marketing research methods examples

Types of market research: Methods and examples

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Here at GWI we publish a steady stream of blogs, reports, and other resources that dig deep into specific market research topics.

But what about the folks who’d appreciate a more general overview of market research that explains the big picture? Don’t they deserve some love too?

Of course they do. That’s why we’ve created this overview guide focusing on types of market research and examples. With so many market research companies to choose from, having a solid general understanding of how this sector works is essential for any brand or business that wants to pick the right market research partner.

So with that in mind, let’s start at the very beginning and get clear on…

Market research definition

At the risk of stating the slightly obvious, market research is the gathering and analyzing of data on consumers, competitors, distributors, and markets. As such it’s not quite the same as consumer research , but there’s significant overlap.

Market research matters because it can help you take the guesswork out of getting through to audiences. By studying consumers and gathering information on their likes, dislikes, and so on, brands can make evidence-based decisions instead of relying on instinct or experience. 

What is market research?

Market research is the organized gathering of information about target markets and consumers’ needs and preferences. It’s an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness.

If a business wants to know – really know – what sort of products or services consumers want to buy, along with where, when, and how those products and services should be marketed, it just makes sense to ask the prospective audience. 

Without the certainty that market research brings, a business is basically hoping for the best. And while we salute their optimism, that’s not exactly a reliable strategy for success.

What are the types of market research?

Primary research .

Primary research is a type of market research you either conduct yourself or hire someone to do on your behalf.

A classic example of primary research involves going directly to a source – typically customers or prospective customers in your target market – to ask questions and gather information about a product or service. Interviewing methods include in-person, online surveys, phone calls, and focus groups.

The big advantage of primary research is that it’s directly focused on your objectives, so the outcome will be conclusive, detailed insights – particularly into customer views – making it the gold standard.

The disadvantages are it can be time-consuming and potentially costly, plus there’s a risk of survey bias creeping in, in the sense that research samples may not be representative of the wider group.

Secondary research 

Primary market research means you collect the data your business needs, whereas the types of market research known as secondary market research use information that’s already been gathered for other purposes but can still be valuable. Examples include published market studies, white papers, analyst reports, customer emails, and customer surveys/feedback.

For many small businesses with limited budgets, secondary market research is their first choice because it’s easier to acquire and far more affordable than primary research.

Secondary research can still answer specific business questions, but with limitations. The data collected from that audience may not match your targeted audience exactly, resulting in skewed outcomes. 

A big benefit of secondary market research is helping lay the groundwork and get you ready to carry out primary market research by making sure you’re focused on what matters most.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is one of the two fundamental types of market research. Qualitative research is about people and their opinions. Typically conducted by asking questions either one-on-one or in groups, qualitative research can help you define problems and learn about customers’ opinions, values, and beliefs.

Classic examples of qualitative research are long-answer questions like “Why do you think this product is better than competitive products? Why do you think it’s not?”, or “How would you improve this new service to make it more appealing?”

Because qualitative research generally involves smaller sample sizes than its close cousin quantitative research, it gives you an anecdotal overview of your subject, rather than highly detailed information that can help predict future performance.

Qualitative research is particularly useful if you’re developing a new product, service, website or ad campaign and want to get some feedback before you commit a large budget to it.

Quantitative research

If qualitative research is all about opinions, quantitative research is all about numbers, using math to uncover insights about your audience. 

Typical quantitative research questions are things like, “What’s the market size for this product?” or “How long are visitors staying on this website?”. Clearly the answers to both will be numerical.

Quantitative research usually involves questionnaires. Respondents are asked to complete the survey, which marketers use to understand consumer needs, and create strategies and marketing plans.

Importantly, because quantitative research is math-based, it’s statistically valid, which means you’re in a good position to use it to predict the future direction of your business.

Consumer research 

As its name implies, consumer research gathers information about consumers’ lifestyles, behaviors, needs and preferences, usually in relation to a particular product or service. It can include both quantitative and qualitative studies.

Examples of consumer research in action include finding ways to improve consumer perception of a product, or creating buyer personas and market segments, which help you successfully market your product to different types of customers.

Understanding consumer trends , driven by consumer research, helps businesses understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles. The result helps brands improve their products and services by making them more customer-centric, increasing customer satisfaction, and boosting bottom line in the process.

Product research 

Product research gives a new product (or indeed service, we don’t judge) its best chance of success, or helps an existing product improve or increase market share.

It’s common sense: by finding out what consumers want and adjusting your offering accordingly, you gain a competitive edge. It can be the difference between a product being a roaring success or an abject failure.

Examples of product research include finding ways to develop goods with a higher value, or identifying exactly where innovation effort should be focused. 

Product research goes hand-in-hand with other strands of market research, helping you make informed decisions about what consumers want, and what you can offer them.

Brand research  

Brand research is the process of gathering feedback from your current, prospective, and even past customers to understand how your brand is perceived by the market.

It covers things like brand awareness, brand perceptions, customer advocacy, advertising effectiveness, purchase channels, audience profiling, and whether or not the brand is a top consideration for consumers.

The result helps take the guesswork out of your messaging and brand strategy. Like all types of market research, it gives marketing leaders the data they need to make better choices based on fact rather than opinion or intuition.

Market research methods 

So far we’ve reviewed various different types of market research, now let’s look at market research methods, in other words the practical ways you can uncover those all-important insights.

Consumer research platform 

A consumer research platform like GWI is a smart way to find on-demand market research insights in seconds.

In a world of fluid markets and changing attitudes, a detailed understanding of your consumers, developed using the right research platform, enables you to stop guessing and start knowing.

As well as providing certainty, consumer research platforms massively accelerate speed to insight. Got a question? Just jump on your consumer research platform and find the answer – job done.

The ability to mine data for answers like this is empowering – suddenly you’re in the driving seat with a world of possibilities ahead of you. Compared to the most obvious alternative – commissioning third party research that could take weeks to arrive – the right consumer research platform is basically a magic wand.

Admittedly we’re biased, but GWI delivers all this and more.

And the downside of using a consumer research platform? Well, no data set, however fresh or thorough, can answer every question. If you need really niche insights then your best bet is custom market research , where you can ask any question you like, tailored to your exact needs.

Face-to-face interviews 

Despite the rise in popularity of online surveys , face-to-face survey interviewing – using mobile devices or even the classic paper survey – is still a popular data collection method.

In terms of advantages, face-to-face interviews help with accurate screening, in the sense the interviewee can’t easily give misleading answers about, say, their age. The interviewer can also make a note of emotions and non-verbal cues. 

On the other hand, face-to-face interviews can be costly, while the quality of data you get back often depends on the ability of the interviewer. Also, the size of the sample is limited to the size of your interviewing staff, the area in which the interviews are conducted, and the number of qualified respondents within that area.

Social listening 

Social listening is a powerful solution for brands who want to keep an ear to the ground, gathering unfiltered thoughts and opinions from consumers who are posting on social media. 

Many social listening tools store data for up to a couple of years, great for trend analysis that needs to compare current and past conversations.

Social listening isn’t limited to text. Images, videos, and emojis often help us better understand what consumers are thinking, saying, and doing better than more traditional research methods. 

Perhaps the biggest downside is there are no guarantees with social listening, and you never know what you will (or won’t) find. It can also be tricky to gauge sentiment accurately if the language used is open to misinterpretation, for example if a social media user describes something as “sick”.

There’s also a potential problem around what people say vs. what they actually do. Tweeting about the gym is a good deal easier than actually going. The wider problem – and this may shock you – is that not every single thing people write on social media is necessarily true, which means social listening can easily deliver unreliable results.

Public domain data 

Public domain data comes from think tanks and government statistics or research centers like the UK’s National Office for Statistics or the United States Census Bureau and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences. Other sources are things like research journals, news media, and academic material.

