How to Conduct a Market Research for Your Agro-Veterinary Startup? : Modus Operandi of Market Analysis for Your Business to be Started

How to Conduct a Market Research for Your Agro-Veterinary Startup? : Modus Operandi of Market Analysis for Your Business to be Started

Before starting off any project, business, or a study, one of the most important things to do is research. Every business has its own set of target users. It’s impossible to understand your users, their habits, expectations and behaviours without detailed market research. This article will help you understand everything about efficient market research.

What is market research?

Market research is a process that consists of gathering data and information pertaining to your target audience in a systematic way. It helps in understanding how viable your product or service would be, before even entering the market. It also gives you an overview of what is trending in the industry and what motivates the users to make a decision to convert and buy. Accordingly, you can plan the roadmap for your product or service. Listed below are some of the key benefits of market research:

• Increases efficiency:Quality research helps you understand your customer’s behaviour and habits and tells you the potential focus areas well in advance
• Competitor overview: Market research is the best way to study the market or industry you are targeting. By doing this you can make sure to stay ahead of your competitors by offering varied experience and services
• Cost-efficient:This process does not cost you dollars. You can simply choose to use a survey tool or one-on-one meetings within your reach to start with. Shortly put, this is a low investment, high returns process!
• Productive business investment:Market research is a great investment for any business. It helps the decision-makers to take the right path and achieve the targets that are required

Market research is a technique that is used to collect data on any aspect that you want to know to be later able to interpret it and, in the end, make use of it for correct decision-making.

Another more specific definition could be the following:

Market research is the process by which companies seek to collect data systematically to make better decisions. Still, its true value lies in the way in which all the data obtained is used to achieve a better knowledge of the market consumer.

The process of market research can be done through deploying surveys, interacting with a group of people, also known as a sample, conducting interviews, and other similar processes.

The primary purpose of conducting market research is to understand or examine the market associated with a particular product or service to decide how the audience will react to a product or service. The information obtained from conducting market research can be used to tailor marketing/ advertising activities or determine consumers’ feature priorities/service requirement (if any).

Why is market research important?

Conducting research is one of the best ways of achieving customer satisfaction, reducing customer churn and elevating business. Here are the reasons why market research is important and should be considered in any business:

• Valuable information: It provides information and opportunities about the value of existing and new products, thus, helping businesses plan and strategize accordingly.
• Customer-centric: It helps to determine what the customers need and want. Marketing is customer-centric and understanding the customers and their needs will help businesses design products or services that best suit them. Remember that tracing your customer journey is a great way to gain valuable insights into your customers’ sentiments toward your brand.
• Forecasts: By understanding the needs of customers, businesses can also forecast their production and sales. Market research also helps in determining optimum inventory stock.
• Competitive advantage: To stay ahead of competitors market research is a vital tool to carry out comparative studies. Businesses can devise business strategies that can help them stay ahead of their competitors.

Types of Market Research: Market Research Methods and Examples

Whether an organization or business wishes to know the purchase behavior of consumers or the likelihood of consumers paying a certain cost for a product, market research helps in drawing meaningful conclusions.

Depending on the methods and tools required, the following are the types:

1. Primary Market Research (A combination of both Qualitative and Quantitative Research):

Primary market research is a process where organizations or businesses get in touch with the end consumers or employ a third party to carry out relevant studies to collect data. The data collected can be qualitative data (non-numerical data) or quantitative data (numerical or statistical data).

While conducting primary market research, one can gather two types of information: Exploratory and Specific. Exploratory research is open-ended, where a problem is explored by asking open ended questions in a detailed interview format usually with a small group of people, also known as a sample. Here the sample size is restricted to 6-10 members. Specific research, on the other hand, is more pinpointed and is used to solve the problems that are identified by exploratory research.

As mentioned earlier, primary market research is a combination of qualitative market research and quantitative market research. Qualitative market research study involves semi-structured or unstructured data collected through some of the commonly used qualitative research methods like:

Market Research Methods

In Primary research, we gather information directly from the source i.e. the potential customers. Secondary research is the gathering of statistics regarding things related to the business or reports, studies and other data from organizations such as government agencies, trade associations and the local chamber of commerce.

