importance of market research study

How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

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Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry.

What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

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Home Market Research

Importance of Market Research + Types & How to Plan it.

Market research will help you develop a successful marketing strategy. It is one of the reasons why market research is so important for organizations that want to make informed decisions. This article will highlight the relevance of market research and importance of market research.

For your products and services to be well-accepted by customers, you must know the choices and preferences of your target audience . Market research provides you with essential information about your competitors and existing products. 

The results offer you insights into what it would take to succeed in the market. Hence, organizations base their business decisions on good market research, such as sales and marketing strategies.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

Market research helps reduce risk by allowing you to determine product features, pricing, and promotions from the outset. It also helps you focus resources where they will be most effective.

LEARN ABOUT: Marketing Insight

This blog will discuss the importance of market research, its types, and how to plan it for your business.

Content Index

What is market research?

Types of market research, the importance of market research for your business, how to plan market research, how questionpro helps in market research.

Market research is a systematic process of gathering, evaluating, and interpreting data. It is the basis of any business that does well. The data could be about a target market, customers, competitors, or the industry as a whole. The research serves a variety of reasons, ranging from identifying a new market to launching a new business.

Market research assists entrepreneurs in making sound business decisions. It may remove the guesswork from innovation and direct resources to the most promising ideas and projects. Different companies conduct market research for different purposes.

Businesses use various types of market research to gather information about their target market, competitors, and market research industry trends . There are two main types of market research: 

• Quantitative research.
• Qualitative research.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research focuses on generating numbers, for example, what percentage of the population buys a specific product. It is conducted using surveys and questionnaires. You can do simple quantitative research yourself by talking to customers. 

More detailed quantitative research can be used to identify markets and understand customer profiles while launching a new product.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research relies on facts and figures to discover what people think and feel about products and what factors affect their purchasing decisions. Researchers use surveys and focus groups to gather this information while interpreting the results is a job that requires certain research skills .

To learn more about the differences and characteristics of these types of research, we recommend reading Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research .

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

You can also conduct secondary research using existing surveys and business reports. Use free online information on market size, sales trends, customer profiles, and competitor activity.

Your customer records can give you a wealth of knowledge about purchasing patterns, the most popular services among various demographic groups, etc. 

Market research can help you analyze key trends and predict how the market will change. Here are some of the reasons why market research is important for your business:

Identifies new products and services

Market research can assist you in determining what new products or services the market requires and how you can provide them. Key issues with developing a specific product or service can be identified, allowing you to avoid costly development mistakes. 

It also assists you in determining which factors are most important to customers and how to implement them into what you want to bring to market.

Identifies potential customers

Demographic information such as gender, age, income, occupation, and lifestyle can help you better understand your customer base. If you know who your current customers are, you can target them in the future. Marketing to the wrong type of customer can lead to poor product performance.

Establishes product or service viability

If your company plans to launch a new product or service, you must first determine whether the market is ready for it. Will the product be well received? Is the product required by the customers you want to reach? Will it be workable, and what are the chances of success?

Keeps your company ahead of competitors

Comparative studies are excellent for tracking your competitors’ progress compared to your company’s. 

If they are far ahead of you, this is an excellent opportunity for you to learn what they are doing differently than you. Business strategies can be developed to help you stay ahead of your competitors.

Reduces risk and enhances profitability

Knowledge can help reduce your company’s risks and determine which risks are worth taking based on past and future market trends. 

Market research help in determining market viability , lowering the risk of failure. Understanding your customers’ needs is also important for risk reduction. At the end of the day, lowering risk helps to increase profitability.

Helps to understand existing customers

Your customers are complex, and what they require previously may not be what they require now. To be successful, you must constantly monitor the pulse of your customer base. Market research can help you better understand your current customers. 

The market research also helps to determine customer satisfaction levels. If you discover their low satisfaction levels, you can figure out why and fix it. If it is high, you can figure out why and learn how to keep it that way.

Helps set realistic goals

You can set realistic goals by using current data about your market and customer base. Establishing a growth pattern over time lets you know what to expect in the future and how to really develop that growth. 

Setting attainable goals will save resources, succeed before you start, and miss out on better long-term goals for your company.

Effective market research starts with knowing what you are trying to accomplish and what information you need. You can do it yourself. 

For example, if you are considering buying or renting a store, you can analyze traffic levels at different times. Or you can talk to your potential customers.

However, to make good business decisions , you will need a more comprehensive approach. 

For example, if you conduct a market survey , you will need survey software to design a survey, customize the look and feel and generate reports. You might also want to integrate the tool with other CRM and marketing automation software. 

Survey software can let you export results in standard formats or share the reports with others. You can also create online surveys in multiple languages and let your respondents select the language of their choice.

One of the most important aspects of planning market research is asking the right questions. Design the survey such that it collects meaningful and high-quality data.

If you want to know more about how to do this, we recommend our article: How to Write a Market Research Plan?

LEARN ABOUT:  Test Market Demand

QuestionPro is a market research software platform that assists businesses in conducting various types of market research. It has market research tools to create, distribute, and analyze surveys and other research methods. QuestionPro can assist organizations with their market research in a variety of ways, including:

Surveys: QuestionPro has a full survey builder that lets organizations make their own surveys, add questions, and choose from a variety of question types, like multiple choice, open-ended, and rating scales.

Data collection: QuestionPro enables organizations to collect data via online surveys, email, web pop-ups, and mobile devices. It also provides a variety of data collection methods, including panel sampling, random sampling, and targeted sampling.

Data analysis: To assist organizations in gaining insights from their data, QuestionPro offers a variety of data analysis tools such as cross-tabulation, descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics .

Real-time data reporting: QuestionPro provides real-time data reporting, allowing organizations to monitor the progress of their research in real-time and make changes to their survey design as needed.

Integration with other tools: QuestionPro integrates with a variety of other tools, including Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Zapier, to provide organizations with a comprehensive view of their market research data.

QuestionPro offers businesses a comprehensive platform for conducting market research and gaining valuable insights into their target audience, competitors, and industry trends. It enables businesses to make informed decisions based on data-driven insights.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

Market research should be well-structured, concise, and provide useful insights to help the organization make informed decisions. It should also serve as a starting point for future research and assist organizations in identifying areas for improvement in their business strategies.

Market research is an important component that summarizes the research findings and insights. It gives you a clear picture of the market and its trends, consumer behavior, and the overall competitive landscape.

If you are interested in conducting online survey research, QuestionPro can help you. Request a demo and learn how our survey software works and the advantages of using it in your next market research. Get started today!

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Market research is a cornerstone of all successful, strategic businesses. It can also be daunting for entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup or start a side hustle . What is market research, anyway? And how do you…do it?

We’ll walk you through absolutely everything you need to know about the market research process so that by the end of this guide, you’ll be an expert in market research too. And what’s more important: you’ll have actionable steps you can take to start collecting your own market research.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the organized process of gathering information about your target customers and market. Market research can help you better understand customer behavior and competitor strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide insight for the best strategies in launching new businesses and products. There are different ways to approach market research, including primary and secondary research and qualitative and quantitative research. The strongest approaches will include a combination of all four.

“Virtually every business can benefit from conducting some market research,” says Niles Koenigsberg of Real FiG Advertising + Marketing . “Market research can help you piece together your [business’s] strengths and weaknesses, along with your prospective opportunities, so that you can understand where your unique differentiators may lie.” Well-honed market research will help your brand stand out from the competition and help you see what you need to do to lead the market. It can also do so much more.

The Purposes of Market Research

Why do market research? It can help you…

• Pinpoint your target market, create buyer personas, and develop a more holistic understanding of your customer base and market.
• Understand current market conditions to evaluate risks and anticipate how your product or service will perform.
• Validate a concept prior to launch.
• Identify gaps in the market that your competitors have created or overlooked.
• Solve problems that have been left unresolved by the existing product/brand offerings.
• Identify opportunities and solutions for new products or services.
• Develop killer marketing strategies .

What Are the Benefits of Market Research?

Strong market research can help your business in many ways. It can…

• Strengthen your market position.
• Help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.
• Help you identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Minimize risk.
• Center your customers’ experience from the get-go.
• Help you create a dynamic strategy based on market conditions and customer needs/demands.

What Are the Basic Methods of Market Research?

The basic methods of market research include surveys, personal interviews, customer observation, and the review of secondary research. In addition to these basic methods, a forward-thinking market research approach incorporates data from the digital landscape like social media analysis, SEO research, gathering feedback via forums, and more. Throughout this guide, we will cover each of the methods commonly used in market research to give you a comprehensive overview.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Primary and secondary are the two main types of market research you can do. The latter relies on research conducted by others. Primary research, on the other hand, refers to the fact-finding efforts you conduct on your own.

This approach is limited, however. It’s likely that the research objectives of these secondary data points differ from your own, and it can be difficult to confirm the veracity of their findings.

Primary Market Research

Primary research is more labor intensive, but it generally yields data that is exponentially more actionable. It can be conducted through interviews, surveys, online research, and your own data collection. Every new business should engage in primary market research prior to launch. It will help you validate that your idea has traction, and it will give you the information you need to help minimize financial risk.

You can hire an agency to conduct this research on your behalf. This brings the benefit of expertise, as you’ll likely work with a market research analyst. The downside is that hiring an agency can be expensive—too expensive for many burgeoning entrepreneurs. That brings us to the second approach. You can also do the market research yourself, which substantially reduces the financial burden of starting a new business .

Secondary Market Research

Secondary research includes resources like government databases and industry-specific data and publications. It can be beneficial to start your market research with secondary sources because it’s widely available and often free-to-access. This information will help you gain a broad overview of the market conditions for your new business.

Identify Your Goals and Your Audience

Before you begin conducting interviews or sending out surveys, you need to set your market research goals. At the end of your market research process, you want to have a clear idea of who your target market is—including demographic information like age, gender, and where they live—but you also want to start with a rough idea of who your audience might be and what you’re trying to achieve with market research.

You can pinpoint your objectives by asking yourself a series of guiding questions:

• What are you hoping to discover through your research?
• Who are you hoping to serve better because of your findings?
• What do you think your market is?
• Who are your competitors?
• Are you testing the reception of a new product category or do you want to see if your product or service solves the problem left by a current gap in the market?
• Are you just…testing the waters to get a sense of how people would react to a new brand?

Once you’ve narrowed down the “what” of your market research goals, you’re ready to move onto how you can best achieve them. Think of it like algebra. Many math problems start with “solve for x.” Once you know what you’re looking for, you can get to work trying to find it. It’s a heck of a lot easier to solve a problem when you know you’re looking for “x” than if you were to say “I’m gonna throw some numbers out there and see if I find a variable.”

How to Do Market Research

This guide outlines every component of a comprehensive market research effort. Take into consideration the goals you have established for your market research, as they will influence which of these elements you’ll want to include in your market research strategy.

Secondary Data

Secondary data allows you to utilize pre-existing data to garner a sense of market conditions and opportunities. You can rely on published market studies, white papers, and public competitive information to start your market research journey.

Secondary data, while useful, is limited and cannot substitute your own primary data. It’s best used for quantitative data that can provide background to your more specific inquiries.

Find Your Customers Online

Once you’ve identified your target market, you can use online gathering spaces and forums to gain insights and give yourself a competitive advantage. Rebecca McCusker of The Creative Content Shop recommends internet recon as a vital tool for gaining a sense of customer needs and sentiment. “Read their posts and comments on forums, YouTube video comments, Facebook group [comments], and even Amazon/Goodreads book comments to get in their heads and see what people are saying.”

If you’re interested in engaging with your target demographic online, there are some general rules you should follow. First, secure the consent of any group moderators to ensure that you are acting within the group guidelines. Failure to do so could result in your eviction from the group.

Not all comments have the same research value. “Focus on the comments and posts with the most comments and highest engagement,” says McCusker. These high-engagement posts can give you a sense of what is already connecting and gaining traction within the group.

Social media can also be a great avenue for finding interview subjects. “LinkedIn is very useful if your [target customer] has a very specific job or works in a very specific industry or sector. It’s amazing the amount of people that will be willing to help,” explains Miguel González, a marketing executive at Dealers League . “My advice here is BE BRAVE, go to LinkedIn, or even to people you know and ask them, do quick interviews and ask real people that belong to that market and segment and get your buyer persona information first hand.”

Market research interviews can provide direct feedback on your brand, product, or service and give you a better understanding of consumer pain points and interests.

When organizing your market research interviews, you want to pay special attention to the sample group you’re selecting, as it will directly impact the information you receive. According to Tanya Zhang, the co-founder of Nimble Made , you want to first determine whether you want to choose a representative sample—for example, interviewing people who match each of the buyer persona/customer profiles you’ve developed—or a random sample.

“A sampling of your usual persona styles, for example, can validate details that you’ve already established about your product, while a random sampling may [help you] discover a new way people may use your product,” Zhang says.

Market Surveys

Market surveys solicit customer inclinations regarding your potential product or service through a series of open-ended questions. This direct outreach to your target audience can provide information on your customers’ preferences, attitudes, buying potential, and more.

Every expert we asked voiced unanimous support for market surveys as a powerful tool for market research. With the advent of various survey tools with accessible pricing—or free use—it’s never been easier to assemble, disseminate, and gather market surveys. While it should also be noted that surveys shouldn’t replace customer interviews , they can be used to supplement customer interviews to give you feedback from a broader audience.

Who to Include in Market Surveys

• Current customers
• Past customers
• Your existing audience (such as social media/newsletter audiences)

Example Questions to Include in Market Surveys

While the exact questions will vary for each business, here are some common, helpful questions that you may want to consider for your market survey. Demographic Questions: the questions that help you understand, demographically, who your target customers are:

• “What is your age?”
• “Where do you live?”
• “What is your gender identity?”
• “What is your household income?”
• “What is your household size?”
• “What do you do for a living?”
• “What is your highest level of education?”

Product-Based Questions: Whether you’re seeking feedback for an existing brand or an entirely new one, these questions will help you get a sense of how people feel about your business, product, or service:

• “How well does/would our product/service meet your needs?”
• “How does our product/service compare to similar products/services that you use?”
• “How long have you been a customer?” or “What is the likelihood that you would be a customer of our brand?

Personal/Informative Questions: the deeper questions that help you understand how your audience thinks and what they care about.

• “What are your biggest challenges?”
• “What’s most important to you?”
• “What do you do for fun (hobbies, interests, activities)?”
• “Where do you seek new information when researching a new product?”
• “How do you like to make purchases?”
• “What is your preferred method for interacting with a brand?”

Survey Tools

Online survey tools make it easy to distribute surveys and collect responses. The best part is that there are many free tools available. If you’re making your own online survey, you may want to consider SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, or Zoho Survey.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis is a breakdown of how your business stacks up against the competition. There are many different ways to conduct this analysis. One of the most popular methods is a SWOT analysis, which stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” This type of analysis is helpful because it gives you a more robust understanding of why a customer might choose a competitor over your business. Seeing how you stack up against the competition can give you the direction you need to carve out your place as a market leader.

Social Media Analysis

Social media has fundamentally changed the market research landscape, making it easier than ever to engage with a wide swath of consumers. Follow your current or potential competitors on social media to see what they’re posting and how their audience is engaging with it. Social media can also give you a lower cost opportunity for testing different messaging and brand positioning.

SEO Analysis and Opportunities

SEO analysis can help you identify the digital competition for getting the word out about your brand, product, or service. You won’t want to overlook this valuable information. Search listening tools offer a novel approach to understanding the market and generating the content strategy that will drive business. Tools like Google Trends and Awario can streamline this process.

Ready to Kick Your Business Into High Gear?

Now that you’ve completed the guide to market research you know you’re ready to put on your researcher hat to give your business the best start. Still not sure how actually… launch the thing? Our free mini-course can run you through the essentials for starting your side hustle .

About Mary Kate Miller

Mary Kate Miller writes about small business, real estate, and finance. In addition to writing for Foundr, her work has been published by The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more. She lives in Chicago.

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The benefits of market research are long-proven. Yet still, there are many who focus on instinct instead of insight.

While intuition is all good and well, there’s no getting away from the power of cold-hard data.

In this post, I list 11 market research benefits, with real-world examples and six free research templates thrown in for good measure.

1. Better communication with customers

Why it matters: Effective communication is the cornerstone of good relations. And, with how much time, effort, and money it takes to win a new client, ensuring you stay in their good books isn’t just nice – it’s a necessity.

The first benefit of market research is the ability to learn about your customer’s likes and dislikes – so you can adapt how you position the business and its products accordingly. Tailored communications speak to customers in a way that resonates far better than generalized messages.

The one-size-fits-all approach no longer works. Delivering comms in the right format, at the right time, via the right platform can boost engagement and help focus on driving value. With it, customers feel appreciated and receive information that’s both useful and relevant.

These days, all it takes is a quick click, and customers can unsubscribe from communications. This is why businesses must ensure every communication counts.

Example: Market research surveys are an ideal way to quickly understand how customers feel about your communications with them. Be direct, and ask them about the content, frequency, and formats they prefer.

If you want to establish the best time or day of the week to email, you can use your email campaign tracking data to show you the best and worst times, based on open rates, and click-through rates.

2. Enables strategic, data-driven plans

Why it matters: Market research benefits all types and stages of business planning. It gives you the numbers and insights you need to make accurate forecasts. It can also impact key decisions that can help you develop and adapt your strategy.

