Do you know what is marketing research? If no, then get ready to know. Because to maintain leadership, in this competitive environment you have to conduct marketing research from time to time.
So marketing research is a process where a company take detailed information about the market, customer and general people to better understand the target market and to make best tactical decisions by identifying their needs, wants and different opportunities.
When you buy something from a shopping mall or any other online platform they give you some feedback form, about their business or their future offerings, that is also a part of a marketing research program.
So here, I will discuss all about the marketing research techniques and that will also help you to improve your business.
What can I learn from here?
Marketing research
Today marketing research is very essential for companies to maintain the customer base and also leadership. Marketing research is about collecting information from the market about the customers need, want, demand and also the best opportunities to make the best tactical decisions.
A market research department’s work is to find the solution of the problems faced by the company by collecting information from the market and also help the management team.
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Marketing research also helps us to know better about the target audience. Like, what type of people like our product we have to target them more. If you also want to know more about Target audience? Check our blog.
That helps us to find opportunities and design a new product or service. If you have a business or want to start a business and you want to know about your ideas whether it succeeds or not then you can know it by marketing research.
For that you can conduct research to find some information like, if I working on this idea then how many people like this? is this necessary for them? In what price I should sell it? Whether they buy my product or not? etc.
Marketing research processes
You can conduct a good marketing research by following these six steps. These are defining the objectives, develop the research plan, collect the information, analyse the information, present the findings, and make the decision.
How to Defining the problem & Objectives for marketing research?
The main importance of marketing research is to solve the problems of the company. Before we start, we have to define the company’s problem and research objectives to get the best result in marketing research.
If you have a business and you want to design a new product or add additional value to an existed product then you have conduct marketing research to find objectives as what type of customers are responding most to my product or service? how much they pay extra for my service? And also find how many customers may choose your store for this service? Etc.
Defining an objective correctly is very important in a research program, because if you define it incorrectly then your result also will be wrong.
How to Develop the Research Plan?
After defining the objective you also have to develop a plan for research. But to develop the research plane we have to make some decisions based on the data source, research approach, research instruments, sampling plan, contact methods.
Data Source:
We start research on collecting data or information from the customer. But some time data already existed.
We have to see whether anywhere data available researched by any other company or person that available on the internet or somewhere else.
That type of data is called secondary data and that is very low in cost. If any secondary data is not available then you have to research your data, that data is called the primary data.
At the time of marketing research try to always use your collected data. Because the data available on the internet may be outdated and that not work for you. So always find data from your sources.
Research Approaches:
You can collect primary data by following these steps, observational research, focus group research, survey research, behavioural research, and also by experiment.
Observational Research:
In observational research, you can collect information by observing the consumers or customers. And you also can give customers to fillup feedback forms.
You also have to observe your customer’s behaviour in-store, which product they pick, how long they check for any product etc. Most important to observe is that what our customer think about our product.
You can also link security cameras to your stores to observe the customer’s behaviour in-store. And can also use different software on your website to track customers online behaviour.
Focus Group Research:
In this type of research, You can also collect data by making a group. But here you have to take some people of different location, culture, demographic and behaviour to ask questions about your product.
Because if you take people from one location then you can’t know about the whole market people’s opinion.
But You have to ask them questions based on your research agenda and observe them. But finding good peoples in this process is very crucial
Survey Research:
In survey research process you can ask people to share their knowledge, believes, and also their satisfaction with your product by questioning them indirectly.
You can ask people for an interview at a public place or you can put a survey request on your website, social media and can add it to your customer service department also.
Behavioural Research:
In this process, you have to observe customers past purchasing behaviours. You also have to analyse their pattern of buying behaviour, return and refund rate, repurchase etc.
Experimental Research:
The most effective way to collect primary data is by experimenting. You have to experiment with your service and product with a different type of customers in a different price range so that you can know what type of customer liking to buy your product and what price is more preferable
Research Instruments:
There are three types of research instruments you can use to market research, these are questionnaires, qualitative measures, and technological devices.
Questionnaires:
In this process, you can ask a set of questions to customers based on your objectives. The questions must be good form, wording and also presented in a good sequence.
So that the customer does not irritate and deliver the appropriate answer. You can ask two types of questions one is open-ended and another is close-ended questions.
An open-ended question gives freedom to the customers so they can answer their way.
Qualitative Measure:
In this instrument, you can measure customer or consumer’s opinion about your product.
You have to creatively measured customers opinion by asking them some brand-related questions, like what word comes to your mind when you hear about our brand? would you like to buy this product? would you also like to recommend someone? etc.
