Class Notes Of 1425.docx

Q1. Explain business research. Discuss the practical applications of research in business management with examples. 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: 1) Scientific research is the foundation of public health knowledge; 2) Public health knowledge derives from population-based observations; 3) Health initiatives are pro-active (e.g., health promotion and prevention are primary while treatment is secondary); and 4) Public health is balanced and considers both the costs and benefits of gambling. A public health perspective not only takes into consideration the impact that disordered gambling has on the community, but it also includes how government, industry and the health care sector all respond to people struggling with a gambling problem. Examples of Business Management: Small companies use many business management reports to monitor the success of their businesses and operations. These reports may include financial, labor and traffic reports, as well as detailed information about customers. Directors, managers and analysts of various departments are usually responsible for writing these reports. However, these business professionals typically share their reports with other managers and employees to keep them wellinformed. Profit and Loss Reports: Financial managers and accountants usually write and produce profit and loss reports. These reports are also called income statements. Financial professionals usually write these reports to outline the gross sales each month, quarter or year. Expenses such as product orders, promotions and employee wages are also included in these reports. Expenses are then deducted to calculate net profits. Profit and loss reports are used to study cyclical sales patterns, such as when sales peak each year. Managers also establish their advertising and inventory budgets with these reports.

Labor Reports Labor reports are used to outline various labor expenses, including salary and health benefits. Some types of labor reports are highly detailed. For example, plant managers often study labor reports to determine if their wages are in line with industry averages. Similarly, restaurant managers may use labor reports to determine how many workers should run lunch and dinner shifts. Labor is usually the largest business expense, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Hence, these reports are vital to all organizations. Web Traffic Reports: Online businesses or companies with websites often use web traffic reports. Some important details garnered from these reports include page views, unique visitors and referrers. Website referrers are search engines from which web traffic is generated, according to "Entrepreneur" online. These search engines typically include Google, MSN, Yahoo, Lycos and other major search engines. Companies also use web traffic reports to determine how long visitors spend on various pages. Managers can also study what time of day most of their customer traffic is generated. Customer Survey Reports: Marketing research professionals often conduct customer surveys by phone, mail and the Internet. These surveys are used to measure customers' satisfaction with a company's products and services. Small business owners may also use them to determine which product features are most important to customers. Marketing research managers then analyze the survey data and highlight key findings from the surveys in their reports. Top management may then use the customer survey report to develop various marketing strategies.