STRUCTURE OF THE RESEARCH PLANNING STAGES

1. Introduction
- Background, Need & Precise Interest (Literature Review)
2. Problem – Definition, Core Nature & Importance (Significance)
- Discovering the Management Dilemma ( whether Start-Up Project/Analysis of
Existing Project)
- Defining the Management Questions
o Marketing – Strategies adopted
I) Product –
a) Brand Name
b) Related Products or Services
c) Functionality
d) Quality
II) Promotion –
a) Advertising
b) Marketing Budget
c) Promotional Strategy vis-à-vis Competitors
III) Price –
a) Pricing Strategy vis-à-vis Competitors
b) Pricing Flexibility
c) Tariff Plans
d) Seasonal Changes in Tariffs vis-à-vis Competitors
IV) Place –
a) Distribution Centres
b) Distribution Channels
o Finance – Strategies adopted
I) Balance Sheets – should include assumed & anticipated business financials,
including assets & liabilities.
II) Profit & Loss Analysis – Income Statement that subtracts the costs of
business from earnings over a specific period of time, typically a quarter
or a year.
III) Break-Even Analysis – demonstrates the point where the cost of doing
business is fully covered by sales.
o Human Resources – Strategies adopted
I) Human Resources Plan
II) Consumer Behavior
III) Co-ordination among employees or in this case, project team-mates.

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 - Defining & Refining the research questions
o Fact – oriented, information gathering questions
o Research questions broken into specific second & third level Investigative &
Measurement questions (Predesigned or Pretested in this case) respectively.
3. Review of the past research
- Significant achievements
- Gaps & justification for present study
4. Aims, objectives, hypotheses & conceptual model or theoretical
framework
- Reasonable number of challenging but not impossible special objectives.
- Formation & development of structure of relationships among variables.
- Conceptually clear, specific & anticipated outcomes as hypotheses.
5. Operational definition of concepts & terms
- For ease of measurements.
6. Scope & Limitations
- Marking of boundaries to make it manageable.
- Delimiting the scope & dimensions w.r.t
a) Topic Scope (Breadth & Depth)
b) Geographical Area (Space Co-ordinates)
c) Reference Period (Time Co-ordinates)
7. Significance of the study & expected utility of findings
- How it enriches theory and/or practice?
8. Methodology
- Type of research design
9. Sampling strategy
- Method
- Sample size adopted
10.Data collection methods & tools
- Primary and/or Secondary Data
11.Plan of analysis
- Statistical techniques to be used
12.Appendices & Supporting Information
- Information supporting statements made which includes Graphs, Charts,
Statistics, Photos, References; etc.

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