One of the most effective ways to understand your customers, competitors and the business industry that your company belongs to is through market research.
Do you want to discover how you can convince consumers to buy your products? Are you about to launch a new product, service or campaign but are not sure how to approach your leads?
Market research is the only way to get the answers to these questions.
Market Research definition
Market research is conducted to prospective clients to evaluate the viability of a new product or service.
The aim of this is to figure out and analyze the clients involved with a specific product or service and to know their response to it.
Organizations then use the information collected to design their products better, improve user experience, and create a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads.
Market research can be done directly by companies or it can be outsourced to third-party agencies who are experts in this field.
There are two main types of market research – primary market research and secondary market research.
Primary Market Research
Primary market research is a process where companies or organizations get in touch directly with the consumers. It can be a combination of qualitative and quantitative market research.
Qualitative market research involves some methods like the ones listed below.
Focus groups
Focus groups refers to a carefully selected group of people, usually six to 10, who fit a company’s target market.
A moderator usually starts the conversation about the product, customer experience, or marketing campaigns to gain a deeper understanding of the clients’ point-of-view.
The best part about focus groups is the information can be collected remotely, and can be done without personally interacting with the group members.
The downside of this method is that it is expensive and your team can’t afford to cut corners. Trying to lessen the cost of focus groups can lead to multiple errors in your research.
Dominance bias, or when a forceful participant influences the group, and moderator style bias, or when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study, can also affect your collected data.
One-on-one interview
This method includes personal interaction where a researcher asks a series of questions to collect information from the respondents.
Questions used are mostly open-ended and are asked in a way to evoke reactions, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
An in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.
Ethnographic research
This type of research is usually done in a respondent’s natural settings. During this session, someone from your team takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with your product, or a similar product from a competitor.
What makes this method clever and powerful is you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other.
The only disadvantage is that you clearly can’t read your respondent’s mind. Therefore, data collected from observation cannot easily replace those gathered from other methods.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research, on the other hand, is the method used by organizations to conduct an interview or survey using a set of predetermined questions.
Researchers, nowadays, tend to use advanced survey platforms to create a questionnaire that evokes maximum response from the respondents.
Through this, data can be collected and reported quickly. Necessary action can be taken with all the gathered information afterwards.
Secondary Market Research
Secondary market research is a kind of a market research method that involves collecting information or data from outside sources.
In this method of research, a business relies on information that has previously been collected by other organizations.
The advantage in this is that there is already an abundance of suitable information out there. Your team saves time and money by using those data rather than going the distance to do your own.
Secondary market research makes use of the following:
Public sources
Public sources are a great way of gathering free information. Government agencies usually allow people to look through their collected research free of cost.
Most government offices publish data and information about markets, trends, growth rates, labor, economic factors, consumer behavior and other such matters that may prove to be of a lot of use for your business.
Commercial sources
Commercial sources, although reliable, are expensive. Some examples of this are local newspapers, magazines, journals, and media.
Since there is an infinite amount of these sources, you must make it a point to go through only highly relevant ones.
Make sure to refer only to trusted, reputable and credible sources in finding business related data to avoid wasting time.
Educational institutions
Most educational institutions can be a rich source of information as many research projects are being carried out or sponsored by universities.
University libraries can contain a mixture of every data from any research that was made by their students, professors or visiting staff. You can use some of them to help in your own research.
