Syndicated Data and Standardized Services in Marketing Research

Today, over $20 billion a year is spent on marketing/advertising/public opinion research services around the world. Spending on marketing research is $6.9 billion in the United States alone. During the past two decades, the research market has become highly concentrated, with about 54 percent of the market being held by the 50 largest worldwide organizations. The other half of the market is shared by a thousand or more small research firms. The concentration is even more pronounced in the United States, where the 10 largest firms account for 64 percent of total U.S. spending for marketing research.

In the highly competitive retail market, understanding the customer is paramount.… Read the rest

Role of Business Research in Decision Making Process

One of the best methods of collecting information is carrying out research. When research is carried out explicitly for the purpose of running businesses, it is termed as “business research”. Business research, which is also commonly known as market research, is a process by which business relevant information is collected so as to ensure that the business operations are run intelligently. With the help of business research, existing businesses are able to keep in touch with the ever-changing consumer demands and expectations and adapt accordingly. Typically, business research is aimed at gaining information that is likely to make the business more successful.… Read the rest

Significance of Research

“All progress is born of inquiry. Doubt is often better than overconfidence, for it leads to inquiry, and inquiry leads to invention” is a famous Hudson Maxim in context of which the significance of research can well be understood. Increased amounts of research make progress possible. Research inculcates scientific and inductive thinking and it promotes the development of logical habits of thinking and organization.

Research provides the basis for nearly all government policies in our economic system. For instance, government’s budgets rest in part on an analysis of the needs and desires of the people and on the availability of revenues to meet these needs.… Read the rest

Stratified Random Sampling in Research

In the example of choosing a simple random sample of twenty employees out of a thousand in a factory, suppose they include 100 supervise and 900 workers. A simple random sample comes by mere chance and it possible that among the twenty chosen, all may be supervisors or none may be. If the researcher feels that he should study both the subgroups, it would be me sensible to take a random sample from each subgroup (stratum) after separate lists for the two strata.   Such sampling is called stratified random sampling. Stratification may be done in business research on differ characteristics like sex, age (e.g.… Read the rest

Simple Random Sampling in Research

In probability sampling, each element of the population has a known non-zero chance of being selected for the sample. Among the probability sampling methods, simple random sampling is simplest as its name indicate and it underlies many of the more complex methods.

In a simple random sample of a given size, all such subsets of the frame are given an equal probability. Each element of the frame thus has an equal probability of selection: the frame is not subdivided or partitioned. Furthermore, any given pair of elements has the same chance of selection as any other such pair (and similarly for triples, and so on).… Read the rest

Significance of Research in Social Sciences

Social sciences refer to business, commerce, demography, psychology, sociology, etc. Social sciences directly involve people. Research in social sciences arena deals with the  behavior  of people in their different roles, such consumers, competitors, producers, executives, salespersons, leaders, workers, followers, teachers, students, opinion-makers, etc. Research in social sciences deals with the systematic method of discovering new facts or of verifying old facts, their sequence, inter-relationship, casual explanations and the natural laws which cover them.

The importance that social science research wields today is immeasurable and enlarging. As social, business and economic problems abound, the significance of social research gets enhanced as it provides workable solutions.… Read the rest