MBM 433: Business Research Methods

Question Bank
[REVISED 2017]

Unit I
1) What do you mean by research? Discuss the role of research in business.
2) Define business research? Also explain how changing trend has affected business research applications.
3) Describe classifications of business research. Give suitable example.
4) Explain some of the factors that differentiate between good business research and research that falls short of
professional quality.
5) Describe the characteristics of scientific approach in business research.
6) Explain the steps involved while formulating a research proposal.
7) What are the steps in business research process design? Explain.
8) What are ethics? Why the ethical considerations should be kept in mind while conducting research?
9) Give some examples of unethical research practices at different stages of business research project.
10) How some of the unethical practices in research could be curbed?
11) Distinguish between the following set of items:
a. Deduction and Induction
b. Management Decision Problem and Research Problem

Unit II
1) What do you understand by the term research design? What is its importance? What are its different types?
2) Highlight various aspects of exploratory research design. Mention its advantages and disadvantages.
3) Compare and contrast exploratory and conclusive research designs.
4) What are the different methods in conducting descriptive research?
5) What are projective techniques? Explain different type of projective techniques.
6) What are the requirements for inferring a causal relationship between two variables?
7) What is qualitative research and explain why focus group is the most popular qualitative research
technique?
8) Explain the difference between nominal scale, ordinal scale, interval scale, and ratio scale. Also explain the
relative superiority of these scales in light of their importance for a researcher.
9) Briefly describe the following scales (i) likert, (ii) semantic differential.
10) Describe the following terms in the context of a scale (i) reliability, (ii) validity.
11) What is sampling? Explain the sampling design process. How is sampling different from census method?
12) Briefly define the following terms (i) population, (ii) sample, (iii) sampling error, and (iv) non-sampling
error.
13) Briefly describe the following sampling techniques (i) stratified, and (ii) cluster.
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14) Describe the various methods of selecting a sample. State the merits and demerits of each, giving
examples.
15) Compare and contrast probability and non-probability sampling methods.
16) Discuss the procedure for determining the sample size necessary to estimate a population mean, given the
degree of precision and confidence level, and a known population variance.

Unit III
1. What is the difference between primary and secondary data?
2. What are the major sources of gathering the secondary data? Explain your answer in the light of
classification of the secondary data.
3. What are the different survey methods available for launching a business research study? What will be the
best method to be adopted?
4. What is the relative advantage of web-based interview technique over e-mail interview technique?
5. What are the steps involved in questionnaire designing process?
6. Write short notes on the following terms:
a. Extraneous variables c. One group pre-test post-test experiment
b. Double barreled questions d. Dichotomous questions
12) Is pre-testing questionnaire essential for a questionnaire development process? Why there is general
tendency of the researchers to avoid the pre-testing questionnaire?
13) Define experimentation and differentiate it from observation and survey methods of obtaining data.
14) What is observation? What are its types? Discuss its advantages and limitation
15) What is experimentation and why is this important for conducting any business research?
16) What are internal and external validity in experimentation? How can a researcher control the threats to
internal and external validity in an experiment?

Unit IV
1) Discuss the procedure of hypothesis testing with an example.
2) What is the difference between Z-test and t-test?
3) Discuss the following with examples (i)Type I ( (ii) Type II Error
4) Discuss the following with examples (i) One tail (ii) two tail Test
5) Discuss the following models with examples (i) one-way ANOVA, (ii) two-way ANOVA.
6) Explain the terms (a) correlation coefficient, and (b) regression equations.
7) Briefly explain the concept and an industrial application of the following data analysis techniques (i)
Factor analysis, (ii) Cluster analysis, (iii) Multi-dimensional analysis (MDS), (iv) Conjoint analysis.

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8) Royal Tires launched a new brand of tires for tractors and claims that under normal circumstances of
the average life of the tires is 40,000 km. A retailer wants to test this claim and has taken a random
sample of 8 tires. He tests the life of tire under normal circumstance. The results obtained are presented
in the table given below.
Tires 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Km. 35,000 38,000 42,000 41,000 39,000 41,500 43,000 38,500
Use = .05 for testing the hypothesis.