Its advantages for market research are it’s cheap (or even free), quick to access, and easily available. Public domain datasets can be huge, so potentially very rich.

On the flip side, the data can be out of date, it certainly isn’t exclusive to you, and the collection methodology can leave much to be desired. But used carefully, public domain data can be a useful source of secondary market research.

Telephone interviews 

You know the drill – you get a call from a researcher who asks you questions about a particular topic and wants to hear your opinions. Some even pay or offer other rewards for your time.

Telephone surveys are great for reaching niche groups of consumers within a specific geographic area or connected to a particular brand, or who aren’t very active in online channels. They’re not well-suited for gathering data from broad population groups, simply because of the time and labor involved.

How to use market research 

Data isn’t an end in itself; instead it’s a springboard to make other stuff happen. So once you’ve drawn conclusions from your research, it’s time to think of what you’ll actually do based on your findings.

While it’s impossible for us to give a definitive list (every use case is different), here are some suggestions to get you started.

Leverage it . Think about ways to expand the use – and value – of research data and insights, for example by using research to support business goals and functions, like sales, market share or product design.

Integrate it . Expand the value of your research data by integrating it with other data sources, internal and external. Integrating data like this can broaden your perspective and help you draw deeper insights for more confident decision-making.

Justify it . Enlist colleagues from areas that’ll benefit from the insights that research provides – that could be product management, product development, customer service, marketing, sales or many others – and build a business case for using research.

How to choose the right type of market research 

Broadly speaking, choosing the right research method depends on knowing the type of data you need to collect. To dig into ideas and opinions, choose qualitative; to do some testing, it’s quantitative you want.

There are also a bunch of practical considerations, not least cost. If a particular approach sounds great but costs the earth then clearly it’s not ideal for any brand on a budget.

Then there’s how you intend to use the actual research, your level of expertise with research data, whether you need access to historical data or just a snapshot of today, and so on.

The point is, different methods suit different situations. When choosing, you’ll want to consider what you want to achieve, what data you’ll need, the pros and cons of each method, the costs of conducting the research, and the cost of analyzing the results. 

Market research examples

Independent agency Bright/Shift used GWI consumer insights to shape a high-impact go-to-market strategy for their sustainable furniture client, generating £41K in revenue in the first month. Here’s how they made the magic happen .

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The Types of Market Research [+10 Market Research Methods]

• Market research

Jaclyn Robinson, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at Crunchbase

Market research can help startups understand where they should be placing their resources and time. It can tell you everything from how people are perceiving your company, as well as which features to drop or continue developing. And while there are plenty of ways to conduct market research, not every market research method is right for every situation.

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Market research can help play a major role in developing your product, marketing, and overall business strategy. Understanding the different market research methods can be the difference between wasting months of engineering time or exceeding your ambitious revenue targets.

We review the types of market research as well as the market research methods you can pursue based on your primary objectives and business goals.

The 2 types of market research

All market research falls under two distinct categories: primary research and secondary research.

Primary research looks at any data you collect yourself (or someone you pay). It encompasses analyzing current sales, metrics, and customers. It also takes into account the effectiveness of current practices, while taking competitors into account.

Secondary research looks at data that has already been published by others. It includes reports and studies from other companies, government organizations, and others in your industry.

10 market research methods

The type of data you need will decide which market research technique to use. Here are the most commonly used market research methods:

Primary research methods

These primary research methods will help you identify both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data is information that cannot be measured while qualitative data is taken from a large sample size and is a statistically significant mathematical analysis.

1. Interviews

Great for: expert advice

Consisting of one-on-one discussions, interviews are a great source of qualitative data. You can either perform interviews by telephone, video conference, or face-to-face. Interviews are great for an in-depth look for target audience insights.

In-depth interviews are great when expert advice is needed or when discussing highly complex or sensitive topics. Interviews are usually 10 to 30 minutes long with 25 to 75 respondents.

Great for: understanding brand awareness, satisfaction and loyalty analysis, pricing research, and market segmentation .

One of the most commonly used market research methods, Surveys are an easy way to understand your target audience and allow you to test a large sample size to determine if findings are true across a larger segment of your customers.

3. Questionnaires

Great for: Customer feedback and satisfaction surveys (NPS surveys), and when you want more detail on your target audience and customer base.

Do not confuse questionnaires for surveys !  While surveys are aggregated for statistical analysis, questionnaires are a set of written questions used for collecting information.

Questionnaires are used to collect information rather than draw a conclusion.  Surveys can include a questionnaire, but a survey must aggregate and analyze the responses to the questions.

When writing questionnaires for market research, keep the number of questions in mind.

In one study, SurveyMonkey found that questionnaires with 40 questions have about a 10% lower response rate than questionnaires with 10 questions . The more questions, the less likely people will finish your questionnaire.

4. Focus groups

Great for: Price testing, advertising concepts, product/messaging testing

Even with the rise of big data, focus groups have remained an integral part of how companies build their products, strategy, and messaging. Focus groups are intentionally compromised by a group of purposefully selected individuals. Above all, the collaborative setting ensures that members of the group are able to interact and influence each other.

Typically these open and interactive groups are composed of around five to 12 screened individuals . Make sure that your participants are diverse so you can get a range of opinions and you have enough representation from several segments of your market.

Many smaller startups will conduct DIY focus groups and will use video conferencing technology, which is one of the most cost-effective and time-efficient market research methods.

This is a great resource to see some good questions to ask your focus groups as well as what topics focus groups should touch on.

5. User groups

Great for: Feature testing, UX and web design feedback

User groups are used to gather UX data and provide insight for website design. User groups usually meet regularly to discuss their experience with a product, while researchers capture their comments.

Here’s a great guide on how to format questions for user groups .

6. Test markets

Great for: Testing new marketing campaigns

Test markets represent a larger market. Using a test group as well as a control group can show you the success of a new landing page, messaging copy, or CTA button. We particularly like the free version of Google Optimize to get quantitative data on how your experiment is performing based on a specific goal.

Secondary research methods

Secondary research can help establish a starting point prior to diving into more expensive primary research techniques. While there is a lot of data on the web regarding basic statistics, you may have to purchase a distinct data provider for a more in-depth look at your market.

Crunchbase Pro and Marketplace partners are a great and inexpensive way to start your secondary research directly on Crunchbase.com.

7. Competitor benchmarks

Great for: Understanding your revenue, churn, operating costs, sales, profit margin, and burn rate.

Competitor benchmarks are the most valuable and widely used of the secondary research methods. Moreover, competitor benchmarks measure specific growth metrics or key performance indicators in comparison to business within the same industry and of a similar size.

You can use Crunchbase Pro to find how much companies in a certain industry are raising and who are the leading players with our global coverage on companies ranging from pre-seed to late-stage. So, as one of the most informative of the market research methods, competitive benchmarks are a great way to inform your business strategy. 

Free Crunchbase registered users have access to revenue estimates as well as web traffic data.

8. Sales data

Great for: Understanding your audience and where to place marketing efforts.

Taking a look at internal sales data not only reveals profitability but also helps market researchers segment customer trends.

However, taking a look at competitive sales data is a great way to make sure that you’re meeting the numbers you should be targeting as well as capturing the full potential of the market

9. Government publications and statistics

Great for: General demographic information and larger trends

The U.S. Census Bureau is a great resource of national demographic data. You can also review patents as a preview of industry trends and future innovation.

Also, you can find additional data and research from Data.gov , The World Bank , as well as the Pew Research Center to help inform your market research decisions.

10. Commercial data

Great for: Greater insight into industry trends and reports

If you’re interested in purchasing secondary market research, commercial data is available. For comprehensive reports, Mintel and IBISWorld are both traditional market research companies that provide commercial data.

Additionally, to choose which type of market research method is best for your goal, follow this graph from Relevant Insights. Begin with the metric you’re trying to move and then backtrack into a targeted market research method.