Here are a few examples where market research can benefit data-driven decision-making :

• Deciding whether to modify or discontinue a product.
• Prioritizing new features to develop for an existing product.
• Establishing which marketing channels to invest in.
• Selecting which social media platforms to utilize.
• Choosing which new markets to enter or where to open a new retail outlet.
• Evaluating the impact of a cost increase or change to pricing strategy.
• Discover new partners, affiliates, or publishers to work with.
• Targeting a new persona or different segment of a market.

Market research serves as a trusty compass, helping guide and steer decisions that impact growth and profitability. Once you implement a new tactic or campaign, you can again benefit from market research to measure and track ongoing success.

3. Develop detailed target personas

Why it matters: It’s no secret that a comprehensive understanding of one’s target audience is fundamental to an organization’s success. Everything from product development to positioning and marketing is impacted by the effective development of target personas.

While most companies have a decent understanding of what their ideal customer profile looks like; a distinct advantage of market research is the depth of detail it offers about the preferences, behaviors, and habits of a target audience – based on actual facts and everyday actions they take online.

By doing audience analysis and consumer journey tracking , organizations can discover insights about their ideal customers quickly and in finite detail. So instead of having a static persona that doesn’t really change with the times; marketers can discover things like:

• Age, gender, and geography
• Audience loyalty & interests
• Cross-shopping behaviors
• Product search trends
• View audience overlaps with rivals
• Identify drop-off points in funnels
• Optimize conversion funnels
• Discover which marketing channels appeal to a specific audience

Grab our customer persona template to use a framework for this research – it’s at the end of this post, along with 5 other useful market research templates !

4. Reduce costs and save time

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of market research for a business is its ability to help organizations improve efficiency and reduce outlay – both from a time and cost perspective. While each business achieves different outcomes, doing proper research can help pave the way for process improvements.

A few examples include:

• Spending less on marketing channels that don’t appeal to a target audience or drive ROI.
• Decrease customer churn via surveys, enhanced support, or more suitable product offerings.
• Prevent you from entering a new market in a territory that’s already saturated.
• Testing the viability or appetite for a new product or service before making investment decisions.
• Reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) through clearer targeting and messaging.
• Identification of new partnerships or affiliates who can drive referrals to your business.

DocSend uses Similarweb to reduce marketing spend by 20% and reduced research time by 10% – as an added bonus it saw website traffic gains of around 10%.

Read more about how market research benefited DocSend here .

5. Stay ahead of the competition

Why it matters: These days, the competition is fierce in almost every market. Customers have many options to choose from, and outpacing your rivals is a constant battle. From new product or service offerings to campaigns and content – not to mention promotions and partnerships; keeping a keen eye on your market positioning is key.

A core benefit of market research is knowing what other players in your market are doing. More to the point, market research actually shows you how well these offerings are doing.

A competitive analysis framework is a great way to systematically record and track what your rivals are doing. It can help you spot opportunities, such as:

• Develop new marketing campaigns and creatives
• Adapt your product or service offerings
• Give insights into new content to write about
• Show you which channels work best for your target market
• Find underserved segments of a market
• See what customers like or dislike about your rivals
• Help you develop your unique selling proposition (USP)

Good market research can be the differential factor that gives you an edge in your market.

In this scenario, I want to analyze the competitive landscape of a social media management company. I chose Sprout Social to review as it’s considered a market leader.

See how much competitive intel I can grab in less than a minute

In a snapshot, I can see an overview of its traffic and engagement. This includes the total visits, unique visitors , a link to its apps, and a breakdown of traffic by channel. With a quick compare, I see how these metrics stack up against others in the market. Later.com and influencermarketinghub.com are two players who consistently outperform sproutsocial.com – which means I can delve deeper into their successes, campaigns, and content next.

From the platform, I can see how many referrals they’re getting, and from where. Which ad networks and campaigns they’re running, and copies of the creatives being used.

Next, I look at the most popular pages on Sprout Social’s site. This shows several pages on the topic of small business social media are achieving significant growth – indicating my target audience is responding to these pages, so I should be covering or promoting content on a similar theme.

So, in less than a minute, I’ve discovered

• How my competitor stacks up vs others in the market
• Which traffic channels are growing
• The best referral partners and advertisers
• What marketing channels are showing the best results
• Copies of their ad creatives
• What content topics are the most popular
• Top industry search terms
• Uncovered two other major players to evaluate

Software like Similarweb makes it quick and easy to see the insights and metrics that matter most. Here, you can discover where you can get a competitive edge, and keep track of market trends and rival campaigns.

6. Discover the best marketing channels

From email marketing to socials, affiliates, referrals, paid ads, and more; there are many marketing channels to leverage – and it’s not always obvious which is right for your business. Another key benefit of doing market research is the ability to hone in on the channels that deliver the best return on investment.

A trial-and-error approach can be costly. Not just from a dollar perspective, it can be a drain on your resources too. By first establishing the optimal marketing mix for your target audience or market, you can save time and money, and reach your goals faster.

Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence can show you which channels work best for your market and rivals. It also highlights the specific ad creatives and content being used for high-performing campaigns.

Here, you see a snapshot of the marketing channels being used across five competitive sites. It shows the biggest drivers of traffic are direct and organic search. By clicking on any single channel, you can get a complete breakdown of the respective details. I’ve clicked to expand social media, as just one example, here’s what it tells me.

As well as being able to instantly see the insights that count, I can click on any channel to see a detailed breakdown of performance. Next, I can compare each channel to see who is outperforming others – which tells me exactly who I need to take a closer look at.

7. Identify growth opportunities

The benefits of doing market research apply to those launching new products or entering new markets . However, periodic research can also help you spot growth-focused opportunities that may not have been considered before.

Another compelling entrant to include in the benefits of market research is its ability to unearth opportunities to grow. Whether that’s through finding new customers, markets, channels, or creative ways to go to market and get more eyes on your business. A good case in point is in the identification of new partnerships for referrals; something that often comes about when doing a competitive analysis .

The advantages of using market research for growth are ongoing, throughout the lifecycle of your business. For example:

• Reviewing competitor marketing channels could uncover key findings about a new affiliate site that’s sending a volume of traffic to their site.
• A guest post or piece of content generates a high level of interest and drives traffic to the site.
• Untapped segments for your products. Perhaps a rival is doing a better job of appealing to a different demographic. This, in turn, presents an opportunity to diversify your messaging or switch marketing channels. The same could apply to a new location or geographic region.
• New partnerships. Joint ventures between businesses that share a similar target demographic can be mutually beneficial – helping both parties reach a new ready-prepped customer base.
• Perhaps a rival is offering an add-on or upsell that you’ve failed to consider.
• You might also conduct market research surveys where customers tell you something they’d like but which you don’t yet offer.

Success story: See how AirBnB used Similarweb to uncover opportunities for growth in new markets.

8. Spot new or emerging trends

Why it matters: With how quickly consumer behaviors change and markets shift, it’s important to move with the times. Market research can help businesses stay in touch with what’s happening – something that applies to consumers, competitors, and the industry as a whole.

From changes to purchasing behaviors, new technologies, new products, or service features; researching trends and staying close to rising players in your market allows you to keep tabs on what things are attracting attention.

• Which keywords or phrases are trending in your industry?
• Is there a new player showing significant growth in your market?
• What are your rival’s highest-hitting pages?
• How are apps impacting your market – do you know which of your competitors have one, and is it successful?
• Which campaigns in your industry are working and gaining traction?
• Is there a specific asset, whitepaper, or offering that your target audience responds to?
• Are there any seasonal trends that impact your market?
• Can you see spikes in specific search terms or phrases?

While you can use digital research tools like Similarweb to quickly analyze a market, search trends, seasonal patterns, mobile app intelligence , and more – qualitative data, like surveys can be leveraged to understand customers and changing behaviors too.

Read more about how Wonderbly achieved its success here.

9. Makes it easy to evaluate and track your success

Why it matters: With the knowledge of where your business is performing well, or falling behind, you can set goals and direction more clearly. Benchmarking shows you industry standards, and maps out how rivals are doing; so you can measure relative performance.

For a business to grow, it needs to push the boundaries. The benefit of using market research here is that it shows you where and how big those boundaries are. A survey from PWC found businesses that set benchmarks achieve 45% more productivity and grow, on average 69 times faster than those that do not.

There are various types of benchmarking – each of which makes it possible to unpack and track the successes of those in your market and drill down into what success looks like for your business.

10. Inform market analysis – SWOT

Why it matters: A further benefit of doing market research is that it can show you any relative strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that exist between competitors and in a market. Greater awareness of these facts helps drive the right actions and gives clarity on areas of focus for the business. Without it, your business is susceptible to preventable mistakes.

With company and market research , you find out where opportunities and threats exist in your ecosystem. From environmental or technological factors to internal considerations; forewarned is forearmed. What’s more, a regular review of your SWOT, informed by market research, allows you to capitalize on new opportunities faster than others and keeps you in the strongest position where gaining a competitive edge is concerned.

Helpful: Read our complete guide to doing an industry SWOT analysis .

11. Inform a content marketing strategy

Why it matters: These days, the importance of having an effective, relevant, and successful content marketing strategy cannot be overstated. According to a 2020 competitive intelligence survey , companies have, on average, 29 competitors. So, regardless of your sector, in the digital world, it’s constant competition – be it for better visibility online, a higher CTR, or increased engagement.

So, how does market research benefit a business? And how can you stand out and get found online? With content marketing, of course.

An advantage of using market research to inform your content marketing strategy is that data doesn’t lie. Yes, it’s an old one but a good one. A data-driven approach to content marketing is a surefire way to uncover the most searched keywords , the right topics, and content to harness to your advantage.

You can use market research to uncover the following:

• The busiest pages on any website.
• Which topics and keywords drive the most traffic in your market?
• New topics or keyword phrases that are trending or appearing seasonably.
• Inform topic planning or theme building for a blog.
• Help you discover new opportunities for dedicated landing pages.
• What content or assets an audience engages with most.
• Which channels are the most effective to deliver content?
• The best time of day to post new content.

Success story:  See how Tourism New Zealand benefits from market research ; and how they use Similarweb to research content and keywords.  

Limitations of Market Research

Regardless of whether it’s for an enterprise company or an entrepreneur – time, cost, and experience are viewed as the biggest limitations of market research. But this is an outdated perception that is no longer relevant or true to life.

Here’s how things are in 2022.

• If cost is considered a limitation of market research – use secondary market research methods. Most of the time, the data can be found online, for free.

This guide to desk research shows you the best places to find secondary research data. 

• Should you view time as a limitation – use software like Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence to quickly view insights in almost any market, company, or product.

If you’re on a deadline, let’s say you need to do market research for a business plan , market research tools can help you get it done in a day.

• Perhaps you feel a lack of experience is preventing you from doing market research. Most market research tools require little to no training and are highly intuitive.

Use market research templates to guide you through the key data points you need to collect. 

Benefits of market research – In summary

Market research benefits any business, at any stage. From product teams to sales, customer support, marketing, operations, and management – there’s a relevant application in almost every department. However, many organizations choose only to use it for limited periods in limited areas of their business.

Similarweb Research Intelligence makes key insights accessible to all. And with the ability to impact an entire business, at almost every level, it’s a market research tool with the power to deliver immense value and insights at pace.

Stop Guessing, Start Analyzing

Get actionable insights for market research here

What are the advantages and disadvantages of market research?

The advantages of market research include things like gaining a competitive edge, data-driven decision-making, reducing expenditure, finding new markets to enter, trend-spotting, and developing growth-focused strategies. The only disadvantage is in how it’s conducted, and the time it takes to carry out the research. However, market research tools are designed to make the task of conducting research more efficient, and cost-effective.

Which goals can market research help you accomplish?

Market research can help you achieve key business objectives, such as growing your customer base, retaining a higher number of customers, improving marketing effectiveness, and increasing revenue.

How can market research benefit entrepreneurs?

The benefits of market research to entrepreneurs are plentiful. It can help startups and new businesses research the viability of a new product or service they want to bring to market. In addition, it allows entrepreneurs to accurately forecast demand , which can help both operationally and financially.

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

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How To Do Market Research: Definition, Types, Methods

Jul 25, 2024

11 min. read

Market research isn’t just collecting data. It’s a strategic tool that allows businesses to gain a competitive advantage while making the best use of their resources. Research reveals valuable insights into your target audience about their preferences, buying habits, and emerging demands — all of which help you unlock new opportunities to grow your business.

When done correctly, market research can minimize risks and losses, spur growth, and position you as a leader in your industry. 

Let’s explore the basic building blocks of market research and how to collect and use data to move your company forward:

Table of Contents

What Is Market Research?

Why is market research important, market analysis example, 5 types of market research, what are common market research questions, what are the limitations of market research, how to do market research, improving your market research with radarly.

Market Research Definition: The process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a market or audience.

Market research studies consumer behavior to better understand how they perceive products or services. These insights help businesses identify ways to grow their current offering, create new products or services, and improve brand trust and brand recognition .

You might also hear market research referred to as market analysis or consumer research .

Traditionally, market research has taken the form of focus groups, surveys, interviews, and even competitor analysis . But with modern analytics and research tools, businesses can now capture deeper insights from a wider variety of sources, including social media, online reviews, and customer interactions. These extra layers of intel can help companies gain a more comprehensive understanding of their audience.

With consumer preferences and markets evolving at breakneck speeds, businesses need a way to stay in touch with what people need and want. That’s why the importance of market research cannot be overstated.

Market research offers a proactive way to identify these trends and make adjustments to product development, marketing strategies , and overall operations. This proactive approach can help businesses stay ahead of the curve and remain agile as markets shift.

Market research examples abound — given the number of ways companies can get inside the minds of their customers, simply skimming through your business’s social media comments can be a form of market research.

A restaurant chain might use market research methods to learn more about consumers’ evolving dining habits. These insights might be used to offer new menu items, re-examine their pricing strategies, or even open new locations in different markets, for example.

A consumer electronics company might use market research for similar purposes. For instance, market research may reveal how consumers are using their smart devices so they can develop innovative features.

Market research can be applied to a wide range of use cases, including:

• Testing new product ideas
• Improve existing products
• Entering new markets
• Right-sizing their physical footprints
• Improving brand image and awareness
• Gaining insights into competitors via competitive intelligence

Ultimately, companies can lean on market research techniques to stay ahead of trends and competitors while improving the lives of their customers.

Market research methods take different forms, and you don’t have to limit yourself to just one. Let’s review the most common market research techniques and the insights they deliver.

1. Interviews

3. Focus Groups

4. Observations

5. AI-Driven Market Research

One-on-one interviews are one of the most common market research techniques. Beyond asking direct questions, skilled interviewers can uncover deeper motivations and emotions that drive purchasing decisions. Researchers can elicit more detailed and nuanced responses they might not receive via other methods, such as self-guided surveys.

Interviews also create the opportunity to build rapport with customers and prospects. Establishing a connection with interviewees can encourage them to open up and share their candid thoughts, which can enrich your findings. Researchers also have the opportunity to ask clarifying questions and dig deeper based on individual responses.

Market research surveys provide an easy entry into the consumer psyche. They’re cost-effective to produce and allow researchers to reach lots of people in a short time. They’re also user-friendly for consumers, which allows companies to capture more responses from more people.

Big data and data analytics are making traditional surveys more valuable. Researchers can apply these tools to elicit a deeper understanding from responses and uncover hidden patterns and correlations within survey data that were previously undetectable.

The ways in which surveys are conducted are also changing. With the rise of social media and other online channels, brands and consumers alike have more ways to engage with each other, lending to a continuous approach to market research surveys.

3. Focus groups

Focus groups are “group interviews” designed to gain collective insights. This interactive setting allows participants to express their thoughts and feelings openly, giving researchers richer insights beyond yes-or-no responses.

One of the key benefits of using focus groups is the opportunity for participants to interact with one another. They spark discussions while sharing diverse viewpoints. These sessions can uncover underlying motivations and attitudes that may not be easily expressed through other research methods.

Observing your customers “in the wild” might feel informal, but it can be one of the most revealing market research techniques of all. That’s because you might not always know the right questions to ask. By simply observing, you can surface insights you might not have known to look for otherwise.

This method also delivers raw, authentic, unfiltered data. There’s no room for bias and no potential for participants to accidentally skew the data. Researchers can also pick up on non-verbal cues and gestures that other research methods may fail to capture.

5. AI-driven market research

One of the newer methods of market research is the use of AI-driven market research tools to collect and analyze insights on your behalf. AI customer intelligence tools and consumer insights software like Meltwater Radarly take an always-on approach by going wherever your audience is and continuously predicting behaviors based on current behaviors.

By leveraging advanced algorithms, machine learning, and big data analysis , AI enables companies to uncover deep-seated patterns and correlations within large datasets that would be near impossible for human researchers to identify. This not only leads to more accurate and reliable findings but also allows businesses to make informed decisions with greater confidence.

Tip: Learn how to use Meltwater as a research tool , how Meltwater uses AI , and learn more about consumer insights and about consumer insights in the fashion industry .

No matter the market research methods you use, market research’s effectiveness lies in the questions you ask. These questions should be designed to elicit honest responses that will help you reach your goals.

Examples of common market research questions include:

Demographic market research questions

• What is your age range?
• What is your occupation?
• What is your household income level?
• What is your educational background?
• What is your gender?

Product or service usage market research questions

• How long have you been using [product/service]?
• How frequently do you use [product/service]?
• What do you like most about [product/service]?
• Have you experienced any problems using [product/service]?
• How could we improve [product/service]?
• Why did you choose [product/service] over a competitor’s [product/service]?

