Why is research important in business?

Research is a strategy that seeks to make basic discoveries and uncover new principles or factors so far not unknown or unrecognized. It is the systematic search for new knowledge.

A business research program is an increasingly popular way for companies to train and educate their managers and other employees in a vast array of different fields. Business research can pertain to economics, business strategy, and ethics, in fact, anything related to modern business and trade.

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Research is an important element in business management in many different ways as follows;

Testing of new products: Business research tests the potential success of new products. Companies must know what types of products and services customers want before they market them. Market research will minimize risk – Market research can help shape a new product or service, identifying what is needed and ensure that the development of a product is highly focused on demand.

Ensuring adequate distribution: Companies may also use business research to ensure the adequate distribution of their products. For example, a consumer products’ company may want to talk to retailers about all the different brands they sell. The results of the business research will help marketing managers determine where they need to increase their product distribution.

Measuring advertising effectiveness: Companies use business research to determine the success of their advertising. For example, a milk manufacturer may want to know what percentage of the population saw its most recent television commercial. The milk company may find that more people become aware of its advertising the longer the television ad runs. The milk company may need to run its television advertisements at different times if few people have seen the commercials.

Studying the competition: Companies often use business research to study key competitors in their markets. Companies will often start with secondary research information or information that is already available. For example, a software company may want to know the percentage of customers in the market who purchase its products versus competitors’ products. The researchers can then study the purchasing trends in the industry, striving to increase their company’s share of the market. Companies will often need to increase their market share in an industry to increase sales and profits.


Other benefits include:

Research is an essential part of any business that wants to offer products or services that are focused and well targeted. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimize risk and pay dividends by making market research part and parcel of the business process.

Research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – Unless you measure, you may not be able to gauge how well your business is performing. Early research may highlight glaring holes in your service or shortfalls in your product, regular market research will show if improvements are being made and, if positive, will help motivate a team.

Research will help you better communicate – Your current customers’ experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong.

Doing research in business management is vital as it helps a business plan for the future, based on what may have happened in the past. If carried out successfully it can help a company make informed plans on how to become more viable in its sector. Some business experts agree that looking to the future of business is very much about looking at the past. The two are interlinked and by carrying out research you are more likely to see a positive outcome in your chosen objective. In business, making ill-informed decisions may be very precarious as there may be too much money at risk or a company’s reputation may be put at stake.

Research is important in any business for it to stay competitive in the market. The foremost function of research is to provide a business with an outlet to accurately identify its customers. Through the surveys, a company can analyze the likes and dislikes of its target consumers. In addition to this, these studies can also give a business the opportunity to scrutinize its rivals in the industry and analyze and emulate key strategies that might likewise help in its operations.

Research provides a business with a chance to update itself on the latest market trends; such knowledge will prove helpful in the formulating of useful concepts and tactics for success in the market. All things considered, it is through research that a business is able to make educated and informed decisions.

Research helps the business to improve the productivity, lower the cost and save time and retain the expertise of their core competencies and this through research discovery of new technology and development which leads to the development of innovative management system for future growth.

Research helps the business to continually revise their design and range the product due to continuous technological changes and changing preference of customers.

It also helps in the recruitment of employees. It’s through research that human resource managers are able to identify and recruit skilled manpower. Proper recruitment of employees with the right skills and attitudes helps the firm to increase its productivity levels. Research for the right employees can be got via the internet, consultancy firms and institutions of higher learning.

Research helps the firm to get the right supplier at the right price and at the right time. A proper supplier selection enables the firm to get or acquire high-quality raw materials which result in the production of high-quality products that are consumed by the end user. Also reliable and efficient suppliers help a firm to perform effectively as supplies will be got in time.

In conclusion, every organization needs to conduct research, and small budgets are no excuse for lack of a research plan. By starting out with some easily accessible resources, you can begin to develop better marketing strategies that can position you for market growth.

Edusearch Global Network Limited is one of the best indigenous companies to consult for expertise in business research services with the most appropriate methodology possible. Edusearch Global Network Limited is a growing business and management research firm based in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Nigeria, building capacity and informing best practices in the business research field globally.

Accurate and thorough information is the foundation of all successful business ventures because it provides a wealth of information about prospective and existing customers, the competition, and the industry in general. It allows business owners to determine the feasibility of a business before committing substantial resources to the venture.

Market research provides relevant data to help solve marketing challenges that a business will most likely face--an integral part of the business planning process. In fact, strategies such as market segmentation (identifying specific groups within a market) and product differentiation (creating an identity for a product or service that separates it from those of the competitors) are impossible to develop without market research.

