Business Research Methods

OBJECTIVES:
• To make the students of tourism understand the principles of scientific methodology in business enquiry, develop analytical skills of business research and to prepare scientific business reports.

UNIT I INTRODUCTION
Business Research – Definition and Significance – the research process – Types of Research – Exploratory and causal Research – Theoretical and empirical Research – Cross –Sectional and time – series Research – Research questions / Problems – Research objectives – Research hypotheses – characteristics – Research in an evolutionary perspective – the role of theory in research.

UNIT II RESEARCH DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT
Research design – Definition – types of research design – exploratory and causal research design – Descriptive and experimental design – different types of experimental design – Validity of findings – internal and external validity – Variables in Research – Measurement and scaling – Different scales – Construction of instrument – Validity and Reliability of instrument.

UNIT III DATA COLLECTION
Types of data – Primary Vs Secondary data – Methods of primary data collection – Survey Vs Observation – Experiments – Construction of questionnaire and instrument – Types of Validity – Sampling plan – Sample size – determinants optimal sample size – sampling techniques – Sampling methods.

UNIT IV DATA PREPARATION AND ANALYSIS
Data Preparation – editing – Coding –Data entry – Validity of data – Qualitative Vs Quantitative data analyses – Applications of Bivariate and Multivariate statistical techniques, Factor analysis, Discriminant analysis, Cluster analysis, Multiple regression and Correlation, Multidimensional scaling – Conjoint Analysis – Application of statistical software for data analysis.

UNIT V REPORT DESIGN, WRITING AND ETHICS IN BUSINESS RESEARCH
Research report –Types – Contents of report – need for executive summary – chapterization – contents
of chapter – report writing – the role of audience – readability – comprehension – tone – final proof – report format – title of the report – ethics in research – Ethics in research – Subjectivity and Objectivity in research.

OUTCOMES:
• Students will understand and appreciate scientific inquiry
• Students would know to write research proposals
• The students would be able to undertake a systematic outlook towards business situations for the purpose of objective decision making, and the method of conducting scientific inquiry to solve organizational problems
• Students would be able to analyze data and find solutions to the problems.
• Students could prepare research reports

REFERENCES :

1. Donald R. Cooper, Pamela S. Schindler and J K Sharma, Business Research methods, 11th Edition, Tata Mc Graw Hill, New Delhi, 2012.
2. Alan Bryman and Emma Bell, Business Research methods, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011.
3. Uma Sekaran and Roger Bougie, Research methods for Business, 5th Edition, Wiley India, New Delhi, 2012.
4. William G Zikmund, Barry J Babin, Jon C.Carr, AtanuAdhikari,Mitch Griffin, Business Research methods, A South Asian Perspective, 8th Edition, Cengage Learning, New Delhi, 2012.
5. Panneerselvam. R, Research Methodology, 2nd Edition, PHI Learning, 2014.