ABSTRACT
Businesspeople have been doing research for millennia, but the formal study of business research is relatively young. The need for business research increases as firms realize more opportunities, for example, in the form of increased trade globally and more competition. Business research is a truth-seeking function responsible for gathering, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting information so that business decision makers become more effective. There are few limits to what a business researcher might be asked to study. All organizations—profit and nonprofit, big or small—that manage employees, study systems, or market to customers are potential users of business research. Several trends are affecting business research. These include data analytics, digital communications, smartphone utilization, social media, relationship marketing; the globalization of business and big data and the information revolution, which provides researchers easier access to greater volumes of data.
