What is Business Academic Research & How to Conduct It? Effective Steps You Must Know

The content of this article will primarily focus on the conceptual understanding of academic research and ways to conduct it in a stepwise manner.

Business academic research- A brief introduction:

Business academic research refers to the process of exploring things that help all types of businesses solve their concerns in one way or another. The most common aspects of being considered while conducting business research include sales and profit maximising policies, finding best-selling services or products, and making sustainable policies to ensure a long successful business journey.

To put it simply, it can be stated that business research is the acquisition of data for solving professional and commercial problems or determining the opportunities to achieve long-term goals.

Types of Business academic research:

Business academic research is of two types, i.e, qualitative research methods and qualitative research methods. In either case, there is a long list of steps to do for terminating the process. The basic difference between these types of research is in the form of the data. One is effective in grabbing quantitative form of data (textual or non-numerical), while the other is a method to scrap qualitative information (non-textual or numerical data).

All in all, the type of data that you gather in business research determines the type of research as well. The interesting thing about conducting both types of research is that each offers a complete set of pre-determined steps that help researchers smoothly deal with any scientific nature.

Qualitative Business Research:

It is the type of research that targets the audience to get information by putting questions into practice. It is an ideal method of research for the business researcher that aims to pinpoint the emotions, briefs, and even cultural or geographical limitations in research. To achieve the aims, the qualitative business researcher presents a number of ways in front of the researcher so they can get benefited at each step. There are many methods for collecting, analysing, and reducing data.

• Available options for collecting qualitative data: The available options in the methods of collecting qualitative data include a questionnaire, case study, focus group, literature search, and interviews.
• Available options for collecting qualitative data: Likewise, there are many methods of analysing qualitative data, such as content analysis, thematic analysis, discourse analysis, ethnographic analysis, and systematic literature review.

Quantitative business research:

Quantitative business academic research is a bit more critical in dealing with sensitive issues more accurately. It collects the data in numerical form and then applies some mathematical formulae and models to get insights about the problem under observation.

Thus, it is necessary to start with proper guidance if you really want to succeed in this method of conducting business research. However, assistance and guidance can be obtained from supervisors, seniors, and even Dissertation writers UK, at every step.

Available options for collecting quantitative data:

For collecting data to conduct quantitative business research, the important methods include experimentation (direct and controlled), close-needed questionnaires, surveys, polls, and observations. In business studies, surveys and polls are the most common method; however, in medical sciences, the experimental method is the most sought-after one.  

Available options for collecting quantitative data:  

Due to the nature of the data to be collected, the tools and techniques used for analysing, summarising and interpreting the quantitative data also vary greatly. The tools used for analysing this form of data include SPSS, NVivo, STATE, R, Python, Excel, GraphPad Prism, and many more.

Simultaneously, the methods of analysis include statistical methods that are further divided into descriptive and inferential statistics. To get a complete guide on statistical techniques to analyse quantitative business data, you must consult Dissertation Writing Services.

Steps to conduct academic business research:

After knowing all the above-mentioned concepts about research, you are now in a position to follow the following steps for conducting business research.

1. Decide the topic of research:
2. Select the type of business research:
3. Conduct literature search:
4. Decides methods (data collection and analysis).”
5. Collect and analyse the data
6. Conclude the study

Importance of business academic research:

Business academic research is important to carry on due to several reasons. Some of these are listed below:

• It facilitates businesses to gain better insights into market trends, customer demands and buying patterns.
• By knowing customer’s demands it helps an organisation increase its profitability.
• The knowledge of market trends helps new companies to take a head start.
• After knowing the purchasing power and buying patterns of customers, the companies decide on marketing campaigns and tricks to target the purchase decision of customers.
• It also helps in budgeting and planning for making future business plans.

Final Thought:

After all is said and done, we must say that business academic research is an exercise that aims to prepare the student to emerge as successful young entrepreneurs. It ensures that a student develops know-how of all the fundaments of conducting business research. Both qualitative, as well as quantitative research methods have their own place and advantages.

It will be only your research goals that decide the appropriate method for your study. The article has provided all the fundamental information necessary to take vital decisions for solving a scientific mystery related to business academic research.