Secondary Research

The vast majority of research that is conducted is secondary research and the best way to look for that would be the following.

• A local library or the Internet
• Reference libraries at public disposal or university libraries
• Industry trade Associations
• New magazines and newsletters
• Government Guidance
• Maps
• Community Organizations

Apart from this, an in-depth understanding is required of what’s essential to any business plan along with appropriate points for the venture to ensure the success of the startup.

Market research aims to understand the reasons how and why consumers will buy a given product. It studies such things as consumer behaviour and consumer’s decision-making process, including how cultural, societal and personal factors influence that behaviour while buying a product.

 

• Focus groups:

Focus group is one of the commonly used qualitative research methods. Focus group is a small group of people (6-10) who typically respond to online surveys sent to them. The best part about a focus group is the information can be collected remotely, can be done without personally interacting with the group members. However, this is a more expensive method as it is used to collect complex information.

• One-to-one interview:

As the name suggests, this method involves personal interaction in the form of an interview, where the researcher asks a series of questions to collect information or data from the respondents. The questions are mostly open-ended questions and are asked to facilitate responses. This method heavily depends on the interviewer’s ability and experience to ask questions that evoke responses.

• Ethnographic research:

This type of in-depth research is conducted in the natural settings of the respondents. This method requires the interviewer to adapt himself/herself to the natural environment of the respondents which could be a city or a remote village. Geographical constraints can be a hindering factor in conducting this kind of research. Ethnographic research can last from a few days to a few years.

Organizations use qualitative research methods to conduct structured market research by using online surveys, questionnaires, and polls to gain statistical insights to make informed decisions.

This method was once conducted using pen and paper. This has now evolved to sending structured online surveys to the respondents to gain actionable insights. Researchers use modern and technology-oriented survey platforms to structure and design their survey to evoke maximum responses from respondents.

Through a well-structured mechanism, data is easily collected and reported, and necessary action can be taken with all the information made available firsthand.

Secondary research uses information that is organized by outside sources like government agencies, media, chambers of commerce etc. This information is published in newspapers, magazines, books, company websites, free government and nongovernment agencies and so on. The secondary source makes use of the following:

• Public sources: Public sources like library are an awesome way of gathering free information. Government libraries usually offer services free of cost and a researcher can document available information.
• Commercial sources: Commercial source although reliable are expensive. Local newspapers, magazines, journal, television media are great commercial sources to collect information.
• Educational Institutions: Although not a very popular source of collecting information, most universities and educational institutions are a rich source of information as many research projects are carried out there than any business sector.

Three key objectives of market research

A market research project may usually have 3 different types of objectives.

1. Administrative: Help a company or business development, through proper planning, organization, and both human and material resources control, and thus satisfy all specific needs within the market, at the right time.
2. Social: Satisfy customers’ specific needs through a required product or service. The product or service should comply with a customer’s requirements and preferences when consumed.
3. Economical: Determine the economical degree of success or failure a company can have while being new to the market, or otherwise introducing new products or services, thus providing certainty to all actions to be implemented.

Steps for conducting Market Research

Knowing what to do in various situations that arise during the investigation will save the researcher time and reduce research problems. Today’s successful enterprises use powerful market research survey software that helps them conduct comprehensive research under a unified platform, providing actionable insights much faster with fewer problems.

Following are the steps to conduct effective market research.

Step #1: Define the Problem

Having a well-defined subject of research will help researchers when they ask questions. These questions should be directed to solve problems and must be adapted to the project. Make sure the questions are written clearly and that the respondents understand them. Researchers can conduct a test with a small group to know if the questions are going to know whether the asked questions are understandable and if they will be enough to gain insightful results.

Research objectives should be written in a precise way and should include a brief description of the information that is needed and the way in which it will obtain it. They should have an answer to this question “why are we doing the research?”

Step #2: Define the Sample

To carry out market research, researchers need a representative sample that can be collected using one of the many sampling techniques. A representative sample is a small number of people that reflect, as accurately as possible, a larger group.

