You want to take a two-week holiday to Mombasa, with your family, sometime this year. Before you discuss this with eager family members however, there are a number of things you want to get straight:  Will you fly, take a bus, catch the train, or use the family car to get there? What will it cost for each of these options? Will you stay in a hotel, and for how longs? Will you go during the peak tourism season, which will cost you an arm and a leg…or wait it out till the pocket-friendly period when beaches are also less crowded?  Will you go to the north or south coast?  If you choose to stay in a hotel, which one is best?
You get the drift. As your head reels with all these questions, and their possible answers, you are actually in the process of assembling all the relevant information to help you decide on a specific action that has benefits, as well as cost implications.  This essentially is what research is all about: information gathering, for action taking.