Maund E R Studios

Learning how to research foreclosures is the best educational investment money can buy. While you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on a college education earning a degree so that you can get a five-figure white collar job may have its appeal, the money spent on an education in foreclosures has a return on investment that far exceeds anything a traditional education can buy.

If you aren’t convinced, let the numbers speak for themselves:

The cost of a traditional college is $20,000 per year. Over four years, that is $80,000.

Straight out of college, let’s say you land a good paying job for $60,000 per year. You obviously will have to start repaying your college loan. That could take as many as 15 years, if you make the monthly minimum payments at a decent interest rate, plus you will be repaying your loan with interest. Meanwhile, you will accumulate other expenses and debts such as housing, a car, and other bills.

The cost of a couple of books on real estate investing is $50. You read the books and learn how to research foreclosures. You then join your local real estate investing club for free. You pay a visit to your local county courthouse to learn how foreclosures work, for free. You surf some websites and discuss foreclosures with other people through discussion forums. You then go out and do a real estate investment deal with the help of a more experienced real estate investor who agrees to put up the money and mentor you through the process, in exchange for 50% of the profits. You and your partner invest in your first deal during a down real estate market, so you put it up for rent and break-even every month. After 12 months, you are able to sell the property for a net profit of $20,000. You and your partner split the profits 50/50. You walk away with $10,000.

You didn’t have to go to college. You didn’t have to spend much more money than the $50 to buy the real estate books that teach you how to research foreclosures.

College or a couple of real estate books? Which one is the better investment?

Marketing research “The systematic gathering, recording and analyzing data about problems relating to the marketing of goods and services”.

Market research on the other hand, is only a part of marketing research that covers a few of aspects of marketing. It is only the sub function of marketing research ‘some companies use “market research” for describing research into markets the size geographical distribution incomes, and so on. However it fails to cover the idea of research into the effects of marketing efforts on markets, for which the term marketing research is the accurate. Elements of marketing research.

1. Market Research. It covers the aspects regarding size and nature of the market including export markets dividing the consumers in terms, of their age, sex, income (market segmentation), economic aspects of marketing etc.

2. Sales Research. This relates to the problem regional variations in sales fixing sales territories, measurement of the effectiveness of salesman, evaluation of sales methods and incentives, etc.

3. Product Research. This relates to the analysis of strengths and or weakness of existing product testing problems relating to diversification, simplification, trading up and trading down (all product line decisions), etc.

4. Packaging Research. In essence, it is a part of product research. But the recent development in packaging and its contribution in the advertising made it to occupy an independent position. This necessitates a separate study concerning the aspects of package to know its impact and response in the market.

5. Advertising Research. It undertakes a study relating to the preparation of advertisement copy (copy research), media to be used (media research) and measurement of advertising effectiveness.

6. Business Economic Research. Problems relating to input output analysis, forecasting, price and profit analysis, and preparation of break -even charts are the main fields of the research.

7. Export Marketing Research. This research is intended to study the export potentials of the product. In such cases any or all kinds of research mentioned above become necessary.

Competency research is a process in which each individual working in a firm is examined and his and his specific core competencies are identified. These competencies are identified on the basis of average performance and current success rate in a particular person’s domain job. Various methods are adopted to identify these competencies like doing a survey by filling a form or by individually interviewing all the employees in a company. Competency research is a part of the competency modeling which has six main components. These are listed as defining superior performance criteria, collect data, identify the sample of the criteria, analyzing the data that has been collected and creation of the competency model, validating the competency model, and finally developing various applications which use the competency model as a strong working tool. Competency researchers also use the behavioral event interviewing (BEI) as an additional tool so that the competency model is more accurately understood by the designers and the managers.

The behavioral event interview is a very important criterion for the researchers while developing a competency model. It is used as an elicitation protocol and a useful tool for obtaining access to the present mental status of the employees that categorize then into various categories. Their behavior in the interview is finely observed and noted so that later on it can help the researchers to categorize the staff more efficiently. These interviews also assist in the assigning of activities like task of a difficult job, understanding of strategies which are too difficult to understand for a more effective performance, and finally identifying those mistakes that a novice would usually make.

Surveying is another efficient tool for making the competency model and proving a competency research to be a successful one. Some companies carry out a single survey in their staff while the others carry out a series of surveys, each based on different topics to make sure that no topic is left and each and every staff member is surveyed on each and every topic. Competency research together with competency modeling can proved to be a very effective tool in restructuring the management of the firm and making the staff member more efficient in their work.