Brand perception market research questions

• How familiar are you with our brand?
• What words do you associate with our brand?
• How do you feel about our brand?
• What makes you trust our brand?
• What sets our brand apart from competitors?
• What would make you recommend our brand to others?

Buying behavior market research questions

• What do you look for in a [product/service]?
• What features in a [product/service] are important to you?
• How much time do you need to choose a [product/service]?
• How do you discover new products like [product/service]?
• Do you prefer to purchase [product/service] online or in-store?
• How do you research [product/service] before making a purchase?
• How often do you buy [product/service]?
• How important is pricing when buying [product/service]?
• What would make you switch to another brand of [product/service]?

Customer satisfaction market research questions

• How happy have you been with [product/service]?
• What would make you more satisfied with [product/service]?
• How likely are you to continue using [product/service]?

Bonus Tip: Compiling these questions into a market research template can streamline your efforts.

Market research can offer powerful insights, but it also has some limitations. One key limitation is the potential for bias. Researchers may unconsciously skew results based on their own preconceptions or desires, which can make your findings inaccurate.

• Depending on your market research methods, your findings may be outdated by the time you sit down to analyze and act on them. Some methods struggle to account for rapidly changing consumer preferences and behaviors.
• There’s also the risk of self-reported data (common in online surveys). Consumers might not always accurately convey their true feelings or intentions. They might provide answers they think researchers are looking for or misunderstand the question altogether.
• There’s also the potential to miss emerging or untapped markets . Researchers are digging deeper into what (or who) they already know. This means you might be leaving out a key part of the story without realizing it.

Still, the benefits of market research cannot be understated, especially when you supplement traditional market research methods with modern tools and technology.

Let’s put it all together and explore how to do market research step-by-step to help you leverage all its benefits.

Step 1: Define your objectives

You’ll get more from your market research when you hone in on a specific goal : What do you want to know, and how will this knowledge help your business?

This step will also help you define your target audience. You’ll need to ask the right people the right questions to collect the information you want. Understand the characteristics of the audience and what gives them authority to answer your questions.

Step 2: Select your market research methods

Choose one or more of the market research methods (interviews, surveys, focus groups, observations, and/or AI-driven tools) to fuel your research strategy.

Certain methods might work better than others for specific goals . For example, if you want basic feedback from customers about a product, a simple survey might suffice. If you want to hone in on serious pain points to develop a new product, a focus group or interview might work best.

You can also source secondary research ( complementary research ) via secondary research companies , such as industry reports or analyses from large market research firms. These can help you gather preliminary information and inform your approach.

Step 3: Develop your research tools

Prior to working with participants, you’ll need to craft your survey or interview questions, interview guides, and other tools. These tools will help you capture the right information , weed out non-qualifying participants, and keep your information organized.

You should also have a system for recording responses to ensure data accuracy and privacy. Test your processes before speaking with participants so you can spot and fix inefficiencies or errors.

Step 4: Conduct the market research

With a system in place, you can start looking for candidates to contribute to your market research. This might include distributing surveys to current customers or recruiting participants who fit a specific profile, for example.

Set a time frame for conducting your research. You might collect responses over the course of a few days, weeks, or even months. If you’re using AI tools to gather data, choose a data range for your data to focus on the most relevant information.

Step 5: Analyze and apply your findings

Review your findings while looking for trends and patterns. AI tools can come in handy in this phase by analyzing large amounts of data on your behalf.

Compile your findings into an easy-to-read report and highlight key takeaways and next steps. Reports aren’t useful unless the reader can understand and act on them.

Tip: Learn more about trend forecasting , trend detection , and trendspotting .

Meltwater’s Radarly consumer intelligence suite helps you reap the benefits of market research on an ongoing basis. Using a combination of AI, data science, and market research expertise, Radarly scans multiple global data sources to learn what people are talking about, the actions they’re taking, and how they’re feeling about specific brands.

Our tools are created by market research experts and designed to help researchers uncover what they want to know (and what they don’t know they want to know). Get data-driven insights at scale with information that’s always relevant, always accurate, and always tailored to your organization’s needs.

Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below:

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Market research definition

Market research – in-house or outsourced, market research in the age of data, when to use market research.

• Types of market research 

Different types of primary research

How to do market research (primary data), how to do secondary market research, communicating your market research findings, choose the right platform for your market research, try qualtrics for free, the ultimate guide to market research: how to conduct it like a pro.

27 min read Wondering how to do market research? Or even where to start learning about it? Use our ultimate guide to understand the basics and discover how you can use market research to help your business.

Market research is the practice of gathering information about the needs and preferences of your target audience – potential consumers of your product.

When you understand how your target consumer feels and behaves, you can then take steps to meet their needs and mitigate the risk of an experience gap – where there is a shortfall between what a consumer expects you to deliver and what you actually deliver. Market research can also help you keep abreast of what your competitors are offering, which in turn will affect what your customers expect from you.

Market research connects with every aspect of a business – including brand , product , customer service , marketing and sales.

Market research generally focuses on understanding:

• The consumer (current customers, past customers, non-customers, influencers))
• The company (product or service design, promotion, pricing, placement, service, sales)
• The competitors (and how their market offerings interact in the market environment)
• The industry overall (whether it’s growing or moving in a certain direction)

Free eBook: 2024 market research trends report

Why is market research important?

A successful business relies on understanding what like, what they dislike, what they need and what messaging they will respond to. Businesses also need to understand their competition to identify opportunities to differentiate their products and services from other companies.

Today’s business leaders face an endless stream of decisions around target markets, pricing, promotion, distribution channels, and product features and benefits . They must account for all the factors involved, and there are market research studies and methodologies strategically designed to capture meaningful data to inform every choice. It can be a daunting task.

Market research allows companies to make data-driven decisions to drive growth and innovation.

What happens when you don’t do market research?

Without market research, business decisions are based at best on past consumer behavior, economic indicators, or at worst, on gut feel. Decisions are made in a bubble without thought to what the competition is doing. An important aim of market research is to remove subjective opinions when making business decisions. As a brand you are there to serve your customers, not personal preferences within the company. You are far more likely to be successful if you know the difference, and market research will help make sure your decisions are insight-driven.

Traditionally there have been specialist market researchers who are very good at what they do, and businesses have been reliant on their ability to do it. Market research specialists will always be an important part of the industry, as most brands are limited by their internal capacity, expertise and budgets and need to outsource at least some aspects of the work.

However, the market research external agency model has meant that brands struggled to keep up with the pace of change. Their customers would suffer because their needs were not being wholly met with point-in-time market research.

Businesses looking to conduct market research have to tackle many questions –

• Who are my consumers, and how should I segment and prioritize them?
• What are they looking for within my category?
• How much are they buying, and what are their purchase triggers, barriers, and buying habits?
• Will my marketing and communications efforts resonate?
• Is my brand healthy ?
• What product features matter most?
• Is my product or service ready for launch?
• Are my pricing and packaging plans optimized?

They all need to be answered, but many businesses have found the process of data collection daunting, time-consuming and expensive. The hardest battle is often knowing where to begin and short-term demands have often taken priority over longer-term projects that require patience to offer return on investment.

Today however, the industry is making huge strides, driven by quickening product cycles, tighter competition and business imperatives around more data-driven decision making. With the emergence of simple, easy to use tools , some degree of in-house market research is now seen as essential, with fewer excuses not to use data to inform your decisions. With greater accessibility to such software, everyone can be an expert regardless of level or experience.

How is this possible?

The art of research hasn’t gone away. It is still a complex job and the volume of data that needs to be analyzed is huge. However with the right tools and support, sophisticated research can look very simple – allowing you to focus on taking action on what matters.

If you’re not yet using technology to augment your in-house market research, now is the time to start.

The most successful brands rely on multiple sources of data to inform their strategy and decision making, from their marketing segmentation to the product features they develop to comments on social media. In fact, there’s tools out there that use machine learning and AI to automate the tracking of what’s people are saying about your brand across all sites.

The emergence of newer and more sophisticated tools and platforms gives brands access to more data sources than ever and how the data is analyzed and used to make decisions. This also increases the speed at which they operate, with minimal lead time allowing brands to be responsive to business conditions and take an agile approach to improvements and opportunities.

Expert partners have an important role in getting the best data, particularly giving access to additional market research know-how, helping you find respondents , fielding surveys and reporting on results.

How do you measure success?

Business activities are usually measured on how well they deliver return on investment (ROI). Since market research doesn’t generate any revenue directly, its success has to be measured by looking at the positive outcomes it drives – happier customers, a healthier brand, and so on.

When changes to your products or your marketing strategy are made as a result of your market research findings, you can compare on a before-and-after basis to see if the knowledge you acted on has delivered value.

Regardless of the function you work within, understanding the consumer is the goal of any market research. To do this, we have to understand what their needs are in order to effectively meet them. If we do that, we are more likely to drive customer satisfaction , and in turn, increase customer retention .

Several metrics and KPIs are used to gauge the success of decisions made from market research results, including

• Brand awareness within the target market
• Share of wallet
• CSAT (customer satisfaction)
• NPS (Net Promoter Score)

You can use market research for almost anything related to your current customers, potential customer base or target market. If you want to find something out from your target audience, it’s likely market research is the answer.

Here are a few of the most common uses:

Buyer segmentation and profiling

Segmentation is a popular technique that separates your target market according to key characteristics, such as behavior, demographic information and social attitudes. Segmentation allows you to create relevant content for your different segments, ideally helping you to better connect with all of them.

Buyer personas are profiles of fictional customers – with real attributes. Buyer personas help you develop products and communications that are right for your different audiences, and can also guide your decision-making process. Buyer personas capture the key characteristics of your customer segments, along with meaningful insights about what they want or need from you. They provide a powerful reminder of consumer attitudes when developing a product or service, a marketing campaign or a new brand direction.

By understanding your buyers and potential customers, including their motivations, needs, and pain points, you can optimize everything from your marketing communications to your products to make sure the right people get the relevant content, at the right time, and via the right channel .

Attitudes and Usage surveys

Attitude & Usage research helps you to grow your brand by providing a detailed understanding of consumers. It helps you understand how consumers use certain products and why, what their needs are, what their preferences are, and what their pain points are. It helps you to find gaps in the market, anticipate future category needs, identify barriers to entry and build accurate go-to-market strategies and business plans.

Marketing strategy

Effective market research is a crucial tool for developing an effective marketing strategy – a company’s plan for how they will promote their products.

It helps marketers look like rock stars by helping them understand the target market to avoid mistakes, stay on message, and predict customer needs . It’s marketing’s job to leverage relevant data to reach the best possible solution  based on the research available. Then, they can implement the solution, modify the solution, and successfully deliver that solution to the market.

Product development

You can conduct market research into how a select group of consumers use and perceive your product – from how they use it through to what they like and dislike about it. Evaluating your strengths and weaknesses early on allows you to focus resources on ideas with the most potential and to gear your product or service design to a specific market.

Chobani’s yogurt pouches are a product optimized through great market research . Using product concept testing – a form of market research – Chobani identified that packaging could negatively impact consumer purchase decisions. The brand made a subtle change, ensuring the item satisfied the needs of consumers. This ability to constantly refine its products for customer needs and preferences has helped Chobani become Australia’s #1 yogurt brand and increase market share.

Pricing decisions

Market research provides businesses with insights to guide pricing decisions too. One of the most powerful tools available to market researchers is conjoint analysis, a form of market research study that uses choice modeling to help brands identify the perfect set of features and price for customers. Another useful tool is the Gabor-Granger method, which helps you identify the highest price consumers are willing to pay for a given product or service.

Brand tracking studies

A company’s brand is one of its most important assets. But unlike other metrics like product sales, it’s not a tangible measure you can simply pull from your system. Regular market research that tracks consumer perceptions of your brand allows you to monitor and optimize your brand strategy in real time, then respond to consumer feedback to help maintain or build your brand with your target customers.

Advertising and communications testing

Advertising campaigns can be expensive, and without pre-testing, they carry risk of falling flat with your target audience. By testing your campaigns, whether it’s the message or the creative, you can understand how consumers respond to your communications before you deploy them so you can make changes in response to consumer feedback before you go live.

Finder, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing online comparison websites, is an example of a brand using market research to inject some analytical rigor into the business. Fueled by great market research, the business lifted brand awareness by 23 percent, boosted NPS by 8 points, and scored record profits – all within 10 weeks.

Competitive analysis

Another key part of developing the right product and communications is understanding your main competitors and how consumers perceive them. You may have looked at their websites and tried out their product or service, but unless you know how consumers perceive them, you won’t have an accurate view of where you stack up in comparison. Understanding their position in the market allows you to identify the strengths you can exploit, as well as any weaknesses you can address to help you compete better.

Customer Story

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Types of market research

Although there are many types market research, all methods can be sorted into one of two categories: primary and secondary.

Primary research

Primary research is market research data that you collect yourself. This is raw data collected through a range of different means – surveys , focus groups,  , observation and interviews being among the most popular.

Primary information is fresh, unused data, giving you a perspective that is current or perhaps extra confidence when confirming hypotheses you already had. It can also be very targeted to your exact needs. Primary information can be extremely valuable. Tools for collecting primary information are increasingly sophisticated and the market is growing rapidly.

Historically, conducting market research in-house has been a daunting concept for brands because they don’t quite know where to begin, or how to handle vast volumes of data. Now, the emergence of technology has meant that brands have access to simple, easy to use tools to help with exactly that problem. As a result, brands are more confident about their own projects and data with the added benefit of seeing the insights emerge in real-time.

Secondary research

Secondary research is the use of data that has already been collected, analyzed and published – typically it’s data you don’t own and that hasn’t been conducted with your business specifically in mind, although there are forms of internal secondary data like old reports or figures from past financial years that come from within your business. Secondary research can be used to support the use of primary research.

Secondary research can be beneficial to small businesses because it is sometimes easier to obtain, often through research companies. Although the rise of primary research tools are challenging this trend by allowing businesses to conduct their own market research more cheaply, secondary research is often a cheaper alternative for businesses who need to spend money carefully. Some forms of secondary research have been described as ‘lean market research’ because they are fast and pragmatic, building on what’s already there.

Because it’s not specific to your business, secondary research may be less relevant, and you’ll need to be careful to make sure it applies to your exact research question. It may also not be owned, which means your competitors and other parties also have access to it.

Primary or secondary research – which to choose?

Both primary and secondary research have their advantages, but they are often best used when paired together, giving you the confidence to act knowing that the hypothesis you have is robust.

Secondary research is sometimes preferred because there is a misunderstanding of the feasibility of primary research. Thanks to advances in technology, brands have far greater accessibility to primary research, but this isn’t always known.

If you’ve decided to gather your own primary information, there are many different data collection methods that you may consider. For example:

• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Observation

Think carefully about what you’re trying to accomplish before picking the data collection method(s) you’re going to use. Each one has its pros and cons. Asking someone a simple, multiple-choice survey question will generate a different type of data than you might obtain with an in-depth interview. Determine if your primary research is exploratory or specific, and if you’ll need qualitative research, quantitative research, or both.

Qualitative vs quantitative

Another way of categorizing different types of market research is according to whether they are qualitative or quantitative.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is the collection of data that is non-numerical in nature. It summarizes and infers, rather than pin-points an exact truth. It is exploratory and can lead to the generation of a hypothesis.

Market research techniques that would gather qualitative data include:

• Interviews (face to face / telephone)
• Open-ended survey questions

Researchers use these types of market research technique because they can add more depth to the data. So for example, in focus groups or interviews, rather than being limited to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for a certain question, you can start to understand why someone might feel a certain way.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research is the collection of data that is numerical in nature. It is much more black and white in comparison to qualitative data, although you need to make sure there is a representative sample if you want the results to be reflective of reality.

Quantitative researchers often start with a hypothesis and then collect data which can be used to determine whether empirical evidence to support that hypothesis exists.

Quantitative research methods include:

• Questionnaires
• Review scores

Exploratory and specific research

Exploratory research is the approach to take if you don’t know what you don’t know. It can give you broad insights about your customers, product, brand, and market. If you want to answer a specific question, then you’ll be conducting specific research.

• Exploratory . This research is general and open-ended, and typically involves lengthy interviews with an individual or small focus group.
• Specific . This research is often used to solve a problem identified in exploratory research. It involves more structured, formal interviews.

Exploratory primary research is generally conducted by collecting qualitative data. Specific research usually finds its insights through quantitative data.

Primary research can be qualitative or quantitative, large-scale or focused and specific. You’ll carry it out using methods like surveys – which can be used for both qualitative and quantitative studies – focus groups, observation of consumer behavior, interviews, or online tools.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

Research topics could include:

• Product features
• Product or service launch
• Understanding a new target audience (or updating an existing audience)
• Brand identity
• Marketing campaign concepts
• Customer experience

Step 2: Draft a research hypothesis

A hypothesis is the assumption you’re starting out with. Since you can disprove a negative much more easily than prove a positive, a hypothesis is a negative statement such as ‘price has no effect on brand perception’.

Step 3: Determine which research methods are most effective

Your choice of methods depends on budget, time constraints, and the type of question you’re trying to answer. You could combine surveys, interviews and focus groups to get a mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

Step 4: Determine how you will collect and analyze your data.

Primary research can generate a huge amount of data, and when the goal is to uncover actionable insight, it can be difficult to know where to begin or what to pay attention to.

The rise in brands taking their market research and data analysis in-house has coincided with the rise of technology simplifying the process. These tools pull through large volumes of data and outline significant information that will help you make the most important decisions.

Step 5: Conduct your research!

