The Fundamentals of Market Research

Have you ever encountered a failure where your newly launched product does not create enough noise in the market? It seems you forgot to do your homework, which is called market research. Every business has a perception that their product is somehow different and will have a great impact in the market, but does it? Not every time, the market is full of ambiguities and even the customer’s perception about a product keeps on changing and that makes market research even more complex.

So, how do these companies get their facts right and make use of them for better-informed decisions that will help them succeed and generate revenue? 

Everything starts with digging deep into the market and understanding the constantly changing market trends and demands. Once companies realize the true potential of their products and understand the current trends, it’s time they understand the behavior of their customers and how they will react to them. 

All of this research has now become a mandatory task before companies launch their products into the market to understand its uncertainty. Not only established businesses but small businesses are also in need of conducting efficient market research to eliminate business risks. 

So, where does the complexity hit?

Things started to be complex for a newcomer who does not know where and how to start market research and what components to consider while conducting it. The process is time-consuming as there is no well-functioning system that can help every type of business conduct a variety of market research. 

Before we move to the critical part of how and why first we will introduce you to the term market research, and what exactly it is.

What is Market Research?

Market research involves a methodical process that helps businesses to gather relevant information about the market, ongoing trends, competitors’ analysis, customer behavior, and most importantly their interest. 

As per your business requirement, you can choose different market research software that will help convert the hard numbers into simple reports for you to make informed decisions. Market research is a detailed process that will provide insights into different fields. 

By staying aware of industry trends, consumer demands and preferences, legislative changes, and other factors, companies can tailor their efforts and allocate resources effectively. This is where the value of market research lies.

The market is huge and has unlimited opportunities for every business. But before that business asks how to do effective research, before that they understand why they are doing it and why they need market research software.

Here is “Why” to Market Research

Whether you are a new business or established, you must conduct market research frequently to understand the market needs and change customers’ behavior. Not only this, market research can help businesses to reach new heights.

“Below are the reasons why businesses must make market research a crucial part of their development process.”

• Identifying potential customers, what are their demands, who is the target audience who will be using the product, their age range, their demographics, and others. It will help to target customers effectively.
• Learn more from existing customers, such as what they like about the product, how they are using the product, what is influencing their purchase decisions, and others. Not only this, but you will encounter their pain points also, so you can eliminate them with improved products and identify upsell opportunities.
• Help you set realistic and long-term targets for your business. Leveraging market data, you can improve your tactics and improve marketing campaigns for continuous development. Being a part of a customer-centric market, you must adopt an STP model: Segmentation – Targeting – Positioning for better results.
• Help you identify potential market challenges and how you can eliminate them by developing a solution to boost your business.
• Find new places and platforms to advertise your products for better reach.
• It helps in getting the latest updates on competitors, their sales, strategies, and their approach to targeting potential customers. 

Now that you know how market research can help your business in several ways, then why not do it? 

But, the most asked question is how can we start doing our research, what methods are available and how do we do that, and what approach to use in different scenarios?

Well, this could be challenging if you are not aware of different ways of conducting market research. So, here we move to the “how” part of the research.

“How” do we do Market Research?

Different types of market research help businesses get accurate information. Market research takes much time and incurs money, so, whatever information you want to be used within your business to make decisions, you must choose the right form of market research. 

Primary Research

In this type, you gather the data directly from the target market, making it a primary data set. Collecting data through primary research yields two types of results: exploratory data, defining the nature of the problem, and conclusive data, which is used to solve a problem. 

For example-

Problem: not able to eliminate fraud respondents who are filling the surveys and it is impacting the quality of the results.

Solution: for that, companies can include fraud detection techniques to eliminate respondents who are leveraging the existing system to complete surveys incorrectly.

The data collected from participants is raw and must be analyzed to identify trends and comparisons. It generally includes focus groups, interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and others.

Secondary Research

The second marketing method is known as secondary research, which involves utilizing previously collected, analyzed, and published data. This type of research can be conducted through desktop research using public domain data such as government statistics, think tanks, research centers, and other sources available on the internet, such as Google.

Compared to primary research strategies, secondary research is often less expensive as much of the information is freely available. However, in certain cases, the collected data may not provide sufficient details to describe the results accurately, requiring the use of primary market research to enhance understanding.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research involves data that cannot be measured. This type of research can be either primary or secondary, and methods such as interviews, polls, and surveys are often used to gain insights into customers’ thoughts and feelings about a product or service.

By asking open-ended questions such as

• Why do you buy our product or service?
• What are the scope of improvements and why?” 

Such answers can help businesses to make significant changes to newly launched and existing products and services. Qualitative research is helpful if conducted before the product launch. 

Quantitative Research

To gather statistical data for analysis, marketers use quantitative research. The objective of this type of market research is to have numerical evidence to support your marketing strategy. The numbers obtained are empirical, and not interpretations, this is where qualitative and quantitative research differs.

Quantitative market research gathers data via surveys, polls, questionnaires, and other methods to generate numerical data for analysis. It helps your business to understand where to allocate your marketing efforts and budget. By analyzing data such as page views, subscribers, and other dimensions, you can modify your marketing strategy according to your findings.

But, that is not all. Once you get into market research, you will come across different methods to get better customer insights. 

With time, people get more curious and have changing opinions about everything. So it is better to connect one-on-one and provide a personalized experience where they can share their true reviews. Getting to know a dedicated set of genuine respondents will take time, only then you can make a futuristic decision to help your business grow while eliminating risks.

Thus one can say that conducting market research is a crucial task that brings many challenges that must be eliminated for a seamless research process. If you are not aware of those challenges then you must take a look.

Potential Market Research Challenges

No matter how much effort you put into conducting detailed market research, if you make a single mistake or use a faulty system to conduct it, your business will have to suffer from losses that you might not be prepared for.

No matter how much effort you put into conducting detailed market research, if you make a single mistake or use a faulty system to conduct it, your business will have to suffer from losses that you might not be prepared for.

Many businesses have failed the process due to many reasons, such as-

• Limited staff and budget to go deeper into the research to get more accurate results, resulting in impacted survey results.
• Making assumptions about the gathered information or completing surveys with wrong data internally.
• Relying on the respondents who are vaguely completing the surveys for just rewards, such as using different accounts to complete the surveys, filling in different data from different cities, and filling surveys for different demographics.
• A seamless pattern to help businesses to manage and create their projects internally.
• Managing a wide range of global suppliers for completing the surveys.
• Not able to check the project’s feasibility even before starting the project.

To cater to these challenges, several companies are developing top-notch market research solutions. With such MR platforms, businesses can process and manage surveys, projects, and respondents from across the globe with great customization.

Unlock Market research opportunities with OnGraph

With the increased need for accurate market insights for making informed decisions, businesses need solutions that can help them get accurate data, connect to genuine respondents and suppliers, create engaging surveys, and more.

To help markets, analysts, and survey respondents, we have a team of experts that will help your business to eliminate all the significant challenges and streamline the market research process. With our solutions, we have helped global clients to make a significant difference in achieving their success.

To know more about these functionalities and market research software development services, you can connect with our team with complete requirements. We will build a perfect MR solution for every business needs.