How can Crunchbase help with my market research?

Crunchbase gives market researchers flexible access to Crunchbase’s complete company data. Innovative teams and leaders in market research rely on Crunchbase’s live company data to build powerful internal databases and research insights in respective industries. Learn more about how Crunchbase can help you with your market research .

• Originally published March 14, 2019, updated April 26, 2023

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The 8 types of market research: definitions, uses and examples.

13 min read What are the different types of market research that can help you stay ahead of the curve with your marketing strategy? Understand how to use each type, and what the advantages and disadvantages are.

Market research (also called marketing research) is the action or activity of gathering information about market needs and preferences. This helps companies understand their target market — how the audience feels and behaves.

There are 8 types of market research, each with their own methods and tools:

• Primary research
• Secondary research
• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Branding research
• Customer research
• Competitor research
• Product research

Let’s start our list by exploring primary and secondary research first.

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1. Primary research

Primary research is research that you collect yourself but going directly to the target market through a range of methods. Because it is data you create, you own the data set.

Two types of results — exploratory information (determines the nature of a problem that hasn’t yet been clearly defined) and conclusive information (carried out to solve a problem that exploratory research identified) — from participants are collected as raw data and then analyzed to gather insights from trends and comparisons.

This method is good for getting the views of a lot of people at one time, especially when time is short, but it comes with its own management issues. The interviewer must prepare a way to gather answers and record these, while engaging in conversation with many people.

Participants may be affected by the group setting, either from acquiescence bias (the desire to say yes to please the interviewer), dominance bias (stronger participants can alter the results from less dominant participants) or researcher bias (where the research leads or impacts the participant responses indirectly).

This provides a structured setting where the interviewer can listen to what’s being said and investigate further into an answer. The interviewer can also pick up on non-verbal cues from body language can help the interview understand where to deep-dive and broaden their understanding.

However, some of the same biases (acquiescence and researcher) still exit in this format. The method is time consuming to do the interviews and collect the data afterwards.

A survey is an excellent method for carrying out primary research as participants do need to be physically present with the interviewer to carry it out. The survey can be completed anywhere there is an internet connection, meaning there is flexibility for the participants to use different devices and for interviewers to contact participants in different geographical time-zones.Preparation is key, however, as the researchers must segment the market and create a list of participants to send the survey to. Hiring a panel or using existing marketing lists can help with this.

2. Secondary research

Secondary research is the use of data that has previously been collected, analysed and published (and therefore you do not own this data). An example of this for market research is:

Most information is freely available, so there are less costs associated with this kind of secondary research over primary research methods.

Secondary research can often be the preparation for primary research activities, providing a knowledge base. The information gathered may not provide the specific information to explain the results, which is where primary market research would be used to enhance understanding.

There is also a logistics planning need for a recording solution that can handle large datasets, since manual management of the volumes of information can be tricky.

Both primary and secondary research have its advantages and disadvantages, as we’ve seen, but they are best used when paired together. Combined, the data can give you the confidence to act knowing that any hypothesis you have is backed up.

Learn more about primary vs secondary research methods

The next market research types can be defined as qualitative and quantitative research types:

3. Qualitative research

Qualitative market research is the collection of primary or secondary data that is non-numerical in nature, and therefore hard to measure.

Researchers collect this market research type because it can add more depth to the data.

This kind of market research is used to summarise and infer, rather than pin-points an exact truth held by a target market. For example, qualitative market research can be done to find out a new target market’s reaction to a new product to translate the reaction into a clear explanation for the company.

4. Quantitative research

Quantitative research is the collection of primary or secondary data that is numerical in nature, and so can be collected more easily.

Researchers collect this market research type because it can provide historical benchmarking, based on facts and figures evidence.

There are a number of ways to collect this data — polls, surveys, desk research, web statistics, financial records — which can be exploratory in nature without a lot of depth at this stage.

Quantitative market research can create the foundation of knowledge needed by researchers to investigate hypotheses further through qualitative market research.

The next four variations of market research are specific to topics areas, that bring about specific information.:

5. Branding research

Branding market research assists a company to create, manage and maintain the company brand. This can relate to the tone, branding, images, values or identity of the company.

Research can be carried out through interviews, focus groups or surveys. For example, brand awareness surveys will ask your participants whether the brand is known to them and whether it is something they would be interested in buying.

Additional areas for brand research is also around brand loyalty, brand perception , brand positioning , brand value and brand identity .

The aim of research will be to understand how to know if:

• Your brand is performing in relation to other competitors
• There are areas to improve your brand activities
• There are positives to showcase to enhance your brand’s image

6. Customer research

Customer market research looks at the key influences on your target customers and how your company can make changes to encourage sales.

The aim of this research is to know your customer inside out, and continuously learn about how they interact with the company. Some themes covered by this include:

• Customer satisfaction – Exploring what keeps customers happy, as higher customer satisfaction is more likely to lead to increased customer retention.
• Customer loyalty – This looks at what experiences have happened to lead to greater customer loyalty across the customer lifecycle.
• Customer segmentation research – Discovering who the customers are, what their behaviour and preferences are and their shared characteristics.

Relevant desk research may look at historical purchase records, customer journey mapping , customer segmentation, demographics and persona templates.

Primary research, such as NPS and customer satisfaction surveys , or customer satisfaction interviews at the end of customer support calls, can also give more details.

7. Competitor research

Competitor market research is about knowing who your competition is and understanding their strengths and weaknesses, in comparison to your organization. It can also be about your competitive offering in the market, or how to approach a new market.

The aim of this research is to find ways to make your organization stand out and future planning through horizon scanning and listening to customer preferences.

For example, for competitive analysis, researchers would create a SWOT for your business and your competitors, to see how your business compares.

Primary research could interview customers about their buying preferences, while secondary sources would look at competitor’s market dominance, sales, structure and so on. With this thorough analysis, you can understand where you can change to be more competitive, and look for ideas that make you stand out.

8. Product research

Product market research is a key way to make sure your products and services are fit for launching in the market, and are performing as well as they can.

The aim of this research is to see how your product is perceived by customers, if they are providing value and working correctly. Ideas can also be formed about upgrades and future product development.

There are a number of avenues within product research:

• Product branding – Does the product brand and design attract customers in the intended way?
• Product feature testing – this can happen at various stages of development with target markets (in early development, between versions, before product launch, etc.) to check if there are positive reaction to new or improved features
• Product design thinking – what solutions would solve your customers’ current or future problems?
• Product marketing – Do the marketing messages help your product’s memorability and saleability, or can they be improved?

Primary research methods have a clear advantage in this kind of market research: Surveys can ask for rankings on the popularity or usefulness of features or conduct conjoint analysis, while in-person observation interviews (where the participant can handle a product) can be particularly useful in seeing what customers do with the product in real time.

How to use market research types in your company

In a good marketing strategy, it’s preferable to have a mixture of data across:

• Qualitative and quantitative research
• Primary and secondary research
• Your specific topic area or area of focus

With these three components, you can make sure your market strategy gives you a complete picture of your market’s operational data and experience data , — what your market does and why .

Economical experience data (O data)

This type of experience data is quantitative in nature (including operations, featuring sales data, finance data and HR data ). As it can be quantified into numerical values, it can be measured over and over, providing datasets.

There is the opportunity to use a data-driven approach to understanding the results and making predictions based on historical trends.

This sort of data can be measured more easily than emotions and feelings. But it can only tell you about past activities and what happened. It can’t tell you what will happen in the future and why things will happen — this is where X data comes in.

Emotional experience data (X data)

This type of experience data seeks to find reasons to explain emotional decisions and how brands ‘sit’ in people’s minds. In this way, this data is qualitative in nature.

Companies that have X data have a ‘mental advantage’ over other companies,  as they are able to understand the perceptions of the customer, their needs and values.