This is how you can run your research using Qualtrics CoreXM

• Pre-launch – Here you want to ensure that the survey/ other research methods conform to the project specifications (what you want to achieve/research)
• Soft launch – Collect a small fraction of the total data before you fully launch. This means you can check that everything is working as it should and you can correct any data quality issues.
• Full launch – You’ve done the hard work to get to this point. If you’re using a tool, you can sit back and relax, or if you get curious you can check on the data in your account.
• Review – review your data for any issues or low-quality responses. You may need to remove this in order not to impact the analysis of the data.

A helping hand

If you are missing the skills, capacity or inclination to manage your research internally, Qualtrics Research Services can help. From design, to writing the survey based on your needs, to help with survey programming, to handling the reporting, Research Services acts as an extension of the team and can help wherever necessary.

Secondary market research can be taken from a variety of places. Some data is completely free to access – other information could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are three broad categories of secondary research sources:

• Public sources – these sources are accessible to anyone who asks for them. They include census data, market statistics, library catalogs, university libraries and more. Other organizations may also put out free data from time to time with the goal of advancing a cause, or catching people’s attention.
• Internal sources – sometimes the most valuable sources of data already exist somewhere within your organization. Internal sources can be preferable for secondary research on account of their price (free) and unique findings. Since internal sources are not accessible by competitors, using them can provide a distinct competitive advantage.
• Commercial sources – if you have money for it, the easiest way to acquire secondary market research is to simply buy it from private companies. Many organizations exist for the sole purpose of doing market research and can provide reliable, in-depth, industry-specific reports.

No matter where your research is coming from, it is important to ensure that the source is reputable and reliable so you can be confident in the conclusions you draw from it.

How do you know if a source is reliable?

Use established and well-known research publishers, such as the XM Institute , Forrester and McKinsey . Government websites also publish research and this is free of charge. By taking the information directly from the source (rather than a third party) you are minimizing the risk of the data being misinterpreted and the message or insights being acted on out of context.

How to apply secondary research

The purpose and application of secondary research will vary depending on your circumstances. Often, secondary research is used to support primary research and therefore give you greater confidence in your conclusions. However, there may be circumstances that prevent this – such as the timeframe and budget of the project.

Keep an open mind when collecting all the relevant research so that there isn’t any collection bias. Then begin analyzing the conclusions formed to see if any trends start to appear. This will help you to draw a consensus from the secondary research overall.

Market research success is defined by the impact it has on your business’s success. Make sure it’s not discarded or ignored by communicating your findings effectively. Here are some tips on how to do it.

• Less is more – Preface your market research report with executive summaries that highlight your key discoveries and their implications
• Lead with the basic information – Share the top 4-5 recommendations in bullet-point form, rather than requiring your readers to go through pages of analysis and data
• Model the impact – Provide examples and model the impact of any changes you put in place based on your findings
• Show, don’t tell – Add illustrative examples that relate directly to the research findings and emphasize specific points
• Speed is of the essence – Make data available in real-time so it can be rapidly incorporated into strategies and acted upon to maximize value
• Work with experts – Make sure you’ve access to a dedicated team of experts ready to help you design and launch successful projects

Trusted by 8,500 brands for everything from product testing to competitor analysis, Our Strategic Research software is the world’s most powerful and flexible research platform . With over 100 question types and advanced logic, you can build out your surveys and see real-time data you can share across the organization. Plus, you’ll be able to turn data into insights with iQ, our predictive intelligence engine that runs complicated analysis at the click of a button.

Related resources

Market intelligence 10 min read, marketing insights 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, qualitative vs quantitative research 13 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, primary vs secondary research 14 min read, request demo.

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How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

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Why Is Market Research Important: We Give You 7 Reasons

Planning and conducting market research is a critical component of any business. It provides decision-makers with important information to decide the course of the company, launch a new product, or to keep a tab on what competitors are doing.

Data indicates that market research is a growing industry of 47.36bn USD , globally – and rightly so. For a business to succeed, all its resources – financial and otherwise – must be invested in areas where they are needed the most. Conducting market research helps you identify those areas. It also helps you discover and understand your customers’ needs so you can innovate better, expand when the time is right, and work with more focus.

In this article below, we will share a few pointers with you about why market research is important for every business – big and small. But first, let’s talk about the types of market research.

Types Of Market Research

Depending on the purpose of your research, you can choose either of the two main types of market research. These are primary research and secondary research.

– Primary Research

Primary research is direct research that you conduct yourself or hire someone else to do it for you. It involves reaching out to your target market, asking them questions, collecting data, and analyzing the information gathered. Based on the data, strategies are devised, decisions are made, and policies are created.

Primary research helps you explore issues, dig deeper, and ask specific questions that are relevant to research topics or what you are looking for. Because it takes more time and effort, it may also cost a bit more than secondary research but it is more effective and helps you gain a solid picture of what’s going on.

– Secondary Research

Secondary research is using somebody else’s primary research for your business purposes. Research that is already conducted, organized, and published is often used by small businesses to gauge market trends, current economies, and to devise plans.

A lot of government agencies conduct market research for various purposes. If you’re on a budget, going to one of those agencies may help you out a lot as most of that research is freely available to the public. If you want to access a private market research company’s report, you may have to pay a fee to access the complete file.

However, there are private companies that publish their reports publicly. Additionally, you can also go online and conduct Google searches looking for specific phrases relevant to your research purpose to find valuable data.

Why Is It Important?

Now that we know what market research is and what different kinds it has, it’s time to learn why it is important, and why you should invest in it if you want to become a successful entrepreneur.

1. It Helps You Identify The Problem Areas As Well As Strong Areas

Knowing what you are good at and what you’re not, help you take profitable risks in life. It’s true in business too. Accurate market research helps you identify business areas that are performing well, those that need more attention, and also those that you should perhaps give up.

Back in 2010 , two young tech enthusiasts launched a location-based app – Burbn – that would allow consumers to check-in, make plans of hangouts with friends, share pictures, and more. Few weeks into the launch, they realized through internal discussions and reevaluation of the market, that Burbn is cluttered and their target market is more into Foursquare and they won’t be able to budge them.

They took a long, hard look at their app again – which had already been launched – and started working on it from scratch, removing all the features and only letting the photo-sharing, liking, and commenting options intact. And thus, Instagram was born.

It also helps you discover and understand your customers’ needs so you can innovate better, expand when the time is right, and work with more focus. For example, if you plan on starting a digital marketing agency, you’d know that there’s more need for social media in your area, than for PPC services. Thus, you’ll hire more social media experts.

2. It Helps You Understand Your Customers’ Needs

It is not enough that you know your business; you got to know what your customers are saying about you – and about your competitors. If you have got your pulse on what your customer is thinking, you’d create products that solve their issues, reach out to them when they are most ready to listen, and help them become your loyal ambassadors.

A huge part of business market research is always dedicated to gauging customer satisfaction rates, their reactions to a new product, and what they are looking for next.

In 2005, when YouTube initially launched, it was for a very different purpose : dating. Pretty soon into launch, however, and by investing in robust market research (a part of which they conducted themselves) the founders realized that their video dating app is not what their customers are looking for. Analyzing the data, they discovered that there is no app or platform in the market for video sharing. The websites that were offering this service were patchy at best and not intuitive at all.

Being attuned to their customers’ needs and spotting a wide space in the market, they tweaked their video platform and launched YouTube .

Following what your customers are talking about, listening to them, and then delivering on their needs is an important task that you can fulfill with timely customer-centered market research.

3. Helps You Conduct Your Marketing Based On Informed Decisions

Launching and running a business means making decisions every day – about products, services, expansions, HR, and so much more. Without solid market research backing your decisions, all you are doing is guess-work, hoping the results will be in your favor.

With research helping your business, you are better informed about areas to invest in, gauge the potential success of new products, test new markets to expand into, and to determine what kinds of products/services will be most favored by your customers.

This is certainly what Starbucks does. The company has a whole dedicated platform ‘My Starbucks Idea’ where employees and customers and anyone who wants can pitch in and share what they think the company should do next, the flavors it should try, the new products it should launch, bring back some old favorites, and more.

The platform helps them remain informed on all important aspects of business investment and propels them towards ventures and venues that hold the most potential.

If you aren’t a humungous company like Starbucks and cannot afford to host dedicated platforms to gain important information, invest in market research whenever you have a big decision coming up. It isn’t as expensive as you think and doesn’t take that much time. Plus the results can be relevant for a lot of related areas that you may want information on.

4. Helps You Keep An Eye On Your Competitors

As a startup founder, you may think being original is all about being focused on what you’re doing and not worry about what everyone else may be up to. This approach spells long-term disaster. While you should certainly keep your focus on your own efforts, it is critical – and smart – to keep tabs on your rivals and know what they are thinking or planning.

With sound market research on your side, you can better prepare for what your competitor may be about to do next and make sure they aren’t able to put a dent in your market share. With regular research, you can not only learn to anticipate their next move but be in a better position to avert any possible damage from their end.

In addition to conducting market research, you can pair it up with regularly monitoring their social media or to increase Instagram followers , blog posts, and seeing what is trending in your market. Here is a great resource on how you can go about it.

5. Helps You Expand And Innovate

Market research can help you identify markets and geographical areas where you can expand to. It can also help you to invest in ideas that have the most potential to succeed based on what customers are looking for and what the market is lacking.

For example, if you are a retail company, conducting market research can help you identify locations where your store can profit the most. If you are planning to buy a business to increase your market share, market research can help you point towards businesses that may be ripe for acquiring. Not only that, conducting market research before you launch your business can help you figure out ways to put your best foot forward.

It guides you towards opportunities where you have the most room to innovate and take risks with the highest return potential. For example, if your competition is employing cutting edge tech such as VoIP Phone to get better results, you can also employ the same to improve your customer care and business goals.

6. Helps You Set Business Goals

Goal-setting is one of the major parts of running a business – big and small. Goals give you directions, help you remain in sight of the bigger picture, and set you on the path of continued success. Goals can be of different kinds: short-term, long-term, department-oriented, over-arching, and such.

To set all these kinds of goals and get ready to meet them, businesses need to have a thorough and complete knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses. They need to be aware of how the market is behaving and predict what may come next.

All of this is only possible after conducting market research. With the help of focused market research, you can set achievable business goals and not follow some vague notions of instant success. These often include how to improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and business’ financial health. You can also use market research to learn ways you can reduce expenses without hurting the business, find out how to amplify your digital marketing, generate copywriting tips for research paper writers , or introduce a new employee incentive program.

7. Helps You Know Which Risks To Take And Increases Earning Potential

Risk-taking is an important component of the business. Without it, you can become stagnant and a sitting-duck for a more ambitious rival. But risk-taking cannot be a shot in the dark. To know which risks to take and when to take the plunge are attributes of successful innovators. From Dropbox’s Drew Houston who refused Steve Jobs to Google’s buying of YouTube when it was a fledgling startup, the history of business success and innovating is packed full of stories of ambitious – but informed – risk-taking.

Using market research and building a strong investing network , you can also join the ranks of informed-decision makers who do not shy away from taking risks. It prevents you from making costly mistakes that could have been avoided and take steps that result in massive profits.

Take the example of Frito-Lay . When the potato chip maker wanted to introduce a new brand, it launched online market research conducted through Facebook to ask its customer-base which flavor they would like the best. The results showed that beer-battered onion-ring flavor is a hit in California and Ohio, while New Yorkers preferred the Churros flavor idea. This research also helped him increase Instagram followers as his posts became popular over the internet.

The research helped the company come up with different flavors and market them strategically to different states. If the research would not have been done, the company would have come up with a new flavor that could have been a hit – or a miss.

Popular Instruments Of Market Research

As technology keeps advancing, market research keeps evolving. Where before you had to rely on face-to-face interviews, telephone surveys, or lengthy online questionnaires, now it’s all about short online surveys, online video interviewing tools , instant case studies aided by technologies, and focused groups that are already available on your social media channels.

Below we talk about 4 popular instruments of market research that are frequently used by companies worldwide with excellent results.

– Surveys

The survey is a quantitative method of research which means it gives you numerical scores. These scores pertain to specific answers and don’t leave much room for multiple interpretations. Because they are precise, provide specific answers, and immediate interpretation, quantitative methods are popular to conduct research when you are looking for exact information: to find out how to solve a particular problem, etc.

According to a study conducted by Statista.com , 26% of all market research is conducted through online quantitative methods, with online surveys accounting for a major share of 79%.

If you know how to create an easy survey online for your company, here is a great resource to get you started.

– Case Studies

Case studies are usually qualitative research methods; however, you can incorporate a mixed approach with a quantitative questionnaire thrown in for additional information. Using case studies, you focus on a single individual or single entity to research them thoroughly. The purpose of using case studies in business market research is usually to test theories of what went wrong in a particular situation or what went right.

Case studies are time-taking but provide extremely valuable information, detailed data, and in-depth analysis opportunities.

– Focus Groups

Focus groups are another popular instrument to conduct market research in business. A focus group consists of a small portion of your target audience that you can study in detail. It is a qualitative method of research and allows you to bring together a group of individuals that can take part in a guided form of discussion.

You can give them one or more focus questions that the group can talk about and share their views on. Focus groups are great to use when you’re creating a new product, researching a particular market segment, or want to know what your customers are thinking about you or your market.

Similar to case studies, focus groups give you a comprehensive view of a situation and allow you to conduct an in-depth analysis of different business elements.

The Future Of Market Research

The future of market research is bright. As a budding and burgeoning industry, it shows all the trends of continued growth. But as technology becomes more accessible and mobile devices more popular than desktops, market research is also evolving to fulfill the shifting customer needs.

The surveys are becoming shorter as nobody has got the time or interest to fill out a 10-page questionnaire. Artificial Intelligence is making the data collection process quicker and more intuitive, including contact database . And as time passes, you’ll see more and more market surveys being optimized for mobile.

So use all that modern market research has to offer you and use it to propel your business for the success you’d always dreamed of.

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About The Author Kelvin Stiles

Kelvin Stiles is a tech enthusiast and works as a marketing consultant at SurveyCrest – FREE online survey software and publishing tools for academic and business use. He is also an avid blogger and a comic book fanatic.

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5 reasons why marketing research is important to your business

Marketing research is a critical tool that businesses and organisations use to gather valuable information about their target market and industry. By conducting research, companies can gain insights into customer needs, preferences, and behaviour, as well as market trends and the competitive landscape. In this article, we'll explore five reasons why marketing research is important for businesses and organisations.

5 reasons why marketing research is important

Is your company on the fence about investing in marketing research? If so, read on for five reasons why marketing research is important to the viability and longevity of your business.

1. Marketing research helps businesses understand their customers.

Knowing your customers is the first step in running a successful business. And while this may sound simple enough, it can be difficult to look inside the consumer psyche—one whose needs, preferences, and behaviours are ever-evolving.

Fortunately, marketing research can give you a peek behind the curtain, helping you understand what motivates current as well as potential customers. A marketing research survey , for example, can provide insight into pricing sensitivity among a segment of your target population. The data yielded may suggest that boomers are more likely to purchase a product based on price alone while millennials are more motivated by the values of the respective company. Based on this information, you can tailor your offerings to better meet these needs.

Let’s take a closer look at what else marketing research can tell you about your target audience.

a. Marketing research reveals demographic data.

Through conducting surveys, you can better understand characteristics of your buyers, like age, gender, race, and ethnicity. You can also collect socioeconomic information like education, income, and employment status. These variables can help you engage in audience segmentation, which essentially involves tweaking your brand messaging to appeal to various subgroups.

b. Marketing research illustrates purchasing behaviour.

Marketing research tools like surveys, transaction tracking, and social media tracking can also shed light on when, why, how, and what consumers are buying. A better understanding of purchasing behaviour can help your company develop brand messaging that strikes a chord with its target audience. If consumers tend to shop between the hours of 5 and 8 p.m., for instance, your company may send an email coupon at 4:45 p.m. to prime that behaviour.

c. Marketing research helps companies appeal to potential customers.

It’s important to learn as much as possible about your current customers. However, it’s equally important to learn about people who are at the beginning of the customer journey. A deeper understanding of what motivates these individuals can help your business turn clicks into conversions.

2. Marketing research helps businesses manage risk.

Risk is an intrinsic part of the business world. However, by understanding market trends and customer behaviour, businesses can anticipate changes in demand and adjust their strategies accordingly. Market research can also help businesses identify potential obstacles or challenges and develop contingency plans to mitigate those risks.

For example, let’s say a company hopes to introduce a new product to the market. Before investing significant time and financial resources into product development, market researchers may conduct a series of surveys to determine if consumers are even interested in the respective product. This mitigates the risk of introducing a good for which there is no demand.

Other examples in which marketing research can be used as a tool for mitigating risk include:

• Conducting ad testing to determine if brand messaging resonates with consumers
• Hosting product development focus groups to receive feedback before revealing a new product to the larger market
• Organising customer satisfaction surveys at various points of the customer journey to determine any issues affecting sales
• Administering price testing to determine the ideal price for a new product

3. Marketing research helps businesses stay competitive.

Marketing research gives companies a competitive edge in many ways, one being a greater awareness of the industry itself. By understanding what other businesses are doing, your company can develop strategies to differentiate itself and stay ahead of the curve. For example, if research indicates that laundry detergent manufacturers are increasing prices, a company can either decide to a) keep up with the times and increase costs, b) keep costs the same, or c) decrease pricing to appeal to a specific target market.

