Designing Research Proposals in Commerce

& Management
Dr. R. D. Biradar*
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Introduction:
Research is a systematic, objective analysis and recording of controlled
observations that may lead to the developments of generalizations, principles or theories
resulting in prediction and possibly ultimate control of events. Commerce research has
application oriented research to solve the problems in the trade, industry and commerce.
This type of research is also useful in decision making of business management.
Commerce research is systemized efforts to gain new knowledge. Many times commerce
research is taken as knowing the relationship between and among the variables in the
organizations. Human behavior is a part of commerce research. Though it become
difficult to relate and determine the relationship between human behavior and socio-
economic and techno, political factors, but it is important to study, the human behavior,
which is multidimensional social research. Mostly commerce & management research is
undertaken to discover answers to questions by applying scientific method.
In this paper an attempt is made identify the major areas of research in commerce
and management and describe that can be searched in these areas.

Areas of Research in Commerce and Management:

Every activity of business, trade, industry and commerce can be considered for
research. Because every activity of business is a decision making and problem oriented.
Broadly we can have the following areas of research in commerce & management.

*Professor & Head, School of Commerce & Management Sciences, Swami Ramanand
Teerth Marathwada University, Nanded. Maharashtra.
 COMMERCE

TRADE AID TO
TRADE

Retail Wholesaler Transport Banking

Domestic International Insurance Warehousing

Communication Branding

Management

INDUSTRY MANAGEMENT

Scale of Operation Construction Marketing Systems

Services Genetic Production Human Resource

Development

Manufacturing Extraction Information Finance

Technology
 Take an example of marketing and see what the areas for research are. Each and
every components of commerce and management activity has considerable scope to
undertake research and establish the relationship between the variables. Major research
carried out in commerce and management is of conventional type of research. Such
research is mostly carried out for partial fulfillment of degree or diploma like, M. Phil,
and Ph.D. over a period of time the research in commerce is still confined with certain
areas with specific activities. It needs to extend its application to the current issues of
socio-economic development of the society. There are emerging areas in the functional
management which needs to be studied. For example in marketing management societal
marketing is vital area of research. Similarly, services marketing, Green marketing, E-
marketing etc. are equally important.

Application of Technique in Commerce & Management:

In commerce and management studies there are number of technique which can
be used for studying the topic systematically as a research study. Some of the techniques
are as follows.
 Total Quality Management  PERT/CPM and network
 Business process reengineering techniques
 Inventory control techniques  Bench Marking
 Ratio analysis  ISO-9000-9009
 Break even point  ISO14000
 Cost benefit analysis  Social audit
 Profitability analysis

Interdisciplinary Areas of Research:

 Psychologist approach towards Entrepreneurship
 Business, Industry Vs Academia
 Environment and Industry
 Technology and HRD
 Stress Management and HRD
  MIS and Productivity
 E-commerce and Business performance
 Education and Sociology and economic change
 Society and natural resource management

Any two or more areas are taken for study it becomes interdisciplinary research.
Say for example poverty can not; be studied with one aspect like economic or social.
Poverty has multidimensional approach, so it can be studied with interdisciplinary
approach.
Besides this, UGC, ICSSR, Govt. of India, State Govt. and most of the funding
agencies invites applications for conducting research in the priority areas. Research areas
may change from time to time but there is always a top priority for certain areas. Such
areas and creating healthy environment in the region, some of such a priority areas are as
follows.

Priority areas for Research:

 Environment Management
 Quality Management
 Impact of LPG on
economic development
 WTO and its impact of economy
 Information Technology
Social change
 Media and ethics
 Waste Management
 Human rights
 Intellectual poverty Rights
 Women Entrepreneurship
 Empowerment and Management
 Natural Resource Management
 Rural Development
 Agricultural Marketing
Socio-  Small Scale Industry
 Management of Public Sector
undertaking
and  Societal issues
 Yoga & Value Education
 Project Management
 Disaster Management
 Consumer protections
 Labour Studies
 HRD & Manpower Planning
 Retail Management
 Sustainable Development
  Global Recession  Stress Management
 Human Development  Indian Ethos
 Services Marketing  Management & Spirituality
 Personality Development  Development & Spirituality
 Time Management  Good Management Practices

Areas for research are many but how to search a topic for research and how to
make the rationale of the research is real problem. For example entrepreneurship
development is the area of research. But how to put it in the form of research problem is
basically a big problem.
This problem can put forward as how this is important for the development and
what makes people success in entrepreneurship development form the different schools
of thought like economists, psychologists, sociologists, can be studied. Another example
can be given from agricultural marketing. What can be searched in agricultural marketing
is “Farmers share in consumer’s rupee”, etc. This is an excellent topic for research.
Similarly, the researcher should identify the rationale of the topic and formulate the
research design.

 Areas of Research in Marketing

Research on Products:
 Reviewing product line, quality, features, sign and rationalization of product lines
 Study on the actual uses of a give product
 Study on new uses of an existing product
 Testing of new products
 Study of the competitive position of a product/brand
 Study on related products and the nature of the relationship
 Study of packaging/ packing/ design, packing material, package size, etc.
 Study on servicing requirements
Research on Market:
 Study of the Market size/ potential
 Study of the Market profile
 Market share analysis
 Determining Market characteristics
 Study of Market segments
 Conducting elaborate Market surveys
 Sales forecasting-short range and long range
 Study of overall business trends
 Study of seasonal trends

Research on Consumer:
 Study of consumer profile
 Study of consumer brand preference, tastes and reactions
 Study of shifts in consumption patterns
 Study of consumer dissatisfaction and sources of dissatisfaction
 Operating consumer panels

Research on Advertising and Promotion:

 Motivation research
 Media research
 Assessing Ad effectiveness and Ad impact
 Assessing efficacy of sales promotional measures

Research on Distribution:
 Measuring relative effectiveness of different types of distribution intermediaries
 Measuring dealer reaction to company and its products and services
 Measuring dealers patronage of competitor’s brands viz-a viz company’s brands
 Measuring the relative effectiveness of different modes of transportation
 Measuring warehouses efficiency
 Distribution cost analysis
Research on Pricing:
 Evaluating the pricing strategy of the firm
 Assessing the general pattern of pricing followed by the industry
 Measuring price elasticity of demand

Research on Sales Methods:

 Testing new sales programmes
 Analysis problems of selling
 Measuring salesmen’s effectiveness
 Study of sales compensation
 Analysis methods of setting sales quotas

Research on Competition:
 Study on competitive structure of the industry land individual competitors
 Study of competitor’s products, price promotion programmes channel policies and
sales methods.