Market Research Techniques for Better Decision Making
Market research has changed the destiny of countless businesses. Because of its ability to do this, its market size is turning gigantic. Won’t you believe? Here is the fact. The global market research services market registered growth from $81.13 billion in 2022 to $83.93 billion in 2023 and this happened at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.4%, as per a report.
Why is its market size growing? The reason is obvious. The knowledge about the target marketing proves a critical component when it comes to making a realistically leveraging business strategy. Certainly, informed decisions have an edge over normal decision-making. And that difference maker is data. And, this research is completely based on niche data.
So here, we’re going to discuss various techniques of market research that top companies follow, which can guide a business to achieve success. So, let’s get started.
Techniques or Methods of Market Research
Let’s discover a few techniques of market research that are trending & useful.
Surveys and Questionnaires
The very first technique is a survey, which is incomplete without questionnaires. You need some predefined questions to ask online or email. The respondents answer to them, and you collect that information for further processing and deep analysis to draw demographics, customer intent, purchasing preferences, etc. This primary method of research method comes very much in budget. Additionally, you can reach out to hundreds of respondents through this way.
Interviews
An interview is a kind of conversation between a researcher and customers, industry experts, or stakeholders. This primary research method can help in exploring in-depth insights. And many businesses find it effective to find viable solutions to address specific concerns because it helps in discovering authentic opinions of concerned people.
Focus Groups
These are such groups of expert people who discuss a product or strategy before its implementation or launch. In short, these groups provide their feedback, which is authentic and extremely useful. However, the count of involved people in them is small. But, nothing beats the diversity of participants and their opinions. A moderator guides the entire group to discuss. Simply put, this technique helps in discovering perceptions or what people think about, their senses, intent, behaviour, etc. On that basis, a general perception is derived to take further actions accordingly. This knowledge driving method proves extremely helpful in collecting qualitative data.
Observational Research
This type of research is qualitative in nature, which specifically emphasizes the monitoring of participant’s ongoing intent and behaviour in the most spontaneous situation. The goal of the observation guides to decide various levels of participation. With this technique, watching and recording customer behaviour become easy when they are introduced to a specific product, ads, services, or whatever.
Competitor Study & Analysis
A competitor analysis is based on the study of various competitors’ products, sales, marketing strategies etc. This discovery helps organizations to discover stronger business strategies and hence, inflate their reach. Likewise, this analysis enriches you with a deep understanding of gaps in your own strategies. Ultimately, the researching organization leans towards improvement, and hence, grabbing potential competitive advantages.
Digging Social Media
For discovering what a company’s target and existing audiences think of, social media platforms are mined. People open up about their experiences with its products and services in reviews, mentions, comments, and recommendations. This research helps in exploring sentiments of people who are interested in its offerings. With tools like Facebook Insights for FB and other tools, one can easily listen to the voice of its audience and make decisions accordingly.
Online Analytics
Web analytics or online analytics are similar, which can be easily explored through very impressive tools like Google Analytics. Such tools can reveal the flow of online traffic, such as from where a customer is coming to find what, and he/she reacts on finding the details. In simpler words, this technique can reveal web traffic, its behaviour, conversion rate, and possibility of conversions. This method is particularly effective when you are likely to create effective and viable marketing strategies that bring results.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is an indirect method of collecting data and then, drawing insights for understanding and further, creating strategies. It means that the data are not the firsthand, but second hand records. These records can be reports of any industry, academic studies, research papers, government publications, etc. This method is comparatively inexpensive and save hours & resources also.
Demographic and Psychographic Segmentation
Psychographic segmentation is based on psychological attributes, such as personality and values. On the flip side, demographic segmentation focuses on specific traits (like gender, age, income, etc.) for categorizing potential customers.
These categorizations are really helpful in catering specific recommendations and marketing campaigns in accordance with their intent.
A/B Testing
This is a testing method to observe the reaction of the respondents toward an online campaign. Typically, it requires two different versions of a landing page, which targets a specific product or service. Once the campaign is aired, the first few hours easily inform you about which one is going to perform better.
The deep analysis of their performance reveal some key points to optimize their marketing efforts. This is how you can discover the success mantra for any online campaign.
Data Mining
Data mining is itself a complete process of drawing intelligence out of insights. It ensures an easy interaction with useful patterns, trends, and correlations between data and data subjects. An entrepreneur can understand it via data mining and identify leads, customer preferences, their habits, and various opportunities to upsell and cross-sell anything.
Ethnographic Research
This is a qualitative method of digging out data from social behavioural science. The sources can be observations and interviews that help in understanding the attributes & pain points of societies and individuals. You can easily peep into the cultural insights of any society with it and introduce that learning in your discoveries.
Conclusion
The aforementioned techniques of market research are evolving and getting finer. Basically, there are two researches- primary and secondary, which are further split into subsets. A researcher can discover these methods and improve its strategies to identify scope or opportunities, challenges, and prospects.
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