When you have tangible insights on the audience’s needs, you can then take steps to meet those needs and solve problems. This mitigates the risk of an experience gap – which is what your audience expects you deliver versus what you actually deliver.

Related resources

Mixed methods research 17 min read, market intelligence 10 min read, marketing insights 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, qualitative vs quantitative research 13 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, request demo.

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Home Market Research

Market Research: What it Is, Methods, Types & Examples

Would you like to know why, how, and when to apply market research? Do you want to discover why your consumers are not buying your products? Are you interested in launching a new product, service, or even a new marketing campaign, but you’re not sure what your consumers want?

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

To answer the questions above, you’ll need help from your consumers. But how will you collect that data? In this case and in many other situations in your business, market research is the way to get all the answers you need.

In this ultimate guide about market research, you’ll find the definition, advantages, types of market research, and some examples that will help you understand this type of research. Don’t forget to download the free ebook available at the end of this guide!

LEARN ABOUT: Perceived Value

Content Index

Three key objectives of market research

Why is market research important.

• Types of Market Research: Methods and Examples

Steps for conducting Market Research

Benefits of an efficient market research, 5 market research tips for businesses, why does every business need market research, free market research ebook, what is market research.

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).

LEARN ABOUT: Consumer Surveys

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.

LEARN ABOUT: Data Analytics Projects

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 segmentation , market research helps in drawing meaningful conclusions.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Targeting

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.

LEARN ABOUT: Marketing Insight

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:

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 market research 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.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

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.

Learn more: How to conduct quantitative research

2. Secondary Market Research:

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.

Learn more: Market Research Example with Types and Methods

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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

LEARN ABOUT:  Test Market Demand

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.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market research industry

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 marketing 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?”

Learn more: Interview Questions

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 bias 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.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research 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?

Learn more: Types of Interviews

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.

Learn more: Quantitative 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.

LEARN ABOUT: Research Process Steps

• 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.

LEARN ABOUT: Total Quality Management

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?

Learn more: Customer Satisfaction

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.

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.

Learn more: Trend Analysis

• 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.

Learn more: Customer Satisfaction Survey

• 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.

Learn more: SWOT Analysis 

• 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.

Learn more: 300+ Market Research Survey Questionnaires

Market research and market intelligence may be as complex as the needs that each business or project has. The steps are usually the same. We hope this ultimate guide helps you have a better understanding of how to make your own market research project to gather insightful data and make better decisions.

LEARN ABOUT: Projective Techniques

We appreciate you taking the time to read this ultimate guide. We hope it was helpful! 

You can now download our free ebook that will guide you through a market research project, from the planning stage to the presentation of the outcomes and their analysis.

Sign up now, and download our free ebook: The Hacker’s Guide to Advanced Research Methodologies 

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Brandwatch Consumer Research

Formerly the Falcon suite

Formerly Paladin

Published October 17 th 2023

10 Essential Methods for Effective Consumer and Market Research

When it comes to understanding the world around you, market research is an essential step.

We live in a world that’s overflowing with information. Sifting through all the noise to extract the most relevant insights on a certain market or audience can be tough.

That’s where market research comes in – it’s a way for brands and researchers to collect information from target markets and audiences.

Once reliant on traditional methods like focus groups or surveys, market research is now at a crossroads. Newer tools for extracting insights, like social listening tools, have joined the array of market research techniques available.

Here, we break down what market research is and the different methods you can choose from to make the most of it.

What is market research, and why is it critical for you as a marketer?

Market research involves collecting and analyzing data about a specific industry, market, or audience to inform strategic decision-making. It offers marketers valuable insights into the industry, market trends, consumer preferences, competition, and opportunities, enabling businesses to refine their strategies effectively.

By conducting market research, organizations can identify unmet needs, assess product demands, enhance value propositions, and create marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience. 

This practice serves as a compass, guiding businesses in making data-driven decisions for successful product launches, improved customer relationships, and a stronger positioning in the business landscape. 

For marketers and insights professionals, market research is an indispensable tool. It helps them make smarter decisions and achieve growth and success in the market.

These 10 market research methods form the backbone of effective market research strategies. 

Continue reading or jump directly to each method by tapping the link below.

• Focus groups
• Consumer research with social media listening
• Experiments and field trials
• Observation
• Competitive analysis
• Public domain data
• Buy research
• Analyze sales data

Use of primary vs secondary market research

Market research can be split into two distinct sections: primary and secondary. These are the two main types of market research.

They can also be known as field and desk, respectively (although this terminology feels out of date, as plenty of primary research can be carried out from your desk).

Primary (field) research

Primary market research is research you carry out yourself. Examples of primary market research methods include running your own focus groups or conducting surveys. These are some of the key methods of consumer research. The ‘field’ part refers to going out into the field to get data.

Secondary (desk) research

Secondary market research is research carried out by other people that you want to use. Examples of secondary market research methods include studies carried out by researchers or financial data released by companies.

10 effective methods to do market research

The methods in this list cover both areas. Which ones you want to use will depend on your goals. Have a browse through and see what fits.

1. Focus groups

It’s a simple concept but one that can be hard to put into practice.

You bring together a group of individuals into a room, record their discussions, and ask them questions about various topics you are researching. For some, it’ll be new product ideas. For others, it might be views on a political candidate.

From these discussions, the organizer will try to pull out some insights or use them to judge the wider society’s view on something. The participants will generally be chosen based on certain criteria, such as demographics, interests, or occupations.

A focus group’s strength is in the natural conversation and discussion that can take place between participants (if they’re done right).

Compared to a questionnaire or survey with a rigid set of questions, a focus group can go off on tangents the organizer could not have predicted (and therefore not planned questions for). This can be good in that unexpected topics can arise; or bad if the aims of the research are to answer a very particular set of questions.

The nature of the discussion is important to recognize as a potential factor that skews the resulting data. Focus groups can encourage participants to talk about things they might not have otherwise, and others might impact the group. This can also affect unstructured one-on-one interviews.

In survey research, survey questions are given to respondents (in person, over the phone, by email, or via an online form). Questions can be close-ended or open-ended. As far as close-ended questions go, there are many different types:

• Dichotomous (two choices, such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’)
• Multiple choice
• Rating scale
• Likert scale (common version is five options between ‘strongly agree’ and ‘strongly disagree’)
• Matrix (options presented on a grid)
• Demographic (asking for information such as gender, age, or occupation)

Surveys are massively versatile because of the range of question formats. Knowing how to mix and match them to get what you need takes consideration and thought. Different questions need the right setup.

It’s also about how you ask. Good questions lead to good analysis. Writing clear, concise questions that abstain from vague expressions and don’t lead respondents down a certain path can help your results reflect the true colors of respondents.

There are a ton of different ways to conduct surveys as well, from creating your own from scratch or using tools that do lots of the heavy lifting for you.

3. Consumer research with social media listening

Social media has reached a point where it is seamlessly integrated into our lives. And because it is a digital extension of ourselves, people freely express their opinions, thoughts, and hot takes on social media.

Because people share so much content on social media and the sharing is so instant, social media is a treasure trove for market research. There is plenty of data to monitor , tap into, and dissect.

By using a social listening tool, like Consumer Research , researchers can identify topics of interest and then analyze relevant social posts. For example, they can track brand mentions and what consumers are saying about the products owned by that brand. These are real-world consumer research examples.

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Social media listening democratizes insights, and is especially useful for market research because of the vast amount of unfiltered information available. Because it’s unprompted, you can be fairly sure that what’s shared is an accurate account of what the person really cares about and thinks (as opposed to them being given a subject to dwell on in the presence of a researcher).

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Your complete social listening guide.

Learn how to get started with social listening

4. Interviews

In interviews, the interviewer speaks directly with the respondent. This type of market research method is more personal, allowing for communication and clarification, making it good for open-ended questions. Furthermore, interviews enable the interviewer to go beyond surface-level responses and investigate deeper.

