If used correctly, marketing research is a tool that helps make a business more effective. This is because one of the key values ​​in making effective management decisions is information. Also, companies that do not build their work not on intuition, assumptions, or guesses, but based on accurate market data, are competitive. Such companies are consumer-oriented, so they try to hear, understand, and offer the consumer the exact product or service that meets their expectations.

Marketing research is at the heart of customer value creation. The study of deep motives, values, emotions, preferences, expectations, and trends in consumer behavior — all this gives an accurate understanding of your client and helps build all further actions—from product ideas to advertising.

Marketing research is the pursuit, collection, and analysis of information that meets the marketing needs of the company. Marketing research is much broader than market analys is or consumer surveys, and includes consumer research, market research, competitor research, et cetera. The main goal of marketing research is to give the business everything it needs to make effective management decisions, reduce the uncertainty in making such decisions, and therefore minimize risks.

GOALS

What Are the Goals of Marketing Research?

• Study consumer behavior and specificities;

• Collect and analyze information about a specific marketing problem (for example, finding the reasons for slowing or falling sales);

• Assess the prospects for demand for the product;

• Study the market from the point of view of consumer preferences and competitive environment;

• Assess the effectiveness of implemented activities;

• Build a forecast of the research object state in the future.

It is important that the goal of the research is formulated correctly. This means that research must solve a specific and accurately defined problem. For example, it’s illogical to conduct a study on the aim of assessing the market capacity if it is clear without research that the company does not have the opportunity to scale up production and significantly increase its output. An accurate market size figure will not help increase market share. In this case, the purpose of the study could be  consumer preferences to find possible ways to increase sales.

What Problems Does Marketing Research Solve?

• Search for new sales markets, promising niches, and product introduction to the market;

• Release of a new product, modification of the current one;

• Test the idea and concept of the product;

• Determine positioning and detuning from competitors;

• Assess the customer loyalty degree;

• Reveal consumer insights;

• Test the quality characteristics of the product;

• Provide comprehensive market analysis;

• Analyze competitors;

• Evaluate the advertising campaign effectiveness;

• Segment consumers, including psychographic;

• Assess market growth potential in the long-term;

• Study brand awareness and perception;

• Assess brand health;

• Test packaging (perception, convenience, clarity ofinformation, et cetera);

• Identify business growth drivers.

TYPES OFMARKETING RESEARCH

All marketing research can be divided into two large groups according to the type of information that is collected and processed:

1.   Desk research: Secondary sources of information (analytical reports, official statistics, publications, et cetera) are studied and analyzed.

2.   Field research: Primary information is collected for the purposes of a specific project.

Field marketing research, in turn, can be divided into three types: qualitative, quantitative, and combined. Their differing qualities are listed below.

Field ResearchMethods

Qualitative

Quantitative

Combined

Focus groups

Household surveys

Mystery shopping/calling

In-depth interviews

Street/point of sale  surveys

Hall tests

Expert interviews

Telephone surveys (CATI)

Home tests

Neuromarketing research

Online polls/riversampling

Purchase support

Comprehensive research

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Qualitative research helps answer the questions “how?” and “why?”

This type of research is necessary for a deep understanding of the behavior, preferences, and views of a small group of people from the target audience. With the help of qualitative research methods, one can get to the bottom of deep preferences and motives that may not be at all obvious to the consumer.

For example, if a respondent is asked a direct question like: "When buying a product, what is most important to you?" The most common answer will be: “Price and quality.” But what exactly does “quality” mean to a client? Is price always important, or are other characteristics a priority in other cases?

Qualitative research helps to see and hear your product from the perspective of the consumer and develop hypotheses, which are then tested in quantitative research.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS

Focus Group

An interview in the form of a discussion based on a pre-developed scenario with a small group of people similar to each other in certain characteristics.

In-Depth Interview

An unstructured interview in the form of a personal conversation between the interviewer and the respondent. This format encourages the respondent to provide more detailed and open answers than in a focus group.

Neuromarketing

A set of methods aimed at studying unconscious human reactions to marketing incentives using special equipment. The most complete and clear picture for decision-making is provided by a combination of qualitative and quantitative method, that is, comprehensive marketing research.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH Methods

Quantitative research helps answer the questions "who?” and “how much?"

This type of research involves a quantitative, numerical expression of the market situation, behavior, and reactions of consumers. The main advantage of such studies is that they help to study the opinions of a large number of respondents to process the information obtained by statistical methods and distribute the results to all consumers. This allows such studies to be an indicator of the reliability and objectivity of the data obtained.

Using quantitative methods, one can assess the market capacity in physical and monetary terms,find out how the market is distributed among competitors, see a portrait of your customer, understand the prospects of a new product that the company intends to launch on the market, assess the health of a brand, and much more.

Quantitative surveys are carried out using a list of questions specially designed for research: a questionnaire. Its quality has a very large impact on the result of the questionnaire — the wording, the number and consistency, and the ease of understanding of the questions, et cetera.

QUANTITATIVE METHODS

Online Surveys

The most common method today. When conducting online surveys, the questionnaire is provided in electronic form for self-filling from a computer, tablet, or mobile device. At the same time, online surveys also have wider possibilities—video and audio clips, advertisements, and other visual materials for testing can be embedded in the questionnaire.

Personal Surveys

Personal consumer surveys are probably the most familiar form of survey. These are polls in which the interviewer interviews the respondent. The duration of this interview type is from five to 40 minutes, depending on the purpose, location of the interview, and many other factors. Personal interviews can take place on the street or at the point of purchase. Now, personal surveys are becoming less popular due to the possibility of polling via the Internet.

Telephone Surveys (CATI)

A quantitative method of marketing research in which respondents are surveyed by telephone. This is one of the fastest and most effective research methods for both B2C and B2B markets with a considerably wide geography.

Combined Research

This group of methods assumes a combination of qualitative and quantitative research features when there is a deeper understanding of the buyer's preferences with a sufficient sample.

Hall Tests

These are aimed at testing individual characteristics of a product or service during direct contact of the respondent with the tested sample.

Home Tests

The collection of information about a product by testing it on a group of consumers at home. The application of the method is advisable when repeated or prolonged contact with the product is required.

Mystery Shopper

Marketing research method for assessing the quality of work of the company’s personnel or its competitors.

STAGES OF MARKETING RESEARCH

Marketing research usually has four key steps:

1. At the first stage it is important to accurately determine the problem that caused the need for the study and correctly formulate goals and objectives.

2. The second stage involves the development of a research methodology. The analyst marketer determines the key parameters of the research. That is, what is the object, what methods of data collection should be used, what should be the sample size,and so on. The necessary project toolkit is also being developed — a guide for a focus group discussion, a questionnaire for a survey, et cetera.

3. The third step is data collection. The result of the study depends on the quality of data collection. Therefore, strict quality control of the collected data is very important (control of the interviewer’s work, listening to audio recordings during interviews on tablets, calling respondents, controlling the completeness of the questionnaire, control over logic, and more).

4. The fourth stage includes the analysis of the collected data, i.e., extracting the most important results from the set of information received, processing data using modern statistical methods, and presenting the results in a visual form. The professionalism of a marketer-analyst is extremely important here. Their task is not only to extract graphs and diagrams from the database, but also to find the most significant dependencies and relationships and formulate marketing recommendations.

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