This document outlines the steps in conducting business research. It discusses exploratory, descriptive, and causal research. Exploratory research explores problems through secondary data analysis, expert surveys, focus groups, depth interviews, case studies, and projective techniques to understand issues, identify variables, and develop hypotheses. Descriptive research involves collecting data to describe characteristics and causal research determines relationships between variables through experiments and quasi-experiments. The research process involves identifying a problem, defining it as a research question, developing a proposal, determining methods, collecting and analyzing data, and reporting findings.

1. Author: Naval Bajpai
Business Research Methods, 2e
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Business Research Process Design
Chapter 2

2. Author: Naval Bajpai
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Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this chapter, you will be able to:
 Understand the steps in conducting research
 Understand the types of research
 Learn the purposes and methods of conducting exploratory research
 Learn about descriptive research and the types of descriptive
research
 Have a preliminary idea about causal research
 Establish a difference between exploratory research, descriptive
research, and causal research

3. Author: Naval Bajpai
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Introduction
• Research is all about finding something, the absence of which
may distort our ability to take informed decisions (Nwokah et al.,
2009).
• The ability to take an informed decision is generated through a
systematic study that is conducted through various interrelated
stages.
• All the steps in a research are interrelated and no independent
activity is launched without considering the decisions on the
previous stages.
• One has to really understand that, from problem identification to
presentation of findings, every step is interlinked and interrelated.

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Business Research Process Design
• A research design is the detailed blueprint used to guide a research study towards
its objective.
• A good research is conducted using 10 steps:
1. Problem or opportunity identification
2. Decision maker and business researcher meeting to discuss the problem and
opportunity dimensions
3. Defining the management problem and subsequently the research problem
4. Formal research proposal and introducing the dimensions of the problem
5. approaches to research
6. Field work and data collection
7. Data preparation and data entry
8. Performing data analysis
9. Interpretation of result and presentation of findings
10.Management decision and its implementation.

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Figure 2.1: Business Research Process Design

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Step 1: Problem or Opportunity Identification
 The process of business research starts with the problem or
opportunity identification.
 Actually, the management of the company identifies the problem or
opportunity in the organization or in the environment. The
management can identify the symptoms or the effects of the
problem, but to understand the reasons of the problems, a
systematic research has to be adopted.
 This required research should either be executed by a business
research firm or a business researcher.

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Step 2: Decision Maker and Business Researcher Meeting to
Discuss the Problem or Opportunity Dimensions
• The decision maker contacts the business research firm and then
discusses the problem or opportunity with the business researcher.
• The researcher can only suggest solution to a problem, but the
actual decision is taken by the decision maker.

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Step 3: Defining the Management Problem and Subsequently
the Research Problem
• The management problem is concerned with the decision maker
and is action oriented in nature. For example, the management
problem offers a psychological pricing to enhance the quantum of
sales. This management problem focuses on the symptoms.
• Research problem is somewhat information oriented and focuses
mainly on the causes and not on the symptoms. This is to
determine the consumer’s opinion on psychological pricing and to
estimate their purchase behaviour for the psychological price being
offered.

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Step 4: Formal Research Proposal and Introducing the
Dimensions to the Problem
• Now, the researcher prepares a formal proposal of the research and
develops the approaches to the research problem. The first part is
to develop a theoretical model to quantify an attitude.
• For example, to estimate the “buying intentions” for a particular
product, first, the researcher has to prepare a theoretical model to
measure an attitude like buying intentions.

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FIGURE 2.2 : Theoretical model to measure the buying intention

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Framing Hypotheses
• Hypothesis 1: “Brand image” has a significant liner impact on the buying
intention.
• Hypothesis 2: “Brand awareness” has a significant liner impact on the
buying intention.
• Hypothesis 3: “Price” has a significant liner impact on the buying
intention.
• Hypothesis 4: “Availability” has a significant liner impact on the buying
intention.
• Hypothesis 5: “After-sales services” has a significant liner impact on the
buying intention.

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• The researcher can also test the combined impact of these five
variables on the buying intention. The proposed multiple regression
model will be
Hypothesis 6: All the five factors in combination have a significant linear
impact on the buying intention.

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Step 5: Approaches to Research
• The research approach is formulated is the next step.
• In the light of the “type of data,” questions are framed and
scientifically placed in the questionnaire.
• This chapter is based on the research design formulation,
Chapter 3 deals with measurement and scaling, Chapter 4
with the aspects of the questionnaire design in detail, and as
a next step, a sample size is determined and a sampling
technique is selected in Chapter 5.

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Types of Research
• All researches can be broadly classified into three groups:
exploratory research, descriptive research, and causal research.
• These three methods differ in terms of different aspects of
conducting the research.

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FIGURE 2.3: Classification of different types of research

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Exploratory Research
• As the name indicates, exploratory research is mainly used to
explore the insight of the general research problem. This is used for
the following purposes:
A. Obtaining Background Information
B. Research Problem Formulation or Defining it More Precisely
C. Identifying and Defining the Key Research Variables
D. Developing Hypotheses

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FIGURE 2.4: The refined theoretical model to measure the buying
intentions (obtaining inputs from exploratory research)

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Methods of Conducting Exploratory Research

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Secondary Data Analysis
• The secondary data are not only used for problem understanding
and exploration but are also used to develop an understanding
about the research findings.
• Chapter 6 exclusively deals with this topic.

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Expert Survey
• To get the authentic information about the problem, the
researchers sometimes consult the experts of the concerned
field. These experts provide authentic and relevant
information useful for the research, which otherwise is
difficult to obtain.

