Morocco today is considered the country that constitutes the main link between the European Union, USA and Africa not only for its geographical position but also because it is almost the only African country which has a great openness to different culture as it is the seventh economic power of Africa with a GDP of 111 billion dollars in 2017. Morocco has distinguished in recent years by a high macroeconomic stability associated with low inflation, despite its development and its openness to the outside world Morocco still suffers from a big problem of unemployment as well as a very limited access to education or it occupies the 130th place among the 177 countries for which the HDI was calculated in 2012. Of the 221 urban communes, 69% have an integrated cultural center. 35% of public schools do not have a school library. Nearly 30% have a room with books without documentary coherence and small collections of 200 to 500 books. In almost all schools, the supervision of reading and documentation rooms is practically non-existent. It rarely meets the standards that should help young people to form, flourish, be autonomous and be responsible for their lives.
According to the association Racines, which works for cultural development in Morocco and Africa, there were in 2014 less than 750 bookstores in Morocco, a bookstore for 42",600 inhabitants. Casablanca had only 190 bookstores, one for every 21",000 inhabitants.
Today the world sees the birth of a new generation called "digital generation" where all young people without exception can not live without telephone and all that is digital, so this lack of reading among young Moroccans can be blamed on the system. too much educational task that does not leave time for reading and distraction. As a young Moroccan who has completed part of my higher education in Morocco I believe that young people will read more if they have the time and if the Moroccan state takes advantage of this technological evolution to introduce online libraries by the creation of rich applications of different reading activities. Take advantage of digital to give easy access to books for young readers.
As a former student at the International University of Rabat I would like to set up an online application for the students of this university where they will have easy access to information to share by professors or directors, as well as it is an international university in partnership with several international universities this application will give a chance to the students to be connected with the other students of the world, so the application will contain as well an online library where the students can buy books that they can read avery where and any where, during the break, on the bus, on the train, at home or at the university.
To confirm this hypothesis and the reliability of this project a Market Research study is highly recommended. in this report I will explain the details of my Market Research for this project.
1- Exploratory & Descriptive Research Design
According to research conducted by the Ministry of Culture in 2001, Moroccans read only 2.5 books a year on average, and one in ten never read any.
Since this year, significant efforts have been made to promote and encourage reading, for instance The NGO has launched a new concept of READING IN PUBLIC in order to push young people to read more often.
To better know if the hypothesis we have set up is right or not an exploratory and descriptive research is strongly recommended, so this research will help us better understand the reason behind the crisis of reading in Morocco.
To go further in our research, we will be dealing with the research, reviews and reports already published by researchers who have treated the same problem through a quantitative and qualitative research.
2 - Definition of data that has to be gathered
In this phase, through quantitative and qualitative research, we will try to understand the main reason that hold Moroccans from reading, if is it really a lake of time as I have supposed or not. And can it motivate them to read if they have an easy access to books (phone application for instance).
I think it's also important to understand their reading motivations, the kind of reading they prefer excluding reading for homework.
So I think it would be also interesting to understand the emotions that link each reader to his book.
And to go deeper into our research we will try to define the place that occupied reading in Moroccan culture whether in society, family or school. or what hinders them from exercising this activity.
in this type of research more we understand the population more we are likely to obtain the effective solution to this problem.
3) Tools to be used for conducting the research
Qualitative research
To go deeper in our research we will use quantitative research and qualitative research in order to obtain a good market research results.
For the qualitative research we will use focus group and ethnographic studies and for the quantitative research we will opt for an online survey that will allow us to collect more answers faster and easly.
the quantitative research is a study that measures opinions or behaviors. it is most often based on a survey carried out on a representative sample of the population to be studied. the quantified results resulting from this survey give, after analysis, the measurement of the studied phenomenon (for example, measuring brand awareness). In our case I proposed to use online survey which will be published on Facebook groups where participants exceed 5",500 people, for example Student Office of the International University of Rabat ( Bureau des étudiants de l’université international) which perfectly target my population as well to better understand this lack of reading for Moroccans I proposed to publish also the questionnaire on the group booksellers (a group especially dedicated to the Moroccan readers where they share full of ideas and their books preference ) which gather about 124 127 members of different ages (from 14 years to 65 years). why the online survey? simply because it has many advantages firstly it is easy to build for free and easy to answer secondly it allows to reach more people since it will be published online and also the searcher doesn’t need to hier interviewers as well as it allows to obtain effective results.
