Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
As you write the research report, keep your audience in mind. Don’t use technical jargon decision makers
and other people reading the report won’t understand. If technical terms must be used, explain them.
Also, proofread the document to ferret out any grammatical errors and typos, and ask a couple of other
people to proofread behind you to catch any mistakes you might have missed. If your research report is
riddled with errors, its credibility will be undermined, even if the findings and recommendations you
make are extremely accurate.
Many research reports are presented via PowerPoint. If you’re asked to create a slideshow presentation
from the report, don’t try to include every detail in the report on the slides. The information will be too
long and tedious for people attending the presentation to read through. And if they do go to the trouble of
reading all the information, they probably won’t be listening to the speaker who is making the
presentation.
Instead of including all the information from the study in the slides, boil each section of the report down
to key points and add some “talking points” only the presenter will see. After or during the presentation,
you can give the attendees the longer, paper version of the report so they can read the details at a
convenient time, if they choose to.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Step 1 in the marketing research process is to define the problem. Businesses take a look at what they believe
are symptoms and try to drill down to the potential causes so as to precisely define the problem. The next task
for the researcher is to put into writing the research objective, or goal, the research is supposed to
accomplish. Step 2 in the process is to design the research. The research design is the “plan of attack.” It
outlines what data you are going to gather, from whom, how, and when, and how you’re going to analyze it
once it has been obtained. Step 3 is to design the data-collection forms, which need to be standardized so the
information gathered on each is comparable. Surveys are a popular way to gather data because they can be
easily administered to large numbers of people fairly quickly. However, to produce the best results, survey