Business Essentials Research Project


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Business Essentials Supporting HNC/HND and Foundation degrees Research Project Course Book In this July 2010 edition: x Full and comprehensive coverage of the key topics within the subject x Activities and examples x Practical illustrations and case studies x Index x Fully up to date as at July 2010 x Coverage mapped to the Edexcel Guidelines for the HNC/HND in Business First edition September 2007 Second edition July 2010 Published ISBN 9780 7517 6834 3 (previous edition 9780 7517 4480 4) e-ISBN 9780 7517 7671 3 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Published by BPP Learning Media Ltd BPP House, Aldine Place London W12 8AA A note about copyright Dear Customer What does the little © mean and why does it matter? Your market-leading BPP books, course materials and e-learning materials do not write and update themselves. People write them: on their own behalf or as employees of an organisation that invests in this activity. Copyright law protects their livelihoods. It does so by creating rights over the use of the content. Breach of copyright is a form of theft – as well as being a criminal offence in some jurisdictions, it is potentially a serious breach of professional ethics. With current technology, things might seem a bit hazy but, basically, without the express permission of BPP Learning Media: www.bpp.com/learningmedia x Photocopying our materials is a breach of copyright Printed in the United Kingdom x Scanning, ripcasting or conversion of our digital materials into different file formats, uploading them to facebook or e-mailing them to your friends is a breach of copyright Your learning materials, published by BPP Learning Media Ltd, are printed on paper sourced from sustainable, managed forests. All our rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of BPP Learning Media Ltd. We are grateful to Edexcel for permission to reproduce the Guidelines for the BTEC Higher Nationals in Business. © BPP Learning Media Ltd 2010 You can, of course, sell your books, in the form in which you have bought them – once you have finished with them. (Is this fair to your fellow students? We update for a reason.) But the eproducts are sold on a single user licence basis: we do not supply ‘unlock’ codes to people who have bought them second-hand. And what about outside the UK? BPP Learning Media strives to make our materials available at prices students can afford by local printing arrangements, pricing policies and partnerships which are clearly listed on our website. A tiny minority ignore this and indulge in criminal activity by illegally photocopying our material or supporting organisations that do. If they act illegally and unethically in one area, can you really trust them? Contents Contents Introduction (v) Study Guide (vii) 1 Introduction to the research project 1 2 Research philosophies, methodologies and ethics 35 3 The research proposal 63 4 The literature search 105 5 Methods of data collection: primary and secondary sources 131 6 Data analysis 187 7 Project presentation 235 Bibliography 281 Appendix: Edexcel Guidelines 285 Index 291 Review form (iii) (iv) Introduction Introduction BPP Learning Media’s Business Essentials range is the ideal l