Business research methods 9th edition

Introductory page or opening screen is called the home page because it provides basic information about the purpose of the document along with a menu of selections or links that lead to other screens with more specific information. Connections between pages anywhere on the Internet are called hyperlinks.

Search engine — a computerized directory that allows anyone to search the WWW for information based on a key word search e. Key word search — search engine searches through millions of Web pages for documents containing the key words. Google revolutionized search engines by basing searches on a mathematical theory known as graph theory, which greatly improved the accuracy and usefulness of results.

Interactive Media and Environmental Scanning Interactive medium — a medium i. Environmental scanning entails all information gathering that is designed to detect changes in the external operating environment of the firm. Information Technology Pull technology — consumers request information from a Web page and the browser determines a response.

Software is used to guess what information might be interesting to consumers based on the pattern of previous responses. Information is available only inside the organization or to those whom the organization deems as appropriate participants. Serve as knowledge portals that contain substantial amounts of organizational memory and can integrate it with information from outside sources.

Can be extended to include key consumers as a source of valuable research e. Internet2 A collaborative effort involving about universities, government entities, and corporate organizations in the U.

Goal is to create a faster more powerful Internet by providing multimodal access, employing more wireless technologies, and building in global trading mechanisms. What is the difference between data, information, and intelligence? Data are simply facts or recorded measures of certain phenomena things or events ; information is data formatted structured to support decision making or define the relationship between two facts.

Market intelligence is the subset of data and information that actually has some explanatory power enabling effective decisions to be made. So, there is more data than information and more information than intelligence. What are the characteristics of useful information? Information can be evaluated by using four characteristics: relevance, quality, timeliness, and completeness. Relevance is the characteristic of data reflecting how pertinent these particular facts are to the situation at hand.

Data quality is the degree to which data represent the true situation. High-quality data are accurate, valid, and reliable. High-quality data represent reality faithfully. Timeliness means that the data are current enough to still be relevant.

Completeness refers to having the right amount of information. What is the key question distinguishing relevant data from irrelevant data? Define knowledge management. What is its purpose within an organization? Knowledge is a blend of previous experience, insight and data that form organizational memory.

The purpose of knowledge management is to organize the intellectual capital of an organization in a formally structured way for easy use. What type of databases might be found in the following organizations? Holiday Inn Holiday Inn will have the standard accounting records, of course, but they will also have information about the characteristics of each registered guest.

They have the home address, destination on a trip, place of employment, perhaps the type of credit card used, and make of automobile. This will allow a great deal of direct mailing activity. Frequent visitor questionnaires and loyalty program information would also provide customer data. The databases could be used to determine market performance such as average percentage of capacity used on a seasonal or weekly basis.

The occupancy-to-variable-labor ratio could be monitored to access productivity in specific areas. Comparison of occupancy rates before and after advertising and promotional efforts adjusted for seasonal variations could help measure the effectiveness of those expenditures.

Data can be used to assess the effectiveness of promotional activities i. Data can also be maintained on support of the athletic programs in the form of donations. Anheuser-Busch Anheuser-Busch would have information concerning all the different types of package sizes, sales volume within regions, etc. Anheuser-Busch has a computerized shelf-space management program for its retailers that audit sales, margins, and turnover by brand and package.

Further, to check on wholesaler performance, Anheuser-Busch has staff at headquarters record salesperson call frequency to each account, weekly and monthly sales of all beer, and shelf-space facings for all brands. Additionally, sales levels might help indicate advertising campaign effectiveness after adjusting for seasonal fluctuations.

An extensive scanner database would exist for supermarket sales. Beer sales in taverns and liquor stores would most likely be kept using a different type of record keeping system. While business research can perform four possible functions i. Performance refers to research that monitors specific metrics including financial statistics like profitability and delivery times. The metrics that are monitored can be fed into automated decision making systems, and they can trigger reports that are delivered to managers.

In this case, FedEx can monitor its performance of on-time delivery, customer complaints, and profitability. What makes a decision support system successful? Thus, a successful decision support system is one that stores relevant data and transforms them into organized information that is easily accessible to managers.

What is data warehousing? More specifically, a data warehouse is the mulitiered computer storehouse of current and historical data. Data warehousing management requires that the detailed data from operational systems be extracted, transformed, placed into logical partitions, and stored in a consistent manner. While there, choose two cars that you might consider buying and compare them.

