 Welcome learners, I am Dr. Smriti Sikhasothri of Krishna Kanto Handic State Open University. Today we are going to discuss on business research methodology which is a core course of MBA program and today I am going to discuss the first unit of the course that is Introduction to Research and this is the first video lecture of this unit. So in this video lecture we are going to discuss about the concept of business research like why we need to do research and this video lecture that you need one. This is divided into two parts, one is your meaning and concept of research in business and types of research design that is exploratory and conclusive research. So in this video lecture we are going to discuss this part two portion and in another video lecture I will be discussing a process of research and features of a good research study. So let us start first we should know why we need to do research. So research means searching for some information facts, research is one of the most important aspects of any field like in any management field we can say whether it is marketing, finance, HR, any field like we need to do new and new research to upgrade ourselves. So like there basically we can say like in research we do problem identification and problem solving. So business research is a systematic and objective identification then collection analysis, dissemination of information and use of information for the purpose of improving decision making related to the identification and solution of problem and opportunities in the field of management. Suppose for example a marketer wants to launch a new product in the market. So like before launching the product he or she needs to do research like what type of product customer prefers then what price will be suitable for the market all these things we need to like do the research and then based on our research finding we can launch a product. So business research involves the identification of the information then collection of data analysis of data then dissemination of information and use of information and we define or like we define the business research problem or opportunity and then determine what information is needed to investigate it. So here I am showing you the different process of business research like first is your identification of the need or the problem we say then collection of data. Data we can collect either through primary data collection that is going to the field and collecting the data or maybe from secondary sources like whatever literature is available from that we can collect data. Then we analyze those data and then from that analysis of the data we interpret that okay data like into some feasible solutions for our study and then we use this information in the field of business. So we will be discussing all these details in later part of our video lectures. So basically there are two types of research design one is your exploratory research and another one is your conclusive research. So first we will discuss what is exploratory research. The primary objective of exploratory research is to provide insight into the problem confronting the researcher. So exploratory research is used in case when we must define identify relevant courses of action or gain additional insight before an approach can be developed. The information needed is only loosely defined at this stage and the research process that is adopted is flexible and unstructured. So while doing exploratory research we generally do some kind of unstructured and flexible research. Suppose we are exploring something for the first time that is that kind of research is known as your exploratory research. For example it may consist of a personal interview with few industry experts then the sample selected to generate maximum insights is small and non-representative. So suppose we have collected the information from this personal interview and then based on that study we might go for a concrete systematic research. So the primary data are qualitative in nature and are analyzed accordingly. Given these characteristics of the research process the findings of exploratory research should be regarded as tentative because we are exploring something new and it is like your non-structured or maybe semi-structured. So exploratory research just provides us some sort of framework for the conclusive research. So now we will discuss conclusive research. The insights gained from exploratory research might be verified by conclusive research because the objective of conclusive research is to test specific hypothesis like whichever we formulate for our study and then examine specific relationships. This requires that the information needed is clearly specified. Conclusive research is typically more formal and structured compared to our exploratory research. It is based on large representative of samples and the data obtained are subjected to quantitative analysis. The findings from this research are considered to be conclusive in nature in that they are used as input into managerial decision making. So conclusive research designs may be either descriptive or causal. So here in case of conclusive research we can say that it is more structured and formal type of research. Based on like in conclusive research we already have got some tentative picture of the research and based on that we will set our hypothesis objective and based on that we will do conclusive study. Some conclusive study can be again are subdivided into two types. One is your descriptive research and another one is your causal research. Now first we will discuss what is descriptive research. The major objective of descriptive research is to describe something usually the characteristics of relevant groups such as consumers, salespeople, organization or market etcetera. Many of the business research studies involve descriptive research which makes use of service and observations as major method. So in descriptive research what we do we describe certain kind of relationship like whether there is correlation between suppose consumers and salespeople or suppose consumer buying behavior and sale of a mall any kind of relationship when we are going to study we generally use descriptive research and under this descriptive research we use different types of survey methods then observations and for that we administered some structured questionnaires which I will be discussing in our next video lecture in details. Then we will go to the causal research. So causal research is used to obtain evidence of cause and effect relationship. Assuming managers continually make decisions based on assumed causal relationship. These assumptions may not be justifiable and the validity of the causal relationship should be examined via formal research. Like descriptive research causal research requires a planned and structured design. While descriptive research can determine the degree of association or correlation between the variables. As I have already said suppose there are two or three more variables and we will check whether there is any kind of association or relationship between those variables that is the part of our descriptive research. But in case of causal research what we do like we examine the causal relationship whether like one variable is the cause for the another variable. Because the sales are increasing so we need to examine why sales are increasing whether advertising is one of the reason for increasing sales so that will be your causal study. So such an examination requires a causal design. So in this video lecture I have basically discussed about what is research then I have discussed different types of research design. That is our exploratory and conclusive research. And then again under conclusive research there are two types one is your descriptive research and another one is your causal research. And depending on the type of study we administered like our research design will be different. Hope you have understand this video lecture here I have given some further references you can also go through these books for your study thank you.