Business Research

Final

1. Business research is the process of acquiring the relevant information needed to make sound business decisions. It’s important to define what research is, without that people may leave out critical steps. The difference between research and data is the qualitative and quantitative questions. The qualitative or “research” addresses the important who, what, where, when, how and why and the quantitative or “data” addresses how many/much. There is always risk involved when making business decisions whether it’s starting a new business or adding a new product/service to an existing business. We conduct research in order to reduce the risks and lessen any potential losses. There are many important questions the research needs to answer in order to drive your business decisions. What is the management dilemma? What are the possible solutions? What do the customers/clients actually want? What are your competitors doing? Who is your target market? How can we meet the needs of the market? Where is the market trending? How much will it cost and what is the ROI? You’ll need to clearly define your management’s dilemma. If this is not done correctly it will not matter what the research says, the solution will fail because you aren’t addressing the actual problem. There is usually more than one possible solution to the dilemma and you should be looking for all possibilities or you’ll miss out on an opportunity. You’ll need to listen to what your customers actually want. During our presentation, the possible solutions were creating a custom fit orthotic or selling mismatched shoe sizes. We wanted to know what the actual customers wanted. If we decided to spend thousands of dollars to design and market custom fit orthotics that would cost the customers $200-$300 when the customers really just wanted the option to buy mismatched shoe sizes, we would’ve missed the opportunity to meet the needs of the market and lost a large sum of money. It’s important to know who your competitors are and what they are doing to meet the needs of the market. Many times we don’t properly identify our competitors either considering ones that shouldn’t be or ignoring the ones who should be. As an example, customers with two different show sizes could have their needs met by other shoe stores willing to sell mismatched sizes or they could be met by an orthopedics appliance company. If you only consider other shoe store as your competitors you’ll miss the other possible solutions the customers are using to meet their needs. Knowing your target market is extremely important. If you don’t your research won’t be valid and the solution will fail and knowing where the market is trending is extremely important. If you are effective and accurate when researching the trends you’ll be able to get out in front of your competitors. It’s also important to consider the costs involved and