Novel Research via Methods

A study by ​Zakaria (2012)​ investigating the safety regulations of the European Union (EU), the United States of America (USA) and Malaysia. This work was a thesis paper from a law background, which gave me an understanding of the scope, length and quality of work required to produce a thesis. Moreover, the work is highly related to my own, with many similarities. Firstly, the incorporation of regulatory frameworks and their explanations is something I will also be using in my work. The idea of comparing different geoeconomic regions (such as the EU and USA) are also features that my work incorporates. Zakaria’s work is very descriptive and uses qualitative research methods. The main research method used by the study was comparative law which was broken down into two methods of comparison, a) different types of rules, and b) different contexts of the rules. The study is particularly good at explaining the context as to why legislators choose to implement different types of rules, for example, how the USA uses a self-regulatory system due to the preferences of Americans to have more control in their purchasing decisions – allowing more risk in the market. Whereas in the EU, the regulators’ main priority is to ensure a high level of consumer safety with a lesser regard for free movement of trade outside the EU, consumer choice and market competitiveness. This study was carried out in 2012, therefore, there is no mention of the Modernization of Cosmetic Regulations Act (MoCRA, 2022), and since 2012, there has been a stress on market competitiveness in the EU as the industry is become more globalised. Cosmetics Europe have published a news article about their desire to work with the regulatory (European Commission) to increase the EU‘s competitiveness ​(European Cosmetics Industry Advocates for Smart Simplification with Safety at Its Core to Foster Innovation and Competitiveness – Cosmetics Europe, 2025)​. These updates will be featured in my work. Document analysis was another methos used in Zakaria’s thesis. My work will also use document analysis as a primary research methodology as it’s the backbone of legal scholarship. I will use the N-vivo software to help manage the vast array of regulations, legislative texts and commentary. The final research method used was informal discussions. This method can bring a lot of contexts into a piece of work, and therefore very useful for qualitative research. I will be using a similar approach, but more structured through the use of structured interviews. There is a benefit of using informal discussions over structured interviews as discussions allow for a wider range of topics to be discussed, whereas structured interviews have little space for novel opinions. This is why it’s very important that the interview questions are broad enough to capture the earnest views of my interviewees. 

Despite the strengths of Zakira’s work, it can be improved. One of the ways I will be building on Zakira’s work will be through the use of quantitative research methods. A mixed-methods approach will help with triangulation of the data and therefore help answer the research question better as well as provide potential solutions explored in my thesis. Not many studies used mixed methods in this field of study. Another relevant study by ​Ferreira et al. (2022)​ also used document analysis but didn’t incorporate any quantitative analysis in their study. Other studies state their methodologies as the ’literature method’ in which literature sources were used to generate the data ​(Putri et al., 2024)​. The use of these methods will ensure that my work is unique and novel.