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Answer: Business research is a field of practical study in which a company obtains data and
analyzes it in order to better manage the company. Business research can include financial data,
consumer feedback, product research and competitive analysis. Executives and managers who
use business research methods are able to better understand their company, the position it holds
in the market and how to improve that position. Business research involves establishing
objectives and gathering relevant information to obtain the answer to a business issue. You can
conduct business research to answer a business-related question, such as: What is the target
market of my product? Business research can also be used to solve a business-related problem,
such as determining how to decrease the amount of excess inventory on hand. Adequate planning
and information-gathering are essential to derive results for your business.
The Nature & Importance of Business Research:
Research on aspects related your business,
such as your target customer, marketplace trends, production processes, and financial practices,
can help you predict trends, project sales, spot opportunities, and avoid potential problems.
Understanding the nature of different types of business research will help you use data to
maximize your sales and profits.
Reasons for Business Research:
Business research can help you determine what potential
customers want, which can guide you toward development of better products and services. It can
keep you abreast of what your competition is doing and help you spot marketplace and industry
trends. Research lets you analyze how your departments are performing, and then compare their
performance against projections to determine if you need to make adjustments.
Types of Business Research:
Employ a variety of business research types to maximize the benefit that data can provide your
company. Conduct customer surveys and focus groups of potential customers. Join your
industry’s trade association to access its research studies. Perform budget variance analyses
every quarter to determine if your revenue and expense projections were correct or if you need to
adjust your budget. Keep tabs on the competition to determine if they’ve changed their products,
where they’re advertising, what they are charging, and where they are selling. Check your
website traffic data to determine who’s visiting your site, what pages they’re accessing, and
which keywords bring people to your site. Sites such as Quant cast and Alexa can give you
valuable data about your competitors’ website traffic.
Methodologies:
Depending on your budget, you can conduct research in a variety of ways. Online
surveys can provide you with quick, easy-to-understand data. Websites such as Survey Monkey
let you administer short surveys for free, charging a fee for more expansive surveys. Telephone
surveys of current customers let you spend more time and solicit open-ended questions. A focus
group lets you get a small group of potential or current customers together to discuss their ideas,
suggestions and thoughts in ways that produce information you might not have considered. Mail
surveys cost more, but let you reach a large number of highly targeted recipients, depending on
what mailing list you use. Analyzing your sales by distribution channel, territory, sales rep, price
point, margin and volumes helps you determine where you should focus your marketing efforts.
Outsourcing:
If you aren’t expert at conducting research or don’t have the staff to perform this type of work,
consider hiring a research firm to assist you. They can give you a list of options, allowing you to
increase your research effort as your budget allows. Research firms have access to tools such as
databases, phone banks, and email programs that you might not be able to afford, helping you
gather data you otherwise couldn’t.
Types of Business Research Methods:
Business research serves a number of purposes.
Entrepreneurs use research to make decisions about whether or not to enter a particular business
or to refine a business idea. Established businesses employ research to determine whether they
can succeed in a new geographic region, assess competitors or select a marketing approach for a
product. Businesses can choose between a variety of research methods to achieve these ends.
1) Case Study:
When businesses want a comprehensive understanding of how customers interact and
respond to a product or service, they conduct case studies. Case studies aim to develop a
complete assessment of customer satisfaction, product use and attitudes about the product
and do so in a relevant context. For example, a knife company might conduct a case study
about its new, professional grade chef’s knife by giving one to a professional chef to use
for two months. Data gathering might include on-site observations of the chef using the
knife, as well as an interview or survey. This method allows for in-depth information
collection, but it is typically time-intensive.
2) Surveys:
One of the more common research methods, a survey enables researchers to gather large
amounts of data quickly and at a comparatively low cost. Due to the widespread use of
surveys, a solid methodology and numerous samples make it fairly easy to put together a
sound survey that gathers relevant data. Disadvantages of surveys include people in the
target market not responding, partially completed surveys and shallow information about
the target market.
3) Interviews:
Interviews often employ the same questions as those found on surveys, but they afford
people the opportunity to respond at length. This approach typically yields deep
information about one person’s experience with a product, service or company. The
opportunity to ask follow-up questions to more fully grasp a person’s response is one of
the key advantages to this research method. Interviews tend toward the time-intensive,
and careless interviewers can bias interviewee answers.
4) Focus Groups:
Focus groups typically consist of a small group of people consistent with a target market
profile that discuss a product or service. Focus groups offer a kind of middle ground
between other research methods. They provide a larger sample group than interviews or a
case study, while taking advantage of the depth that interviews afford. As with
interviews, however, the facilitator who directs the conversation can unintentionally skew
answers in a particular direction, and analysis of the information collected during the
focus group can prove difficult to analyze.
Practical applications of research in business management.
In support of its mission, the NCRG continues to seek practical applications for the research it
has funded. One example is the introduction of a new tool for training gaming employees about
responsible gaming. EMERGE (Executive, Management & Employee Responsible Gaming
Education) is a science-based employee education program created by Harvard Medical School
faculty, using funding mainly provided by the NCRG. It is the only program of its kind, offering
customizable responsible gaming training for every level of employee, from executives to
management to line staff. The program also exceeds all current state regulations for the level of
responsible gaming training required of casino employees.
Other practical applications resulting from NCRG-funded studies include the research-based
guide for parents “Talking with Children about Gambling", the development of new instruments
for measuring, screening and diagnosing gambling disorders; and development and testing of
promising treatment and intervention strategies such as Your First Step to Change.
Perhaps one of the most important impacts of the NCRG has been to encourage new ways of
thinking about gambling disorders, leading to an important paradigm shift. Clinicians,
researchers and public policy-makers have started to consider gambling from a public health
perspective. According to Dr. Howard Shaffer, director at the Division on Addictions, there are
four principles that provide the basis for a public health perspective on gambling: