Business Research Methods - Despac - Case Study Example

Topic: Business Research Methods University Name Lecturer Date of Submission Introduction Business research method is a very important tool in the today’s business activities at ensuring continued business success. This is so because business research processes has been greatly assisting the management personnel in various business organization at their crucial role of decision-making. Some of the ways in which business research methods assist the management personnel with include: (Cooper and Schiveller, 2001) Business research methods acts as a higher order in the main objective of business investigation as a descriptive analysis of most business ventures the research goes beyond plain reporting. The research gathers a wide range of information, which is very useful to the manager in their correlative study, which is directed towards discovering similarities and differences amongst different competitors. Business research is concerned with the reporting of statistical data. Although reporting is a common assignment, the collected data and information may be difficult for the top management team to fine without employing research. It is thus apparent that a good report, which has the basis of carefully gathered and reported data will by far aid the managers in the important process of decision making. (Cooper and Schiveller, 2001) Normally the researchers employ classical scientific methods in their task with the major target being explaining the forces that account for a given phenomena. Consequently, the working personnel present a working presumption to account for long distance calling an idea that helps in establishing a research design useful in testing the theory. The management team will employ the above practice in their decision making process thus assisting them in coming up with a working presumption on how stock holding and handling requirements, customer demands and the entire production process can be put together in order to arrive at increased profitability in a given company. According to Cooper and Schiveller (2001), it is under business research methods that certain theories and assumptions are gathered into a basis of forecast of the results of the various courses of action taken. The gathered facts and hypothesis will play an important role to the managers in their process of decision making because they will be able to differentiate facts and assumptions and in so doing they will tend to act accordingly. Business research methods will assist in competency development particularly when they are supposed to purchase research externally. It will assist them in proper definition of their own information needs into as well as translating the defined needs into well researchable questions for use by specialists. Mangers will also arm themselves for proper judgement of proposals made by the research specialists therefore avoiding any chances of abdicating of their useful roles of decision making to their research specialists. At times disagreements will occur in any business organization setup, at such a time a major commitment of resources is necessary. Such scenarios help the managers to adequately reconsider their purpose, formulate a problem for solution or come up with possible theories for the answers to the problems identified. (Sekaran, 2000) This gives room for the feasibility of a particular type of research. The research series consist of four major steps. 1) Exploration of the situation. 2) Research design development. 3) Collection of data 4) Results analysis and interpretation. Although it is important for research to be thoroughly grounded in management of companies particularly in decision-making, studies always tend to be less effective as they ought to be. The main caused of this divergence are the researcher’s obsession with attractive data bank and certain specified techniques. (Johnson, 1999) Background of the Project Over the last couple of years sales volumes at Despac has been dwindling. The situation has gone into an alarming level since even the number of customer base has declined gradually. The company used to earn huge profits occasioned by what used to be its huge sales volumes. Customers used to queue in order to get the required services and the task used to be everywhere about the good quality products offered by the company hence its repute was spreading far and wide. Prices were said to be competitive and pocket friendly while the future of the company promised to be a bright one (business wise). (Johnson, 1999) However, this has not been the case and much blame has been directed to the company’s sales department on the account that the sales department is the backbone of every business venture and when it fails to play its part of sales and marketing then the other departments will be stuck, for example, the production department argues that they cannot keep producing more whereas the sales department is failing them through recording low sales. The pressure mounted on the sales department led to the resignation of the sales marketing manager in this company and also two accountants from the administration department. (Johnson, 1999) The company has been losing its former glory with the senior management personnel threatening to leave the company particularly due to the increasing pressure exerted on them by the company directors. This project is aimed at establishing the root cause of all the mishappenings that are currently facing Despac, it will research for all these problems with an aim of establishing viable solutions in order to end the poor business performance experienced at the moment. The project will involve employing various business research methods in order to conduct a thorough research and come up with solid solutions pertaining to the company woes. (Denscomber, 1998) Project Aims and Objectives The project carries various aims and objectives some of which include: To reserve the current business trend i.e. from recording low sales volume to recording high sales volumes hence increased profitability. To research on the main problem affecting the company in general and provide solutions for the same. To come up with ways aimed tat halting the massive resignations of the top management personnel in the company. To come up with better ways of cutting down costs (production and transport costs) so as to boost profitability in the firm. To improve on product quality. To come up with ways of retaining customers and help in coming up with bigger list of customers. To embark on aggressive marketing