A good manager needs to have insight into the previous happenings as well as the present situation in a business so as to be able to identify the underlying trends to develop short-term and long-term business strategies. These trends could relate to managing employees, using financial resource, studying target consumers, designing or formulating products, and promoting products effectively. Collecting useful information and analyzing it to identify underlying patterns require knowledge of research methods.

Business Research Methods is intended to provide opportunities to learn about research methods (both qualitative and quantitative) and to apply them in the real business context through class-room discussions and exercises. Designed as a guide to students, researchers, and individuals carrying out business projects, this book explains how to formulate research questions, design a research plan, develop a survey questionnaire, and solve critical issues of sampling and data collection including detailed illustrations of statistical data analyses, interpretation of output, inference, and report writing. With this book, readers will get a firm grounding of each and every critical concept, method, and illustration.

Chapter 1 The Role of Business Research

Chapter 2 Information Systems and Knowledge Management

Chapter 3 Theory Building

Chapter 4 The Business Research Process: An Overview

Chapter 5 The Human Side of Business Research: Organizational and Ethical Issues

Chapter 6 Problem Definition: The Foundation of Business Research

Chapter 7 Qualitative Research Tools

Chapter 8 Secondary Data Research in a Digital Age

Chapter 9 Survey Research: An Overview

Chapter 10 Survey Research: Communicating with Respondents

Chapter 11 Observation Methods

Chapter 12 Experimental Research

Chapter 13 Measurement and Scaling Concepts

Chapter 14 Attitude Measurement

Chapter 15 Questionnaire Design

Chapter 16 Sampling Designs and Sampling Procedures

Chapter 17 Determination of Sample Size: A Review of Statistical Theory

Chapter 18 Fieldwork

Chapter 19 Editing and Coding: Transforming Raw Data into Information

Chapter 20 Basic Data Analysis: Descriptive Statistics

Chapter 21 Univariate Statistical Analysis

Chapter 22 Bivariate Statistical Analysis: Differences Between Two Variables

Chapter 23 Bivariate Statistical Analysis: Measures of Association

Chapter 24 Multivariate Statistical Analysis

Chapter 25 Communicating Research Results: Report Generation, Oral Presentation, and Follow-Up

Appendix: Statistical Tables

Glossary of Frequently Used Symbols

Glossary

Endnotes

Index