• An organization cannot waste their resources in collecting information from the wrong population. It is important that the population represents characteristics that matter to the researchers and that they need to investigate, are in the chosen sample.
• Take into account that marketers will always be prone to fall into a bias in the sample because there will always be people who do not answer the survey because they are busy, or answer it incompletely, so researchers may not obtain the required data.
• Regarding the size of the sample, the larger it is, the more likely it is to be representative of the population. A larger representative sample gives the researcher greater certainty that the people included are the ones they need, and they can possibly reduce bias. Therefore, if they want to avoid inaccuracy in our surveys, they should have representative and balanced samples.
• Practically all the surveys that are considered in a serious way, are based on a scientific sampling, based on statistical and probability theories.

There are two ways to obtain a representative sample:

• Probability sampling: In probability sampling, the choice of the sample will be made at random, which guarantees that each member of the population will have the same probability of selection and inclusion in the sample group. Researchers should ensure that they have updated information on the population from which they will draw the sample and survey the majority to establish representativeness.
• Non-probability sampling: In a non-probability sampling, different types of people are seeking to obtain a more balanced representative sample. Knowing the demographic characteristics of our group will undoubtedly help to limit the profile of the desired sample and define the variables that interest the researchers, such as gender, age, place of residence, etc. By knowing these criteria, before obtaining the information, researchers can have the control to create a representative sample that is efficient for us.

When a sample is not representative, there can be a margin of error. If researchers want to have a representative sample of 100 employees, they should choose a similar number of men and women.

The sample size is very important, but it does not guarantee accuracy. More than size, representativeness is related to the sampling frame, that is, to the list from which people are selected, for example, part of a survey.

If researchers want to continue expanding their knowledge on how to determine the size of the sample consult our guide on sampling here.

Step #3: Carry out data collection

First, a data collection instrument should be developed. The fact that they do not answer a survey, or answer it incompletely will cause errors in research. The correct collection of data will prevent this.

Step #4: Analyze the results

Each of the points of the market research process is linked to one another. If all the above is executed well, but there is no accurate analysis of the results, then the decisions made consequently will not be appropriate. In-depth analysis conducted without leaving loose ends will be effective in gaining solutions. Data analysis will be captured in a report, which should also be written clearly so that effective decisions can be made on that basis.

Analyzing and interpreting the results is to look for a wider meaning to the obtained data. All the previous phases have been developed to arrive at this moment.

How can researchers measure the obtained results? The only quantitative data that will be obtained is age, sex, profession, and number of interviewees because the rest are emotions and experiences that have been transmitted to us by the interlocutors. For this, there is a tool called empathy map that forces us to put ourselves in the place of our clientele with the aim of being able to identify, really, the characteristics that will allow us to make a better adjustment between our products or services and their needs or interests.

When the research has been carefully planned, the hypotheses have been adequately defined and the indicated collection method has been used, the interpretation is usually carried out easily and successfully. What follows after conducting market research?

Step #5: Make the Research Report

When presenting the results, researchers should focus on: what do they want to achieve using this research report and while answering this question they should not assume that the structure of the survey is the best way to do the analysis. One of the big mistakes that many researchers make is that they present the reports in the same order of their questions and do not see the potential of storytelling.

To make good reports, the best analysts give the following advice: follow the inverted pyramid style to present the results, answering at the beginning the essential questions of the business that caused the investigation. Start with the conclusions and give them fundamentals, instead of accumulating evidence. After this researchers can provide details to the readers who have the time and interest.

Step #6: Make Decisions

An organization or a researcher should never ask “why do market research”, they should just do it!

Market research helps researchers to know a wide range of information, for example,  consumer purchase intentions, or gives feedback about the growth of the target market. They can also discover valuable information that will help in estimating the prices of their product or service and find a point of balance that will benefit them and the consumers.

Take decisions! Act and implement.