Which do you like the best? What would you do now? What are at least three pieces of data that should be stored in a data warehouse somewhere based on your interaction with Kelly Blue Book? Data warehousing assists decision making by storing and organizing relevant data for simplified access. The answers to this question will vary. The Internet is a worldwide network of computers that allows users access to data, information, and feedback from distant sources.

The Internet has no central computer; instead, each message sent bears an address code that lets a sender forward a message to a desired destination from any computer linked to the Net.

Internet standards and technology, but the information is available only inside the organization or to those individuals whom the organization deems as appropriate participants. Thus, the key. Suppose a retail firm is interested in studying the effect of lighting on customer purchase behavior.

Which of the following pieces of information is the least relevant and why? Amount of natural light in the store. The compensation system for store salespeople. The color of the walls in the store. The type of lighting: fluorescent or incandescent. It would seem that the compensation system for store salespeople would be the least relevant piece of information because it has no impact on the lighting.

The other factors could directly or indirectly influence the lighting in the store. List at least five types of data that are collected through the daily operations. Describe each in terms of it illustrating data, information, or intelligence. Make sure you list at least one example of each. Possible data collected each day include the number of bids, the value of bids, the number of sales, personal information on customers making purchases, the types of products most popular with sellers and buyers, and the number of repeat buyers.

These data could be turned into useful information by looking at the most relevant data to assist in making strategic decisions. Then, useful information can be used to develop strategic programs, such as customer relationship management programs for frequent purchasers and the development of push programs that would send information to these customers when an item they would most likely be interested in comes up for bid.

The technology could be embedded in the shoes to logistically track the flow of goods from the manufacturer to consumer. How consumers actually use the shoe can be assessed.

That is, do they just use them for exercise, or do they wear them for casual shoes? The length of time consumers keep the shoe could be assessed as well as the method of disposal. The purpose of this Web site is to teach users how to use search engines to find what they are looking for. Students should be able to easily find information from this site.

What is the weather in Angers, France today? What are four restaurants in the French Quarter in New Orleans? What is the population of Brazil? You can find the answers to all these using search engines such as Yahoo! Finally, the population of Brazil is ,, July estimate. CASE 2. They make their way through the narrow aisles of the crowded department store, picking up a sweatshirt here, trying on a baseball cap there, and checking out the endless array of merchandise that bears the Harvard University insignia.

Was the Harvard Square store attracting steady traffic? Were the college students buying enough books and supplies for the Co-op to make a profit? Back then, it was tough to answer those questions precisely. The owners had to watch and wait, relying only on their gut feelings to know how things were going from minute to minute. His window on the business is the PC that sits on his desk. In a matter of seconds, the computer can report gross margins for any product or supplier, and Murphy can decide whether the margins are fat enough to justify keeping the supplier or product on board.

Questions 1. What is a decision support system? What advantages does a decision support system have for a small business like the Harvard Cooperative Society? A decision support system is a system that helps decision-makers confront problems through direct interaction with computerized databases and analytic software programs. The purpose of a.

Decision support systems serve specific business units within a company. A decision support system is a sophisticated software program that analyzes the data an executive deems critical to his or her business and delivers the analyses to a computer screen as easy-to-read graphics and text reports.

A decision support system can, for instance, spot a potential cash flow problem before it happens, enabling a CEO to avert a crisis. Or it can show that seasonal inventory is not moving as fast as it was last year, which might prompt a company president to reduce prices to avoid getting stuck with extra goods. Its ultimate purpose is to give executives the detailed information they need to assess the state of their company and make informed decisions.

How would the decision support system of a small business like the Harvard Cooperative Society differ from that of a major corporation? Decision support systems are not new. Large corporations have been using them for years. Information Systems and Knowledge Management. Theory Building. Qualitative Research Tools. Secondary Data Research in a Digital Age. Survey Research: An Overview. Survey Research: Communicating with the Respondents. Observation Methods. Experimental Research. Measurement and Scaling Concepts.

Attitude Measurement. Questionnaire Design. Sampling Designs. Basic Data Analysis: Descriptive Statistics. Univariate Statistical Analysis.