Page 257 - MARSIUM'21 COMP OF PAPER

3.0 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A preliminary survey was conducted to investigate the factors that could increase the purchase intention of a preschool service.
Further, the survey findings were used as a guideline to implement the social media marketing strategies for Tadika Santalia
to increase the purchase intention from parents. The following section discusses the research design and analysis methods for
the survey.

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN
According to Malhotra and Malhotra (2012), a research design is a framework or blueprint for conducting a marketing research
project. It specifies the essential procedures in gaining the required information to structure or solve marketing research
problems. On the other hand, Stapleton (2018) defined research design as a strategy that offers a framework in integrating all
aspects of a quantitative study to ensure the results are trustworthy, free from bias and maximally generalizable. It enables
researchers to determine participants to be selected, variables to be manipulated, data to be collected and analyzed. The research
design can control all the extraneous variability so that the overall research problem can be addressed. Thus, it is an important
step to develop an appropriate research design in a study.
There are two key components in research design, which are exploratory research design and conclusive research
design (Leavy, 2017). The major difference between these two research designs is exploratory research design focuses on
providing insights and understanding while conclusive research design aims to test hypotheses and examine the connection
between variables. One of the most noticeable characteristics of these two research designs is the data analysis part (Malhotra
and Malhotra, 2012). In exploratory research design, the data analysis is qualitative while in the conclusive research design
the data analysis is quantitative.
The conclusive research design can be further divided into descriptive research and causal research. The descriptive
study is then separated into two types of designs which are cross-sectional and longitudinal. Cross-sectional design measures
the outcome and the exposures of the research participants at the same time while longitudinal design takes a different
measurement of respondents over time (Setia, 2016).
In this study, a conclusive research design was adopted to examine the relationships between the social media
marketing element of entertainment and interaction, trust, perceived value and purchase intention of a preschool service. The
main research design for this study includes descriptive research with a cross-sectional design.

3.2 POPULATION AND SAMPLING
The population can be defined as people or items which a researcher wishes to investigate (Rahi, 2017). Normally, a population
in research is referred to as a set of people or items which share common and specific characteristics. In this study, the
population of this study was parents who have children between ages 3 to 6 and have the intention to send them to preschool
education.
Sampling is the process of identifying a small group from the population for further investigation (Rahi, 2017). It is
a process of selecting a few sample units from the population to measure their characteristics such as their attitudes or beliefs.
The sampling method can be broadly divided into two types which are probability sampling and non-probability sampling
(Taherdoost, 2016). Probability sampling refers to an approach in which each unit has the same as being chosen. Probability
sampling can be divided into five categories which are simple random sampling, systematic random sampling, stratified
random sampling, cluster sampling and multistage sampling (Sharma, 2017). Besides, the non-probability sample refers to an
approach where the chance or probability of each unit to be selected is not known. Non-probability sampling can be divided
into four categories which are convenience sampling, purposive sampling, quota sampling and snowball sampling (Malhotra
and Malhotra, 2012).
Moslehpour et al. (2021) suggested that a sample size of 200 is considered as an appropriate number in conducting
a study. In addition, Siddiqui (2013) stated that to gain a reasonable level of result, at least 200 respondents must be sampled.
Hence, the sample size of 200 was used in this study by the purposive sampling technique. Purposive sampling is also known
as judgment, selective or subjective sampling. This sampling technique relies on the researcher’s judgment while selecting the
respondent in participating in the study (Etikan, 2016). The respondents were selected as a sample based on criteria: they are
parents who have the intention to send their children between ages 3-6 to a preschool education.

3.3 RESEARCH INSTRUMENT

The quantitative approach was adopted in this study to collect the primary data from the respondents. Questionnaires were
distributed in the form of Google Forms to the targeted respondents. The questionnaire consists of two sections: Section A and
Section B. Section A of the questionnaire consists of questions regarding the respondents’ demographic profiles such as their
age, gender, education level, employment and monthly income level. On the other hand, Section B of the questionnaires
consists of 18 questions related to the respondents’ opinions on social media entertainment, interaction, trust, perceived value
and purchase intention.
This study aimed to examine the factors that influence consumers’ purchase intention. There were three items for
social media entertainment, three items for social media interaction, three items for consumers’ trust, three items for consumers’

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