Marketing research also helps companies determine areas where they may be falling behind. If several healthcare conglomerates are expanding telehealth services, it would be wise for a hospital to also make moves to provide digital appointments. Otherwise, patients may take their business elsewhere.

How else can marketing research help your business stay competitive?

a. Marketing research aids in trendspotting.

It’s important for companies to keep up with industry patterns. However, it’s also important for companies to predict patterns before they even happen. The fashion industry provides a good example of this. Trend forecasters analyse decades—centuries even—of socio-cultural data in an attempt to be the first company to put out a ‘hot’ new product that appeals to modern sensibilities.

b. Marketing research allows businesses to identify gaps in the industry.

Similarly, marketing research can help companies realise a demand that has yet to be satisfied. Through marketing research surveys, for instance, an organic snack food company may see that consumers are craving more savoury gluten-free snack options. Using this data, the company can one-up competitors by introducing a new product.

4. Marketing research gives businesses the tools to measure success.

Net profit is an important indicator of a company’s success. However, if profits are plummeting, it can be difficult to know if this is because of your company’s performance or industry-wide factors like increased materials costs and decreased demand. Because of this, businesses must rely on a more holistic approach to evaluating success.

Fortunately, marketing research can be a helpful tool if you want to measure business health using more than dollar signs. Here’s how marketing research can help you gauge company success.

a. Marketing research provides insight into customer satisfaction.

Sure, your company could be making money. But if your customers aren’t satisfied, your financial gains are likely to be short-lived. To determine if customers are happy with your products or services, you can conduct a customer feedback survey questionnaire.

Alternatively, you may choose to conduct a longitudinal panel survey . Unlike an ad hoc survey, which takes a snapshot of consumer opinions and behaviours, longitudinal studies (like monthly or quarterly trackers) monitor how consumer attitudes change over time. This tool is especially helpful if you want to see how customer satisfaction changes after the introduction of new protocols or training methods.

b. Marketing research helps businesses assess employee satisfaction.

A financially profitable company isn’t necessarily successful if its employees aren’t satisfied. To assess this metric of success, you can conduct surveys, in-person interviews, or focus groups. The results from these marketing research assessments may also shed light on the efficiency of your staff.

c. Marketing research provides insight into the performance of competitors.

It can be constructive to compare your company’s performance to that of competitors. This can help you understand if dips or rises in profit are unique to your company or simply an industry trend.

5. Marketing research helps businesses make informed decisions.

For decades, companies have made key business decisions based on gut feelings alone. But the new age of marketing revolves around data-driven decision-making: a process in which business decisions are informed by metrics and analytics. This contemporary model helps companies make solid choices that reduce risk while improving performance.

Since marketing research lends itself to data generation, it’s an integral part of this equation. For example, data yielded from a brand awareness survey may illustrate that men aged 50 to 65 in a specific geographic area are the least familiar with the brand. Using this information, the company can invest marketing dollars in a way that will yield true results.

Other examples of using marketing research to support data-driven decision-making include:

• During a focus group, a company discovers that 60% of women are dissatisfied with the playback speed options of an audiobook app. In response, software developers dedicate time and financial resources to adjusting that feature.
• Survey data reveals that as the price of microwaves increases, so does customers’ perceived value of the product. With this in mind, a company chooses to increase prices by 30%.
• A popular food chain conducts a series of phone interviews to assess customer service at various locations. Afterward, the company mandates that employees at the restaurants with the lowest reviews take customer service training courses.

All this to say, marketing research has many different applications. By gathering data about customer preferences, market trends, and industry dynamics, businesses can make decisions based on facts rather than assumptions or intuition. This can help businesses avoid costly mistakes and increase their chances of success.

Conduct high-quality marketing research with Kantar

Marketing research is a critical tool that businesses and organisations can use to gather valuable information about their target market and industry. By conducting research, businesses can gain insights into customer needs and behaviour, stay competitive, make informed decisions, manage risk, and measure success.

And during VUCA times (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), keeping a consistent pulse on consumer sentiment and behaviour is essential to driving the right decisions for business growth.

However, in today's rapidly changing business landscape, marketing research can feel complicated and overwhelming. That’s where Kantar comes in. As an industry leader, we provide tips and tools to help you navigate each step of the marketing research process, from survey design to data visualisation.

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Market Research Definition, Types, Tools and Benefits

Published on Jul 01, 2022

More than doubling in size from 2008 to 2021, the market research sector brought in over $76.4 (Statista) billion worldwide in 2021.  

What is Market Research?

Market research is the process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a market, about the product or service to be offered for sale in that market. It is also about the previous, current, and potential customers for the product or service. 

Data collection, analysis, and interpretation are the three main steps in any successful market research project. The data could pertain to a certain demographic, general consumers, rival businesses, or the entire market. This is the cornerstone of any thriving business. The findings can be used for anything from discovering a fresh opportunity to entering the market to developing an entirely new product or service. 

Small business owners can benefit greatly from conducting market research. It can eliminate uncertainty in the creative process and direct energy and funding toward the most promising ideas and initiatives. Many types of market research are conducted by businesses at many different stages. 

Market Research for Businesses  

Accurate and comprehensive data gives a plethora of information on potential and existing customers, competitors, and the industry as a whole, making it the bedrock of any successful commercial endeavor. It helps entrepreneurs weigh the odds of success before sinking a lot of money into a new firm. 

An essential aspect of every successful business plan is conducting market research to gather data that can be used to address potential marketing obstacles. In reality, it is not viable to develop tactics like market segmentation (identifying distinct groups within a market) and product differentiation (establishing a unique selling proposition for a product or service that distinguishes it from the competition) without conducting market research. 

Types of Market Research  

1. quantitative research .

The results of quantitative studies are typically presented using numerical and graphic representations. It's the gold standard for verifying or disproving hypotheses. It is possible to establish broad, overarching truths about a subject by conducting this kind of study. Experiments, numerically recorded observations, and surveys with a limited number of predetermined answer choices are all examples of common quantitative approaches. 

2. Qualitative research 

Words are the currency of qualitative inquiry. It's a tool for making sense of things like ideas and experiences. Using this method, you can learn more about a topic from every angle, which is very useful for researching controversial or poorly understood subjects. Open-ended interviews, written descriptions of observations, and in-depth analyses of the existing literature are all examples of common qualitative techniques. 

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research 

Quantitative research focuses on numerical and statistical facts, while qualitative research examines concepts and interpretations. Both are necessary to learn various things. Comparatively, qualitative research draws its conclusions from interviews and documents rather than statistics and reasoning. Quantitative studies typically report their findings numerically or graphically, while qualitative studies report their findings verbally. 

3. Primary Research 

Primary data refers to a study that seeks to collect firsthand information from real-world participants. Primary research is data collected by the researcher themselves through various techniques of approaching the target audience directly. You have full legal and ethical rights to the data set you to create. Primary research can be challenging due to the time, money, resources, and familiarity with the topic that it demands. 

4. Secondary Research 

Secondary research is a study that is done after primary research has already been conducted, and it consists of analyzing, interpreting, and summarizing the results of the primary research. A more precise definition of secondary research would be any study that makes use of publicly available data. When conducting secondary research, scholars refer to information that has already been gathered, processed, and made public (and therefore, you do not own this data). Since the accessible data has already been evaluated and interpreted, the researcher just needs to determine the data he wants to use, i.e., the data that is necessary for his project. 

Primary Research vs. Secondary Research

Research that involves the collection of new information, or "primary" research, is distinguished from secondary research by the fact that it is conducted for the first time on a particular topic. Instead, secondary research makes use of information that has previously been gathered through primary research. The fundamental dividing line between primary and secondary research is whether the research has been done before. 

5. Market Research 

Market research on branding can help a business develop, launch, and sustain its brand. This may involve the firm's ethos, branding, visuals, ideals, or very name. Interviews, focus groups, and surveys are all viable options for conducting research. 

6. Customer Research 

Market research on customers is learning what factors most strongly affect your demographic of interest and what adjustments may be made to better attract and retain them as paying customers. The objective of this study is to acquire an intimate understanding of your consumer base and their habits and preferences as they relate to your business. 

7. Competitor Research 

Conducting market research on your competitors entails learning about their businesses and assessing how they stack up against your own. Your competitive product in the market or how to break into a new market could also be a topic of discussion. The study's overarching goal is to help your company prepare for the future by identifying methods to set itself apart from competitors and by learning from customers' opinions and suggestions. 

8. Product Research 

Conducting market research on your items is essential to ensuring they will sell successfully once they hit the shelves. Finding out how people feel about your product and if they feel it's valuable and functioning properly is the goal of this study. The ability to think creatively about enhancements and new features is another benefit. 

Benefits of Market Research 

According to a survey, the market research business is expected to increase at a rate of 12-14% (The Economic Times) per year through FY26, at which point it would have surpassed the $4 billion mark. 

The following is a list of the most important reasons and benefits of marketing research: 

It's a great tool for boosting companies' standing. The ability to think critically and act on that thinking is the key to success. You can keep your business one step ahead of the competition by conducting market research to expand your knowledge of your market or target audience. 

Reduces the potential for loss on an investment. This is a basic point to think about, but it is often crucial to the success of a firm. When starting a firm, it makes sense to spend what amounts to a negligible amount on research and testing the market, product, concept, or idea. 

Possible dangers and benefits are highlighted. Insurance against these two glaring pitfalls lies in both primary research (fieldwork) and secondary research (desk research). Opportunities or red flags may be uncovered through the combination of this with qualitative research for further investigation. 

You can learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of your own business and of your competitors. To achieve entirely objective reporting, it is generally recommended to collaborate with a market research agency. Take advantage of what you've learned from study to improve in areas where you're weak and to gain an edge over the competition. 

Strategic preparation is helped by this. Where do you stand with the core principles of your company plan? If it's supported by data, and you've put in the time and effort to do your own (hopefully continuous) research, you can rest assured that you're giving yourself the best chance of success in your commercial endeavors. 

This aids in the identification of developing tendencies. Being the first, the best, or coming up with the idea that nobody else has is typically what it takes to stay ahead in business. Taking the pulse of your industry on a regular basis is an important habit. You can learn more about the tools available to you to identify and capitalize on these trends by consulting with a research firm or expert. 

Helpful for firms in keeping up with the competition. Being the best calls for an insatiable need for knowledge and a propensity to experiment. The key to success, and the ability to maintain that success, is knowing how to effectively apply the information gleaned from market research, audience research, and data research. 

It includes forecasts for future income. One of the most important parts of any market study is a forecast, which looks into the future and predicts the size, makeup, and trends of the market you're interested in. This allows for the categorization of prospective clients. You should prioritize the market that is the best fit for your business rather than the largest or fastest-growing. 

It's geared toward meeting the wants and desires of its patrons. Many things in business, including research, benefit from keeping clients front and center. By reaching out to individuals through online panels, web forums, telephone surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups, market researchers can learn where their business's ideas, services, and products can be strengthened. 

Using this method, one can measure the progress of one's company against predetermined standards. Utilize data gathered from the market to study the competition, gauge employee enthusiasm, identify knowledge or skill shortages, and identify development opportunities. This will allow you to consider novel approaches, ideas, and resources for boosting your company's efficiency. 

Market Research Tools 

In order to better understand your market and target audience, you need to use market research techniques. It's fundamental to every company's success, and in today's more crowded marketplace, a thorough familiarity with your target market is more important than ever. Good news: you don't have to be an "insights genius" to get started collecting the data you need, owing to the proliferation of market research tools. Some of the best and most widely used methods of market research include: 

• Answer the Public 
• Attest 
• Google Trends 
• Social Mention 
• Remesh 
• Heartbeat Ai 
• Think With Google 
• Spyfu 
• Latana 
• BuzzSumo 
• Statista 
• Typeform 
• Otter.ai 
• Dimensions.ai 

How to Conduct Research for Your Business: Market Research Strategies 

Despite their different objectives, market research and marketing research should use the same framework for gathering and analyzing information about your company's target audiences. These help in primary research as well as secondary research.  

Clearly identify the problem at stake. Establish an initial research topic. Having a clear research question in mind will allow you to better organize your findings. 

Start by figuring out your financial and time constraints. How much money do you have to put into your study? When do you anticipate finishing data collection? Research, like any other tactic for expanding your company, should be carried out within your means. Nonetheless, it may be worthwhile to spend more money to receive the most comprehensive results available, especially if the questions you are answering are time-sensitive. 

Planning your approach and requirements. Find out what information needs to be gathered and figure out how to get it. Observation, surveys, phone calls, and focus groups are among the alternatives. Consult a professional research agency if you are unsure of how to organize your data collection. 

Pick a way to sample the data. I need to know how you plan on picking people to take part in your study. You may require a cross-section of the consumer population at large, a subset of the population who share a particular characteristic of their way of life, or just the opinions of those who are already familiar with your brand. Develop a plan for tracking down and contacting the persons who will take part in your research. 

Prepare a data analysis strategy. Think about the methods you'll use to examine the data. Do you require numbers for statistical analysis, or can you get a sense of things from qualitative, observable data? Spend some time learning about the many types of analysis so you can pick the one that will yield the most useful results for your study. 

Gathering information. The next step is data collection, which may begin once you have settled on a research question and developed a strategy for answering it within the bounds of your time and money. Research is often outsourced to professional firms or consultants by many corporations. 

Examining the information. It is important to apply certain methods of analysis to make sense of your data, no matter how simple it may appear at first. Which analytical techniques you employ are most suited to your data is a function of the information you've gathered. Also, this is the time to double-check for any mistakes that might have crept into your data gathering, analysis, or sampling. 

Make the report you need. Concluding your research with a written report is the next to last stage. From formulating a problem statement to discussing the findings of your data study, your report should include it all. 

Why is Market Research Important?

Over 44,000 businesses across the United States provide some form of market research. Their total annual income is around $23 billion (QuestionPro).  

The importance of Market Research is the following -  

1. Identifies new products or services

By conducting market research, a business can learn what consumers want and how to best meet their demands. Identifying the major challenges associated with creating a product or service can help you save money. It's useful for figuring out what customers value most and how to implement that into your product or service offering. 

2. Identifies potential customers

You may learn more about your clientele by analyzing demographic information like their gender, age, income, occupation, and interests. You'll have a better idea of who to target with your future advertising efforts if you have a clear picture of your current clientele. When a product is marketed to the wrong demographic, sales suffer. 

3. Establishes viability of a product or service

If your organization is considering introducing a novel product or service to consumers, you should find out if there is a need for it. Do people need this product? Do the people you plan to sell to actually want this product? Does it have any chance of succeeding, and does it even have a chance of being a viable trend? 

4. Anticipates and discovers future market trends 

If you are familiar with your market and the tendencies that are just beginning to emerge, you will be better prepared to build tactics to combat any negative tendencies that may threaten your company. As a result, you can use rising tendencies to your advantage and propel your company forward. 

5. Keeps your company ahead of competitors

Examining your company's performance in relation to that of its rivals is a prime use for comparative research. If they're much ahead of you, it's a fantastic chance to figure out what you're doing wrong. It is possible to devise business plans that will help you surpass the competition. 

6. Decide the best marketing strategy

Conducting research is helpful for pinpointing the optimal distribution platform for reaching your target audience. If you find out that a large portion of your audience prefers one form of communication over another, it makes sense to concentrate your efforts there. Because of the scarcity of these resources, it only makes sense to direct them toward endeavors with a high probability of success. 

7. Reduces risk and increases profitability

The ability to assess the value of potential risks in light of past performance and anticipated future market behavior is a crucial business skill. The success or failure of a business idea depends heavily on the results of market research. Understanding your consumers and their habits is another crucial step in risk reduction. Taking less risk leads to greater financial rewards. 

8. Identifies threats and opportunities

The SWOT analysis is likely familiar to many of you. The acronym SWOT refers to a company's "strengths," "weaknesses," and "All four of them can be figured out with the use of market research . While a lot of data can be collected through market research, not all of it needs to be used. Use only information that is directly related to your major objective (which you will have established in advance). 

9. Helps to understand existing customers

By conducting market research, you can learn more about your current clientele. Because of this complexity, you can't assume that you know what your clients require. If you want to be successful, you need to take the temperature of your clientele on a frequent basis. Satisfaction levels among customers can also be measured with the help of surveys. You can find out what is bothering them and make adjustments if necessary. If they are already rather high, you can examine the factors that led to this success and implement changes to maintain it. 

10. Assists in realistic goal setting

Goals that are more realistic can be established with the support of up-to-the-minute information on your market and customer base. Knowing what to expect and how to realistically expand growth over time is greatly aided by establishing a growth pattern throughout time. Setting objectives that are too lofty will cause you to waste time and energy trying to achieve something that is impossible. 

How Efficient is Market Research? 

You should only invest time, energy, and money into market research if you expect to see a favorable return on that investment. Because it is so worthwhile, market research continues to play a significant role in the success of any organization. Market research won't ensure your company's success on its own, but it will arm you with the data you need to make the moves that will. 

Many of the advantages of this type of study were examined, but the drawbacks were also taken into account. If you don't conduct market research, you run the danger of losing clients to the competition, missing out on growth prospects, being more susceptible to hazards, making bad business decisions, and more. Some companies succeed without first doing their homework, but those situations are unusual. To build your firm and avoid typical errors, conduct market research. 

Market Research Methods  

Although there are a variety of approaches to conducting market research, the majority of companies opt to utilize one of the following five fundamental approaches: surveys, focus groups, personal interviews, observation, and field trials. Which strategies you decide to implement for your company will depend on the kinds of data you require as well as the amount of money you are ready to pay. Some of the major methods of market research are following - 

1. Surveys 

Surveys ask participants questions. They can use numerous survey methods. Surveys are a cost-effective technique to collect data for the study. Written surveys may encourage truthful responses since participants feel like they're speaking privately. 

