Ans.
The process of identifying the research problem involves the following steps:
1. Management decision problem –
The entire process begins with the identification of the difficulty encountered by the Business manager. The manager might decide to conduct the study himself or gives It to a researcher agency. Thus this step requires that there must be absolute clarity About what is the purpose of getting a study done. When work is done by outsider it is very important that discussion is held with the business manager.
2. Discussion with subjects experts:
The next step involves getting the problem in the right perspective through discussions with industry and subject experts. The information on the current andfuture is obtained by the assistance of an interview.
For example, for the organic food study the researcher might decide to go to food Experts like doctors and dieticians to seek their opinion.
3. Review of existing literature
A literature review is a comprehensive collection of the information obtained from published and unpublished sources of data in the specific area of interest to the researcher. The advantage is that it provides different methodologies and perpespectives used to investigate the problem.
4. Organisational analysis
This data includes the organizational demographics such as origin and history of the firm: size, assets, nature of business, location and resources and management policies.
5. Qualitative survey
In such a case exploratory survey can be done to understand the problem
For example a soap like Dove is very good in terms of price and quality but few people in Small town buys it, thus survey is done to uncover relevant and current issues on the problem definition.
6. Management research problem
It is based on the clearly defined research problem. It simply indicates the gaps in information or knowledge base available to the researcher.