Benefits of an Efficient Market Research

• Make well-informed decisions: The growth of an organization is dependent on the way decisions are made by the management. Using market research techniques, the management can make business decisions based on obtained results that back their knowledge and experience. Market research helps to know market trends, hence to carry it out frequently to get to know the customers thoroughly.
• Gain accurate information: Market research provides real and accurate information that will prepare the organization for any mishaps that may happen in the future. By properly investigating the market, a business will undoubtedly be taking a step forward, and therefore it will be taking advantage of its existing competitors.
• Determine the market size: A researcher can evaluate the size of the market that must be covered in case of selling a product or service in order to make profits.
• Choose an appropriate sales system: Select a precise sales system according to what the market is asking for, and according to this, the product/service can be positioned in the market.
• Learn about customer preferences: It helps to know how the preferences (and tastes) of the clients change so that the company can satisfy preferences, purchasing habits, and income levels. Researchers can determine the type of product that must be manufactured or sold based on the specific needs of consumers.
• Gather details about customer perception of the brand: In addition to generating information, market research helps a researcher in understanding how the customers perceive the organization or brand.
• Analyze customer communication methods: Market research serves as a guide for communication with current and potential clients.
• Productive business investment: It is a great investment for any business because thanks to it they get invaluable information, it shows researchers the way to follow to take the right path and achieve the sales that are required.

5 Market Research Tips for Businesses

The following tips will help businesses with creating a better market research strategy.

Tip #1: Define the objective of your research.

Before starting your research quest, think about what you’re trying to achieve next with your business. Are you looking to increase traffic to your location? Or increase sales? Or convert customers from one-time purchasers to regulars? Figuring out your objective will help you tailor the rest of your research and your future marketing materials. Having an objective for your research will flesh out what kind of data you need to collect.

Tip #2: Learn About Your Target Customers.

The most important thing to remember is that your business serves a specific kind of customer. Defining your specific customer has many advantages like allowing you to understand what kind of language to use when crafting your marketing materials, and how to approach building relationships with your customer. When you take time to define your target customer you can also find the best products and services to sell to them.

You want to know as much as you can about your target customer. You can gather this information through observation and by researching the kind of customers who frequent your type of business. For starters, helpful things to know are their age and income. What do they do for a living? What’s their marital status and education level?

Tip #3: Recognize that knowing who you serve helps you define who you do not.

Let’s take a classic example from copywriting genius Dan Kennedy. He says that if you’re opening up a fine dining steakhouse focused on decadent food, you know right off the bat that you’re not looking to attract vegetarians or dieters. Armed with this information, you can create better marketing messages that speak to your target customers.

It’s okay to decide who is not a part of your target customer base. In fact, for small businesses knowing who you don’t cater to can be essential in helping you grow. Why? Simple, if you’re small your advantage is that you can connect deeply with a specific segment of the market. You want to focus your efforts on the right customer who already is compelled to spend money on your offer.

If you’re spreading yourself thin by trying to be all things to everyone, you will only dilute your core message. Instead, keep your focus on your target customer. Define them, go deep, and you’ll be able to figure out how you can best serve them with your products and services.

Tip #4: Learn from your competition.

This works for brick-and-mortar businesses as well as internet businesses because it allows you to step into the shoes of your customer and open up to a new perspective of your business. Take a look around the internet and around your town. If you can, visit your competitor’s shops. For example, if you own a restaurant specializing in Italian cuisine, dine at the other Italian place in your neighborhood or in the next township.

As you experience the business from the customer’s perspective, look for what’s being done right and wrong.

Can you see areas that need attention or improvement? How are you running things in comparison? What’s the quality of their product and customer service? Are the customers here pleased? Also, take a close look at their market segment. Who else is patronizing their business? Are they the same kinds of people who spend money with you? By asking these questions and doing in-person research, you can dig up a lot of information to help you define your unique selling position and create even better offers for your customers.

Tip #5: Get your target customers to open up and tell you everything.

A good customer survey is one of the most valuable market research tools because it gives you the opportunity to get inside your customer’s head. However, remember that some feedback may be harsh, so take criticism as a learning tool to point you in the right direction.

Creating a survey is simple. Ask questions about what your customer thinks you’re doing right and what can be improved. You can also prompt them to tell you what kinds of products and services they’d like to see you add, giving you fantastic insight into how to monetize your business more. Many customers will be delighted to offer feedback. You can even give customers who fill out surveys a gift like a special coupon for their next purchase.

