Guidelines in writing the research report The general guidelines that should be followed for any research report are as follows: Consider the audience: The information resulting from the study is ultimately of importance to marketing managers, who will use the results to make decisions.

 

Thus, the report has to be understood by them; the report should not be too technical and not too much jargon should be used. This is a particular difficulty when reporting the results of statistical analysis where there is a high probability that few, if any, of the target audience have a grasp of statistical concepts. Hence, for example, there is a need to translate such terms as standard deviation, significance level, confidence interval etc. into everyday language. This is sometimes not an easy task but it may be the case that researchers who find it impossible do not themselves have a sufficiently good grasp of the statistical methods they have been using.

 

Qualitative research also presents difficulties. The behavioral sciences have their own vocabulary, much of which is not encountered in everyday speech. Examples include: cognitive dissonance, evoked set, perception, needs versus wants, self-actualization. It should be noted that these are extreme examples; many words, phrases and concepts used a very precise way by behavioral scientists are also present in everyday speech but often in a less precise or different way. This also presents opportunities for misunderstandings.

 

Be concise, but precise: On the one hand, a written report should be complete in the sense that it stands by itself and that no additional clarification is needed. On the other hand, the report must be concise and must focus on the critical elements of the project and must exclude unimportant issues.

 

There is a great temptation, on the part of inexperienced researchers, to seek to convey all that they did in order to obtain information and to complete the research. This is done almost as if the researcher is afraid that the audiences will not other wise appreciate the time, effort and intellectual difficulties involved. What the researcher has to come to realize is that he/she will be judged by the contribution towards solving the marketing problem and not by the elegance or effort involved in the research methodology.

 

Understand the results and drawing conclusions: The managers who read the report are expecting to see interpretive conclusions in the report.

 

The researcher must therefore understand the results and be able to interpret these. Simply reiterating facts will not do, and the researcher must ask him/herself all the time "So what?"; what are the implications. If the researcher is comparing the client's product with that of a competitor, for example, and reports that 60 percent of respondents preferred brand A to brand B, then this is a description of the results and not an interpretation of them. Such a statement does not answer the 'So what?' question.