2. Discussions 

Focus groups are moderated discussions. Companies assemble consumers to conduct focus groups, pose questions, and record replies. Participants' replies may reveal what consumers want in a firm or a product because they represent a broad group. Focus groups offer longer participant interaction than surveys. 

3. Interviews 

An interview combines focus group and one-on-one survey aspects. It includes recording one participant's comments at a time. Open-ended questions elicit in-depth answers from the interviewee. Researchers can ask follow-up questions and let interviewees ask their own. 

4. Social media listening 

Social media users routinely discuss corporations and their products. Researchers can search for discussion topics and measure consumer sentiment through social media listening. 

5. Observations 

Observation in market research means studying how consumers shop. Filming shoppers in a store and studying their shopping habits is common. This strategy can reveal their natural selves if they are ignorant of the observation. 

6. Experiments 

In a field trial, a corporation lets participants use a product under typical conditions and collects data. Participants' feedback was used to improve the product. 

7. Competitive analysis 

Competitive analysis is a secondary market research process where companies acquire and analyze competition information. It entails identifying primary and secondary rivals and analyzing their offerings, revenues, and marketing methods. 

8. Statistics 

Public data entails seeking and evaluating public market data. This research is often free online or in libraries. Research centers, polls, or government databases may provide this information. Public data is often used to confirm or compare primary market research. 

9. Purchased data 

Companies without the time or resources to perform their own market research can buy it. Several market research companies sell database subscriptions. Small and medium-sized businesses that can't afford primary market research may benefit from this approach. 

10. Analysis of sales data 

Competition analysis is just one way that may be used in tandem with sales data analysis to show how different business tactics affect revenue. It can also reveal consumers' buying behavior and consumer trends. 

Functions of Marketing Research  

The following are the main functions of Marketing Research - 

Description: Marketing research details customers. Age, sex, education, income, etc., are listed. It describes the market and competitors. This description helps marketing decision-makers and problem-solvers. 

Evaluation: Marketing research evaluates firm performance. It evaluates production and marketing policies. It measures customer reactions to product quality, price, packaging, advertising, sales, and promotions. If consumers dislike the company's policies, they must alter them. It contrasts company and rival policies. 

Explanation: Marketing research answers all marketing questions. It explains why sales are declining, why retailers are unhappy, etc. It explains the problem's causes. It gives a solution. 

Prediction: Marketing research forecasts. Predictions are future forecasts. It predicts sales, market prospects, dangers, marketing environment, customer behavior, etc. All predictions may be wrong. Predictions help the organization create plans and policies. It helps seize possibilities. It prevents future hazards. 

Decision Making: Marketing research aids decision-makers. It gives decision-making data. Decision-making involves choosing between options. Decision-making requires accurate data. MR helps the marketer decide. It gives decision-making data. It offers alternatives. It compares each option's pros and cons. It helps marketing managers choose the right action. 

Conclusion 

The world's markets are changing at a dizzying rate, making it more important than ever for companies to adapt quickly enough to be competitive. One method is to conduct market research. The results of your market research and analysis will provide you with a thorough understanding of your target audience's wants and needs, as well as your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. 

The key to making your business successful in the face of intense competition is identifying and fixing your deficiencies. The right market research tools will aid you in doing just that! The time to begin expanding your company is now.  

With a presence in New York, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Toronto, London, Zurich, Pune, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, SG Analytics, a pioneer in Research and Analytics, offers tailor-made services to enterprises worldwide.    

A leader in  Market research services , SG Analytics enables organizations to achieve actionable insights into products, technology, customers, competition, and the marketplace to make insight-driven decisions.  Contact us  today if you are an enterprise looking to make critical data-driven decisions to prompt accelerated growth and breakthrough performance.

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Market Research

A process that determines the viability of a new product, service, or a variation of an existing product

What is Market Research?

Market research refers to the process through which a company can determine the viability of a new product. It can be a new product or service or a variation or upgrade of an existing product.

Through market research, a company can discover the target market and collate feedback on the level of interest of potential customers in the product. It can be used in the product development stage to customize the product or even in the marketing phase while devising segment-specific promotional activities.

• Market research refers to the process through which a company can determine the viability of a new product.
• Market research is important not only to ensure that the product being offered is suited to the tastes of its consumer base but also to determine potential demand.
• A combination of primary and secondary data makes up the information pool in market research.

How is Market Research Conducted?

Usually, market research is conducted by the company in-house, which means that the company offering the product collects and analyzes the data. Other companies may outsource the market research process to third-party firms.

Market research can be conducted in a variety of ways, such as surveys, focus groups , product testing, etc. Sometimes, the test subjects (potential customers) may be compensated with product samples or a small stipend .

Data collection methods have significantly changed over time. Before, companies would interview people on the street and collect feedback about their advertisements in publications. Towards the 1980s, data collection was increasingly done in the telephone mode, which led to a drastic improvement in market research models. Operators could organize focus groups or collect information via cold calling in an organized manner.

Since the beginning of the 21 st century, market research has shifted online. People can now sign up for surveys, fill in feedback forms, or give ratings on apps.

Why is Market Research Conducted?

For any company that aims to launch a new product, it is important to ascertain the views of the target audience on the distinct features of the product, not only to ensure that the product being offered is suited to the taste of its consumer base but also to determine potential demand. Demand forecasting is crucial before starting the production of a product.

Moreover, gathering information is important for segmenting markets and differentiating the product. It can later be used to tailor advertisement efforts and focus on the features that the consumer is most likely to prioritize while making a purchase decision.

To complete the market research process in a comprehensive manner, the firm must engage in a variety of tasks, such as gathering information on the market sector. The data collected must be analyzed to disclose patterns or trends or to focus on the most relevant data points.

How Does Market Research Work?

A combination of primary and secondary data makes up the information pool used in market research.

1. Primary Information

Primary information is data collected by the company or a third-party firm. This type of information can be categorized into exploratory research and specific research.

Exploratory research – It follows a questionnaire-type method wherein open-ended questions are asked from the target audience in a loosely structured manner.

It leads to issues and problems from the consumer’s point of view being brought to the notice of the company. The company must address the concerns before launching the product.

Specific research – It is aimed at finding answers to issues that were identified during the process of conducting the exploratory research.

2. Secondary Information

Secondary information is data that is already publicly available. It can include government-collated data such as the census , reports of trade associations, etc. Data collected by other businesses that are operating in the same sector may also be used (if available).

CFI is the official provider of the Commercial Banking & Credit Analyst (CBCA)™ certification program, designed to transform anyone into a world-class financial analyst. To keep learning and developing your knowledge of financial analysis, we highly recommend the additional resources below:

• Market Penetration
• Supply and Demand
• Research and Development (R&D)
• Economics of Production
• See all economics resources
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How to Conduct Market Research for a Startup

• 17 Mar 2022

With every innovative product idea comes the pressing question: “Will people want to buy it?”

As an entrepreneur with a big idea, what’s the best way to determine how potential customers will react to your product? Conducting market research can provide the data needed to decide whether your product fits your target market.

Before launching a new venture, you should understand market research. Here’s how to conduct market research for a startup and why it’s important.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about customers and the market as a whole to determine a product or service’s viability. Market research includes interviews, surveys, focus groups, and industry data analyses.

The goal of market research is to better understand potential customers, how well your product or service fits their needs, and how it compares to competitors’ offerings.

There are two types of research you can conduct: primary and secondary.

• Primary research requires collecting data to learn about your specific customers or target market segment. It’s useful for creating buyer personas, segmenting your market, and improving your product to cater to customers’ needs .
• Secondary research is conducted using data you didn’t collect yourself. Industry reports, public databases, and other companies’ proprietary data can be used to gain insights into your target market segment and industry.

Why Is Market Research Important for Entrepreneurs?

Before launching your venture, it’s wise to conduct market research to ensure your product or service will be well received. Feedback from people who fall into your target demographics can be invaluable as you iterate on and improve your product.

Performing market research can also help you determine a pricing strategy by gauging customers’ willingness to pay for your product. Additionally, it can improve the user experience by revealing what features matter most to potential customers.

When assessing which startups to fund, investors place heavy importance on thorough market research that indicates promising potential. Providing tangible proof that your product fulfills a market need and demonstrating you’ve taken the time to iterate on and improve it signal that your startup could be a worthwhile investment.

Related: How to Talk to Potential Investors: 5 Tips

How to Do Market Research for a Startup

1. form hypotheses.

What questions do you aim to answer through market research? Using those questions, you can make predictions called hypotheses . Defining your hypotheses upfront can help guide your approach to selecting subjects, researching questions, and testing designs.

An example question you may ask is: “How much are people in my target demographic willing to pay for the current version of my product?” Your hypothesis could be: “If my product contains all its current features, customers will be willing to pay $500 for it.”

Another example question you may ask is: “What’s the user’s biggest pain point, and is my product meeting their needs?” Your hypothesis could be: “I believe the user’s biggest pain point is needing an easy, unintimidating way to learn basic car maintenance, and I predict that my product meets that need.”

You can and should test multiple hypotheses, but try to select no more than a few per test, so the research stays focused.

Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Hypothesis Testing in Business

2. Select the Type of Research Needed to Test Hypotheses

Once you’ve formed your hypotheses, determine which type of research to conduct.

If your hypotheses focus on determining your startup’s place in the broader market, start with secondary research. This can include using existing data to determine market size, how much of that market your startup could reasonably own, who your biggest competitors are, and how your brand and product compare to theirs.

If your hypotheses require primary research, decide which data collection method best fits your needs. These can include one-on-one interviews, surveys, focus groups, and polls. Primary research allows you to gather insights into customer satisfaction and loyalty, brand awareness and perception, and real-time product usability.

3. Identify Target Demographics and Recruit Subjects

To gather meaningful insights, you need to understand your target demographic. Do you aim to cater to working parents, young athletes, or pet owners? Determine the type of person who can benefit from your product.

If you conduct primary research, you need to recruit subjects. This can be done in several ways, including:

• Word of mouth: The simplest but least reliable way to recruit participants is by word of mouth. Ask people you know to refer others to be research subjects, then screen them to confirm they fit your target demographic.
• Promoting the study on social media: Many social media platforms enable you to show an ad to people who fall into specific demographic categories or have certain interests. This allows you to get the word out to a large number of people who qualify.
• Hiring a third-party market research company: Some companies provide full market research services and recruit participants and conduct research on your behalf.

However you recruit subjects, ensure they take a screener survey beforehand, which allows you to determine whether they fit the specific demographic you want to study or have a trait that eliminates them from the research pool. It also provides demographic data—such as age and race—that enables you to select a diverse subset of your target demographic.

In addition, you can offer compensation to boost participation, such as money, meal vouchers, gift cards, or early access to your product. Make it clear that compensation is in appreciation for subjects’ time and honest feedback.

4. Conduct the Research

Once you’ve determined the type of research and target demographic necessary to test your hypotheses, conduct your research. To reduce bias, enlist someone unfamiliar with your hypotheses to perform interviews or lead focus groups.

Ask questions based on your audience and hypotheses. For instance, if you’re aiming to test existing customers’ purchase motivations, you may ask: “What challenge were you trying to solve when you first bought the product?”

If examining brand perception, your audience should consist of potential customers who don’t yet know your brand. Present them with a list of competitor logos—with yours in the mix—and ask them to rank the brands by perceived reliability.

While the questions you ask are vehicles to prove or disprove hypotheses, ensure they don’t lead subjects in one direction. To craft unbiased research questions , use neutral language and vary the order of options in multiple-choice questions. This can keep subjects from selecting the same option each time if they sense the third option is always mapped to a certain outcome. It also helps account for primacy bias (the tendency to select the first option in a list) and recency bias (the tendency to select the final option in a list).

Once you’ve collected data, ensure it’s organized efficiently and securely so you can protect subjects’ identities .

Related: 3 Examples of Bad Survey Questions and How to Fix Them

5. Gather Insights and Determine Action Items

After you’ve organized your data, analyze it to extract actionable insights. While some of the data will be qualitative rather than quantitative, you can detect patterns in responses to make it quantifiable. For instance, noting that 15 of 20 subjects mentioned feeling overwhelmed when attempting to assemble your product.

Once you’ve analyzed the data and communicated emerging trends using data visualizations , outline action items.

If the majority of users in your target demographic reported feeling overwhelmed while assembling your product, action items might include:

• Creating different versions of assembly instructions to test with other groups, varying diagrams and instructional language
• Researching instruction manual best practices

Each round of market research can offer more information about how your product is perceived and experienced by potential users.

Market Research as an Ongoing Endeavor

While it’s useful to conduct market research before launching your product, you should revisit your hypotheses and form new ones over the course of building your venture.

By conducting market research with each version of your product, you can gradually improve it and ensure it continues to fit target customers’ needs.

Are you interested in bolstering your entrepreneurship skills? Explore our four-week online course Entrepreneurship Essentials and our other entrepreneurship and innovation courses to learn to speak the language of the startup world.

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Importance of market research in developing a strategy.

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Developing a successful strategy is crucial for the growth and sustainability of any organization. One of the key pillars of strategy development is market research. Market research provides valuable insights into the market dynamics, customer preferences, and competitive landscape, enabling businesses to make informed decisions and devise effective strategies. In this article, we will explore the importance of market research in developing a strategy and the various steps involved in conducting comprehensive market research.

Table of Contents

Introduction

In the fast-paced and dynamic business environment, companies need to stay ahead of the curve to remain competitive. Market research acts as a compass, guiding businesses through  the complex marketplace by providing relevant information and actionable insights. It involves gathering and analyzing data about customers, competitors, and market trends to uncover opportunities and challenges.

Definition of Market Research

Market research can be defined as the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information about a market, its customers, and competitors. It helps businesses understand the needs and preferences of their target audience, identify market trends, and evaluate the competitive landscape. By conducting market research , companies gain a deeper understanding of their industry, enabling them to make data-driven decisions.

Importance of Market Research

• Identifying Market Opportunities : Market research helps businesses identify untapped market segments, emerging trends, and unmet customer needs. By understanding market gaps and customer pain points, companies can develop innovative products or services that cater to specific demands, gaining a competitive edge.
• Understanding Customer Behavior : Market research provides insights into consumer behavior, including purchasing patterns, preferences, and motivations. This understanding allows businesses to tailor their offerings to meet customer expectations, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Target Market Identification : Market research helps in identifying the target market for a product or service. By segmenting the market based on demographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts and messages to resonate with the intended audience.
• Competitive Analysis : Market research enables businesses to assess the competitive landscape and understand their position relative to competitors. It helps identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) to formulate strategies that leverage strengths and mitigate weaknesses.
• Market Trends and Opportunities : By monitoring market trends, businesses can identify emerging opportunities and adapt their strategies accordingly. Market research helps in forecasting industry trends, technological advancements, and consumer preferences, enabling businesses to stay ahead of the curve.

Types of Market Research

Market research can be broadly categorized into two types: primary research and secondary research.

• Primary Research : Primary research involves collecting firsthand data directly from the target market. This can be done through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or observations. Primary research provides specific and up-to-date information tailored to the research objectives.
• Secondary Research : Secondary research involves gathering and analyzing existing data from various sources such as government publications, industry reports, market studies, and competitor websites. It provides a broader perspective on the market and helps in understanding historical trends and benchmarking against industry standards.

Steps in Conducting Market Research

• Defining Research Objectives : Clearly defining research objectives is the first step in conducting market research. It involves identifying what information needs to be gathered, the purpose of the research, and the specific questions to be answered.
• Designing the Research Methodology : Based on the research objectives, the appropriate research methodology is selected. This includes determining whether primary or secondary research methods are more suitable and selecting the specific data collection techniques.
• Collecting Data : Data collection involves gathering relevant information using various techniques such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or data mining. Careful consideration is given to sample size, sampling method, and data quality to ensure the validity and reliability of the findings.
• Analyzing Data : Once the data is collected, it is analyzed using statistical techniques, data visualization tools, or qualitative analysis methods. The goal is to uncover patterns, trends, and relationships within the data that can inform decision-making.
• Interpreting Findings : The findings from the data analysis are interpreted to derive actionable insights. This involves identifying key findings, understanding their implications, and drawing conclusions that address the research objectives.

Understanding Consumer Behavior

Understanding consumer behavior is a crucial aspect of market research. By gaining insights into what motivates consumers to purchase, how they make decisions, and what influences their behavior, businesses can create effective marketing strategies. Consumer behavior is influenced by various factors such as cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors. Market research helps in identifying these factors and tailoring marketing efforts to resonate with the target audience.

Identifying Target Market

Identifying the target market is essential for developing a successful strategy. Market research helps businesses segment the market based on various criteria such as demographics, psychographics, and behavioral patterns. This segmentation allows businesses to understand the unique needs and preferences of different customer groups, enabling them to create targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings.

Competitive Analysis

A thorough competitive analysis is a crucial component of market research. It involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, analyzing their marketing strategies , and identifying areas where a business can gain a competitive advantage. By understanding the competitive landscape, businesses can differentiate themselves and position their offerings effectively.