Bonus Tip: Use an insight & research repository

An insight & research repository is a consolidated research management platform to derive insights about past and ongoing market research. With the use of such a tool, you can leverage past research to get to insights faster, build on previously done market research and draw trendlines, utilize research techniques that have worked in the past, and more.

Why Does Every Business Need Market Research?

Market research is one of the most effective ways to gain insight into your customer base, competitors, and the overall market. The goal of conducting market research is to equip your company with the information you need to make informed decisions.

It is especially important when small businesses are trying to determine whether a new business idea is viable, looking to move into a new market, or are launching a new product or service.  Read below for a more in-depth look at how market research can help small businesses.

• COMPETITION According to a study conducted by Business Insider, 72% of small businesses focus on increasing revenue. Conducting research helps businesses gain insight into competitor behavior. By learning about your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, you can learn how to position your product or offering. In order to be successful, small businesses need to have an understanding of what products and services competitors are offering, and their price point.
• CUSTOMERS Many small businesses feel they need to understand their customers, only to conduct market research and learn they had the wrong assumptions. By researching, you can create a profile of your average customer and gain insight into their buying habits, how much they’re willing to spend, and which features resonate with them. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, you can learn what will make someone use your product or service over a competitor.
• OPPORTUNITIES Potential opportunities, whether they are products or services, can be identified by conducting market research. By learning more about your customers, you can gather insights into complementary products and services. Consumer needs change over time, influenced by new technology and different conditions, and you may find new needs that are not being met, which can create new opportunities for your business.
• FORECAST A small business is affected by the performance of the local and national economy, as are its’ customers. If consumers are worried, then they will be more restrained when spending money, which affects the business. By conducting research with consumers, businesses can get an idea of whether they are optimistic or apprehensive about the direction of the economy, and make adjustments as necessary. For example, a small business owner may decide to postpone a new product launch if it appears the economic environment is turning negative.

 A market analysis can help you identify how to better position your business to be competitive and serve your customers.

• A market analysis is a thorough assessment of a market within a specific industry.
• A market analysis has many benefits, such as reducing risk for your business and better informing your business decisions.
• There are seven steps in conducting a market analysis.

• This article is for business owners who want to know why they should conduct a market analysis and how to do it.

Understanding your customer base is one of the first key steps to success in business. Without knowing who your customers are, what they want, and how they want to get it from you, your business could struggle to come up with an effective marketing strategy. This is where a market analysis comes in. A market analysis can be a time-intensive process, but it is straightforward and easy to do on your own in seven steps.

What is a market analysis?

A market analysis is a thorough assessment of a market within a specific industry. You will study the dynamics of your market, such as volume and value, potential customer segments, buying patterns, competition, and other important factors. A thorough marketing analysis should answer the following questions:

• Who are my potential customers?
• What are my customers’ buying habits?
• How large is my target market?
• How much are customers willing to pay for my product?
• Who are my main competitors?
• What are my competitors’ strengths and weaknesses?

What are the benefits of running a marketing analysis?

A marketing analysis can reduce risk, identify emerging trends, and help project revenue. You can use a marketing analysis at several stages of your business, and it can even be beneficial to conduct one every year to keep up to date with any major changes in the market.

A detailed market analysis will usually be part of your business plan, since it gives you a greater understanding of your audience and competition. This will help you build a more targeted marketing strategy.

These are some other major benefits of conducting a market analysis:

