Bringing Research to Life

Read and discuss Bringing Research to Life on page 187 of your text. Develop investigative questions that could have been used to guide Jason and Sara's mechanical observation study.

“Investigative questions are questions the researcher must answer to satisfactorily answer the research question; what the manager feels he or she needs to know to arrive at a conclusion about the manager delimma” (Cooper & Schindler 2011, p.721). Sara and Jason’s Delimma is why are customers so confused on merchandise placement and availability? They wanted to investigate this because of survey feedbacks they received from customers. One important question to ask would be are all the stores configured the same way? How are feedbacks from the other stores? Do they have satisfied customers at the other branches? And do they have repeated customers at the other branches? This should be where they start their investigation. Figure out what branches are working and which ones are not. Figure out if all the stores are configured the same way, and if they are why are items not available? I think they should ask these questions because it seems like they are not sure how the other stores work, Jason made a comment saying he went to one of their branches for the first time, which tells me that there are others that have not been visited. Another important question would be why is it confusing for customers? Are signs not posted and if they are, are they not clear? This could come down to a simple labeling problem, but again you won’t know unless you conduct the investigation. I can go on and on with the questions but I will just list the ones I think will be the most important:

1) How are the other stores configured and are they having the same problems?

2) What feedbacks have they received from other stores?

3) Do any of the other stores have repeated customers?

4) How is the inventory for the store laid out?

5) How are the items grouped?

6) Are their signs...