Rourkela Institute of Management Studies

Master of Business Administration

2nd Semester
Academic Session: 2020-2021
ASSIGNMENT ON: BRM (Module-I)
Submitted To: Dr Subrat Prasad Pattnaik
Submitted By: Biswajit Gochhayat
Roll No: 1906260018
QUESTIONS:
1. Examine the importance of ‘Research Methodology.’ Critically evaluate the distinctions
between ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ research with suitable examples.
2. What is Research Design? Discuss its necessity in Marketing Research.
3. What is the need for conducting Hypothesis Testing? Explain the rationale for conducting
hypothesis testing.
4. Case Study (Tourism)
KSTDC is a premiere organization to promote tourism in the state of Karnataka. People
from all parts of the country and abroad visit different parts of Karnataka every year. Soon
after the capital of Karnataka, Bangalore was identified as the Silicon Valley of India, the
number of tourists visiting Karnataka is on the rise. Both domestic and foreign tourists are
drawn here. It is the opinion of global travellers that India is a top holiday destination. The
important aspect to be remembered is to remove all impediments or barriers to tourists.
KSTDC is considering a detailed study on those who visited Karnataka during the last 3
years. It is intended towards answering the following.
 a. Profile of tourist based on important attributes/characteristics.
 b. What people want from the tourist department vs what is currently offered?
 c. What are the difficulties or hardship tourists face?
 d. Opinion/Suggestion by the tourists which will enable KSTDC to woo more tourists
by improving its services:
a. Prepare data collection from the above information.
b. Prepare a report giving proper explanation for each of the above questions.
1) The organized questioning and exploration either by hypothesis formation or
scientific testing of any inquisition or query by following a set of standard rules and
procedures is defined as research methodology.
In easy terms: A research methodology or involves specific techniques that are adopted in
research process to collect, assemble and evaluate data. It defines those tools that are used
to gather relevant information in a specific research study. Surveys, questionnaires and
interviews are the common tools of research.
A research methodology encompasses the following components—
 Collection of theories and practices
 Features of various methods
 Evaluation of various methods
Research methodology includes—
 Listing of appropriate research methods
 Logic behind the selection of methods used
 Context and objective of each method
 Scope and limitation of each method

The importance of research methodology is to find answers to the

questions—
 Why?
 How?
 When?
 Who?
 What?
 Where?
 Which?
For example:
In a research study conducted to improve productivity and efficiency of employees of an
organisation, the type of questions could be worded as follows—
 Why is the study being conducted?
 How to measure the productivity of employees?
 When the productivity started declining?
 What are the factors that led to declining the productivity?
 What are the different types of skills that are desired for different categories of
employees?
 Who are the employees needing immediate training?
 Where the training will be conducted?
 Which is the set of persons- internal or external-who will conduct the study and
training?
 Quantitative and qualitative research use different research methods to collect and
analyse data, and they allow you to answer different kinds of research questions.

The differences between quantitative and qualitative

research

Quantitative research Qualitative Research

Focuses on testing theories and hypotheses Focuses on exploring ideas and formulating
a theory or hypothesis

Is analyzed through math and statistical Is analyzed by summarizing, categorizing

analysis and interpreting

Mainly expressed in numbers, graphs and Mainly expressed in words

tables

Requires many respondents Requires few respondents

Closed (multiple choice) questions Open-ended questions

Key terms are: testing, measurement, Key terms are: understanding, context,
objectivity, replicability complexity, subjectivity

Example:

Qualitative: Depth interviews with 20 women aged 35–50. Ask questions about their
memories of buying/wear blue jeans. Ask them to leaf through magazines and find pictures
of what they’d like to look when they wear their favourite brand of blue jeans. Tell a story
about a woman who goes shopping for blue jeans — what are her negative and positive
experiences? Tell a story about a woman who wears their most preferred brand and their
least preferred brand. Etc.

Conduct thematic analyses to identify the dimensions of meaning women associate with blue
jeans in general and with specific brands. The objective is to create a “movie” that leads to
rich insights about the category: Understand the “deep meanings” of these garments/brands
and how wearers relate to them, and how their self-concepts are influenced when they wear
them.

Quantitative: Identify a generalizable sample of women aged 35–50 who have bought a pair
of blue jeans in the last month. Ask them (perhaps via an online instrument) to respond to a
series of scales about different brands of blue jeans, e.g. ratings on various product
attributes (functional and non-functional) including durability, sophisticated, attractive fit.
Include a battery of items about the purchase experience,
e.g. did you purchase your most recent pair in a store (which one), online, etc. what led you
to purchase this pair.

2) What is research design ?

A body of knowledge assembled by a small team dedicated full-time to the creation of the
product in question, design research is used as the foundation for

 Creating models (such as personas and representative workflows) that are used
during the design phase
 Obtaining an objective understanding of technical development constraints and
opportunities
 Articulating business goals that may affect features and product deployment
strategies
 Understanding user needs.

A design research phase consists of three main activities: stakeholder interviews, domain
research, and user interviews. Some combination of all three makes for a successful phase.
The length of each activity depends on the complexity of the product. More is always better,
but effective design research can be gathered in a relatively short amount of time. Typically,
one to three weeks is sufficient for most business and domain products, while complex
enterprise systems with multiple interfaces require a longer research period.

An intimate understanding of user research is fundamental for designers. In order to gain

such an understanding of the research, designers must lead—or at least participate in—user
interviews. Simply handing them a report generated by someone else is not nearly as
effective. If the design team is truly immersed in the user research and models that come out
of that research, it will be much easier for them to design a product that meets the needs of
the users rather than themselves.

3) Hypothesis testing is an essential procedure in statistics. A hypothesis test evaluates two

mutually exclusive statements about a population to determine which statement is best
supported by the sample data. When we say that a finding is statistically significant, it’s
thanks to a hypothesis test.

The Need for Hypothesis Tests

Why do we even need hypothesis tests? After all, we took a random sample and our sample
mean of 330.6 is different from 260. That is different, right? Unfortunately, the picture is
muddied because we’re looking at a sample rather than the entire population.

Sampling error is the difference between a sample and the entire population. Thanks to
sampling error, it’s entirely possible that while our sample mean is 330.6, the population
mean could still be 260. Or, to put it another way, if we repeated the experiment, it’s possible
that the second sample mean could be close to 260. A hypothesis test helps assess the
likelihood of this possibility!

THE RATIONALE OF HYPOTHESIS TESTING

The procedure involved in testing hypotheses depends upon—

(1) the form of the hypotheses and

(2) the decision milker’s attitude about the importance of  Type I and Type II errors. In this
chapter we will (1) use the generally applicable hypotheses forms in which Ho contains an
equality sign, as in =, s, or2: If Ho contains the strict equality sign =, Ha will contain the not-
equal sign :F; if Ho has the weak inequality sign -s, Ha will have the strict inequality sign >;
and if Ho contains 2:, Ha will contain <. Examples are

Ho: P = 0.25 Ha: P:F 0.25

Ho: P s 0.25 Ha: P > 0.25

and Ho: P 2: 0.25 Ha: P < 0.2>

Also, we will (2) formulate the hypotheses so that to the decision maker, rejecting  a true Ho
is the worst error that can be made, and set a low value a as the chance of making that
worst error. The value of a will be associated with the = sign in Ho. For example,
suppose we have a = 0.05 and

EXAMPLE:

Suppose the sponsor of the Nifty Tricks television program states that the program should
be canceled if there is convincing evidence (obtained from a random sample of the TV
audience) that the program’s share of the viewing audience is less than 2; percent. The
sponsor also states (1) that the worst error would be to cancel the program if its audience
share is 25 percent or more and (2) the chance of making the worst error is to be only 5
percent. A sample of 1250 TV viewers will be interviewed, and the sample proportion fj of
viewers who watch Nifty Tricks will be used to decide whether or not the program is
canceled. Now suppose there are 260 Nifty Tricks viewers in the sample. Then the sample
proportion of viewers is

fj = 1250 = 0.208

Shouldthesponsorcanceltheprogram?
How to identify Ho

SOLUTION First we identify Ho and Ha. The easiest way to do this is to take the sponsor’s
strict inequality statement “less than 25 percent” as H,
That makes Ha: P < 0.25; so we have Ho: P 2: 0.25. Or, take the sponsor’s  “25 percent or
more” statement (which means 2:0.25, and contains three quality) as Ho: P 2: 0.25; then, as
before, the alternative hypothesis is Ha: p < 0.25. But note also that Ho: P 2: 0.25 and a =
0.05 are the translation of the sponsor’s statement that the chance of canceling the program
if the
show has 25 percent or more of the audience (the worst error) is to be 5 percent.So we have

n; P 2: 0.25 Ha: P < 0.25

Next we want a rule, called a decision rule, for the sponsor to use to determine whether to
accept or to reject Ho. If Ho is accepted, the sponsor will continue the program. If Ho is
rejected, the sponsor will accept Ha: P < 0.25 and cancel the program. The sponsor would
not, of course, reject Ho if the .sample proportion p of viewers is 0,25 or more, because such
such values of p support Ho: P ~ 0,25, But a p value less than 0.25 raises doubt about
the truth of Ho: and if p is much smaller than 0.25, the sponsor, should reject Ho.We want to
associate a = 0.05 with the equality part of Ho, P = 0.25. To do so, we need the sampling
distribution of p, and that is easily determined it is a normal distribution that has.

4) CASE STUDY

a) Profile of tourists based on important attributes—

Liking in the sense—

 Historical and archeological places

 Natural settings

 Religious places

 Wildlife

Tourists are classified according to their needs and their reasons for travelling into
four broad categories----

 Business and professional tourists

 Leisure and holiday tourists

 Travelling to visit friends and relatives

b) Travel and tourism play an important role in india’s economy compared with
other nations. India ranks 14 th in the world in terms of it’s tourism sectors contribution
to GDP

Tourism can offer direct and indirect aid to nations economy

Direct benefits include—

 Economic support for hotels

 Retail shops

 Transportation services

 Entertainment venues

 Attractions

Indirect benefit includes—

  Government spending on related infrastructure

 The government spending of Indians employed in the tourism sector

The tourism department offered as change of priorities of government as because

the local governments as because the local governments of similar towns and cities
are easily overwhelmed especially if they happen to be popular tourist destination or
are poised to become one they may start focusing on the potential influx of money.

Higher prices

Anyone who’s been to popular tourist’s destination knows that they are going to
spend a lot of money not only due to the volume of purchases but because tourists
destinations tend to jack up the prices of everything; food, hotels, drinks etc.

c) Tourists faced difficulties such as—

 International cards acceptance
This is one of the major problems faced by tourists. There are many shops, hotels,
restaurant’s etc. which do not accept debit cards due to which many times tourists
face the problem of card acceptance.

 Touts
Indians are known for their generosity, humbleness, culture and tradition. They treat
guest as god but all fine fingers are not alike. There are some frauds as well. There
are many frauds

4) Suggestions by the tourists to the KSTDC to attract more customers are listed as
follows—
 By investing in creating tourist’s spots.
 Planning urabanisation , construction near monument of historic importance
must be restricted
 Involving locals of a region to act as tourist’s guide, set up small business
 Protecting rights of foreigners especially females
 Promotion through TV advertisement, advertisement thorough tourism
department of every state.
 Attracting tourists throughout the year and not just in few months of year.
 Preserving art and culture of a region so that specialty of regions is not
vanished.
 Provide fast internet connection and food availability of all kind a few famous
tourists spots.
 Glorifying local culture and tradition. ex: folk dance, local music etc.