CDE4121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Weight Watchers
MODULE 2: THE BUSINESS RESEARCH PROCESS
Pure Research: theories, framework, models
Applied Research: application to practice
Exploratory Research:
• conducted to clarify ambiguous situations or discover ideas that may be potential business
opportunities
• It is not intended to provide conclusive evidence from which to determine a particular course of
action.
• It is not an end unto itself –usually it is conducted with the expectation that more research will be
needed to provide more conclusive evidence
• Techniques – literature review, pilot studies (small research project collecting data), pre-tests
Descriptive Research: seeks to diagnose reasons for market outcomes and focuses specifically on the
beliefs and feelings consumers have about and toward competing products (i.e. Weightwatchers example)
Casual Research: research conducted to identify cause and effect relationships
Evidence of casual research:
• Temporal sequence—the appropriate causal order of events
• Concomitant variation—two phenomena vary together
• Nonspurious association—an absence of alternative plausible explanations
Cross-sectional: a snapshot approach to research that considers one or more sites at one point in time
Longitudinal: trends-orientated approach to research that examines one or more sites at two or more
points in time, or on a continuous basis
Quantitative: relies in the collection of statistics that are then analysed through a variety of statistical
techniques
Qualitative: does ot plae ephasis o statistis…osiders a sall uer of respondents in more depth
Primary data: research that involves the collection of original data by the researcher (ie. surveys,
observation, focus groups etc.)
Secondary data: involves use of previously collected data (ie. academic journals, books etc.)
Triangulation: multiple research techniques in the same research process to gather info about an issue
Stages in research process:
1. Problem definition - management problem, research statement, objectives
2. Planning a research design - basic plan which guide the data collection and analysis phases of the
research project
3. Planning a sample - Involves any procedure that draws conclusions based on measurements of a
portion of the population (who to sample, how big the sample will be)
4. Collecting data - process of gathering or collecting information
5. Analysing data – editing (involved checking data for omissions, legibility and consistency), codes
(interpreting, categorizing, recording and transferring data), analysis (application of reasoning to
understand the data
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Exploratory research: conducted to clarify ambiguous situations or discover ideas that may be potential business opportunities. It is not intended to provide conclusive evidence from which to determine a particular course of action. It is not an end unto itself usually it is conducted with the expectation that more research will be needed to provide more conclusive evidence: techniques literature review, pilot studies (small research project collecting data), pre-tests. Descriptive research: seeks to diagnose reasons for market outcomes and focuses specifically on the beliefs and feelings consumers have about and toward competing products (i. e. weightwatchers example) Casual research: research conducted to identify cause and effect relationships. Evidence of casual research: temporal sequence the appropriate causal order of events, concomitant variation two phenomena vary together, nonspurious association an absence of alternative plausible explanations. Cross-sectional: a snapshot approach to research that considers one or more sites at one point in time.