However, the drawback is that interviews can be time-intensive and costly. Those who opt for this method will need to figure out how to allocate their resources effectively. You also need to be careful with leading or poor questions that lead to useless results. Here’s a good introduction to leading questions .

5. Experiments and field trials

Field experiments are conducted in the participants’ environment. They rely on the independent variable and the dependent variable – the researcher controls the independent variable in order to test its impact on the dependent variable. The key here is to establish whether there’s causality.

For example, take Hofling’s experiment that tested obedience, conducted in a hospital setting. The point was to test if nurses followed authority figures (doctors) and if the authority figures’ rules violated standards (The dependent variable being the nurses, the independent variable being a fake doctor calling up and ordering the nurses to administer treatment.)

According to Simply Psychology , there are key strengths and limitations to this method.

The assessment reads:

• Strength: Behavior in a field experiment is more likely to reflect real life because of its natural setting, i.e., higher ecological validity than a lab experiment.
• Strength: There is less likelihood of demand characteristics affecting the results, as participants may not know they are being studied. This occurs when the study is covert.
• Limitation: There is less control over extraneous variables that might bias the results. This makes it difficult for another researcher to replicate the study in exactly the same way.

There are also massive ethical implications for these kinds of experiments and experiments in general (especially if people are unaware of their involvement). Don’t take this lightly, and be sure to read up on all the guidelines that apply to the region where you’re based.

6. Observation

Observational market research is a qualitative research method where the researcher observes their subjects in a natural or controlled environment. This method is much like being a fly on the wall, but the fly takes notes and analyzes them later. In observational market research, subjects are likely to behave naturally, which reveals their true selves. 

They are not under much pressure. However, if they’re aware of the observation, they can act differently.

This type of research applies well to retail, where the researcher can observe shoppers’ behavior by day of the week, by season, when discounts are offered, and more. However, observational research can be time-consuming, and researchers have no control over the environments they research.

7. Competitive analysis

Competitive analysis is a highly strategic and specific form of market research in which the researchers analyze their company’s competitors. It is critical to see how your brand stacks up to rivals. 

Competitive analysis starts by defining the product, service, brand, and market segment. There are different topics to compare your firm with your competitors. It could be from a marketing perspective: content produced, SEO structure, PR coverage, and social media presence and engagement. It can also be from a product perspective: types of offerings, pricing structure. SWOT analysis is key in assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

We’ve written a whole blog post on this tactic, which you can read here .

8. Public domain data

The internet is a wondrous place. Public data exists for those strapped for resources or simply seeking to support their research with more data.  With more and more data produced every year, the question about access and curation becomes increasingly prominent – that’s why researchers and librarians are keen on open data.

Plenty of different types of open data are useful for market research: government databases, polling data, “fact tanks” like Pew Research Center, and more. 

Furthermore, APIs grant developers programmatic access to applications. A lot of this data is free, which is a real bonus.

9. Buy research

Money can’t buy everything, but it can buy research. Subscriptions exist for those who want to buy relevant industry and research reports. Sites like Euromonitor, Statista, Mintel, and BCC Research host a litany of reports for purchase, oftentimes with the option of a single-user license or a subscription.

This can be a massive time saver, and you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting from the very beginning. You’ll also get all your data in a format that makes sense, saving you effort in cleaning and organizing.

10. Analyze sales data

Sales data is like a puzzle piece that can help reveal the full picture of market research insights. Essentially, it indicates the results. Paired with other market research data, sales data helps researchers better understand actions and consequences. Understanding your customers, their buying habits, and how they change over time is important.

This research will be limited to customers, and it’s important to keep that in mind. Nevertheless, the value of this data should not be underestimated. If you’re not already tracking customer data, there’s no time like the present.

Choosing the right market research method for your strategy

Not all methods will be right for your situation or your business. Once you’ve looked through the list and seen some that take your fancy, spend more time researching each option.You’ll want to consider what you want to achieve, what data you’ll need, the pros and cons of each method, the costs of conducting the research, and the cost of analyzing the results.

Get it right, and it’ll be worth all the effort.

When it comes to understanding consumers, businesses choose Brandwatch ahead of any other tool.

New: Consumer Research

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Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

• Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
• Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

Free Market Research Kit

• SWOT Analysis Template
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
• Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
• Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
• Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

• Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
• Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

• Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
• Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
• Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
• Focus Groups
• Product/ Service Use Research
• Observation-Based Research
• Buyer Persona Research
• Market Segmentation Research
• Pricing Research
• Competitive Analysis Research
• Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
• Brand Awareness Research
• Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

• Define your buyer persona.
• Identify a persona group to engage.
• Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
• List your primary competitors.
• Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

10 Free Competitive Analysis Templates

Track and analyze your competitors with these ten free planning templates.

• SWOT Analysis
• Battle Cards
• Feature Comparison
• Strategic Overview

Identifying Content Competitors

Search engines are your best friends in this area of secondary market research.

To find the online publications with which you compete, take the overarching industry term you identified in the section above, and come up with a handful of more specific industry terms your company identifies with.

A catering business, for example, might generally be a “food service” company, but also consider itself a vendor in “event catering,” “cake catering,” or “baked goods.” Once you have this list, do the following:

• Google it. Don't underestimate the value in seeing which websites come up when you run a search on Google for the industry terms that describe your company. You might find a mix of product developers, blogs, magazines, and more.
• Compare your search results against your buyer persona. If the content the website publishes seems like the stuff your buyer persona would want to see, it's a potential competitor, and should be added to your list of competitors.

5. Summarize your findings.

Feeling overwhelmed by the notes you took? We suggest looking for common themes that will help you tell a story and create a list of action items.

To make the process easier, try using your favorite presentation software to make a report, as it will make it easy to add in quotes, diagrams, or call clips.

Feel free to add your own flair, but the following outline should help you craft a clear summary:

• Background: Your goals and why you conducted this study.
• Participants: Who you talked to. A table works well so you can break groups down by persona and customer/prospect.
• Executive Summary : What were the most interesting things you learned? What do you plan to do about it?
• Awareness: Describe the common triggers that lead someone to enter into an evaluation. (Quotes can be very powerful.)
• Consideration: Provide the main themes you uncovered, as well as the detailed sources buyers use when conducting their evaluation.
• Decision: Paint the picture of how a decision is really made by including the people at the center of influence and any product features or information that can make or break a deal.
• Action Plan: Your analysis probably uncovered a few campaigns you can run to get your brand in front of buyers earlier and/or more effectively. Provide your list of priorities, a timeline, and the impact it will have on your business.

Within a market research kit, there are a number of critical pieces of information for your business‘s success. Let’s take a look at these elements.

Pro Tip: Upon downloading HubSpot's free Market Research Kit , you'll receive editable templates for each of the given parts of the kit, instructions on how to use the kit, and a mock presentation that you can edit and customize.

The Beginner's Guide to the Competitive Matrix [+ Templates]

What is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?

9 Best Marketing Research Methods to Know Your Buyer Better [+ Examples]

SWOT Analysis: How To Do One [With Template & Examples]

28 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them?

How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

5 Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences [New Data + Market Researcher Tips]

Causal Research: The Complete Guide

Free Guide & Templates to Help Your Market Research

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

How To Do Market Research: Definition, Types, Methods

Jul 25, 2024

11 min. read

Market research isn’t just collecting data. It’s a strategic tool that allows businesses to gain a competitive advantage while making the best use of their resources. Research reveals valuable insights into your target audience about their preferences, buying habits, and emerging demands — all of which help you unlock new opportunities to grow your business.

When done correctly, market research can minimize risks and losses, spur growth, and position you as a leader in your industry. 

Let’s explore the basic building blocks of market research and how to collect and use data to move your company forward:

Table of Contents

What Is Market Research?