i.e. increasing marketing activities through promotion and application of modern techniques. To regain the firm’s lost glory. Literature Review It is a common thing to hear the saying that sales department is the backbone of every company. When these sales that re supposed to mark the success of a company dwindles then there is certainly a need for concern. Many companies have fallen down and gone into liquidation following low sales volume. Most companies are speeding much of their resources on sales and marketing through advertising and sales promotion to ensure that the sales volumes are steady in their respective firm. Currently most companies are employing online sales due to its efficiency and reduced advertising costs successful companies such as coca cola are evaluated on their high sales volume earning million of dollars daily through sales. When a company suffers low sales volume and a reduced customer base, immediate actions should be taken to ensure that the trend is reserved. From a business point of view, having research-backed information can greatly help not only business form collapsing but also the future of its employees. It is widely known that a company supports various lines particularly on the family of the employers and closing down the company will make many people to suffer. To put the issue of low business activities in the proper perspective it is worth to note that many companies have closed down following the management’s failure on employing research to come up with possible business solutions. Management of business ventures business is doing badly in terms of sales and production; the trend can be reversed via the application of business research methods. Collection of Primary Data I spent ample resources on data collection. The actual gathering of data ranged from simple observation to interviews. I also applied questionnaires. I applied the following primary data collection methods. Interview Method Under this method I involved a wide range of clientele and asked them directly questions regarding the company products and reputation. Most of this people were saying that the firm products low quality goods as compared to many of its competitors. They said that earlier on the company used to produce high quality goods but it has since changed because its current production represents substandard goods. I kept assuring my interviewee of confidentiality assuring him that all information obtained from him will not be used for research purposes. To him he even ceased from being a customer to the company the major reason being that the company does not offer online sales services hence making its customers to waste a lot of time while shopping a thing that makes them shy away from using the company’s services. I also interviewed a few other people so as to ensure that the collected data was evenly distributed, most of them had similar suggestion to the one observed by the first interviewee. Two of them complained that the staff from this company lacked courtesy and failed to treat customers in a polite manner. This made the customers uncomfortable hence switching shops. To some they complained that the company is understaffed an idea that showed the services offered, “It takes more than thirty minutes to make a simple purchase” one of them observed. They said that Despac was no longer a household name and the image of the company had faded away making them to move to other companies with better services, quality products, courtesy and growing reputations. Observation This I did personally through visiting the outlet for a couple of days. In the first few days I was observing and monitoring the frequency of customers from a strategic point. According to the data collected customers frequency was very low considering the size of the company and its location. Compared to what used to operate as a beehive in the recent past the company’s customer base had drastically reduced. Most of them did not appear to be satisfied with the services offered and they kept complaining to the attendants that services like packaging were not done in the right manner. They appeared to be interested in doing minor shopping indicating that major shopping was done somewhere different. From my own observations I noted that Despac was not practicing good customer care while courtesy was not observed at all. Most customers were coming out of the company wearing dull faces a clear indication that they were not pleased by the services offered. The frequency was only high on weekends. Questionnaire I went ahead and drafted some questionnaire to be sent to various regions of the continent in which the company had customers. Some of the questionnaires were sent beyond the continent into other continents that used to import our products. The questionnaires were to be filled by selected individuals and then mailed back to me for my analysis. A sample of the questionnaires was 1) Is the company offering quality products? Yes No 2) How do you rate our customer care services? Excellent Good Average Poor 3) Comment on the overall performance of the company suggesting ways on how to better improve After mailing the questionnaire they were mailed back to me after one month and most people were of the view that the company did not offer quality products while on average most people commented negatively on the general performance of the company. Analysis and Interpretation After collecting the field data through employing questionnaire, observation and interview methods I analyzed the data deriving various measures as well as carrying out investigation of the findings regarding the company, developed a repot and transmitted my findings to the company’s top management learn in a way that they will assist them sufficiently in decision making. References Coghlan, D and Brannick, T (2001): Doing Action Research in your own Organization. London, Sage Cooper, D and Schiveller, D (2001): Business Research methods London McGraw-Hill Denscomber, M. (1998); The Good Research Guide Buckingham, Open University Press. Fink, A (1995); A survey Handbook thousand oaks, CA, Sage Hakim, C (2000): Research Design; Successful Designs for social and Economic Research, London, Routledge. Johnson, J (1999): Doing Field Research. New York, Free Press Kervin, J (1998): Decision making: Proven Method for Better Decisions, Maiden, MC Graw-Hill Oja, S. and Smolyan, L. (1999): Collaborative Action Research: A developmental Approach, London, Falmer Press. Sekaran, U. (2000): Research methods for Business: A skill – Building Approach (3rd edition) New York, Wiley Read More