RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

INTRODUCTION

The tight specification of research objectives is important to ensure that the project is developed along the right lines. Usually primary objectives need to be distinguished from secondary objectives. The primary objective for an electrical components manufacturer seeking to enter the French market, for example, might be to establish the market potential for the products specified and to indicate appropriate market entry strategies. The secondary objectives tend to be more specific and comprehensive. For the components manufacturer they might include:

Defining market trends and competitive structure over the years.
Profiling the existing main suppliers in terms of strengths and weakness (products, prices, distribution, branding, service etc.) Identifying the main buying criteria when purchasing. Surveying potential trade and end users for willingness to switch supply source.

 list above is not exhaustive, but the main point is that objectives clearly drive the whole research process, and should provide the necessary foundations for whatever management decision will have to be taken at the end.

In all cases, the research objectives need to be clearly and concisely stated in writing to ensure that the research brief can be adequately prepared.


The skill at this stage lies in being sufficiently broad-minded and flexible to avoid being misled by assumptions and prejudices that may not be valid, yet being focused enough to allow the project a strong sense of direction and a chance of being achieved within time and cost constraints.

 OBJECTIVES

After you have studied this unit, you should be able to:

1. define research objective. 
2. examine the roles of objective in marketing research. 
3. differentiate between business objective and research objectives. · identify the various types of business and marketing research objectives · explain the complex nature of customer behaviourial objectives 

 Definition and Meaning of Marketing Research Objectives

Research objective can generally be defined in terms of finding appropriate solutions to identified problems that when applied to the situation will help the organization in achieving its sales objective. The objective for any research should link recommended solutions to identified situational problems and predetermined sales/marketing objective. The objective can specifically be stated as finding solutions that when applied to the problem at hand will enable the organizations achieve its preset objectives at the lowest costs.

With the problem identified and properly defined, and the objectives of the research clearly stated, the researcher should now have a good idea of his information needs. Proper specification of the information needs of a given research will equip the researcher to choose an appropriate research design.
Objectives are the ends that state superficially how the goals shall be achieved. They are more concrete and specific, they tend to be mainly quantitative in

specification, measurable and comparable. Objectives are operational definitions of the goals of an organization. They are parameter for evaluating the performance of the organization products and service. It has a time dimension, and this demonstrates how such organization can move towards achievement of it goals.

Objectives are the goals to be achieved at the end of any project or instrument. Statement of objectives for a market research is the setting down of what the researcher is trying to achieve. Problem definition, action plan and evaluation in the research process is completely tied to the set objectives.


Objectives are also the explicit statements of the ways in which customers are expected to be changed by the selling process. That is the ways in which they will change in their thinking, perception, reasoning, feeling and their actions towards a given market situation.