Why is market research important, market analysis example, 5 types of market research, what are common market research questions, what are the limitations of market research, how to do market research, improving your market research with radarly.

Market Research Definition: The process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a market or audience.

Market research studies consumer behavior to better understand how they perceive products or services. These insights help businesses identify ways to grow their current offering, create new products or services, and improve brand trust and brand recognition .

You might also hear market research referred to as market analysis or consumer research .

Traditionally, market research has taken the form of focus groups, surveys, interviews, and even competitor analysis . But with modern analytics and research tools, businesses can now capture deeper insights from a wider variety of sources, including social media, online reviews, and customer interactions. These extra layers of intel can help companies gain a more comprehensive understanding of their audience.

With consumer preferences and markets evolving at breakneck speeds, businesses need a way to stay in touch with what people need and want. That’s why the importance of market research cannot be overstated.

Market research offers a proactive way to identify these trends and make adjustments to product development, marketing strategies , and overall operations. This proactive approach can help businesses stay ahead of the curve and remain agile as markets shift.

Market research examples abound — given the number of ways companies can get inside the minds of their customers, simply skimming through your business’s social media comments can be a form of market research.

A restaurant chain might use market research methods to learn more about consumers’ evolving dining habits. These insights might be used to offer new menu items, re-examine their pricing strategies, or even open new locations in different markets, for example.

A consumer electronics company might use market research for similar purposes. For instance, market research may reveal how consumers are using their smart devices so they can develop innovative features.

Market research can be applied to a wide range of use cases, including:

• Testing new product ideas
• Improve existing products
• Entering new markets
• Right-sizing their physical footprints
• Improving brand image and awareness
• Gaining insights into competitors via competitive intelligence

Ultimately, companies can lean on market research techniques to stay ahead of trends and competitors while improving the lives of their customers.

Market research methods take different forms, and you don’t have to limit yourself to just one. Let’s review the most common market research techniques and the insights they deliver.

1. Interviews

3. Focus Groups

4. Observations

5. AI-Driven Market Research

One-on-one interviews are one of the most common market research techniques. Beyond asking direct questions, skilled interviewers can uncover deeper motivations and emotions that drive purchasing decisions. Researchers can elicit more detailed and nuanced responses they might not receive via other methods, such as self-guided surveys.

Interviews also create the opportunity to build rapport with customers and prospects. Establishing a connection with interviewees can encourage them to open up and share their candid thoughts, which can enrich your findings. Researchers also have the opportunity to ask clarifying questions and dig deeper based on individual responses.

Market research surveys provide an easy entry into the consumer psyche. They’re cost-effective to produce and allow researchers to reach lots of people in a short time. They’re also user-friendly for consumers, which allows companies to capture more responses from more people.

Big data and data analytics are making traditional surveys more valuable. Researchers can apply these tools to elicit a deeper understanding from responses and uncover hidden patterns and correlations within survey data that were previously undetectable.

The ways in which surveys are conducted are also changing. With the rise of social media and other online channels, brands and consumers alike have more ways to engage with each other, lending to a continuous approach to market research surveys.

3. Focus groups

Focus groups are “group interviews” designed to gain collective insights. This interactive setting allows participants to express their thoughts and feelings openly, giving researchers richer insights beyond yes-or-no responses.

One of the key benefits of using focus groups is the opportunity for participants to interact with one another. They spark discussions while sharing diverse viewpoints. These sessions can uncover underlying motivations and attitudes that may not be easily expressed through other research methods.

Observing your customers “in the wild” might feel informal, but it can be one of the most revealing market research techniques of all. That’s because you might not always know the right questions to ask. By simply observing, you can surface insights you might not have known to look for otherwise.

This method also delivers raw, authentic, unfiltered data. There’s no room for bias and no potential for participants to accidentally skew the data. Researchers can also pick up on non-verbal cues and gestures that other research methods may fail to capture.

5. AI-driven market research

One of the newer methods of market research is the use of AI-driven market research tools to collect and analyze insights on your behalf. AI customer intelligence tools and consumer insights software like Meltwater Radarly take an always-on approach by going wherever your audience is and continuously predicting behaviors based on current behaviors.

By leveraging advanced algorithms, machine learning, and big data analysis , AI enables companies to uncover deep-seated patterns and correlations within large datasets that would be near impossible for human researchers to identify. This not only leads to more accurate and reliable findings but also allows businesses to make informed decisions with greater confidence.

Tip: Learn how to use Meltwater as a research tool , how Meltwater uses AI , and learn more about consumer insights and about consumer insights in the fashion industry .

No matter the market research methods you use, market research’s effectiveness lies in the questions you ask. These questions should be designed to elicit honest responses that will help you reach your goals.

Examples of common market research questions include:

Demographic market research questions

• What is your age range?
• What is your occupation?
• What is your household income level?
• What is your educational background?
• What is your gender?

Product or service usage market research questions

• How long have you been using [product/service]?
• How frequently do you use [product/service]?
• What do you like most about [product/service]?
• Have you experienced any problems using [product/service]?
• How could we improve [product/service]?
• Why did you choose [product/service] over a competitor’s [product/service]?

Brand perception market research questions

• How familiar are you with our brand?
• What words do you associate with our brand?
• How do you feel about our brand?
• What makes you trust our brand?
• What sets our brand apart from competitors?
• What would make you recommend our brand to others?

Buying behavior market research questions

• What do you look for in a [product/service]?
• What features in a [product/service] are important to you?
• How much time do you need to choose a [product/service]?
• How do you discover new products like [product/service]?
• Do you prefer to purchase [product/service] online or in-store?
• How do you research [product/service] before making a purchase?
• How often do you buy [product/service]?
• How important is pricing when buying [product/service]?
• What would make you switch to another brand of [product/service]?

Customer satisfaction market research questions

• How happy have you been with [product/service]?
• What would make you more satisfied with [product/service]?
• How likely are you to continue using [product/service]?

Bonus Tip: Compiling these questions into a market research template can streamline your efforts.

Market research can offer powerful insights, but it also has some limitations. One key limitation is the potential for bias. Researchers may unconsciously skew results based on their own preconceptions or desires, which can make your findings inaccurate.

• Depending on your market research methods, your findings may be outdated by the time you sit down to analyze and act on them. Some methods struggle to account for rapidly changing consumer preferences and behaviors.
• There’s also the risk of self-reported data (common in online surveys). Consumers might not always accurately convey their true feelings or intentions. They might provide answers they think researchers are looking for or misunderstand the question altogether.
• There’s also the potential to miss emerging or untapped markets . Researchers are digging deeper into what (or who) they already know. This means you might be leaving out a key part of the story without realizing it.

Still, the benefits of market research cannot be understated, especially when you supplement traditional market research methods with modern tools and technology.

Let’s put it all together and explore how to do market research step-by-step to help you leverage all its benefits.

Step 1: Define your objectives

You’ll get more from your market research when you hone in on a specific goal : What do you want to know, and how will this knowledge help your business?

This step will also help you define your target audience. You’ll need to ask the right people the right questions to collect the information you want. Understand the characteristics of the audience and what gives them authority to answer your questions.

Step 2: Select your market research methods

Choose one or more of the market research methods (interviews, surveys, focus groups, observations, and/or AI-driven tools) to fuel your research strategy.

Certain methods might work better than others for specific goals . For example, if you want basic feedback from customers about a product, a simple survey might suffice. If you want to hone in on serious pain points to develop a new product, a focus group or interview might work best.

You can also source secondary research ( complementary research ) via secondary research companies , such as industry reports or analyses from large market research firms. These can help you gather preliminary information and inform your approach.

Step 3: Develop your research tools

Prior to working with participants, you’ll need to craft your survey or interview questions, interview guides, and other tools. These tools will help you capture the right information , weed out non-qualifying participants, and keep your information organized.