9) Vishal food ltd. is leading manufacturer of biscuits. The company has launched a new brand in the four
metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. After one month, the company realizes that there is
difference in the retail price per pack of the biscuits across cities. Before the launch company had
promised its employees and newly-appointed retailers that the biscuits would be sold at a uniform price
in the country. The difference in price is tarnishing the image of the company. In order to make a quick
inference, the company collected data about the price from six randomly selected stores across the four
cities. Based on the sample information , the price per pack of the biscuits is given below:
Price per pack of the biscuits (in rupees)
Delhi Mumbai Kolkata Chennai
22 19 18 21
22.5 19.5 17 20
21.5 19 18.5 21.5
22 20 17 20
22.5 19 18.5 21
21.5 21 17 20
Use one way ANOVA to analyze the significant differences
in the prices. Take 95% as the confidence level.

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10) ABC Constructions is leading company in the construction sector in India. It wants to construct flats in
Raipur and Dehradun. The company wants to estimate the amount (in thousand Rs.) that customers are
willing to spend on purchasing flats in two cities. It randomly selected 27 potential customers from
Raipur (table 1) and 25 customers from Dehradun (table 2). The data collected from two cities is given
in tables below. The company assumes that the intention to purchase of customer is normally
distributed with equal variance in the two cities taken for the study; estimate the difference in
population means taking 95% confidence level.

Table 1 Table 2
Response of 25 potential customers of Raipur in lakhs Response of 25 potential customers of Dehradun in lakhs
R1 12.5 R15 13 D1 18.5 D15 14.5
R2 13 R16 16.5 D2 16.5 D16 14
R3 12.6 R17 17 D3 16 D17 13.5
R4 12.7 R18 13 D4 17 D18 18.5
R5 15 R19 14.5 D5 18 D19 18
R6 13.5 R20 13 D6 19 D20 19
R7 14 R21 14 D7 170 D21 14.5
R8 16 R22 15 D8 15 D22 16
R9 12 R23 16 D9 15.5 D23 17
R10 15 R24 14 D10 16 D24 18
R11 15.5 R25 14.5 D11 14.5 D25 14.5
R12 14.5 R26 14 D12 15
R13 16.5 R27 16.5 D13 15.5
R14 13.5 D14 16

10) Marketing manager of a firm wants to analyze the sales revenue and money spent on advertisement.
Table given below shows the sales revenue and advertisement expenses of the company for the past 10
months. You are asked to find the coefficient of correlation and its interpretation.
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
Advt. (In thousand rupees) 10 11 12 13 11 10 9 10 11 14
Sales in thousand rupees 110 120 115 128 137 145 150 130 120 115

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11) A cable wire company has spent heavily on advertisements. The sales and advertisement expenses (in
thousand rupees) for the 12 randomly selected months are given in table below. Develop a regression
model to predict the impact of advertisement on sales.
Months Advertisement Sales (in thousand rupees)
Jan 92 930
Feb. 94 900
Mar 97 1020
Apr 98 990
May 100 1100
Jun 102 1050
Jul 104 1150
Aug 105 1120
Sep 105 1130
Oct 107 1200
Nov 107 1250
Dec 11 1220

Unit V
1. What is the importance of report and presentation at the conclusion of a business research project?
2. List various components of report format.
3. Why is research follow-up important?
4. Discuss the importance of tables and graphs in business research report.
5. Why does a researcher have to incorporate an executive summary in the research report?
6. What are the various methods of presenting data in graphs and charts?
7. What is the purpose of oral presentation of research report? Explain some of the guidelines to
organizing a oral presentation.
8. How should a researcher incorporate different types of charts and graphs in the research report?
9. Distinguish between speaker centered presentation and extemporaneous presentation
10. Distinguish between technical report and management report
11. Write short notes on the following:
a. Pictographs
b. Geographs
c. Area charts
d. Semitabular presentation