The Basics of Market Research – What You Need To Know To Make It Successful

The Basics of Market Research – What You Need To Know To Make It Successful
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Market research is aimed at investigating and understanding the customers, the company and the competitors. Conducting a marketing research on a regular basis will enable you to come up with better strategies to market your products and services more effectively.

There are several aspects involved in a market research as discussed below:

What is survey research?

Survey research is a method of investigation in social science. In a survey research, the researcher collects data from a portion of the population (big or small) and makes inferences from this data. He will use questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, telephone or online interviews to collect the data.

Examples of survey

There are basically two types of market research surveys which differ in the methods of data collection they use:

Qualitative survey:

Focuses on exploring or explaining the nature of an issue. This survey uses data collection methods such as in-depth interviews, uninterrupted observation and focus groups. There are no fixed questionnaires and the interviewer will allow respondents to air out their views and opinions in their own words.

Quantitative survey:

It is aimed at quantifying a problem. Interviewees answer fixed questions through questionnaires, telephone, internet or face-to-face chat.

Survey methodology topics

Market research topics you might want to investigate through your survey include:

Ad tracking: This is to track the effectiveness of your advertisements. You may do it to refine your advertisement strategies and to measure the return on investment of advertising.

Brand positioning: This is to find out how your brand is positioned in comparison to competitor brands. Helps you to develop an effective brand positioning strategy.

Customer satisfaction: This is to test whether your products or services meet the expectations of your clients. This will help you to make necessary improvements.

Types of survey questions

There are two types of questions you can use for your market research:

Close-ended questions –

The respondent is asked multiple-choice questions or dichotomous questions which have only two possible answers e.g. Yes/No. Used mainly in quantitative research.

Open-ended questions –

Respondents answers questions using their own words. The purpose is to get detailed information hence used in qualitative research.

Market research tools

These are some of the ways you can gather information about your customers, company and competitors:

Interviews:

You may assign a company representative the role of calling or video conferencing with clients to get honest information about the company and the products.

Focus groups:

They are particularly important when launching a new product in the market. It involves bringing together a group of people to discuss a product’s packaging, pricing and flavor among others.

Social networks and blogs:

You can converse with your clients through social media and blogs.

Market analysis template

The essence of doing a market research is to make sound business decisions. Therefore, you need to analyze the information you collect. The best way to do this is through a market analysis template. These templates are simple and make it easy to pick out necessary information. Some basic templates for businesses include the PEST and SWOT analysis templates.

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2 Comments on “The Basics of Market Research – What You Need To Know To Make It Successful

  1. Hi,

    I sent in a support ticket yesterday but have received no answer. The shortcodes aren’t working on my website.

    Where can I get support?

  2. Hi Martin,
    I can see that your ticket has been sorted out – I got to this comment a little late. If you need any more help with this, please drop a note to support[at]surveyfunnel[dot]com and our team should be able to sort it out for you promptly.

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