You should also have a system for recording responses to ensure data accuracy and privacy. Test your processes before speaking with participants so you can spot and fix inefficiencies or errors.

Step 4: Conduct the market research

With a system in place, you can start looking for candidates to contribute to your market research. This might include distributing surveys to current customers or recruiting participants who fit a specific profile, for example.

Set a time frame for conducting your research. You might collect responses over the course of a few days, weeks, or even months. If you’re using AI tools to gather data, choose a data range for your data to focus on the most relevant information.

Step 5: Analyze and apply your findings

Review your findings while looking for trends and patterns. AI tools can come in handy in this phase by analyzing large amounts of data on your behalf.

Compile your findings into an easy-to-read report and highlight key takeaways and next steps. Reports aren’t useful unless the reader can understand and act on them.

Tip: Learn more about trend forecasting , trend detection , and trendspotting .

Meltwater’s Radarly consumer intelligence suite helps you reap the benefits of market research on an ongoing basis. Using a combination of AI, data science, and market research expertise, Radarly scans multiple global data sources to learn what people are talking about, the actions they’re taking, and how they’re feeling about specific brands.

Our tools are created by market research experts and designed to help researchers uncover what they want to know (and what they don’t know they want to know). Get data-driven insights at scale with information that’s always relevant, always accurate, and always tailored to your organization’s needs.

Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below:

Continue Reading

What Are Consumer Insights? Meaning, Examples, Strategy

How Coca-Cola Collects Consumer Insights

Market Intelligence 101: What It Is & How To Use It

9 Top Consumer Insights Tools & Companies

Market Research Methods: Examples, Tools, & Template [PDFs]

Topics covered ✅.

• Market research methods pdf
• Market research methods examples
• Market research examples
• Types of market research
• Primary market research methods
• Market research methods advantages and disadvantages
• Market research template

You need to have a secure understanding of market research methods if you are currently planning to build a brand or business.

In this article, you'll learn about types of market research, research methods, and what you need to know about customers.

1. Businesses

From start-ups working out of their garage to companies like Amazon, with over 300 million active users, businesses of every size need to invest time and resources into market research in order to be successful.

By being able to recognize consumers’ values and goals, companies can better advertise and tailor their products to customers.

Some companies devote whole teams to generating market research data.

Companies choose to do this because those who utilize effective market research methods have a competitive advantage over others in their industry.

Along with granting a competitive advantage, market research can also provide answers to problems unique to individual businesses.

For example, if a business has found a decrease in sales within the past quarter, market research will allow them to discover the root of the problem and correct it.

Claim My Free Market Research Template

This hub serves as a free template to help you get started and includes free tools, examples, and PDFs for market research.

In business, the market is defined as the sum of individuals and groups that make up potential buyers for a good or service. There are five main types of markets that a business may be involved in.

• The first type is business-to-consumer (B2C). In this type of market, goods and services are marketed to consumers. This makes it the largest market since there are millions of consumers worldwide.
• The business-to-business market (B2B) focuses on goods and services that are sold to other businesses. These markets often overlap with B2C markets.
• The service market can be B2B or B2C and deals with sales services.
• The industrial market sells products and services (such as raw materials or equipment) that are used in the production of other goods.
• The professional service market requires some form of certification to be a part of it (such as medical services and financial advisers).

Businesses use market research to identify their particular target market. Once this is established, additional research is conducted on customers within their market.

3. Customers

Each market has a different set of customers.

To better understand potential customers, market researchers conduct segmentation research and categorize customers in four different ways: geographically, demographically, psychographically, and behaviorally.

• Geographic segmentation pertains to customer location in space.
• Demographic segmentation pertains to the characteristics of a customer.
• Psychographic segmentation pertains to psychological attributes.
• Behavioral segmentation pertains to how people act.

One useful tip in market research is to create user personas .

By collecting demographic and psychographic data on customers, businesses find patterns to create representations of types of users.

Personas can be as broad or as specific as you like, but there are three general questions that can lead to a strong persona.

Who is this persona about?

What does this persona want?

What is preventing this persona from getting what they want?

For example, let’s say a smart board company is analyzing its customers.

They may find that 35% of their sales come from school principals.

By asking these and other branding research questions , the whiteboard company comes up with this persona.

School principals.

For their teachers to be able to (effectively) present and interact with information online while lecturing in front of the class.

Their schools are currently equipped with whiteboards that have not been integrated with technology.

Personas are useful because they allow companies to cater to a large group of people in a particular target market.

By leveraging audience research tools, companies can gather data to tweak their products or create unique advertisements to sell to a specific audience because personas provide them with an increased understanding of how a certain group will react.

4. Types of Market Research

There are many types of market research that a company can do.

With that being said, most types of market research fall into these four categories:

• Primary Market Research
• Secondary Market Research

Qualitative Market Research

Quantitative market research.

Primary and secondary market research both relate to where researchers gather information from.

Qualitative and quantitative research, on the other hand, relate to the type of data that is collected during research.

Qualitative market research is defined as the collection of data from both the primary and secondary markets that cannot be easily measured or expressed in a numerical form.

This type of data is collected through avenues such as interviews and case studies.

Qualitative market research helps in inferring and estimation, but without a lack of numerical data, it can be difficult to point towards conclusions from this type of data as facts.

Quantitative market research is defined as the collection of data from both the primary and secondary markets that are easily measured or expressed in a numerical way.

Polls and different types of surveys for research are efficient strategies to collect this type of data.

By using statistical analysis, researchers can use such data to (accurately) express patterns and predict trends.

While this data is great for producing reliable evidence, it can be restrictive.

Quantitative market research makes it difficult to provide context or let participants tailor their responses.

Researchers should strive to collect quantitative and qualitative data.

A combination of these types of data can provide an even greater picture of the market as a whole.

5. Primary Market

Primary market research is information that researchers collect themselves from primary sources.

Primary sources are any sort of raw, first-hand data that is collected straight from the subject in question.

By going directly to current or potential customers, companies can gather the information that their competitors do not have.

This can be through interviews, online surveys, product testing market research, or other methods of study. Within this type of research, there are two types of results.

• Exploratory results - general, open-ended research conducted to determine the nature of a problem that is not yet fully understood.
• Conclusive results - more precise, often quantitative research that is done to solve the problem that was scoped out through exploratory research.

6. Secondary Market

Secondary market research is information that researchers collect from secondary sources.

Secondary sources can come from public sources, commercial sources, and educational institutions.

Public sources include public libraries and government websites.

Commercial sources include newspapers and television recordings.

Professors and project teams working at educational institutions frequently publish their findings, which can be very beneficial to researchers as well.

By conducting this type of research, companies either hope to discover previously overlooked trends, or work to apply a new perspective toward historical data.

In the past, this type of research was carried out by going to libraries and reading through old files.

Now, however, researchers have coined the term “desktop research” when referring to secondary market research.

There are thousands of reliable websites to source data from, making this type of research very easy to be carried out without leaving one's computer.

7. Market Research Method

There are six basic steps to conducting market research:

Step 1. Define your problem

This step sets up researchers with a goal for their project.

By defining what you want to research, it's easier to come up with additional questions to ask.

Are you conducting branding market research ? Customers? Competitors? Testing products?

These are all important questions to ask yourself when thinking about your problem.

Step 2. Define your sample

Who is the target market being sampled?

By defining your sample, it's easier to gear questions towards subjects, as well as draw conclusions about the people participating in the research.

Step 3. Collect your data

This step in the research process will differ based on if you want to collect qualitative or quantitative data.

The most common types of data collection through observation are surveys, focus groups, interviews, and direct observation (explained in detail below).

Step 4. Analyze data and draw conclusions

This step determines what you take away from the data that was collected.