Market research involves two types of data:

Primary information- This is research you compile yourself or hire someone to gather for you.
Secondary information- This type of research is already compiled and organized for you. Examples of secondary information include reports and studies by government agencies, trade associations or other businesses within your industry. Most of the research you gather will most likely be secondary.
When conducting primary research, you can gather two basic types of information: exploratory or specific. Exploratory research is open-ended, helps you define a specific problem, and usually involves detailed, unstructured interviews in which lengthy answers are solicited from a small group of respondents. Specific research, on the other hand, is precise in scope and is used to solve a problem that exploratory research has identified. Interviews are structured and formal in approach. Of the two, specific research is the more expensive.

When conducting primary research using your own resources, first decide how you'll question your targeted group: by face-to-face questionnaire, telephone, or personal interviews.

If you choose a face-to-face questionnaire, the following guidelines will increase your response rate:

Questions that are short and to the point
A questionnaire that is addressed to specific individuals and is of interest to the respondent
A questionnaire of no more than two pages
A professionally-prepared cover letter that adequately explains why you're doing this questionnaire
An incentive, such as "sweets or biro" to complete the questionnaire

Phone surveys are generally the most cost-effective. Here are some telephone survey guidelines:

Have a script and memorize it--don't read it.
Confirm the name of the respondent at the beginning of the conversation.
Avoid pauses because respondent interest can quickly drop.
Ask if a follow-up call is possible in case you require additional information.
In addition to being cost-effective, speed is another advantage of telephone interviews. A rate of five or six interviews per hour is typical, but experienced interviewers may be able to conduct more. Phone interviews also can cover a wide geographic range relatively inexpensively. Phone costs can be reduced by taking advantage of less expensive rates during certain hours.

One of the most effective forms of marketing research is the personal interview. They can be either of these types:

A group survey- Used mostly by big business, group interviews or focus groups are useful brainstorming tools for getting information on product ideas, buying preferences, and purchasing decisions among certain populations.
The in-depth interview- These one-on-one interviews are either focused or nondirective. Focused interviews are based on questions selected ahead of time, while nondirective interviews encourage respondents to address certain topics with minimal questioning.
Secondary research uses outside information assembled by government agencies, industry and trade associations, labor unions, media sources, chambers of commerce, and so on. It's usually published in pamphlets, newsletters, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers. Secondary sources include the following:

Public sources- These are usually free, often offer a lot of good information, and include government departments, business departments of public libraries, and so on.
Commercial sources- These are valuable, but usually involve cost factors such as subscription and association fees. Commercial sources include research and trade associations, banks and other financial institutions, and publicly traded corporations.
Educational and research institutions- These are frequently overlooked as valuable information sources even though more research is conducted in research institutes, colleges, universities, and technical institutes than virtually any sector of the business community.

Public Information Sources
Government statistics are among the most plentiful and wide-ranging public sources. One of the best public sources is the business section of your public, or local college or university, library. The services provided vary from library to library but usually include a wide range of government publications with market statistics, a large collection of directories with information on domestic and foreign businesses, and a wide selection of magazines, newspapers and newsletters.

Other public information resources include local chambers of commerce and their business development departments, which encourage new businesses to locate in their communities. They will supply you (usually for free) information on population trends, community income characteristics, payrolls, industrial development and so on.

Don't overlook your bank as a resource. Bankers have a wealth of information at their fingertips and may help their small business customers get ahead. All you have to do is ask.

Commercial Information Sources
Among the best commercial sources of information are research and trade associations. Information gathered by trade associations is usually limited to that particular industry and available only to association members, who have typically paid a membership fee. However, the research gathered by the larger associations is usually thorough, accurate, and worth the cost of membership. It is surprising that most Nigerian business owners do not belong to any trade association.

Local newspapers, journals, magazines, and radio and TV stations are some of the most useful commercial information outlets. Not only do they maintain demographic profiles of their audiences (their income, age, gender, amount of disposable income, and types of products and services purchased, what they read, and so on), but many also have information about economic trends in their local areas that could be significant to your business. Contact the sales departments of these businesses and ask them to send you their media kit, since you're working on a marketing plan for a new product and need information about advertising rates and audience demographics. Not only will you learn more about your prospective customers, you'll also learn more about possible advertising outlets for your product or service.

Edusearch Global Network Limited is another commercial source of market research that conducts and offers an abundance of information for making marketing decisions amongst other bespoke business and management research services they render.

Educational and Research Institutions Information Sources
Finally, there are educational, and research institutions that conduct research in various ways, ranging from faculty-based projects often published under professors' bylines, to student projects, theses, and assignments even though most are for academic purposes only and cannot be relied on due to inappropriate methodology adopted and lack of due diligence. Contact the university management studies departments for few available relevant credible research materials.