Technological Devices:
Now you have big advantages in technology. Now you can also use technology devices to conduct marketing research. You can also measure what emotions arise when a customer sees your advertisement or any product by the help of technology.
You can use a skin sensor, brain wave scanner, and also full-body scanner to get consumers response about your product. But this type of technology needs a heavy investment and this is a very difficult process.
By using and observing this type of instruments you also can collect primary data and can improve our product and service.
Sampling Plan:
After choosing different research approaches and instruments to collect primary data we also have to design a sampling plan about whom to survey, how many people to survey, and what procedure we have to take.
But we have to consider one thing, That we do not take too big or small size groups.
Contact Methods:
After deciding whom to survey now you also have to contact those people to collect primary data. And we can contact people through online, mail, telephone, personal contacts. But we have to contact people as per our desire reach.
Online Contact:
You can conduct marketing research by online contact, contacting the majority of people through the internet in a low coast, putting questions on your website, social media and also by offering them some discount to answer the question.
By creating your community groups and there you ask questions and here you can test your product also. By online product testing, you can get information faster than any other platform.
And we can also take help from other companies whose job is to conduct research. But we have to clear about our research objectives.
One of the market research company is a survey monkey. By this, we can get both primary and secondary data.
Mail Contact:
You can also contact people by sending emails. But here you have to make sure your question should be simple and worded so that customer can easily understand and replay.
Telephone Contact:
You can also contact people by telephone and ask questions. If the customer faces any difficulty to understand the question then you can easily clarify them.
But most important is you have to call them when they are not busy or ask them for a certain time to talk.
Personal Contact:
For better marketing research you can also contact people personally by asking them for an appointment or in a shopping mall or any public places by giving them some discount or money.
This is one of the best methods to contact because here you can know more about their behaviour on your product, by observing their body language.
But contacting people personally is also a expensive method. Because when we contact them, not every one cooperate with us.
How to Collect the Information?
After contacting with the people you have to collect information from them. But this process may be complicated because when we contact them by online, mail, telephone or personally than some may be out of the station, may have an internet issue, may block your mail. So this process is a little complicated but most important part of marketing research. So that you have to try to contact them again and collect information
How to Analyse the Information?
After collecting the information we also have to manage that information as a tabulation form. So that we can easily analyse the data. Like we can manage that data in an excel file and analyze.
So you have to observe all the collected data and try to find some objective related answers.
How to Present the Findings?
After analysing, you also have to present what you have found by analysed. You have to present the results of your objectives, who buy from us? how much can they pay? And is this service strengthen our brand? etc.
Because we conduct research for finding the solutions of our problem.
How to Make the Decisions?
You have to make decisions based on your marketing research findings. If your finding shows some negative points about your added service or value then you don’t have to start that service or you have to conduct a little more research and apply that service according to the research.
If your finding is positive then you can start your product or service.
Conclusion
If you have a small vegetable business, and you also want to grow your business by adding some extra value to your product.
Suppose you want to sell vegetables by making them pesticides free but at a premium price. And nobody else is doing this.
So now can conduct marketing research to find objectives like, if I sell these types of product then how many people willing to buy? How much they willing to pay? And is it important for a customer or not? etc.
After that you have to collect data by observing people, their buying behaviour, giving them feedback forms, asking them questions about the product.
After collecting the data now you also have to analyse them and find answers about your objectives. But carefully analyzing is very crucial. Because, if our analyze process is wrong, then our objective’s answer will also be wrong.
If more people want to buy the product and if all your objective’s answer is also positive then you can start that service.
But if your objective’s answer is negative then you can again conduct your research.
Frequently Asked Questions
Marketing research is a process where marketers collect information about consumer and competitors to better manage their marketing decisions to launch a new product or service. And to maintain their customer base.
We have to do market research especially when we want to launch a new product or service and if we want to add some additional value or service in our existing product. Except for that time to time, we have to do market research to gain knowledge about the market and competitor and to find some opportunities.
Marketing research helps businesses to gain required information about the market, competitor and consumer’s needs and wants, so marketers can develop their marketing strategy and satisfy according to the consumer’s required needs and wants.
In marketing research first, we have to identify the objectives, objectives means what we want to research and then we have to find some existed data from the internet. If there is no existed data available then we have to collect our data by questioning customers in a mail, phone call, personal meeting or by online platforms. After collecting the data we have to analyse that data a find our objectives appropriate answer.
