Market Research
The classical definition of Market research :
Market research is a systematic collection and analysis of data about a specific market. It is conducted to help businesses stay competitive and innovative by better understanding:
1.Market environments (size, supply/demand dynamics, and trends)
2. Customer need wants, and beliefs
3.Competitive landscape
In terms of the process, market research has a key role to play in every industry.
Market Research helps marketers and entrepreneurs center their business around their customers. It can also increase the probability of making correct marketing decisions and thus reduce risk, effectively acting as a risk management proposition.
Predominantly, Researchers use two types of market research: Primary & Secondary.
Primary research involves collecting raw or primary data and drawing insight through exploratory analysis. It is often used to gather info about customer opinion, values, and preferences and could have been collected through some basic methods like:
· Interviews
· Focus groups
· Surveys/questionnaires
Specific information could be collected through primary research. Primary research is time-consuming and more expensive to conduct than secondary research as the methods involved are traditional and involves a lot of manual intervention and human interaction.
Secondary research involves collecting data and analysis completed by someone else rather than personally attempting to gather and find inferences. Secondary research typically entails using Web research (mainly through various forums, groups, and data scraping), industry and analyst reports, and demographic research and can be done comparatively faster and cost-effectively. For broad industry and competitor info, researchers tend to rely on secondary research and make adjustments to extrapolate the findings to their situations which might be suitable in business cases where immediate results are required. For a thorough analysis, a combination of primary and secondary research would be advisable.
There are two categories of data collection: qualitative & quantitative. Qualitative methods use interviews and focus group discussions with smaller audiences. They provide insight into customer opinion, perception, and preferences.
Quantitative methods collect data from a large audience and use statistics and analytics to understand the statistical significance in the findings thereby helping in drawing meaningful insights.
Often conducting qualitative research first (using a small sample and gathering maximum data ) can help refine the questions to ask for massive quantitative collection (i.e. surveys) later.
The basic Market Research Process works as follows:
- Identify and formulate the problem
- Determine the research approach and design
- Design the sample and method of data collection
- Collect the data
- Analyze the data
- Interpret, discuss and present the findings
Through the Market Research procedure, we would be able to determine what they need to know about their market.
Here are some ways in which we can leverage the power of Market research by doing it more effectively and efficiently.
- Identify the clear scope of research/ have an in-detail problem statement
Every stakeholder has a different understanding and beliefs about their business, customers, and the environment in which they compete. When they want some research to get done, the first thing they would like to get done would be the tendency to want to find out ‘everything’. This would not help due to the constraint in available resources and time. Understanding the constraints early on will help in scoping the project and developing the problem statement correctly. Getting the stakeholders to prioritize will be difficult and time-consuming but it will ensure setting up a clear expectation and also help understand the exact scope of the research to be conducted. It is to be noted that in market research, we would always be working under some sort of constraint.
2. Note down the assumptions
It is important to understand and note down the assumptions implied during the market research as they affect how one could refine the questions and analyze the data.
Understanding assumptions will play a crucial role, particularly when primary data needs to be extrapolated and analyzed for various purposes.
3. Explore the data and narrow down on key points
Firstly, we would have to take the insights gathered from the interviews as a starting point and conduct one-on-one interviews with a handful of interviewees using open-ended questions that can get maximum information from the interviewees. The goal here is to listen to what your interviewees (i.e. customers, suppliers, regulatory, employees, etc.) have to say. Interview questions are given to have an initial structure and there would be enough freedom to deviate from the questions according to the situation. It is best if you do not frame the questions, prime the interviewee, or influence the audience in any way, biasing the interviewee would be detrimental to the entire process.
Focus groups are similar to one-on-one interviews in their objective to find out more about people’s perceptions, opinions, and beliefs towards the very topic of study though it is conducted in a different format. Focus groups are interactive where participants can talk to each other while interviewers only participate to moderate the flow, level of participation, and pace of discussion.
Key factors to successful interviews and focus groups include listening actively and objectively, fine-tuning assumptions, and sharpening your key questions to ask a larger audience for market validation.
4. Design a superb survey
Having clarity in your objective and knowing what kind of information is needed from the market will help you design a great survey and construct clear and direct questions. Be mindful of the type of analysis you are anticipating and design a survey appropriate for such analysis.
5. Analyze
Analyze and model survey results against the original and refined market research objectives and hypothesis and test for statistical significance for the same. To fully understand the survey findings, it’s important to analyze the survey design, assumptions, and tools used and their impact on the outcome, hence each step should carefully be designed, scrutinized, and completed.
6. Validate the findings
Validation of the findings is necessary as the results sometimes may be way different from what was expected. Hence validate findings with stakeholders which would help decipher whether certain assumptions were not in line with reality, whether there was a flaw in the survey design, and/or whether the results are as expected or otherwise.
7. Communicate the findings after validation (Final Output)
Communicate the results of the entire market research in a visual way that is easy to understand by including graphs, charts, numerical data as well as emphasizing on the key findings. Answer all the key questions and hypotheses the stakeholders had at the beginning of the market research. Make recommendations in context with the original purpose for the market research.
As a summary, here are the steps that are recommended if anyone wishes to conduct market research:-
- Develop a plan
- Understand the nature of the marketing problem
- Specify the sampling process and the sample size
- Design the survey instrument and collect the data
- Distill the analysis results and prepare them in a customer-oriented manner
- Capture the essence of the data
Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning play a leading role in understanding the buyer’s journey and consumer habits during the whole procedure.
Market Research in some cases would not be able to provide reliable and comprehensive explanations of consumer behavior and substitute management decisions. This is the reason why we believe that when trying to identify a Marketing Research Problem, it would be better to focus also on symptoms through Management Decision Process and determine what the decision-maker needs to do alongside the information needed to solve it.
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At Tetracube Technologies we ensure to follow our in house methodology to ensure best results for market research for your business. This process helps us in creating the best plan suited to your businesses. Contact us to know more.