• Risk reduction: Knowing your market can reduce risks in your business, since you’ll have an understanding of major market trends, the main players in your industry, and what it takes to be successful, all of which will inform your business decisions. To help you further protect your business, you can also conduct a SWOT analysis, which identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your business.
• Targeted products or services: You are in a much better position to serve your customers when you have a firm grasp on what they are looking for from you. When you know who your customers are, you can use that information to tailor your business’s offerings to your customers’ needs.
• Emerging trends: Staying ahead in business is often about being the first to spot a new opportunity or trend, and using a marketing analysis to stay on top of industry trends is a great way to position yourself to take advantage of this information.
• Revenue projections: A market forecast is a key component of most marketing analyses, as it projects the future numbers, characteristics and trends in your target market. This gives you an idea of the profits you can expect, allowing you to adjust your business plan and budget accordingly.
• Evaluation benchmarks: It can be difficult to gauge your business’s success outside of pure numbers. A market analysis provides benchmarks or key performance indicators (KPIs) against which you can judge your company and how well you are doing compared to others in your industry.
• Context for past mistakes: Marketing analytics can explain your business’s past mistakes or industry anomalies. For example, in-depth analytics can explain what impacted the sale of a specific product, or why a certain metric performed the way it did. This can help you avoid making those mistakes again or experiencing similar anomalies, because you’ll be able to analyze and describe what went wrong and why.
• Marketing optimization: This is where an annual marketing analysis comes in handy – regular analysis can inform your ongoing marketing efforts and show you which aspects of your marketing need work, and which are performing well in comparison to the other companies in your industry.

 What are the drawbacks of running a marketing analysis?

The below drawbacks of running a market analysis pertain less to the method itself than the resources it requires.

• Market analysis can be expensive. If you’re not as familiar with marketing concepts such as market volume and customer segmentation, you might want to outsource your market analysis. Doing so can be great for your analysis’s quality, but it can also leave a big dent in your budget. Narrow your market analysis to a certain group – perhaps current customers – to lower your costs.
• Market analysis can be time-consuming. Market analysis can take precious time away from more directly business-related tasks. You can analyze one area at a time – say, buying patterns or competition – to free up your day-to-day schedule.
• Market analysis can require extra staff. Some larger companies retain in-house market analysis staff, and you can follow their lead. Doing so, though, comes with all the usual costs of hiring a new employee. The question then becomes: Do you conduct your market analysis yourself, outsource it, or hire in-house? The more expensive options can often yield more meaningful insights.
• Market analysis can be narrow. The most successful market analyses use actual customer feedback, which analysts often get through customer surveys. These surveys may reach only a portion of your entire customer base, leading to an inaccurate sample size. The result is that market analysis may not fully detail your customers and what you should know about them.

Market analysis vs. conjoint analysis vs. sentiment analysis

Where market analysis is broad and comprehensive, conjoint analysis focuses on how customers value what you offer. Surveys are often the backbone of conjoint analysis – they’re a great way for customers to share what drives their purchases. Product testing is an especially common application of conjoint analysis. This method can yield insights into pricing and product features and configurations.

Sentiment analysis goes beyond number-driven market and conjoint analysis to identify how customers qualitatively feel about your offerings. It can show you what customers are happy and unhappy about with your offerings or buying process. You can also wade into deeper emotional territory such as anger, urgency and intention, or you can dig up descriptive feedback. It’s a great tool to use alongside market analysis, whereas conjoint analysis is all but included in market analysis.

How to conduct a market analysis

While conducting a marketing analysis is not a complicated process, it does take a lot of dedicated research, so be prepared to devote significant time to the process.

These are the seven steps of conducting a market analysis:

1. Determine your purpose.

There are many reasons you may be conducting a market analysis, such as to gauge your competition or to understand a new market. Whatever your reason, it’s important to define it right away to keep you on track throughout the process. Start by deciding whether your purpose is internal – like improving your cash flow or business operations – or external, like seeking a business loan. Your purpose will dictate the type and amount of research you will do.

2. Research the state of the industry.

Map a detailed outline of the current state of your industry. Include where the industry seems to be heading, using metrics such as size, trends and projected growth, with plenty of data to support your findings. You can also conduct a comparative market analysis to help you find your competitive advantage within your specific market.

3. Identify your target customer.

Not everyone in the world will be your customer, and it would be a waste of your time to try to get everyone interested in your product. Instead, use a target market analysis to decide who is most likely to want your product and focus your efforts there. You want to understand your market size, who your customers are, where they come from, and what might influence their buying decisions. To do so, look at demographic factors like these:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Occupation
• Education
• Needs
• Interests

During your research, you might consider creating a customer profile or persona that reflects your ideal customer to serve as a model for your marketing efforts.