So thanks to the internet and new technologies that today a researcher can conduct his research with less costs and without complication.
Qualitative researh:
Short Ethnographic Studies
The ethnographic research it is a method implemented by anthropology in the study of exotic societies.
-> extended stay of the observer on the ground
-> long-term observation in societies unknown to the ethnographer.
we can also add that it is a radically inductive approach: it aims to discover through observation what structures and organizes social relations, practices and representations. that's why I think this type of research will be useful in our studies because in Morocco there are some urban areas where people do not yet have access to internet or new technology so an Online survey or even a face-to-face interview will not be effective so in my opinion i think to better understand their behavior it will have to be on the spot for a direct observation of the popuplation in order to analyze how they deal with there life naturaly.
This research we will need a resaercher who has a good background in antropology in order to gain reliable results. The study will take us one year at least in rural and urban areas in Morocco.
Focus Group :
« When people gather to talk about something their contributions and understanding will be enriched by the group dynamic » (cousins 2009).
Why a Focus group method ?
Achieving a focus group has several advantages for instance gathering feedback from potential customers in their own words. Also allows to answer questions and resolve uncertainties, Focus group can as well be used as a tool to generate new ideas directly from the target market, as well as the participants build on the comments of others and judge their relevance, Focus group is also quick, simple and relatively cheap to organize.
In our case the observation of people within the focus group, and their way to answer to questions and how they interact with each other will help us better understand our hypothesis and why not generate a new ones.
The preparation stages of our focus group:
Goal Definitions
preparation of the questionnaire
profiling participants
invitate participants
group animation
production of the research report
Our study will be based on 4 to 5 focus groups that will take place within the International University of Rabat- Morocco- with 6 to 10 participants in each group, for a duration of about an hour with the presence of a facilitator.
and depending on the result we will see if we will need to increase the number of focus group or not.
A video recorded during the animation will help us enormously to analyze the behavior, the opinions, the answers and the way of the participants to interact so that no information can be scaped.
4) Sampling method
In my opinion I see that it is necessary to define the target of our study which will be Moroccan people. In a second place it is also necessary to define the units that make up the population in the form of characteristics.
Regarding our online surveys we will proceed to a non-probabilistic sample to exclude the illiterates but we will choose at random people with a probability of equal selection, we can suppose that a sample of 400 people of facebook group where we will publish our Online survey is more than enough to generate a good result. On the other hand in the focus group we will need 10 participants maximum and this through a random sampling startified for instance we will choose a student, a retiree, an employee, and a housewife in order to build a consistent sample.
Concerning our ethnographic study in my opinion there is no need of sampling, but by using observation technique our researcher must stay connected to a group of homogeneous people to understand the phenomenon for example: how students behave in their daily life.
In this part to answer the research questions, to help determine the trends and relationship among variables we well need to put in advance the demographic analysis of the country in order to have a general idea about our target in order to know "who" said what.
after data collection we will need to follow the following steps:
process data
==> prepare tables and graphs
==> analysis and interpret findings
==> consult again the statistician
==> prepare for editing
==> prepare for presentation
For more details we will begin with the recovery of a table where we will determine frequencies, trend and disperssion to analyze our variable.
So to make it easier for us to calculate the data we will need Excelle and SPSS two essential software.
For qualitative research based on the observer notes and the video shot during the focus group as well as a good transcription of the discussions will allow us to better understand the motivations and the brakes of the participants and this by using the QDA software that will we facilitate the work.
after this part of decryption of data we will interpret and mapping by a statistical analysis. thus we will make a comparison between the primary data and the secondary data for a good result. By following these steps one proceeds to writing a well structured and detailed report in order to avoid confiding information and making mistakes. and this will ultimately help us to confirm our hypothesis or not.