Research institutions are more credible and you may be able to enlist the aid of research students involved in business classes, especially if they're enrolled in an entrepreneurship or management program. E.g Edusearch Business School, a business and management research institute established by the management of Edusearch Global Network Limited is a good point of contact for this. This can be an excellent way of generating research at little or no cost, by engaging students who welcome the professional experience either as interns or for on-the-job learning. Contact the management of Edusearch Global Network Limited for further information.

Do you know that you're losing a lot of clients or prospects by using your personal email address instead of your Brand Custom Domain Email Address?

A small investment in a business email account can be the difference between success and failure for your new business. Yet, many businesses allow lack of a proper business email solution take them by surprise as their companies start to scale.

Here are a few of the benefits from a business email account that you won’t get from a free email account:

1. Build trust with your customers
Imagine you are at a networking event and meet your dream client. You spend the evening talking about your services and what makes you different from the competition. She is excited about what you bring to the table and asks for your business card. You hand it over only to show that your personal email address does not reflect your business’s name. Instead of reading “YourName@YourBusinessName.com,” your non-enterprise email reads “YourBusinessName@gmail.com or YourName@yahoo.com.” A familiar look of uncertainty rushes over her face and you know that she likely won’t reach out after all. Small details can make or break trust with a client. Using a free email account implies that your business is too young, small or lacking in the technical proficiency to obtain a domain-based email address—all red flags to a potential client.

2. Customers will notice your email address
Besides gaining client trust with a business email, you also have a better chance of your email being remembered in case your business card is lost. It’s standard practice for business emails to be simple, like “YourName@YourBusinessName.com,” which allows for easier recall if someone is trying to get a hold of you quickly. Having your own Custom Domain Email Address will also give you a great carriage when discussing deals with your prospects, making you look like a big brand and win contracts with ease. As a Business Person, having your own Custom Domain Email Address (e.g info@yourcompanyname.com) gives you a high regard and competitive advantage over your competitors.

3. Enterprise email helps you scale with ease
Your email is a recorded history of your company, and losing any bit of that could leave you without important context as you grow. By choosing a business email solution from the beginning, you are laying the groundwork to scale with ease.

This sounds interesting! So what?
I have made a Video from the training event that took place yesterday for #3000 only. This Video is a Step-By-Step Tutorials that will show you how to create and configure your own Custom Domain Email Address for FREE (e.g info@yourcompanyname.com) without using G-Suite or even having a website. Next training is Friday 17th, August @ 10AM. Venue: 3 Charity Road, New Oko-Oba, Agege, Lagos. Fee: #3,000 only.

Who is the target audience?
Those who want to improve their brand via custom domain email (e.g you@yourdomain) for FREE even if they don't have a website.
Imagine if your Business Name is Custom Domain Services Limited, and you having your own Custom Domain Email Address as: info@customdomainserviceslimited.com or info@cdslimited.com even if you don't have a website. And the interesting part is that you can do this easily by yourself in less than 15 minutes.

What Will You Learn?
• Create and manage their Custom Domain Email Addresses for FREE without having to hire or pay a developer, and without a website
• Send Custom Mails to Clients, Prospects, Business Partners, Associates for FREE
• Receive Mails via the Custom Domain Email Addresses
• Automatic forwarding of emails incoming mails to their personal email addresses (e.g, you@yahoo.com or You@gmail.com
• Set up automated responses for all incoming mails

What is the use?
-You can easily create and manage as many Custom Domain Email Addresses as you want by yourself within 5 minutes.
-You can send Custom Mails to your prospects, partners, clients, etc, such that a Custom Message with a Custom Email Address (you@yourdomain.com) is received by your recipient.
-You can use the Custom Domain Email Address to receive mails from your partners, prospects, clients, etc.
-Any mail you receive through your Custom Domain Email Address can be forwarded instantly to your personal email address, e.g., your Gmail or Yahoo Mail Address, such that all the emails sent to your Custom Email Address (you@yourdomain.com) are also copied to your personal email address.
-You can create auto responses for any of your Custom Domain Email addresses, such that if anyone sends an email to you, they get a reply instantly even while you're sleeping. The message will go to them directly from your Custom Domain Email Address.

These are great ways of promoting your brand
This will obviously take your brand to the next level in business. With this, you can easily win a lot of contracts. You can't imagine how many contracts you have lost by using your personal email address.

So what are you waiting for?
Reserve your seat at the next training at https://edusearchuk.com/short-courses-and-workshop-sessions/customemail/ or contact us to order for the video at https://edusearchuk.com/contact-us/

Branding pivotal role in business will always make the difference between the perceived value of two businesses by potential customers. For instance, imagine printing your business card, flyer or banner and having your prospective customers reach you via your personal email address such as yourname@yahoo.com or companyname@gmail.com. This is not only unprofessional but shows your level of unseriousness in the competitive market by promoting Yahoo or Gmail at the expense of your own company name. Truth is some potential high-class clients will not take you seriously!