4. Understand your competition.

To be successful, you need a good understanding of your competitors, including their market saturation, what they do differently than you, and their strengths, weaknesses and advantages in the market. Start by listing all your main competitors, then go through that list and conduct a SWOT analysis of each competitor. What does that business have that you don’t? What would lead a customer to choose that business over yours? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

Then, rank your list of competitors from most to least threatening, and decide on a timeline to conduct regular SWOT analyses on your most threatening competitors.

5. Gather additional data.

When conducting marketing analyses, information is your friend – you can never have too much data. It is important that the data you use is credible and factual, so be cautious of where you get your numbers. These are some reputable business data resources:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• U.S. Census Bureau
• State and local commerce sites
• Trade journals
• Your own SWOT analyses
• Market surveys or questionnaires

6. Analyze your data.

After you collect all the information you can and verify that it is accurate, you need to analyze the data to make it useful to you. Organize your research into sections that make sense to you, but try to include ones for your purpose, target market and competition.

These are the main elements your research should include:

• An overview of your industry’s size and growth rate
• Your business’s projected market share percentage
• An industry outlook
• Customer buying trends
• Your forecasted growth
• How much customers are willing to pay for your product or service

7. Put your analysis to work.

Once you’ve created a market analysis, it’s time to actually make it work for you. Internally, look for where you can use your research and findings to improve your business. Have you seen other businesses doing things that you’d like to implement in your own organization? Are there ways to make your marketing strategies more effective?

If you conducted your analysis for external purposes, organize your research and data into an easily readable and digestible document to make it easier to share with lenders.

Retain all of your information and research for your next analysis, and consider making a calendar reminder each year so that you stay on top of your market.

Making market analysis easy

If you have the time to conduct a market analysis yourself, go for it – this guide will help. If you don’t have the time, hiring an in-house expert or outsourcing your analysis is often worth the cost. Your analysis will help you figure out who to target and how – and that’s a huge part of business success.

 Market Research or survey  Process: 6 Steps to Project Success

Did you know there are 6 steps in the market research process?  While this process speaks directly to marketing research professionals, the process applies to HR, customer or education surveys as well:

1. Identify and define the problem. Before you start any web survey project, you should identify the key issues you hope to be able to solve.  This step should also include clearly defined objectives.
2. Develop the approach.  In this step, you need to establish a budget, understand influencing factors such as the environment or economy, decide on sampling and survey methods, and formulating hypotheses.
3. Research design. Designing a survey or questionnaire is considered the most important step in any survey process.  Question design takes a lot of thought and time.  We like to say, “If you put garbage in, you’ll get garbage out.”  This means that if the questions are bad, the data will be bad as well.  During the survey research design, keep in mind sampling methods and data analysis factors you intend to use.
4. Collect the data. Don’t forget to test your survey before to ensure you’re fielding the correct data.  Thankfully, with the help of an online survey tool, this step is relatively painless.
5. Analyze the Data. The types of analysis you planned to perform on the collected survey data should have been decided in earlier steps, but after collecting the data you have to actually perform the survey analysis.  Analysis can be performed using survey analysis tools like office programs, such as Excel, or more advanced programs such as SPSS – the complexity of the questions will determine this.
6. Report, Present, Take Action. The final step in the market research process is to present your survey research findings and draw conclusions.  While Step 3 is the most important because it defines the outcome of your survey, if you fail to complete this last step and act on the findings in some way, the previous steps don’t matter.

 Benefits of Marketing Research

Marketing research has the following benefits for any business:

• Understanding the market:One of the biggest benefits of marketing research is the company can better understand the market in which they are competing. This helps the company in coming up with services and products that are more relevant to customers in that market.
• Higher returns on investments:With the knowledge of what works among target customers, companies can invest in relevant business processes. This will ensure that companies are getting back higher returns on investments. Overall, this helps companies in making more profits than expected.
• Stay ahead of the competition:This gives the company an upper hand over its competitors since it has knowledge of what works in that market. It can also stay ahead of its competitors by leveraging the current trends in the market. Thus, the company gains popularity and establishes a unique position in the market space.

