The Investigation of Volkswagen's Entry Strategy in China's Car Market

MA MANAGEMENT DISSERTATION
XIAOFENG WEN
3.0 Research methodology
3.1 Introduction
The previous chapter on literature review has set up the theoretical background for
the present research, this chapter introduces the purpose of the research, explains the
philosophy behind the research, approach, strategy and techniques adopted in the
process of collecting, interpreting data and reaching conclusions.
3.2 Research purpose
As we all know, management research aims to discover a set of causal laws that can
be used to predict general patterns of human behaviour (David Jobber, 2004), so the
purpose of this paper is to move from the surface problem to the reasons behind, it
aims to find out what particular entry mode did VW choose and why did it chose the
mode when it entered the Chinese car market.
According to the purpose of this research, this paper will adopt three kinds of
enquiries, there are: exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory (Yin 1994)
Exploratory studies aim at exploring something, and are appropriate when the
research problem is difficult to delimit. The purpose is to gather as much information
as possible concerning a specific problem. Exploratory research is often used when a
problem is not well known, or the available knowledge is not absolute. The technique
that is best suited for information gathering when performing an exploratory research
is interview (Yin, 1994). So in this paper, the purpose of this study is to answer
“what is VW’s international strategy (both in China and the other countries).”
The descriptive research purpose is used when a problem is well structured and there
is no intention to examine the casual relationships. The conclusion of the study is
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