Do you want to launch a new business but need to see if the idea is viable? Or perhaps you want to find out why some of your products sell better than others? Maybe you want to launch a marketing campaign, but you’re unsure what your clients want to see. In most of these cases and many others, market research is the best way to gather the information you need to make the best decision for your business. But where do you start?
We’ll be covering what marketing research is as well as the different types of information you can collect. We’ll also look at how you can collect information, such as posting surveys, web scraping and more. If you want to find out what scraping the web is and what you can do with the data, take a look at this blog.
The topics we’ll cover regarding market research include:
- What is market research?
- What are the different types of market research information?
- How to conduct market research?
What Is Market Research?
Market research is a systemic process of collecting different kinds of data related to your market, consumers, competitors and industry as a whole. This is an essential process for businesses, providing them with crucial information when making business decisions like launching a new marketing campaign or product.
During this process, relevant information needs to be collected, analyzed and interpreted for businesses to reap the rewards. It can be difficult for some businesses to understand how to collect information, what is relevant and how to draw conclusions from the information. However, it doesn’t have to be such a challenging process. If you take it step-by-step and keep your ideal customer or target audience in mind, you’ll soon find it much easier to conduct effective marketing research.
What Are The Different Types Of Market Research Information?
When it comes to marketing research, there are two main types of information known as primary and secondary information. There are different ways to collect each of these types of information, and they play different roles in your research efforts.
Primary Information
Primary information is any type of data that is collected directly from the source. So, suppose you’re thinking of launching a new product and hosting a focus group to evaluate the idea’s viability. In that case, this is a type of primary information as you’re getting the information directly from potential consumers.
Primary information gathering techniques include:
- Customer surveys
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Observations
Secondary Information
Secondary information comes from other sources and is often referred to as desk research. This includes any information that you collect through journals, business articles, newspapers and similar sources. In these cases, you rely on secondary sources.
Secondary information gathering techniques include:
- Government reports and studies
- Journals, magazines and newspapers
- Television, radio and other media
- Academic papers and educational resources
- Online articles and case studies
How To Do Market Research?
When you start to do market research, you’ll need to have a clearly defined goal when starting your marketing research. Aim to address one question or problem. For example, do you want to find out more about your consumer preferences? Or do you want to see what products your competitors are selling the most?
Once you have a clear goal in mind, you must establish what research types are needed. Will surveys provide the information to address your questions? Or do you need to host a focus group? Budget considerations should also be considered as some types of collection methods, like focus groups, can be more expensive as you need to compensate participants.
The next step is to start collecting data. When it comes to secondary information, this is one area where web scraping comes into its own. Web scraping or harvesting is the automated process of collecting data across multiple websites. This tool is extremely powerful in helping to collect secondary information for marketing research as you can set it to collect the information you need, such as competitors’ prices, market trends and more, and the tool compiles it all into a single format that you can analyze and interpret.
The final step is analyzing the data to make business decisions. Here, marketing managers, executives and other senior analysts will look at the results from all the different types of information to make the best decision to solve the problem identified in the first step of your market research. Some of these insights may yield new goals or problems to research, and the process will start all over again.
Final Thoughts
Market research is an essential process for any business, big or small. All the decisions made within a business are based on some type of information, and by conducting effective market research, you can ensure you make the best possible decisions for your unique situation.
