in every corner, houses, streets and shops.
The constrain of only 30 people to be used in the sampling frame forced us to use a non-probability method. Non-probability sampling is a sampling technique in which units of the sample are selected on the basis of personal judgement or convenience; the probability of any particular member of the population being chosen is unknown. Despite the fact that non-probability samples may yield good estimates of the population characteristics, they do not allow objective evaluation of the precision of the sample results. Because there is no way of determining the probability for selecting any particular element for inclusion in the sample, the estimates obtained are not statistically projectable to the population.
Furthermore the restriction of time and budget has resulted to the conduction of only one focus group and observation instead of three to six that would have provided a more objective and reliable opinion about coffee shops, their typical customers as well as their needs, expectation and buying behaviour.
Several potential sources of error like random sampling error and non sampling error can affect a research design. However a good research design can control the various sources of error. Therefore, marketing research companies must be very careful when designing a research.
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