Processes of Marketing Research

Marketing research is conducted in the following six-step process:

1. Identifying and Defining the Problem

This is the first step in the marketing research process, where problems are clearly defined and identified. For this purpose, researchers state marketing and business problems that need to be addressed. For this, we require additional information to figure out the solution. For this purpose, we need to understand the actual research question that we need to explore.

We also need to identify problems that we are seeking answers for in the research outcome. Based on this analysis, we need to identify the information that is missing. In this step, researchers generate preliminary questions to base the research around it. It is extremely important to accurately and adequately define the problem.

2. Determining and developing an approach

In this step, objectives or theoretical framework is formulated. Analytical models are constructed, and research questions are generated. The factors that can influence research design are also identified. In this process, management and industry experts discuss simulations and case studies. Secondary data is analyzed, and qualitative research takes place.

In this process, the researcher states the general problem and identifies specific components of the marketing research problem. For this step, communication in the form of a research brief is necessary between marketing researchers and decision-makers. Marketing researchers respond to this research brief with the research proposal. This proposal contains the vision of the solution to the research problem.

3. Developing a Research Plan

Once you have developed an approach, research objectives, and set of problem-related questions, researchers develop a research plan. In this plan, you need to map out your requirements for thorough research. This includes customer opinion, data requirements, information on competitors, and market trends.

Based on these factors, you can develop a research design. For these details, researchers will have to conduct both primary and secondary research. Primary research is conducted by communicating directly with customers. For secondary research, documents are available.

4. Conducting Research

It is the most important part of the marketing research process. Conducting research is important since accurate and adequate information can be gathered only then. First of all, existing research and data are reviewed to determine if it is relevant to the problem. By reviewing existing material, one can gain insights into the problem for which we are conducting research. This secondary research is always important since it not only saves time but also efforts of conducting interviews in person. After gathering data through secondary research, researchers must conduct primary research to understand the market and what consumers demand.

For this, different types of interviews, surveys, and polls are conducted. This is a street-smart method to understand the actual condition of the market and consumer behavior. There should be a proper way to obtain data from respondents. For this, we need to design a sampling plan and questionnaire for the selection of respondents for the study.

For the research design, the following steps must be completed:

• Analysis of secondary data
• Qualitative research
• Deciding methods of quantitative data collection
• Defining the required information
• Measurement and scaling procedures
• Designing questionnaire
• Sample size and sampling process
• Plan of data analysis

5. Data Collection

Once the plan for research has been created, it is important to gather data through surveys, interviews, and other methods. At this stage, the researcher needs to decide the method of collecting the information. The method must be selected in a way to avoid biased opinions of the respondent.  Professionals can conduct telephonic interviews, send emails and surveys to collect the data. These professionals must be trained and evaluated beforehand to minimize data collection errors.

6. Preparation and data analysis

Once the data is obtained, it should be transformed into useful information from just being primary and secondary data. This involves data editing, coding, transcription, and verification. Every questionnaire is inspected, edited, and even corrected. To represent every response in the questionnaire, either number or letter codes are assigned. This data is transcribed or key-punched on magnetic tapes, and disks are uploaded directly to the computer.

Verification ensures that data from actual questionnaires is accurately transcribed. The collected information should be organized in a way to obtain some analysis. Several statistical techniques, such as advanced decision models, measures of dispersion, and compute averages, are applied. When there is a single measurement of every element or unit in the sample, researchers should use univariate techniques.

7. Reporting The Analysis and Findings

Professionals involved in the business should interpret the data since they can identify the relevant insights and accordingly make recommendations from the research finding. This report consists of both analysis and data interpretation to address project objectives. The findings are then presented to the top-level management so that they can understand the problem and the way it is summarized.

The findings should be in a comprehensible format so that they are easily understandable by the business. Along with that, oral presentations using statistics, graphs, figures and tables should be given more clarity. On the basis of these report findings, the management makes decisions after understanding the research and reasons behind choosing a new path.

Compiled  & Shared by- Team, LITD (Livestock Institute of Training & Development)

Image-Courtesy-Google

Reference-On Request.