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Business Research
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Business researchLecture week one
Exam -> combined exam with 20/30 right answers makes a 5.5.
Books -> research methods for business students and the craft of research
What is research? Research mostly consist of Information gathering, this could be scientific or just
applied research. Scientific research involves systematic observation/ experimentation of
phenomena. Applied research is of direct and immediate relevance to practitioners (important
issues, actionable results.
To start an research you have steps you can follow;
1. Research question/ research objective
Should be specific, realistic and important for the company
2. Exploration
What do other people in this business know and where can I retrieve this data
3. Conceptual model
Gap in knowledge (needs data)
4. Research designs
How will I find out what I need to know? You test if you conceptual model works in the
way you designed it.
5. Analysis
6. Findings & conclusions
If your objective is to gain insight in a topic of interest, you are conducting exploratory research.
(What is known about …) If your objective is to gain accurate profile of a situation, you are
conducting descriptive research (what are the current sales of ….). If your objective is to establish a
causal relationship, you are conducting exploratory research. (Which factors affect sales of the…
brand)
Definitions of research approach, strategy and design
- A research approach is the perspective you take for you research
- A research strategy is a general plan of how you will go about answering your questions
- A research design is about your process and the end design.
research research
research design
aproach strategy
A research approach can have a perspective:
Inductive research; approach that involves developing theory after observation of empirical data.
(collect data and then create theory)
Deductive research: approach that involves testing theories by collecting empirical data (know
theory and then collect data)
A research proposal is a structured plan of your proposed research objective. The following
groundwork needs to be done prior to writing your research proposal:
- Define the research objective
, - Review of academic and business literature
- Identify your research approach
- Design your research / methodology
- Assess ethical issues with regards to your data collection
- Define target population and sampling techniques
- Define data collection methods and data analysis techniques
Lecture week two
Exploration – why look at other literature?
It helps you to refine your research questions/objectives. Enables you to identify and define some
common concepts/variables. Helps you to identify key academic theories on your top of interest and
to see what has NOT ben investigated. Protentional to use other data sources or find out how other
researches acquired their data. Need to use exiting theory to analyse your research / findings.
Primary (Grey) literature: the FIRST occurrence of an item of information. Produced by all levels of
government, academics, business and industry but NOT controlled by commercial publishers, for
example; manuscripts, interview, official report (crime report from FBI).
Secondary literature sources: interpret and analyse information obtained from primary sources.
Published sources, for example published academic journal articles, books, newspapers,
encyclopaedias.
Research strategies
Experiment: consist of checking whether a change in the independent variable leads to a change in
dependent variable. Considered the golden standard of research.
Survey: consist of using structured observations, structured interviews, and questionnaires. Allows
for the collection of standardized data from a large population
Archival: research strategy that analyses administrative records and documents as the principal
sources of data.
Case study: consists of studying a contemporary phenomenon in its real life context, sing multiple
sources of evidence.
Ethnography: focus on describing and interpreting the social word through first-hand field study.
This includes participant observation, field notes, interview and surveys.
Grounded theory: strategy in which theory is developed from the data collected by a series of
observations or interviews. Theory is grounded (or produced) from the date. It is very useful for
developing theoretical explanations of social interactions and processes in a wade range of contexts.
Nature inquiry: is a research strategy to collect the experiences of participants as whole accounts or
narratives, or which attempts to reconstruct such experiences into narratives.
Lecture week three
Research design
Conceptual models…. Some definitions
Concept – a general notion, in research a concept is a developed idea about a phenomenon that you
want to study. Examples: customer satisfaction and service quality
Theory – is a formulation regarding the cause and effect relationships between two or more
concepts, which may or may not have been tested. Examples: higher service quality leads to higher
customer satisfaction.
Operationalization – the process of translating concepts into measurable variables
Variable – an attribute on which data is collected you can think about things like age or colour
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