Create a research report based on your application of action research to research a specific business problem present in the given case study Maruti Suzuki India:
Defending Market Leadership in the A-Segment.
Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed in your research report:
I. Business Problem: Refer to the given case study and select a data-driven business problem that can be addressed using action research to be the basis
for your research report.
A. Describe the research problem, including the context in which it exists. In other words, what caused or precipitated this problem? What has
already been done to address it?
B. Describe the key stakeholders (or potential stakeholders) of your business problem. In other words, who are the people who have the most to
gain or lose from a decision?
C. Explain the research objective. How would it benefit the stakeholder to know the results?
D. Develop a research question based on the research objective that clearly and concisely articulates in one sentence the purpose of the study.
E. Discuss the key real or potential ethical issues or challenges of the study. Consider the following: How will data be collected and protected? How
will human subjects be used, treated, and protected?
II. Literature Review: Prepare a comprehensive literature review that carefully and thoughtfully examines the research problem from a scholarly
perspective using a minimum of seven quality sources. A minimum of three of the sources must be selected from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals.
Other quality sources can be professional publications or magazines, internal corporate publications such as annual reports or white papers, or
established news sources.
A. Explain the theories that best ground your organizational problem. Support your explanation with specific examples. These theories might be
management, behavioral, social, and/or business related.
B. Discuss the bias and limitations present in the relevant literature and the potential impact these may have on your research.
C. Summarize at least one other research study that has faced this challenge that could potentially be replicated and applied to your research
study.
D. From the literature, analyze at least one other organization that has faced similar problems, explaining what they have done to address the
problem.
III. Research Design: Explain how you will carry out your research. Remember that your business problem should be able to be addressed using action
research.
A. Explain the research design and methods you will use, justifying why they are appropriate for your research study.
B. Describe the key variables from primary and/or secondary data sources that you will use to analyze your research problem.
C. Explain the key dependent and independent variables. In other words, how would the independent variables predict, explain, or prove the
dependent variable?
D. Explain the key ethical considerations for using these data sources, including how they meet legal and professional standards.
IV. Data Analysis: After you have collected your data, analyze it using descriptive and inferential statistics.
A. Accurately analyze the data using the appropriate descriptive statistics.
B. Construct appropriate tables or graphs to accurately display the results of the data analysis. Include explanations of the meaning of the
information presented.
C. Accurately analyze the data using the appropriate inferential statistics. Be sure to include the output.
D. Explain the meaning of the results of your data analysis in practical terms (e.g., what were the results? What results were expected? What
results were unexpected? What results were unsettling?).
E. Discuss the ethics of analyzing data to ensure it is fair, objective, and scholarly. What safeguards did you put in place to ensure the integrity of
the study?
V. Conclusions and Recommendations for Action
A. Summarize your research findings succinctly for stakeholders.
B. Explain how the research problem can be addressed by incorporating the results from your literature review and data analysis. In other words,
what do you now know about your research problem that you did not know or understand before?
C. Based on the conclusion, make recommendations to address the research problem that are actionable, feasible, and realistic.
D. Recommend appropriate strategies for handling any potential questions and concerns of stakeholders.
E. Based on your study, make appropriate recommendations for additional research that would improve the organization’s effectiveness.
Feedbacks from instructors:
I think you need to investigate in more detail if the core demands of the customers have changed, and how the company can satisfy that need matching the product to the demand.
The problem statement needs to be backed by statistics to convey the magnitude. You also need to delimit it more clearly.
The research question needs to convert the problem statement into a specific analysis that can be done based on the data available. You need to make sure you understand what data you have available,
The problem statement and the research question needs to be defined more clearly.
The problem statement says MSIL has lost market share on the A-segment. The research questions need to be more relared explicitly to the problem. You can define that the demand trends need to be analyzed to determine the correct product offering.
The list of stakeholders needs to be more exhaustive. Remember, a stakeholder is anybody impacted by the operation of the company. That includes suppliers, distributors, financial institutions that finance the purchase of products.
The literature review needs to be more exhaustive also. You need to show at least seven sources, three of them academic. I think you need to do more research on the market characteristics and influences that are changing the demand patterns. The study of the Malaysian market was good, but you need to compare and contrast the two markets to see if you can use ideas from it.
The bias and limitations come from the data you have available. Remember, the analysis you will do, and the research questions you can answer are limited by the data provided by the case.
You are not in any position to make recommendations yet. The idea is to learn to back recommendations with data analysis.
You identified qualitative data well, but the way it will support the study is not clear.
I think you needed to list the problem statement and research questions you defined in milestone 1 to be able to relate how the qualitative data would be related to that analysis. The research question you have listed seems to be based on how you would analyze the data of EXHIBIT 1, but the study you are working on is quantitative.
You need to start getting more specific about the research design to understand how the qualitative data can help you. For example, qualitative data can help you define categories that you can compare in the quantitative analysis.
Research Design: Research Design and Methods: You have explained with justification the research design and methods that will be used for the study.
Research Design: Variables: Appropriate key variables from the data sources were identified that are to be used to analyze the research problem.
Research Design: Dependent and Independent Variables: The dependent and independent variables are clearly explained.
Research Design: Ethical Considerations: Various key ethical issues were explained based on the available data sources, including issues of legal and professional standards.
Articulation of Response: Overall, you provided satisfactory remarks about the qualitative analysis of the Maruti Suzuki case study. Your analysis added value and made good contributions. Appreciate sharing your thoughts describing the data tables and how your analysis helps in answering the Maruti research questions.
f you want to relate the market share to the characteristics of the products, I suggest you start by analyzing the trends at the industry level, and product level as a whole. Then you can compare those trends with the ones of the company.
Remember the descriptive analysis needs to describe the characteristics of the sample, and then the inferential analysis generalizes those characteristics to the whole population.
Using graphs is quite useful in the descriptive analysis, but you need to prepare the data to make sure you get the right insight. You need to sort data in a way that the graph will tell you something. For example, to understand what is important for each region and contrast it with the others, you could sort the table by the importance of one region so that you could see how those priorities compare to the rest of the regions.
Data Analysis: Descriptive Statistics: Appropriate descriptive statistics are well analyzed.
Data Analysis: Tables or Graphs: Appropriate tables or graphs are accurately displayed with meaningful explanations.
Data Analysis: Inferential Statistics: Appropriate inferential statistics, with data and output are accurately analyzed and presented.
Data Analysis: Data analysis results are explained clearly with practical examples.
Data Analysis: Ethics of Analyzing Data: Ethics of analyzing data to ensure it is fair, objective, and scholarly are well explained stating necessary safeguards for study integrity.
Conclusions and Recommendations for Action: Research findings are clearly summarized for stakeholders.
Conclusions and Recommendations for Action: Research problem clearly explains how the research problem can be augmented with results from the literature review and data analysis.
Conclusions and Recommendations for Action: Appropriate recommendations to address the research problem that are actionable, feasible, and realistic based on the conclusion are well presented.
Conclusions and Recommendations for Action: Questions and Concerns of Stakeholders: Appropriate strategies for handling any potential questions and concerns of stakeholders are clearly recommended.
Conclusions and Recommendations for Action: Appropriate recommendations for additional research that would improve the organization’s effectiveness are clearly presented.
Articulation of Response: Overall, you provided satisfactory remarks about the quantitative analysis of the Maruti Suzuki case study. Your analysis added value and made good contributions. Appreciate sharing your thoughts describing the data tables, statistical analysis, findings, results, interpretations, and recommendations in answering the Maruti research questions.
