This is really a very annoying thing.
It may be because there is something wrong with your investigation method, or because your professional ability is not high enough, but more often it is because your investigation report is not satisfactory.
Research shows that many normal research projects fail to achieve the expected results, often because of problems in information transmission, so that decision makers fail to understand and accept the contents of the report.
Research report is the main way for you to transmit information to decision makers, and it is also an important basis for decision makers to obtain information about your research projects.
Therefore, writing a good research report to make your research report more convincing is the basis of your research success.
So, how should the market research report be written? We believe that we can at least make our market research report more brilliant from the following three aspects.
First, the well-designed report structure The market research report has no fixed format and the structure is diversified. However, the general market research report includes contents such as catalogue, report summary, introduction, research methods, research analysis, limitations, conclusions and suggestions, appendices, charts and appendices.
In order to make the research report more professional, we must carefully design the structure of the research report according to the purpose, content and results of the research project.
The author once did a three-month market survey of major competitive brands for a foreign listed company. The survey covers a wide range of products, channels, communication and comprehensive competitiveness of major competitors.
Finally, I wrote a research report with tens of thousands of words and nearly 100 pages.
It takes two to three hours to read such a long research report from beginning to end.
The president is very busy with his work, and many things need to be dealt with urgently. It is difficult to spare a few hours to read the report at once.
At that time, I roughly arranged the structure of the research report as follows.
1, establish a complete electronic catalogue. The author has compiled a document catalogue of research reports in Word, so that decision makers can easily understand the contents of the whole report and quickly find the information they are interested in by clicking on the content title in the catalogue.
At the same time, I have compiled the charts appearing in the report into a chart catalogue independently and attached them to the main catalogue, so that decision makers can find these charts conveniently.
2. Elaborate Abstract After writing the research report, the author made great efforts to elaborate the summary of the report.
It accurately summarizes all the basic parts of the report in two pages, highlighting the conclusions and suggestions of the investigation.
The purpose of this abstract is to enable decision makers to quickly grasp the main points of investigation through the abstract. When decision makers have no time, this summary is a shortened version of the investigation report.
3. Insert an attractive introduction. Decision makers need to read more than one report and make more than one decision. How do they give priority to their reports and make their suggestions implemented? The author's method is to insert a short and attractive introduction at the beginning of the research report.
The introduction mainly explains the reason, scope, problems, benefits and historical background of the investigation.
Its function is to guide decision makers to pay attention to the problems they face and have a strong interest in the research topic.
4. Detailed investigation and analysis This is the longest part of the investigation report, covering the analysis and interpretation of all the contents of the abstract, the collation of collected data, the application process and analysis results of various analytical methods and statistical methods.
This is the basis of the research results and suggestions.
So, it took me more than ten days and dozens of pages to finish this part.
In order to answer all the questions of decision makers when reading the abstract through this part.
5. Remarkable conclusions and suggestions The conclusions of the investigation are obtained through data collection and various scientific analysis methods, and are the results of investigation and analysis.
Research conclusions are often influenced by the knowledge structure, experience and experience of researchers. The author of the research report must clearly realize this, speak with objective facts and try to avoid being influenced by feelings, prejudices, personal preferences and so on.
Therefore, the author is very cautious in drawing conclusions for this survey. Those who have no sufficient basis would rather not draw a conclusion, but have to say something important and make it clear that this is a personal opinion and there may be errors.
The more suggestions, the better.
Suggestions must be made on the purpose and scope of this investigation.
Some researchers suffer from the fact that they usually don't have the opportunity to give advice and suggestions to decision makers, or they don't get the attention and recognition of decision makers. It is rare to have such an opportunity. They usually write down many suggestions that have nothing to do with the purpose of this research at the same time.
This will not be appreciated by decision makers, but will make decision makers think that researchers have failed to grasp the focus of the investigation and solve key problems, which will lead to doubts about the professional standards of researchers and greatly reduce the positive evaluation and adoption confidence of decision makers.
In addition, the recommendations must be reasonable and enforceable.
According to some western theories, policy makers put forward some unrealistic and difficult suggestions, which are just wasting precious time.
Therefore, in this survey, the author only put forward three problems that enterprises need to solve urgently according to the purpose of the survey.
Remember, one good suggestion is enough, and a hundred bad suggestions are useless.
6. The complete data appendix is the data supplement for the analysis of the research report, including more detailed supplementary data, flow charts, calculation data, research questionnaires, reference materials, etc.
A complete appendix will enrich the research report and make decision makers feel that the research is more credible.
In this research report, the author attached his own design method to determine competitive brands, more than a dozen survey flow charts, a batch of questionnaires, a large number of interview records, and search reference website materials, up to more than a dozen pages.
Of course, if the content of the research report is not much, there is no need to prepare a report catalogue and abstract.
If the company requires a special investigation of a certain content, the introduction can also be omitted.
If the decision-maker knows and trusts you very well and doesn't care much about the investigation process, the appendix can also be omitted.
It is worth noting that the research methods and some limitations of this study must be explained in the research report, so that decision makers can better grasp and use the conclusions of the study.
Second, carefully analyze the interests and thinking patterns of users of research reports. If the conclusions and suggestions of a research report are not implemented, then this research report is just like waste paper, and a lot of manpower and material resources spent on research are also in vain.
Deciding whether to implement the recommendations of the report often depends only on the personal preferences of decision makers.
Therefore, when writing a research report, we must understand the interests and thinking patterns of the users (decision makers) of the research report, and then try our best to meet their needs.
In this way, the chances that the report will be taken seriously and the recommendations will be adopted will greatly increase.
For example, if the user of the report is an analytical person, then we will try our best to make the report longer and richer; If he is a person with strong prejudice, then we should be very cautious when writing the report, try to start with what he is most interested in and try to avoid writing something irrelevant to avoid making too many mistakes.
Third, carefully conceive the expression of the report. The research report should have both good content and good packaging.
We can find that some outstanding research reports that have not been sold are dusty in the drawers of decision makers or discarded in garbage baskets.
There are two main aspects of packaging here: on the one hand, the language style, and on the other hand, the design and application of fonts, tables, symbols and cover pictures used in the report.
In terms of language style, research reports generally use short sentences instead of long sentences, and use easy-to-understand words instead of professional sentences, trying to be concise and practical rather than lengthy and vague; In typesetting and printing, attention should be paid to the overall appearance of the report, and the primary and secondary contents of the report should be distinguished with fonts of different shapes and sizes and blank positions.
Make good use of special symbols in word processing software, and use tools such as graphics and tables to express images and so on.
Pay special attention not to ignore the image design of the cover, because the first impression of the research report is as attractive to the users of the research report as the first impression in people's communication.
Finally, we must emphasize that the success of the research project comes from many factors: the determination of the scope and purpose of the research project, the research methods, the overall plan and sub-plan of the research, the formulation of the budget, the selection and training of researchers, the control of the research site and so on.
Writing a good research report is only one of the factors for the success of the research project. Writing a good research report can only increase the probability of success of the research project, but it cannot guarantee the success of the research project. Writing a good research report is only the most basic work requirement in the research project, and it can't make poor market research become excellent.