What do you think of this research suggestion?
I believe that the research suggestion is a little vague. There could have been a lot of reasons as to why the sales of beef went down. Sale of beef could be down due to the fear of E coli which is one way of think, or maybe people in the area just wanted to eat better or healthier. That could have also affected the sale of beef. Sales could have also dwindled due cheaper prices in fish, chicken and tofu or waitress not recommending beef, which might have led people to cut down on their consumption of beef products. I think that the manager jumped to an early conclusion when there might have been several other factors that contributed to the reduction in sales. As it is stated in the text, business research is a systematic inquiry that provides information to guide managerial decisions (Cooper, & Schindler, 2011). More planning, acquiring, analyzing, and disseminating of data should have been done first.
How, if at all, could you improve on your boss’s formulating of the research question?
In order to improve my bosses’ formulation two things could have been done. One is to create a model and the second is to do a survey asking customers why they are buying less beer products. As stated in our text, a model purpose is to increase our understanding, prediction, and control of the complexities of the environment (Cooper &Schindler, 2011). With these in place, the manager would have been able to have a stronger and more accurate research questin.
Cooper, D. & Schindler, P. (2011). Business research methods (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill