How and why to create a problem statement for your market research
Market research attempts to fill a gap in your knowledge about your business, market, or customers. Before starting, however, you have to articulate your research problem with a statement of the problem you want to solve or the question you want to answer.
Why a Problem Statement Is Useful in Market Research
Before beginning any market research, you need to define the problem that the research will attempt to address, including any decision alternatives and research objectives. Your problem statement will guide every step of your market research. It articulates what you want to accomplish with your research, which guides the type of research you need to conduct. Open research is qualitative and helps you understand a phenomenon, opinion, or set of behaviors. Closed research is quantitative and seeks to identify the relationships among a set of variables.
Once you know the type of research you need, you can decide on your research methods, objectives, and time frame. Knowing these will help you gather the resources you need and begin creating a research plan.
How to Identify Market Research Questions
Market research generally begins with research questions from internal clients or from your marketing department about how to achieve specific marketing objectives or understand consumer behavior.
Using these marketing questions will help you identify your knowledge gaps and create an appropriate research problem statement, which will guide the scope of your research.
- Compile a list of all the questions your marketing staff or researchers have relating to a specific topic or situation.
- Look for categories under which the questions can be grouped.
- Create subcategories with these groups.
- Identify an overarching question that can define the missing knowledge for each subcategory.
- Try to find a single question that unites all the subcategories.
Identifying the proper scope of your problem statement can be challenging. Define the problem too narrowly and you may discover that your market researcher has missed valuable information or failed to consider other important variables. Define the problem too broadly and researchers may waste time and money collecting unnecessary information.
If you can identify a single question that brings together your subcategories, that becomes the first draft of your problem statement. If there is not a single question unifying them, you may need multiple rounds of market research, each with its own problem statement, to address each subcategory individually.
Using Your Market Research Problem Statement
There may be a specific decision for your marketing, products, budget, or brand that an answer to your research question will help you make. In that case, you can use backward mapping to identify the appropriate priorities and aims of your research.
Other times, your problem statement may be more open-ended, which means your research can be exploratory, descriptive, or causal rather than decision-mapped.
- Exploratory market research seeks to provide insights into the nature of a marketing problem, come up with new ideas, or suggest a range of possible solutions to be considered. It can help you identify new decisions or options that you didn't know were available to your business.
- Descriptive market research attempts to determine the magnitude of a marketing variable. This information can be used to identify new opportunities for your business or market, as well as better understand the needs of your target customers.
- Causal market research examines a cause-and-effect relationship. This research is often closed-ended. It can be applied to specific situations or used to identify trade-offs that your business or customers may have to make in the future.
Keep in mind that qualitative research often builds on itself. You may need to alter your focus or refine your research problem once data collection is underway.
A change in the problem statement does not necessarily reflect poor planning. More often, it indicates that your research has been successful and your team has identified where to focus the next round of research in order to completely answer your research questions.
The DBA study differs from the standard dissertation in one fundamental way: the business problem. A research problem represents something unknown in a field of study, an inconclusive concern or unresolved issue in the research. This gap in understanding is a problem for research on the topic. What is the difference between a management question and a research question? Research question(s)—the
hypothesis that best states the objective of the research; the question(s) that focuses the researcher’s attention. Management questions—the questions asked of the participants or the observations that must be recorded. What is research problem in management? A research problem is a specific issue, difficulty, contradiction, or gap in knowledge that you will aim to address in your research. You might look for practical problems aimed at contributing to change, or
theoretical problems aimed at expanding knowledge. But fear not, the process is really simple, all you have to do is follow these five steps every time: What is the difference between a problem and a research problem?How does management problem translate into research problem?
Problem situation is an explanation in simple words of the circumstances in which a problem occurs. On the other hand, defining a research problem is a more scientific approach towards the problem situation. A research problem is an area of concern which you will address through your research.
What is the business problem?
Business problems are current or long term challenges and issues faced by a business. These may prevent a business from executing strategy and achieving goals. In some cases, business problems also threaten the long term survival of a firm.
What is the difference between management and research problem?
management problem are actually the action oriented one. Research problem: It is about the data collection ,sampling and analysis of data and then draw the result. The research problems mainly focuses on the causes only.
What’s the difference between management problem and research problem?
The management decision problem asks what the decision maker needs to do, whereas the marketing research problem asks what information is needed and how it can best be obtained (see Table 4.1). Research is directed at providing the information necessary to make a sound decision.
What is research problem in business research?
Research Problem – It refers to some difficulty which a researcher experiences in the context of either theoretical or practical situation and wants to obtain a solution for the same. A research problem can be simply defined as a statement that identifies the problem or situation to be studied.
What is a research problem example?
For example, if you propose, “The problem in this community is that it has no hospital.” This only leads to a research problem where: The need is for a hospital. The objective is to create a hospital.
How do you identify management research problems?
DEFINING MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH PROBLEMS.
- 2.2 Steps required in determining the research problem.
- Understand the management’s objectives or situations.
- Identify the problem from the symptoms.
- Identify research objectives.
- Determine the unit of analysis (UOA)
- Determine the appropriate research variables.
What are management problems?
12 common management challenges
- Decreased performance levels.
- Being understaffed.
- Lack of communication.
- Poor teamwork.
- Pressure to perform.
- Absence of structure.
- Time management.
- Inadequate support.
What is the difference between decision problem and research problem?
The management decision problem asks what the DM needs to do, whereas the marketing research problem ask what information is needed and how it can best be obtained. Research can provide the necessary information to make a sound decision. The management decision problem is action oriented. Click to see full answer
Why do we need to define management and research problems?
DEFINING MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH PROBLEMS. The activities involved in this step tend to bring the researcher and the manager together because the manager needs the researcher to help in his decision making.
What’s the difference between a management and a marketing problem?
The management decision problem asks what the DM needs to do, whereas the marketing research problem ask what information is needed and how it can best be obtained. • Research can provide the necessary information to make a sound decision. • The management decision problem is action oriented.
What is the difference between a research topic and a research problem?
In short, a research topic is something to be understood; a research problem is something that needs to be investigated.