Case I

Bhatbhateni supermart faces problems from employees (late arrival, carelessness and
absenteeism in a regular interval of time). The management had encountered with low morale,
low motivation and low satisfaction and finally low volume of sales. Mr. Gurung, the owner of
Bhatbhateni supermart suggested to his head of human resources department (HR) to find the
reality of the problem by forming team and assigning responsibility to the team. Mr. Gurung also
asked to head of HR to review the existing salary and benefit system. The head of HR and his
team reviewed the salary and benefit system and finally, there was increased in salary and
benefits of the employees. However, an evaluation after one month showed no improvement as
expected.

Now Mr. Gurung decided to hire a research expert for conducting research to find the real
problem, causes of the problem and suggestion for the remedial measures of the problem. He
consulted with chief of HR and decided to appoint you as a researcher to conduct that research.
The chief of HR explained you that the team was not effective and was uninterested and this
could be multiple reasons for being indifference. Thus it was essential that the team be studied
to identify what was the group reaction to the working condition in the division. Also, it was
important to identify what was the perceived as the major problem area. There might be the
difference in old and new employees. Thus this approach was to be given due to recognition
while conducting the survey. The chief of HR said "it seems to be logical approach to the
problem, but do not you think that before you go to the team members you must at least identify
what could be the reasons for the low motivation by looking at the other organization".

Questions

1. Which research design do you think appropriate for the study of this issue?

2. Identify the main variables that are to be considered while undertaking research.

3. What may be the concept of this research?

4. Can you formulate the hypothesis for this study.

Case II

National Food Pvt. Limited is one of the leading producers of dry food in Nepal. It produces
varieties of dry foods with different prices and quality. It adopts a strict quality control
mechanism. In the recent year, the marketing trend reveals a wide variation in demand of dry
foods in rural and urban areas in the country. Therefore, the owner of the company is
interested to know the buying behavior of customers at national level. For this, he called his
manager to conduct a research on buying behavior of customers (particularly to varieties of dry
foods).
For conducting this research, the company announced an expression of interest (EOI) for
research institutions or individuals in national daily newspapers. As per the the terms of
reference (TOR) of announcement, the researcher needs to considers the various dimensions
(quality, price, brand, quality, age of the customers, sex of the customers, education of the
customers, mass media exposure, purchasing power of customers and place of residence)
affecting buying behavior of the customers.
However, the TOR is mainly focused on the buying behavior of customers according to rural and
urban areas of the country because there is a wide variation in the demand of dry foods
according to rural and urban areas in last three months (after COVID-19). If you like to compete
for bidding as a researcher or on the behalf of research institution, you are asked to provide the
answer of the following queries;

A. Which research design you select to conduct the research?

Case III

Deepak, Samir, Bimal and Ramraj are the returnee migrants from gulf countries having semi-
skilled knowledge in organic farming. All these four persons had stayed 8 years in different
countries of gulf and had learnt modern technology for organic farming in vegetable sectors.
They were thinking that their skills may be useful for establishing an organic farm in Gandaki
Province, particularly in Pokhara. They thought that organic vegetable and other cereals items
had high demand in Pokhara because the purchasing power of customers in Pokhara was high.
With this objective, they decided to set up an organic farm in the territory of Pokhara. After
field visit, the realized that the rent of the land in Pokhara and its proximity was very high.

After a long consultation, they were able to find a very good location to run an organic farm
nearer to Pokhara at a cheap rent. Finally, they signed in a contract letter for 25 years for 12
hectors of land. At this stage, they were compelled to think about the production of organic
products. However, it was necessary to know the baseline information on the customers'
preference and willingness to purchase the organic production. Meantime, they also heard that
some of the earlier producers were failure to run an organic farm in this area due to the
problem of marketing. In this condition, they felt that it was important to know the customers’
demand, preference and willingness to pay for organic products.

This group studied the several research reports related to production of organic items in this
region published by department of Agriculture (DOA). They were able to get a few information
on production of organic vegetables and cereals but could not find the information on
customers' demand, preference and willingness to pay. The data revealed that the production
was not enough to meet the demand of the customers. The available statistics showed that 100
metric tons of Cauliflowers, 120 tons of peas, 180 tons of lettuce, 250 tons of American corn,
112 tons of asparagus was produced during 2021 but the demand was about 1.5 folds of
production. However, they could not get the specific information in these issues. One of the
reports showed that about 53.0 percent of the population in this province preferred organic
products in the same period. This study further indicated that majority of the population
preferred organic products. But this group was still in dilemma and interested to conduct a
household survey on preference of organic food and willingness to pay for the same. For
conducting household survey, they got updated information of 5000 households having high
degree of variability (heterogeneity) in consumption pattern. For this study, they decided to get
information from 200 housewives of the selected 200 households. For this purpose, if you were
appointed as a lead researcher, answer the following queries;

1. Develop a suitable statement of the problem for this study.

2. Which research design may be suitable for this study? Also justify it.

3. Suggest an appropriate sampling design for conducting this study.

4. Could you develop a hypothesis? If yes develop any three descriptive hypotheses.
Case IV