Research Title
Zara put on the back foot over Portuguese child labour claim.
Research Hypotheses and Objectives
Hypothesis 1
Zara’s performance is negatively influenced by child labour practices.
Objective 1
Examine the impact of an organization’s ethical behaviour on performance.
Hypothesis 2
Bad publicity of Zara’s unethical behaviour (child labour) negatively affects the perception of Zara’s customers.
Objective 2
Explain the effect that bad publicity could have on consumers’ perceptions of Zara.
Hypothesis 3
Bad publicity of unethical behaviour activities (child labour) will not affect the consumers purchasing behaviour.
Objective 3
Explain the effect that bad publicity could have on consumers’ perceptions of Zara.
Research Methodology
Three hypotheses have been stated and three objectives mentioned as the main focus of the discussion in the paper. Different kinds of research should be conducted either to support or to reject any of these three hypotheses. In general, two types of research are going to be covered, literature review and critical analysis of different legal acts devoted to the relation to child labour in different countries and interviews.
It is crucial to consider the organizational documents and norms which exist in the company and analyze those relating the legal standards which exist in the country either to support or to reject the hypothesis that Zara’s performance is negatively influenced by child labour practices. This quantitative research should show whether the company follows the legal norms in the company or not and how society treats such a company’s behaviour.
Quantitative research based on the interviews should be conducted to support all three hypotheses stated at the beginning of the study. To examine the impact of an organization’s ethical behaviour on its performance, a survey should be created where people should be asked about their personal opinion on child labour and its quality.
The purpose of another questionnaire should be to research the opinion of the society about the impact of bad image on Zara’s consumers’ purchasing behaviour. Another survey should be created with the purpose to ask the community whether they are going to buy things produced by Zara if they are aware of the use of child labour.
The research should be conducted on the Internet as this may allow us to gather opinions of people from different countries. This way of conducting research may let us consider more information as we can get more responses. It is predicted that having put the questions on the Internet, we will bring about 1000 answers in five days. The questions are going to be constructed in such a way that most people should choose the variants, but another variant option should be available. People above 15 years old are going to be allowed to answer the questions.
Still, conducting such kind of research, we are going to face several problems. First of all, the Internet questionnaires do not allow us to check the personal information of the subjects, like their sex, age, etc. Furthermore, the main limitation of the research is that just accidental people are going to answer this survey, not specifically those who are interested in the products manufactured by Zara and whose opinion has changed (or not) after the incident of child labour involvement at the working process. There is a risk that some respondents even do not know such brand and their answers may be just related to the positive or negative attitude to child labour. The dissatisfaction with the brand products may also influence the results of this survey.
The collected data should be analyzed and evaluated. The answers in the questionnaires may show us the relation of the society to child labour and the personal attitude to the companies which have been noticed in obeying the law. Moreover, the research results will also inform us about the social opinion about the brand and how the occasion changed human attitude.