BUSINESS RESEARCH PROPOSAL WRITING

The goal of business proposal writing is to answer your customer's questions and
persuade them to select you. Business proposal writing should be more about your
customer than it is about you .

A specific structure of the business research proposal depends on the institutional and
organizational requirements and may vary. However, the variability does not usually
affect the basic structural model, which includes six major components :

 The Title of the business research proposal is informative and concise. It gives the readers
enough information to attract their attention and to trigger their curiosity.

 The Abstract summarizes each section of the proposal in one or two sentences to give a
general overview of the project. The key findings and practical applicability of the
research are the highlights of this section.

 The Introduction situates the research subject within a larger business context. Two
important statements characterize this section. The opening statement identifies the
problem that needs to be resolved as a result of theresearch. The thesis statement
concludes the Introduction; it outlines the proposed activities and describes the
expected outcomes.

 The Literature Review is the core section of the business research proposal; it provides
justification for the future research as well as for the effort that the writer has already
contributed to studying the subject area. The goal of the Literature review is to
demonstrate that the researcher has extensive knowledge of the field and of the specific
problem; and that s/he has studied both the works of recognized authorities and the new
trends in the theory. Moreover, the writer should be an experienced practician capable
of applying theory to real-life contexts. However, more importantly, the Literature
review has to prove that there is a gap in either theory or business practice; the
proposed research will eliminate this gap.

 The Methods section is an outline of all the activities that the writer is planning to
perform in the pursuit of his/her research goals. The key to a successful research is to
identify appropriate data collection techniques to gather relevant and usable data.
Surveys, face-to-face interviews, focus groups are the three methods of collecting
primary data. Secondary data can be gathered from annual and market reports, financial
and legal documentation, organizational structure-charts, executive publications and
speeches, and so on. The focus of this section is on the details: the timeframe for each
activity, the list of participants, the scripts for the interviews, the materials, and so on.
The more detailed is the description of the methods of the data collection and analysis
the more thoughtful the research sounds to the reader.

 The Conclusion is a brief review of all previous sections. It reemphasizes the most
important elements of the proposed research: the goals, the actions to be taken, and the
ways, in which the research will benefit the business theory and practice