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Focus Group Interviews
• The focus group interview is a qualitative research technique in
which a trained moderator leads a small group of participants to an
unstructured discussion about the topic of interest.

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Depth Interviews
• A depth interview is a probing between a highly skilled interviewer
and a respondent from the target population to unfold the
underlying opinions, motivations, emotions, or feelings of an
individual respondent on a topic generally coined by the researcher.

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Case Analysis
• A case study research method actually combines the record analysis
and observations from individual and group interviews. The case
studies become particularly useful when one needs to understand
some particular problem or situation in great depth and when one
can identify the cases rich in information.

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Projective Techniques
• Projective technique is achieved by presenting the respondents
with ambiguous verbal or visual stimulus materials, such as bubble
cartoons, which they need to make sense of by drawing from their
own experiences, thoughts, feelings, and imagination before they
can offer a response.
• In the field of business research, the projective techniques are
broadly classified as word association, completion task,
construction task, and expressive task.

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Classification of Projective Techniques
• Word Association: Word Association Word association provides a
technique that facilitates the study and shading of attitudes, which
cannot be ordinarily uncovered through standard interview
methods.
In the word association technique, the respondents are required to
respond to the presentation of an object by indicating the first
word, image, or thought that comes in his or her mind as a
response to that object.
• Completion Task : In a completion task, the respondent is
presented with an incomplete sentence, story, argument, or
conversation and asked to complete it. In the field of business
research, the two widely used completion task techniques are
sentence-completion task and story-completion task.

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Classification of Projective Techniques
• Construction Task : Construction task is related to the completion task
technique with a little difference. In the construction task technique, the
respondent is provided with less initial structure as compared with the
completion task where the respondent is provided with an initial
structure, and then, he or she completes the task.
• In the field of business research, third-person questioning and bubble
drawing (cartoon testing) are two commonly used construction
techniques.
• Expressive Task: In expressive task technique, the respondents are asked
to role-play, act, or paint a specific (mostly desired by the researcher)
concept or situation. In the roleplaying technique, the participant is
required to act someone else’s behaviour in a particular setting.

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Descriptive Research
• As evident from the name, descriptive research is conducted to
describe the business or market characteristics.
• The descriptive research mainly answers who, what, when, where,
and how kind of questions.
• It attempts to address who should be surveyed, what, at what time
(pre- and post-type of study), from where (household, shopping
mall, market, and so on), and how this information should be
obtained (method of data collection).
• It can be further classified into cross-sectional study and
longitudinal study.

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Cross-Sectional Study
• Cross sectional research design involves the collection of
information from a sample of a population at only one point of
time.
• In this study, various segments of the population are sampled so
that the relationship among the variables may be investigated by
cross tabulation (Zikmund, 2007).
• Sample surveys are cross-sectional studies in which the samples
happen to be a representative of the population.
• The cross-sectional study generally involves large samples from the
population; hence, they are sometimes referred as “sample
surveys.”

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Longitudinal study
• Longitudinal study involves survey of the same population
over a period of time.
• There is a well-defined difference between a cross-sectional
study and a longitudinal study.
• In a longitudinal study, the sample remains the same over a
period of time. In a cross-sectional design, a representative
sample taken from the population is studied at only one point
of time.

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Causal research
• Causal research is conducted to identify the cause-and-effect
relationship between two or more business (or decision) variables.
Many business decisions are based on the causal relationship
between the variables of interest.
• As discussed, the descriptive research is able to answer who, what,
when, where, and how kind of questions but not the “why” part of
the question. The causal research is designed to address the why
part of the question.

31. Author: Naval Bajpai
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TABLE 2.2: A relative comparison of exploratory research, descriptive
research, and conclusive research

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Step 6: Field Work and Data Collection
• Chapter 6 is exclusively based on secondary data sources. The
researcher has to also decide whether he or she has to go for a
survey or has to adopt the observation methods and decide
whether the research will be based on the field data collection or it
will be a laboratory experiment.
• Chapter 7 is based on survey and observation techniques, Chapter 8
introduces the various dimensions of experimentation, and Chapter
9 focuses on field work and data preparation process.

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Step 7: Data Preparation and Data Entry
• After field work, the collected data are in raw format.
• Before performing data analysis, it is important for a researcher to
structure the data.
• There is a specific scientific procedure to deal with the missing data
and other problems related to the data-collection process. Chapter
9 details all these aspects of data preparation.

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Step 8: Data Analysis
• After feeding the data in the spreadsheet, data analysis is launched.
Chapters 10 to 20 present various sophisticated statistical analytical
techniques to execute the data analysis exercise. These include
univariate statistical analysis, bivariate statistical analysis, and
multivariate statistical analysis.

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Step 9: Interpretation of Result and Presentation of Findings
• It has been already discussed that after applying data analysis
techniques, a statistical result is obtained.
• There is need to interpret the result and present the non-statistical
findings derived from the statistical result. A meaningful
interpretation of the result is a skilful activity and is an important
aspect of research.
• The researcher has to determine whether the result of the study is
in line with the existing literature.
• In this connection, Chapter 21, indicates Presentation of Result:
Report Writing.

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Step 10: Management Decision and Its Implementation
• As the last step of conducting a research programme, the
findings are conveyed to the decision maker after consultation
with the research programmer.
• The decision maker analyses the findings and takes an
appropriate decision in the light of the statistical findings
presented by the researcher.
• This is not a formal part of the research process. Here, it is
included as a step of the research process, because it is the
decision maker who will ultimately take the decision and is the
managerial implication of the research programme.