Market Trends and Opportunities

Monitoring market trends and identifying opportunities is essential for developing a strategy that is future-proof. Market research helps businesses stay informed about industry trends, technological advancements, and changing consumer preferences. By anticipating shifts in the market, businesses can proactively adapt their strategies and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is a framework used to assess the internal and external factors that impact a business. Market research plays a significant role in conducting a comprehensive SWOT analysis. It helps businesses identify their strengths and weaknesses by analyzing internal factors such as resources, capabilities, and brand perception. Additionally, market research helps in identifying external opportunities and threats by evaluating market dynamics, competitor actions, and industry trends.

Developing a Strategy

Market research forms the foundation for developing a robust and effective strategy. The insights gained from market research help businesses make informed decisions regarding product development, pricing, distribution channels , and marketing communication. A well-defined strategy aligns the business’s objectives with market realities and customer needs, increasing the chances of success.

Implementing and Monitoring the Strategy

Once a strategy is developed, its successful implementation is vital. Market research helps in monitoring the implementation of the strategy by providing feedback and evaluating its effectiveness. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), businesses can assess whether the strategy is yielding the desired outcomes and make necessary adjustments if needed.

Final Thoughts on The Importance of Market Research

Market research is a critical component of strategy development. It provides valuable insights into the market, customer behavior, and competitive landscape. By leveraging market research, businesses can identify market opportunities , understand customer needs, and develop effective strategies. The systematic approach of market research ensures that decisions are based on data and analysis rather than assumptions, increasing the likelihood of success.

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Ian has marketed for some of the world's best-known brands like Hewlett-Packard, Ryder, Force Factor, and CIT Bank. His content has been downloaded 50,000+ times and viewed by over 90% of the Fortune 500. His marketing has been featured in Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Adweek, Business Insider, Seeking Alpha, Tech Crunch, Y Combinator, and Lifehacker. With over 10 startups under his belt, Ian's been described as a serial entrepreneur— a badge he wears with pride. Ian's a published author and musician and when he's not obsessively testing the next marketing idea, he can be found hanging out with family and friends north of Boston.

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Top 10 Reasons Why You Need Market Research

by Sarah Schmidt , on November 1, 2022

Because market research is often a significant investment, it’s important to understand why it’s so valuable and the reasons it deserve ongoing attention.

To explore this topic in more depth, I talked to a variety of professionals in a broad range of industries who were eager to explain how market research can help a business accomplish its goals as well as the disadvantages of not doing market research. Read on to learn their top reasons for why you need market research.

1. Pursue Promising Business Opportunities

Market research is an important component of any business plan. Understanding the market demand and the overall competitive landscape can help you avoid the gut-punch of business failure.

“If you get swept up in the excitement of starting a new business, your overoptimism could lead to its early downfall,” explained Max Wesman, COO at GoodHire, a background check company. “Instead of exposing yourself to risks you haven’t prepared for, it’s important to be objective. Your conviction alone cannot carry a business idea to success.”

Wesman advises businesses to conduct market research thoroughly and at regular intervals. Doing so can help you target the right group of consumers, price your products and services appropriately, create the right messaging strategy, stay ahead of market changes, and pivot when needed.

2. Make Informed Business Decisions

Market research grounds your decision-making in data and facts, which can help eliminate blind spots and allow you to set realistic targets for your company. “Business decisions are not made in a vacuum or based on assumptions,” said David Bitton, Co-Founder and CMO at DoorLoop, a rental property management software.

Because market research is data-driven, it can help organizations create strategic plans and allocate their resources and budgets effectively. Venture capitalists, investment banks, and management consultants all routinely rely on market research, because high-stakes decisions require much more than guesswork or hunches. Before taking a leap, people want to see the data.   

3. Gain a Competitive Advantage

Market research is also an important tool for benchmarking and competitive analysis in a market defined by constant change.

“New innovations and companies enter the market every day, so performing market research is an essential part of staying competitive,” said Laurel Mintz, Founder and CEO of Elevate My Brand, a marketing agency based in Los Angeles. “It’s important to use direct, indirect, and aspirational competitors as a comparison to where you are, not only to see how you can improve, but also to use for marketing.”

For example, if a company does market research and they discover that their prices are significantly lower than the competition, it could be a sign to raise prices or use their low prices in their marketing strategy, according to Mintz.

4. Stay Current and Relevant to Consumers

In addition, when you truly understand your competition, and how industry trends are shifting, you give your company the opportunity to adapt.

Market research can even give brands the chance to adopt new concepts from other companies within their market. “Inspiration is a powerful tool,” explained David Batchelor, President of DialMyCalls.com, a texting and calling solution. “Industries are constantly evolving due to new technology and changing consumer behaviors. So if you’re not a ‘first-mover,’ you need to be a ‘fast-follower’ as a result of thorough market research.”

5. Develop an Effective Marketing Strategy

Market research should also help inform all your marketing efforts so you create content that resonates with your target audience and produces real results. You should know who you are creating marketing content for, who you are attracting into your sales funnel, and what their pain points are.

Understanding and marketing to the right audiences is key. “Companies that skip this essential step may lose insights, additional sales, and brand strength that all add up overtime,” said Jason Panzer, President of HexClad, a company that produces hybrid stainless steel nonstick pans.

6. Refine Your Messaging During Pivotal Moments

Market research can not only improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, but it can also help you avoid PR disasters that can tank your brand’s reputation and push loyal customers away.

“Unexpected events like the pandemic and inflation have changed consumer shopping trends in drastic ways, so how you address these issues can either help or hurt your brand,” explained Greg Gillman, Chief Revenue Officer at MuteSix, a performance marketing agency accelerating growth for disruptor brands. “By understanding the impact of world events on customers, you will avoid coming off as tone deaf to those issues.”

7. Take Your Sales to the Next Level

Market research can also improve the bottom line by helping you cross-sell, upsell, and create highly personalized and targeted pitches, according to Manish Mishra, Associate Director of Sales at LeadSquared, a marketing automation and CRM software for businesses.

What’s more, the insights you glean for your sales team can build on each other over time. As Mishra explained it, “Strategies for when, what, and how much to sell can be sketched out from the available information. Similar to how it takes multiple meetings to build a relationship, market research gives much better information about leads when it is repeated regularly.”

8. Identify Avenues for Growth

In addition to boosting sales and marketing efforts, companies also use market research to enhance product development and to plan how to expand into new markets.

“Regular market research initiatives within your company can help you discover new opportunities for growth and improvement,” said Laurice Constantine, Digital Managing Editor at Forbes Middle East and Founder of Casadar.com, an online marketplace that connects buyers with sellers and consultancy service providers in the field of decoration, architecture, and interior remodeling. “You might discover that there are untapped customer bases that would benefit greatly from your products or services. You may also discover that your products or services could be improved.”

Market research can also give you ideas for ways to combine offerings, create add-ons, or upsell items to boost your profits.

9. Reduce Risk and Gain Support from Stakeholders

Although risks are inevitable when running a business, market research can help you decrease them during the start-up phase and beyond. “An effective way to make informed decisions and reduce pitfalls is through market research,” according to Igal Rubinshtein, Founder at Home Essentials Direct, an online marketplace for home goods and DIY projects. “Through past information and by predicting future trends, you are undeniably in a better place to make a decision in the direction of growth.”

Having data to back up your ideas can also help bring other stakeholders on board, whether you need the approval of the executive suite, to win over investors for your business, or to impress clients. By providing a solid foundation for your idea, market research can help you make a persuasive case and tip the balance in your favor.

10. Save Time and Money

Lastly, market research can help you streamline your business operations and avoid waste.

“Targeted efforts are always more effective than broad ones,” explained Geoff Cudd, Founder of Don’t Do It Yourself, a website that provides advice and reviews to help people choose the best freelancers and tools to grow their business. “By conducting market research, you can avoid wasting time and money on marketing and advertising efforts that don’t reach your target market. Instead, you can focus your resources on strategies that are proven to be effective with your specific audience. This will help you get the most bang for your buck and use your resources more efficiently.”

Market research can also help you understand where the market is going, so you can plan what business lines to scale up or scale down, and ensure your investments are proportional to market demand. 

When you have tough business questions, market research can help you move forward with confidence. Will it pay off to acquire a new company, build another factory, or expand your business into another country? Market research can help answer these types of critical questions and position you for success.

Where to Start

When you need market research, MarketResearch.com is here to help. With more than 20 years of experience in the market research industry, hundreds of market research report publishers, and thousands of clients, no one is better suited to help you zero in on research you can trust. Contact us anytime for help finding what you need at the best price available.

In addition, please download our free white paper for more information on the value of market research for validation and decision making.

About the Author : Sarah Schmidt is a Managing Editor at MarketResearch.com, a leading provider of global market intelligence products and services.

Additional Resources

• 7 Key Advantages of Outsourcing Market Research Services
• How to Use Market Research for Onboarding and Training Employees
• Primary Data vs. Secondary Data: Market Research Methods

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The Importance of Market and Marketing Research in Business

Learn the difference between market research and marketing research

Laura Lake is a marketing professional and author of "Consumer Behavior for Dummies."

When it comes to running a business, making assumptions about your customers, market, competitors, or systems can cause you to waste time, money , and effort.

To make effective decisions that will grow your business and use your resources wisely, you will need to put some of those resources toward conducting market and marketing research.

Market Research vs. Marketing Research

Market research involves identifying a specific "target," and focusing exclusively on that group. It is research into a narrow group of consumers to understand their behavior and motivation.

Marketing research has a broader scope that market research. It is used to examine the entire marketing process of a company, rather than only looking at the consumers that the company is targeting.

The Importance of Market Research

Successfully running and growing your business depends on understanding your target customers. Once you have a clear picture of their goals, needs, and values, you are more able to drive them towards purchasing your products or services.

Market research is one of the best tools you have for understanding your customers. It gives you hard data that you can use to drive your marketing strategy, making both marketing and selling easier and more effective. 

Market research helps you:

• Improve communication.  It drives your communication not only with your current customer base but with target prospects as well. Market research shows you where your customers can be reached, as well as what language will be most effective in attracting their attention and resonating with them on an emotional level.
• Identify opportunity.  Market research helps you identify both high-level and more accessible opportunities for reaching and converting new customers. It can be the best way to discover new platforms for advertising, consumer concerns you were unaware of, and gaps within your market that you can fill.
• Lower your risk.  Concrete data keeps you focused on the real opportunities and helps you avoid unproductive effort. When you understand your customers, you can use your resources to reach them more effectively, with less risk of wasting time, money, and effort on marketing initiatives that don't work. Market research also helps you identify low-risk, high-reward areas where your company can expand or offer new services,

The Importance of Marketing Research

Marketing research is important for evaluating what is and is not working in your business model. It includes research into your target market, as well as the systems in your business that make up your marketing conditions.

Marketing research looks at every aspect of the Four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. This includes:

• Public Relations
• Modes of distribution
• Development of new products/services
• Promotions and advertising
• Market conditions

Marketing research helps you learn not just what your customers want, but how successful your business is at reaching and connecting with them. It helps you identify problems and opportunities, refine your systems, and evaluate your marketing strategy.

How to Conduct Research for Your Business

Though they look at different aspects of your business, both market research and marketing research should follow the same pattern of data collection and analysis.

• Define the problem.  Start by identifying the focus of your research. Knowing what question you are trying to answer will help you structure your research effectively.
• Determine your budget and timeframe.  How much can you afford to spend on the research process? How soon will you need to have data collection completed? Like all the strategies that you use to grow your business, research should be conducted within your available resources. However, depending on the urgency of the questions you are answering, it may be worth spending more money to get the most comprehensive results possible.
• Design your method and needs.  Identify what data needs to be collected and how you will gather it. Some options are observation, surveys, telephone calls, or focus groups. If you are unsure how to structure your data collection, consider working with a professional research firm.
• Choose a sampling method. How will you select the participants for your research? You may need a random sampling from the general population of consumers, a group that all have a single lifestyle factor in common, or responses only from people who are already your customers. Create a plan for identifying and contacting your participants.
• ​​ Plan for data analysis. Decide how you will analyze your data. Will you need quantitative data for statistical analysis or qualitative, observational data to give you a broad picture? Will you use software or do it by hand? Take time to learn about various methods of analysis to find the one that will best answer your research question.
• Data collection.  Once you know what question you want to answer and have designed a research method to answer it within the constraints of your available budget and time, it's time to collect data. Many businesses work with professional firms or consultants to conduct their actual research.
• Analysis of the data. No matter how straightforward your data seems at first glance, you'll want to use specific methods of analysis to ensure that you understand what it is telling you. The methods of analysis that you use will depend on the type of data you collected. This should also be when you check for errors, which can occur in your sampling method, data collection, and analysis.
• Create your report.  The final step of the research process is drafting a report on your findings. Your report should outline the entire research process, from developing your problem statement to the results of your data analysis.

No matter what type of research you are conducting, you will need to follow the full research method to arrive at a conclusion that will benefit your business. If your findings lead to a solution to your problem statement, you will be able to decide on the next steps for your business.

If you were unable to answer your research question, that doesn't mean your research was done incorrectly. You may discover that you need to ask different questions or that the situation was more complicated than you anticipated. When that happens, it's time to continue your research until you've arrived at a solution.

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Understanding market research for your business plan.

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When you’re building a business plan, market research needs to happen pretty early in the process. It’s where you learn about your audience’s wants and needs and the financial trends in your industry, and where you combine the data, and uncover trends that tell you what customers want and how to provide it most effectively.

The results of that research and analysis will shape aspects of the rest of your business plan. Assessments of your market and competition inform critical decisions in areas such as product design or service offerings, price, marketing methods, and business location.

That means accurate and comprehensive market research matters. To be comprehensive, your information and analysis should answer every possible question about the market you plan to enter and the consumers you believe will buy your product or service, including (but not limited to):

• Demand: Do consumers want what you’re offering?

• Economic indicators: Do they have the money to buy your product/service?

• Pricing: How much will they pay for your product/service?

• Location: Where do they live, and where are they likely to make their purchases?

• Saturation: How many other options do they currently have for that product/service?

First Steps: Budget

You can spend a lot answering these questions. Many large businesses hire firms to do the research and analysis, employing large-scale surveys, focus groups and statistical models, among other methods. However, for entrepreneurs just starting out, marketing budgets are typically too slim to cover that kind of research.

So, the work needs to stay in-house and fit a small marketing budget. Affordable, effective market research is possible. It may not be as specific to your market as the big-budget stuff, but it can get you the information you need to work out a solid understanding of your market.

First Steps: Market-Research Objectives

Before you start your research and analysis, determine your objectives. Decide what you want to learn from the process. It will guide the data you search for and how you use it, so be specific. Write down actual goals – what would give you the most accurate, comprehensive and useful picture of your market? This could include areas such as demographics, competitor offerings and customer pain points.

First Steps: Research Terminology

In market research, you’re basically dealing with two types of research and two types of data:

• Primary research: This is research you perform yourself in order to get very specific insights into your very specific business. It includes methods such as surveys, interviews and direct observations (by visiting competitor locations, for instance). It can help you gather qualitative data. This is data that goes beyond statistics and market trends. It can tell you what your consumers want, what they don’t want and how they feel about your offerings.

• Secondary research: This is research other people have performed and analyzed. To conduct secondary research, you can visit government websites such as the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as private data collectors such as Google and market-research companies. It can help you gather quantitative data. This is generally statistical data and can reveal insights on consumer demographics, spending patterns, market trends and earnings projections.

Where To Start Your Market Research

There’s a ton of existing research out there, and a lot of it is totally free. The Small Business Administration website has a list of free government sources for various types of quantitative data, such as industry statistics, consumer demographics, consumer demand and spending, and sales indicators. Much of it comes from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A simple search will turn up enough places to start gathering secondary research to build a picture of your market.

With a good understanding of your market from secondary sources, you’re in a good position to know which types of primary research, if any, would be worth an investment of your time and energy. Maybe a well-designed survey completed by everyone you know could help fill in some holes.

You can also conduct primary research by visiting and speaking with your would-be competition and their customers; through crowdsourcing forums such as Quora, where you can glean raw data from comments and responses and post questions related to your product, service and market; on social-media websites such as Facebook, where you can parse conversations in relevant interest groups; and by reading product and service reviews on sites such as Amazon or Yelp.

Analyzing Your Market Research

Armed with all your data, you’ll draw conclusions that will help guide many of your business decisions.

But first, make sure all of your data will benefit those decisions. Don’t start analyzing until you weed out extraneous information that will waste your time and hinder focused insights. If it doesn’t relate directly to your business and your market, set it aside.

Then organize the relevant data into tables, graphs, lists and pie charts, and see what trends emerge. What do those trends mean for your business? Your product? Your location? Your planned promotions?

Be open to whatever the data tells you. Even if your research findings are unexpected, embrace them, and make any necessary adjustments. Listening to good market research can save you a lot of headaches down the road: The better you know your consumers, the better your chances of successfully selling to them.

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The Vital Role of Market Research in Building a Winning Business Strategy

When it comes to crafting a business strategy that truly works, guesswork isn’t an option. To succeed, you need to know your audience inside out and have a firm grasp of the competitive landscape. This is where market research steps in. Think of it as your strategic compass—guiding your decisions and ensuring they’re grounded in reality.

Let’s break down why market research is indispensable and how you can integrate it into your strategy to drive your business forward.

What is Market Research?

Market research goes far beyond simply gathering data. It’s about transforming raw numbers and opinions into actionable insights. These insights then inform the critical decisions that shape your business’s direction and growth.

By systematically collecting and analyzing information about your target market, competitors, and industry trends, market research empowers you to make decisions that are not just informed—but strategic. Emergen Research comprehensive research approach ensures that you stay ahead in a competitive landscape, equipped with the knowledge to drive sustainable growth.

