What is Market Research?
A blog on what market research is and why it is important to companies, entrepreneurs and startups.
Market research is one of the basic tasks that any firm has to undertake and it is an activity that can not be avoided at any stage in its lifecycle. Research is also crucial when you are developing your product or service, in this digitalized world, your customers have access to a pool of data and tools. There is a need to be updated according to the fast-paced and ever-changing market and the market survey helps the company to navigate it.
What is Market Research?
Market Research is the process of understanding your customers’ wants, interests, and requirements. Introducing a product or a service without thorough research will be difficult for businesses without considering market sentiments.
A market is an environment in which a firm operates and influences the decisions taken by the firm.
Imagine you have an idea or a vision for your product, will you launch it without understanding who the target customer is and demography? or whether the market in which you are planning to launch it, will accept it or not?
The definite answer is NO, right!
To be honest launching a product without a market study is like playing glass stepping from Squid Games, Blindfolded (if you haven’t watched, you’re missing out on great series). Now, the same question, Does your business want to take that risk?
Definition:
HubSpot.com defines it as, “The process of gathering information about your business’s buyer personas, target audience, and customers to determine how viable and successful your product or service would be, and/or is, among these people.”
Before continuing, here’s an exercise for you:
Write a short synopsis about how your business will launch a product.
You can share your ideas with us and your queries regarding the research will be resolved with our case studies, so continue reading.
Now let’s continue to the next section.
Purpose of Market Research
With the above exercise, you might have received a small glimpse of significant analyses of the market to the business, customers, operations, and all parties involved in the business. The purpose is to understand market segmentation and product differentiation.
Market research is important as:
- Macro view: We get a macro view of the market environment, includes market trends, players involved, and dynamics between them.
- Know your customer: Macro view also involves the parties participating in the market. Being in the digital age has led to globalization. A firm from India can do business with a firm from any country around the world. The market survey analyses the data and presents the information in the form of charts and creates a market and consumer persona.
- Defining the problem: determines the problem faced by the client and discovering the best possible solution to resolve it.
- Strategies: Builds strategies with a problem-solving approach. S.W.O.T analysis works on determining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the company and the products that the company has or is willing to launch. Companies can also formulate strategies around creating awareness about the product and company in the minds of customers.
We have a dedicated team of researchers, IT professionals, and Digital Marketing who will address all enquiries of your business.
Benefits of Market Research
- Helps to understand the strengths and weaknesses of S.W.O.T. analysis.
- Helps in determining buyers persona
- Moderates the risks
- Factual
- Aids in designing a brand image
- Strategize target audience
- Determines consumer requirements in changing markets.
- Helps in strategizing promotional activity for the product and business.
Types of Market research
- Primary market research
Primary research concentrates on obtaining data from sources and includes data collected from surveys, questionnaires, group discussions. A primary research company or market researcher compiles the data collected at the source.
- Quantitative market research
Quantitative research is a research strategy used to address the question to the target audience to gain insights. It involves surveys, questionnaires, mystery shopping, face-to-face data collection, FCATI Data collection.
- Qualitative market research
Qualitative research strategy uses a vernacular approach which includes focus groups, telephonic in-depth interviews. Here the sample size is small.
- Secondary Market Research
The secondary market revolves around the data collected from secondary sources. Here the data is compiled from sources such as online websites, newspapers, magazines.
Conclusion
Market Research is the essential step for any business and its products, makes it simple to understand clients’ requirements, needs and wants, and competitors’ activities.
