Name of the Publication- Bharat Observer MD- Abhiraj Patel Competition - Deccan Chronicle Researcher Anuradha Singhania

The sales of Bharat Observer had been declining constantly over the last few months. And Mr. Patel and his entire team couldnt pin point the exact reason for the falling sales, where as on the other hand his competitors, the Deccan Chronicle were doing exceedingly well. They assumed it could be either they have not targeted the correct audience or may be their content did not meet the expectations of their target market. As a result of which Mr. Patel decided to hire Mrs. Anuradha Singhania to conduct a readership survey. He was she was the most appropriate for this project since she has a 25 years work experience with IMRB and had recently started off on her own. Soon in the following week there was a meeting arranged at Mr. Patels head office with Mrs. Singhania to identify the objective of the project and all the other details regarding methodology to be adopted etc. Being in the industry for 25 years and having a wide array of clients, Mrs Singhanias publications was one of the oldest and would look fabulous on her project portfolios, so she was extremely eager about the project. Little did she know that Mr. Patel used to occasionally carrying out unethical practise to get his way around and get work done. He did not believe in practising high ethical standards for sound business relationships. So during the discussion, Mr. Patel told Anuradha that in their next meeting she was suppose to come along with her project proposal but the research conducted also required to get information regarding what his direct competition does. He required Mrs. Singhania to place her sources to gather all the information about the Deccan Chronicle, sensitive information such as where do they display their magazines, what are the sources of their content, their subscription offers, who their niche clients were etc. He was very well aware that this kind of information would be easy for her to get since she had been I the industry for so long that she could have developed deep rooted sources which would make this kind of information easily accessible. Also Mr. Patel also wasnt the kind of client who would credit her for the information she gets through her research and most often had tweaked the research data in the past from the previous researches as per his choice before publishing it. For this Mr. Patel was ready to pay her 10 Lakhs. This put the experienced researcher in a huge fix. Considering she has just established herself as an independent researcher and she always followed extremely ethical practises for all her projects ever since she entered the field 25 years back. The foundation of her new setup was top results with best practises and in return she expected a little appreciation and credit for her work. She didnt know what to do, this was her first huge project and the oldest publication would spectacular on her companies folio and it would be beneficial for her to gain more projects in the future. But at the same time the requirements of the project were against her companys policies and practises. She was caught in a dilemma of whether to accept or not to accept.

In the end she decided to accept the project but do it her way, a way in which she dint have to go against the values of her own organization and at the same time she could please the client. She has recently hired 3 management trainees from We School and decided to employ them on the project as well. She decided that the best way to go around the problem was that she would first employ the management trainees as research executives to gain primary information regarding what the survey samples thinks about the Deccan Chronicle. She would not use her sources to extract any information regarding the competitor and would present only the information obtained from primary research from the survey sample by the 3 students to Mr. Patel. And secondly she decided to include a clause in the project agreement that would be signed with Mr. Patel and would also explain to him the clause which would state that he did not have the right to tweak any of the information obtained during her research and also that any of the researched that he decides to publish would required Anuradhas consent as the information rightfully belonged to her organization. And would the published information would require credit to her organization. This would be the only way that she and her new research company would be recognised and her work be known for its authenticity.