Why Market Research Matters

Identifying new opportunities.

Market research is your key to unlocking untapped potential. By diving into the needs and desires of your target audience, you can discover gaps in the market. This knowledge allows you to create products or services that meet those needs—giving you a competitive edge.

Mitigating Risks

Venturing into new markets or launching a new product is always a risk, but market research helps you minimize that risk. By understanding the current market trends and customer behaviors, you can avoid costly mistakes and make more confident decisions.

Staying Ahead of the Competition

In the fast-paced world of business, standing still is the same as falling behind. Regularly conducting market research keeps you informed about what your competitors are up to, enabling you to innovate and stay ahead of the curve.

The Two Pillars of Market Research: Quantitative and Qualitative

Market research generally falls into two categories: Quantitative and Qualitative. Each type offers unique insights and, when used together, provides a comprehensive view of your market.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is all about numbers—data you can measure and analyze statistically. It’s ideal for getting a clear picture of market size, customer demographics, and other measurable factors that influence your business.

Key Characteristics:

Employs structured tools like surveys and questionnaires

Produces numerical data that can be statistically analyzed

Useful for identifying trends and patterns

Surveys to gauge customer satisfaction

Polls to assess product popularity

Qualitative Research

If quantitative research is the "what," qualitative research is the "why." It seeks to understand the motivations and emotions behind consumer behavior. Through open-ended questions and discussions, qualitative research provides deeper insights that numbers alone can’t offer.

Utilizes unstructured or semi-structured techniques such as interviews and focus groups

Delivers insights into customer attitudes, beliefs, and motivations

Typically involves smaller, more targeted sample sizes

Focus groups discussing how a brand is perceived

In-depth interviews exploring why customers prefer one product over another

The Role of Market Research in Business Strategy Development

Market research plays a pivotal role in the formulation of business strategies. Here's how it contributes:

Identifying Demand and Market Viability

Before launching a product or service, it's crucial to assess its viability. Market research helps determine whether there is sufficient demand for your offering.

Steps to Determine Viability:

Identify Market Needs: Understand what the market currently lacks.

Assess Competition: Evaluate how your competitors are fulfilling these needs.

Test Market Demand: Conduct surveys to gauge potential customer interest, especially in niche areas like loans online , where understanding market demand is crucial before launching a new product or service.

Example: A startup looking to introduce eco-friendly packaging must first understand if the target market values sustainability enough to pay a premium price for such products.

Reducing Risks and Enhancing Profitability

Knowledge gained from market research can significantly cut down risks by predictive analysis. Understanding past and future trends helps businesses align their strategies to meet market needs.

Key Points:

Risk Mitigation: Evaluate market conditions and customer behavior to avoid potential pitfalls.

Increased Profitability: Focus resources on strategies with the highest potential for return on investment.

Example: A company considering an expansive marketing campaign can first test various advertising channels and messages to see which resonate most with their target audience.

Understanding and Retaining Customers

Customers' needs and preferences change over time. Constantly monitoring these changes through market research ensures that businesses stay relevant and improve customer satisfaction.

Customer Insights: Understand behavior and satisfaction levels.

Retention Strategies: Develop strategies to retain customers by addressing their evolving needs.

Example: An e-commerce platform might use feedback surveys and purchase data analysis to identify pain points in the user experience and improve it accordingly.

How to Plan Effective Market Research

Planning is the backbone of effective market research. Here’s a structured approach to get the best results:

Set Clear Objectives

Understand what you want to achieve with your research. Is it to understand market trends, customer behavior, or competitor analysis?

Components of a Good Plan:

Define Goals: What do you aim to find out?

Select Techniques: Choose between qualitative and quantitative methods based on your goals.

Design Survey: Formulate questions that will provide meaningful data.

Choose the Right Tools

Invest in robust market research tools. These types of platforms offer comprehensive survey creation, distribution, and analysis features that streamline the research process.

Key Tool Features:

Survey Builder: Customize and create surveys easily.

Data Collection: Gather data through various channels like email, web pop-ups, and mobile devices.

Real-time Reporting: Analyze data as it comes in for timely insights.

Integration: Connect with CRM and other marketing tools for comprehensive insights.

Example: When gathering data for a new product launch, use a combination of online surveys and focus groups to get a well-rounded understanding of market demand.

Analyze and Implement Findings

Effective analysis transforms raw data into actionable insights. Use statistical tools and qualitative analysis techniques to understand your data clearly.

Data Analysis: Employ cross-tabulation, descriptive and inferential statistics.

Derive Insights: Identify key trends and patterns.

Action Plan: Develop strategies based on insights.

Example: A retail chain could use sales trend analysis to determine which products to stock more during festive seasons.

In today's fast-paced business environment, market research is not optional; it's essential. It’s the linchpin that ties together market viability, competitive analysis, and customer understanding into a coherent business strategy. By implementing well-planned and executed market research, businesses can set realistic goals, minimize risks, and maximize profitability.

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Research Report

• Chemical and Advance Materials 491
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• Foods & Beverage 91
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New Markets | New Geographies | Competition

The University of Chicago The Law School

Abrams environmental law clinic—significant achievements for 2023-24, protecting our great lakes, rivers, and shorelines.

The Abrams Clinic represents Friends of the Chicago River and the Sierra Club in their efforts to hold Trump Tower in downtown Chicago accountable for withdrawing water illegally from the Chicago River. To cool the building, Trump Tower draws water at high volumes, similar to industrial factories or power plants, but Trump Tower operated for more than a decade without ever conducting the legally required studies to determine the impact of those operations on aquatic life or without installing sufficient equipment to protect aquatic life consistent with federal regulations. After the Clinic sent a notice of intent to sue Trump Tower, the State of Illinois filed its own case in the summer of 2018, and the Clinic moved successfully to intervene in that case. In 2023-24, motions practice and discovery continued. Working with co-counsel at Northwestern University’s Pritzker Law School’s Environmental Advocacy Center, the Clinic moved to amend its complaint to include Trump Tower’s systematic underreporting each month of the volume of water that it intakes from and discharges to the Chicago River. The Clinic and co-counsel addressed Trump Tower’s motion to dismiss some of our clients’ claims, and we filed a motion for summary judgment on our claim that Trump Tower has committed a public nuisance. We also worked closely with our expert, Dr. Peter Henderson, on a supplemental disclosure and on defending an additional deposition of him. In summer 2024, the Clinic is defending its motion for summary judgment and challenging Trump Tower’s own motion for summary judgment. The Clinic is also preparing for trial, which could take place as early as fall 2024.

Since 2016, the Abrams Clinic has worked with the Chicago chapter of the Surfrider Foundation to protect water quality along the Lake Michigan shoreline in northwest Indiana, where its members surf. In April 2017, the U. S. Steel plant in Portage, Indiana, spilled approximately 300 pounds of hexavalent chromium into Lake Michigan. In January 2018, the Abrams Clinic filed a suit on behalf of Surfrider against U. S. Steel, alleging multiple violations of U. S. Steel’s discharge permits; the City of Chicago filed suit shortly after. When the US government and the State of Indiana filed their own, separate case, the Clinic filed extensive comments on the proposed consent decree. In August 2021, the court entered a revised consent decree which included provisions advocated for by Surfrider and the City of Chicago, namely a water sampling project that alerts beachgoers as to Lake Michigan’s water quality conditions, better notifications in case of future spills, and improvements to U. S. Steel’s operations and maintenance plans. In the 2023-24 academic year, the Clinic successfully litigated its claims for attorneys’ fees as a substantially prevailing party. Significantly, the court’s order adopted the “Fitzpatrick matrix,” used by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia to determine appropriate hourly rates for civil litigants, endorsed Chicago legal market rates as the appropriate rates for complex environmental litigation in Northwest Indiana, and allowed for partially reconstructed time records. The Clinic’s work, which has received significant media attention, helped to spawn other litigation to address pollution by other industrial facilities in Northwest Indiana and other enforcement against U. S. Steel by the State of Indiana.

In Winter Quarter 2024, Clinic students worked closely with Dr. John Ikerd, an agricultural economist and emeritus professor at the University of Missouri, to file an amicus brief in Food & Water Watch v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency . In that case pending before the Ninth Circuit, Food & Water Watch argues that US EPA is illegally allowing Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, more commonly known as factory farms, to pollute waterways significantly more than is allowable under the Clean Water Act. In the brief for Dr. Ikerd and co-amici Austin Frerick, Crawford Stewardship Project, Family Farm Defenders, Farm Aid, Missouri Rural Crisis Center, National Family Farm Coalition, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and Western Organization of Resource Councils, we argued that EPA’s refusal to regulate CAFOs effectively is an unwarranted application of “agricultural exceptionalism” to industrial agriculture and that EPA effectively distorts the animal production market by allowing CAFOs to externalize their pollution costs and diminishing the ability of family farms to compete. Attorneys for the litigants will argue the case in September 2024.

Energy and Climate

Energy justice.

The Abrams Clinic supported grassroots organizations advocating for energy justice in low-income communities and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities in Michigan. With the Clinic’s representation, these organizations intervened in cases before the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), which regulates investor-owned utilities. Students conducted discovery, drafted written testimony, cross-examined utility executives, participated in settlement discussions, and filed briefs for these projects. The Clinic’s representation has elevated the concerns of these community organizations and forced both the utilities and regulators to consider issues of equity to an unprecedented degree. This year, on behalf of Soulardarity (Highland Park, MI), We Want Green, Too (Detroit, MI), and Urban Core Collective (Grand Rapids, MI), Clinic students engaged in eight contested cases before the MPSC against DTE Electric, DTE Gas, and Consumers Energy, as well as provided support for our clients’ advocacy in other non-contested MPSC proceedings.

The Clinic started this past fall with wins in three cases. First, the Clinic’s clients settled with DTE Electric in its Integrated Resource Plan case. The settlement included an agreement to close the second dirtiest coal power plant in Michigan three years early, $30 million from DTE’s shareholders to assist low-income customers in paying their bills, and $8 million from DTE’s shareholders toward a community fund that assists low-income customers with installing energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy, and battery technology. Second, in DTE Electric’s 2023 request for a rate hike (a “rate case”), the Commission required DTE Electric to develop a more robust environmental justice analysis and rejected the Company’s second attempt to waive consumer protections through a proposed electric utility prepayment program with a questionable history of success during its pilot run. The final Commission order and the administrative law judge’s proposal for final decision cited the Clinic’s testimony and briefs. Third, in Consumers Electric’s 2023 rate case, the Commission rejected the Company’s request for a higher ratepayer-funded return on its investments and required the Company to create a process that will enable intervenors to obtain accurate GIS data. The Clinic intends to use this data to map the disparate impact of infrastructure investment in low-income and BIPOC communities.

In the winter, the Clinic filed public comments regarding DTE Electric and Consumers Energy’s “distribution grid plans” (DGP) as well as supported interventions in two additional cases: Consumers Energy’s voluntary green pricing (VGP) case and the Clinic’s first case against the gas utility DTE Gas. Beginning with the DGP comments, the Clinic first addressed Consumers’s 2023 Electric Distribution Infrastructure Investment Plan (EDIIP), which detailed current distribution system health and the utility’s approximately $7 billion capital project planning ($2 billion of which went unaccounted for in the EDIIP) over 2023–2028. The Clinic then commented on DTE Electric’s 2023 DGP, which outlined the utility’s opaque project prioritization and planned more than $9 billion in capital investments and associated maintenance over 2024–2028. The comments targeted four areas of deficiencies in both the EDIIP and DGP: (1) inadequate consideration of distributed energy resources (DERs) as providing grid reliability, resiliency, and energy transition benefits; (2) flawed environmental justice analysis, particularly with respect to the collection of performance metrics and the narrow implementation of the Michigan Environmental Justice Screen Tool; (3) inequitable investment patterns across census tracts, with emphasis on DTE Electric’s skewed prioritization for retaining its old circuits rather than upgrading those circuits; and (4) failing to engage with community feedback.

For the VGP case against Consumers, the Clinic supported the filing of both an initial brief and reply brief requesting that the Commission reject the Company’s flawed proposal for a “community solar” program. In a prior case, the Clinic advocated for the development of a community solar program that would provide low-income, BIPOC communities with access to clean energy. As a result of our efforts, the Commission approved a settlement agreement requiring the Company “to evaluate and provide a strawman recommendation on community solar in its Voluntary Green Pricing Program.” However, the Company’s subsequent proposal in its VGP case violated the Commission’s order because it (1) was not consistent with the applicable law, MCL 460.1061; (2) was not a true community solar program; (3) lacked essential details; (4) failed to compensate subscribers sufficiently; (5) included overpriced and inflexible subscriptions; (6) excessively limited capacity; and (7) failed to provide a clear pathway for certain participants to transition into other VGP programs. For these reasons, the Clinic argued that the Commission should reject the Company’s proposal.

In DTE Gas’s current rate case, the Clinic worked with four witnesses to develop testimony that would rebut DTE Gas’s request for a rate hike on its customers. The testimony advocated for a pathway to a just energy transition that avoids dumping the costs of stranded gas assets on the low-income and BIPOC communities that are likely to be the last to electrify. Instead, the testimony proposed that the gas and electric utilities undertake integrated planning that would prioritize electric infrastructure over gas infrastructure investment to ensure that DTE Gas does not over-invest in gas infrastructure that will be rendered obsolete in the coming decades. The Clinic also worked with one expert witness to develop an analysis of DTE Gas’s unaffordable bills and inequitable shutoff, deposit, and collections practices. Lastly, the Clinic offered testimony on behalf of and from community members who would be directly impacted by the Company’s rate hike and lack of affordable and quality service. Clinic students have spent the summer drafting an approximately one-hundred-page brief making these arguments formally. We expect the Commission’s decision this fall.

Finally, both DTE Electric and Consumers Energy have filed additional requests for rate increases after the conclusion of their respective rate cases filed in 2023. On behalf of our Clients, the Clinic has intervened in these cases, and clinic students have already reviewed thousands of pages of documents and started to develop arguments and strategies to protect low-income and BIPOC communities from the utility’s ceaseless efforts to increase the cost of energy.

Corporate Climate Greenwashing

The Abrams Environmental Law Clinic worked with a leading international nonprofit dedicated to using the law to protect the environment to research corporate climate greenwashing, focusing on consumer protection, green financing, and securities liability. Clinic students spent the year examining an innovative state law, drafted a fifty-page guide to the statute and relevant cases, and examined how the law would apply to a variety of potential cases. Students then presented their findings in a case study and oral presentation to members of ClientEarth, including the organization’s North American head and members of its European team. The project helped identify the strengths and weaknesses of potential new strategies for increasing corporate accountability in the fight against climate change.

Land Contamination, Lead, and Hazardous Waste

The Abrams Clinic continues to represent East Chicago, Indiana, residents who live or lived on or adjacent to the USS Lead Superfund site. This year, the Clinic worked closely with the East Chicago/Calumet Coalition Community Advisory Group (CAG) to advance the CAG’s advocacy beyond the Superfund site and the adjacent Dupont RCRA site. Through multiple forms of advocacy, the clinics challenged the poor performance and permit modification and renewal attempts of Tradebe Treatment and Recycling, LLC (Tradebe), a hazardous waste storage and recycling facility in the community. Clinic students sent letters to US EPA and Indiana Department of Environmental Management officials about how IDEM has failed to assess meaningful penalties against Tradebe for repeated violations of the law and how IDEM has allowed Tradebe to continue to threaten public and worker health and safety by not improving its operations. Students also drafted substantial comments for the CAG on the US EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule improvements, the Suppliers’ Park proposed cleanup, and Sims Metal’s proposed air permit revisions. The Clinic has also continued working with the CAG, environmental experts, and regulators since US EPA awarded $200,000 to the CAG for community air monitoring. The Clinic and its clients also joined comments drafted by other environmental organizations about poor operations and loose regulatory oversight of several industrial facilities in the area.

Endangered Species

The Abrams Clinic represented the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Hoosier Environmental Council (HEC) in litigation regarding the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (Service) failure to list the Kirtland’s snake as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The Kirtland’s snake is a small, secretive, non-venomous snake historically located across the Midwest and the Ohio River Valley. Development and climate change have undermined large portions of the snake’s habitat, and populations are declining. Accordingly, the Clinic sued the Service in the US District Court for the District of Columbia last summer over the Service’s denial of CBD’s request to have the Kirtland’s snake protected. This spring, the Clinic was able to reach a settlement with the Service that requires the Service to reconsider its listing decision for the Kirtland’s snake and to pay attorney fees.

The Clinic also represented CBD in preparation for litigation regarding the Service’s failure to list another species as threatened or endangered. Threats from land development and climate change have devastated this species as well, and the species has already been extirpated from two of the sixteen US states in its range. As such, the Clinic worked this winter and spring to prepare a notice of intent (NOI) to sue the Service. The Team poured over hundreds of FOIA documents and dug into the Service’s supporting documentation to create strong arguments against the Service in the imminent litigation. The Clinic will send the NOI and file a complaint in the next few months.

Students and Faculty

Twenty-four law school students from the classes of 2024 and 2025 participated in the Clinic, performing complex legal research, reviewing documents obtained through discovery, drafting legal research memos and briefs, conferring with clients, conducting cross-examination, participating in settlement conferences, and arguing motions. Students secured nine clerkships, five were heading to private practice after graduation, and two are pursuing public interest work. Sam Heppell joined the Clinic from civil rights private practice, bringing the Clinic to its full complement of three attorneys.