However, creating brand equity can be very expensive especially for small businesses. Having a custom email address like info@yourcompanyname.com on the average cost $4/user/month. This means having one custom email address for your company/business normally cost $48 (N17,280) per annum. Imagine having need for 2 or more custom email addresses, you sure will find it too expensive.

Question is can you have a custom email address for your business/company for free?
The answer is YES! But many do not know how. That is why Edusearch Consulting has decided to assist as many as are willing to improve their corporate brand to attract those that matter most through this training.

Custom Email Training Outline includes:

1. Creation of domain name for your professional blog or company website with WordPress to save cost to as low as N540/month.
2. Setting up a customised email address for your company/business for free.
3. How to setup Email forwarding in WordPress such that you receive emails sent to your custom email address to your already existing personal email account.
4. How to use your custom email with Yahoomail such that you can send-out emails from your custom email address right from your Yahoomail account.
5. How to set-up up to 10 custom emails to incorporate other members of staff for free using any of the above methods.

Other Features include:

* Free training manual.
* Business to business networking opportunity.
* Participant is added to Edusearch global branding and digital marketing interactive WhatsApp group for continuous support.
* One month free branding support.

Now imagine learning this as a freelancer and getting clients to set up their branded email address to pay you N8000/user/year being the least charges you will find in the industry.

For more details and to reserve your seat for this training, go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/short-training-tickets-48980026578?aff=efbevent or https://edusearchuk.com/short-courses-and-workshop-sessions/customemail/

What is custom email address?
A custom email address is simply the address of your professional/business email account used specifically for business communications.
Example is info@businessname.com as against what some business owners do by using gmail or yahoo mail account like businessname@gmail.com.

Is there any danger using gmail or yahoo for your business?
The danger is in the impression you are creating in the mind of your potential customers.
Having email address like businessname@gmail.com or even personal email address like yourname@gmail.com waters down your branding effort and makes you sound unprofessional.

What custom email means to your customers, clients, and/or acquaintances is that you have created a real business. They can now relate with you as a business and respect your pricing and payment terms for products you market. Not only that, custom email promotes your brand equity. The perceived value people have for what you do or sell is increased. You are taken as a business man in business. If what you use on the otherhand is your personal email address, your potential client is not sure you are into the business full time or if you intend to continue in the business for long.

Does your existing personal email account service provider like Gmail have business email?
Yes. There is Google Business Mail known as G suite used for hosting custom email account for businesses. There are other business email service providers like Office 365, Zoho workplace, Rackspace email, Fastmail, and Kerio cloud amongst others.

How much does a typical Business Account Cost?
Custom Email hosting is normally charged per user, per month and can be billed annually. The least affordable option is Rackspace Email at $2 per month, per user. This means if you have few people working with you for instance and you have departments relating with the public like enquiries team, e-payments team, and customer support team etc, you will propably want to have addresses like:
1. info@companyname.com
2. enquiries@companyname.com
3. epayment@companyname.com
4. support@companyname.com and
5. yourpersonalname@companyname.com
you have 5 users multiplied by $2 = $10 per month. Billed annually is $10 x 12 months = $120. In Naira terms is N43,200 per annum.

However, a basic Gmail business account (G suite) with more features and better functionality is $5 per month, per user. If you can commit to 12 months, the cost drops to $50 (N18,000) per user, per year. Multiplied by 5 users for the above example is $250 (N90,000). G Suite used to be free for accounts with 10 users or less, but Google stopped offering that option in late 2012. Other pricing from other Email host are shown in the attached image below.

But the question is can a typical small business in Nigeria afford this? If not, how then can we maintain a professional branding using a custom email address?
The first option is opting for Email forwarding.

What is Email Forwarding?
This is when you create a fictitious business email address and redirect incoming mails to your existing personal email account. e.g. forwarding a fictitious info@companyname.com to yourname@yahoo.com
The downside is you will not be able to send out or reply incoming emails with this fictitious custom email address. Hence, it is a one-way traffic unless you go a step further.

What is the step further?
The step further is to use your fictitious business email address with existing personal email host like Yahoo for free. This automatically turns your fictitious business email address to a real one as you will now be able to reply incoming emails and send-out new emails using this business email from your existing Yahoo account.

How do I go about all these?
Learning how to go about this step by step to create, forward, integrate and set-up your custom business email for free is a post for another day but to be sure this is needful or needed skill, kindly reply this post with your comments. Let's be sure someone is following and my time typing is not a waste of time.

In closing
Aside Email forwarding, there are other free options for setting-up a custom business email using an email hosting app for free with full features! All these are what I have in the pipeline as my contribution to moving your business brand forward.