Step 5. Create a research report

A research report is how you display your findings to others who are going to use them. Research is useless if people cannot understand or interpret the data.

Step 6. Take future steps

After analyzing the research reports, the next step is to see what future work there is to be done.

Often the market research process will start over again, this time with a new problem and goal based on previous research.

8. Observation

Researchers observe participants in many ways.

Listed below are four ways that primary market research data can be collected.

• Surveys - Surveys are questionnaires sent out to a sample of potential customers. These questionnaires ask questions about consumer behavior in relation to your products or services. Online surveys are the easiest and most effective type of survey, compared to mail-in and over-the-phone methods. Surveys are an effective way to collect information quickly and inexpensively because they require very little time or money on your part; however, they can only answer questions that relate directly back to your products or services.
• Interviews - Interviews are one-on-one conversations that a researcher has with a customer or potential customer. Interviews can be beneficial, as they provide insight into a customer’s experience, as well as emotions that surveys may not be able to pick up on.
• Focus Groups - Focus groups are similar to interviews, except they're conducted in a group setting. They can also be beneficial, in the sense that more people are questioned face to face. Pitfalls of this type of method, however, include group conformity (where group members converge towards the same answers) and moderator bias.
• Direct Observation - Observation is when researchers record what they see the subject do. This can be done in the subject's natural environment or in a controlled setting. This is the most powerful type of research because researchers are able to see participants interact with their product organically (with no outside influences).

9. Marketing

The data collected from market research is what leads companies to develop unique marketing strategies.

User personas allow companies to market directly to a particular group of people.

Market research also provides companies with information on which market their product will perform the best in, which in turn influences marketing strategies.

10. Product

At the end of the day, the marketing methods used will ultimately depend on what your product is.

Local companies will have a very different research and marketing strategy than companies that operate globally.

Researchers must identify and carry out different research methods based on their product.

This can only be done successfully if they have a strong understanding of market research methodology.

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Market research examines consumer behavior and trends in the economy to help a business develop and fine-tune its business idea and strategy. It helps a business understand its target market by gathering and analyzing data.

Market research is the process of evaluating the viability of a new service or product through research conducted directly with potential customers. It allows a company to define its target market and get opinions and other feedback from consumers about their interest in a product or service.

Research may be conducted in-house or by a third party that specializes in market research. It can be done through surveys and focus groups, among other ways. Test subjects are usually compensated with product samples or a small stipend for their time.

Key Takeaways

• Companies conduct market research before introducing new products to determine their appeal to potential customers.
• Tools include focus groups, telephone interviews, and questionnaires.
• The results of market research inform the final design of the product and determine how it will be positioned in the marketplace.
• Market research usually combines primary information, gathered directly from consumers, and secondary information, which is data available from external sources.

Market Research

How market research works.

Market research is used to determine the viability of a new product or service. The results may be used to revise the product design and fine-tune the strategy for introducing it to the public. This can include information gathered for the purpose of determining market segmentation . It also informs product differentiation , which is used to tailor advertising.

A business engages in various tasks to complete the market research process. It gathers information based on the market sector being targeted by the product. This information is then analyzed and relevant data points are interpreted to draw conclusions about how the product may be optimally designed and marketed to the market segment for which it is intended.

It is a critical component in the research and development (R&D) phase of a new product or service introduction. Market research can be conducted in many different ways, including surveys, product testing, interviews, and focus groups.

Market research is a critical tool that companies use to understand what consumers want, develop products that those consumers will use, and maintain a competitive advantage over other companies in their industry.

Primary Market Research vs. Secondary Market Research

Market research usually consists of a combination of:

• Primary research, gathered by the company or by an outside company that it hires
• Secondary research, which draws on external sources of data

Primary Market Research

Primary research generally falls into two categories: exploratory and specific research.

• Exploratory research is less structured and functions via open-ended questions. The questions may be posed in a focus group setting, telephone interviews, or questionnaires. It results in questions or issues that the company needs to address about a product that it has under development.
• Specific research delves more deeply into the problems or issues identified in exploratory research.

Secondary Market Research

All market research is informed by the findings of other researchers about the needs and wants of consumers. Today, much of this research can be found online.

Secondary research can include population information from government census data , trade association research reports , polling results, and research from other businesses operating in the same market sector.

History of Market Research

Formal market research began in Germany during the 1920s. In the United States, it soon took off with the advent of the Golden Age of Radio.

Companies that created advertisements for this new entertainment medium began to look at the demographics of the audiences who listened to each of the radio plays, music programs, and comedy skits that were presented.

They had once tried to reach the widest possible audience by placing their messages on billboards or in the most popular magazines. With radio programming, they had the chance to target rural or urban consumers, teenagers or families, and judge the results by the sales numbers that followed.

Types of Market Research

Face-to-face interviews.

From their earliest days, market research companies would interview people on the street about the newspapers and magazines that they read regularly and ask whether they recalled any of the ads or brands that were published in them. Data collected from these interviews were compared to the circulation of the publication to determine the effectiveness of those ads.

Market research and surveys were adapted from these early techniques.

To get a strong understanding of your market, it’s essential to understand demand, market size, economic indicators, location, market saturation, and pricing.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a small number of representative consumers chosen to try a product or watch an advertisement.

Afterward, the group is asked for feedback on their perceptions of the product, the company’s brand, or competing products. The company then takes that information and makes decisions about what to do with the product or service, whether that's releasing it, making changes, or abandoning it altogether.

Phone Research

The man-on-the-street interview technique soon gave way to the telephone interview. A telephone interviewer could collect information in a more efficient and cost-effective fashion.

Telephone research was a preferred tactic of market researchers for many years. It has become much more difficult in recent years as landline phone service dwindles and is replaced by less accessible mobile phones.

Survey Research

As an alternative to focus groups, surveys represent a cost-effective way to determine consumer attitudes without having to interview anyone in person. Consumers are sent surveys in the mail, usually with a coupon or voucher to incentivize participation. These surveys help determine how consumers feel about the product, brand, and price point.

Online Market Research

With people spending more time online, market research activities have shifted online as well. Data collection still uses a survey-style form. But instead of companies actively seeking participants by finding them on the street or cold calling them on the phone, people can choose to sign up, take surveys, and offer opinions when they have time.

This makes the process far less intrusive and less rushed, since people can participate on their own time and of their own volition.

How to Conduct Market Research

The first step to effective market research is to determine the goals of the study. Each study should seek to answer a clear, well-defined problem. For example, a company might seek to identify consumer preferences, brand recognition, or the comparative effectiveness of different types of ad campaigns.

After that, the next step is to determine who will be included in the research. Market research is an expensive process, and a company cannot waste resources collecting unnecessary data. The firm should decide in advance which types of consumers will be included in the research, and how the data will be collected. They should also account for the probability of statistical errors or sampling bias .

The next step is to collect the data and analyze the results. If the two previous steps have been completed accurately, this should be straightforward. The researchers will collect the results of their study, keeping track of the ages, gender, and other relevant data of each respondent. This is then analyzed in a marketing report that explains the results of their research.

The last step is for company executives to use their market research to make business decisions. Depending on the results of their research, they may choose to target a different group of consumers, or they may change their price point or some product features.

The results of these changes may eventually be measured in further market research, and the process will begin all over again.

Benefits of Market Research

Market research is essential for developing brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Since it is unlikely for a product to appeal equally to every consumer, a strong market research program can help identify the key demographics and market segments that are most likely to use a given product.

Market research is also important for developing a company’s advertising efforts. For example, if a company’s market research determines that its consumers are more likely to use Facebook than X (formerly Twitter), it can then target its advertisements to one platform instead of another. Or, if they determine that their target market is value-sensitive rather than price-sensitive, they can work on improving the product rather than reducing their prices.

Market research only works when subjects are honest and open to participating.

Example of Market Research

Many companies use market research to test new products or get information from consumers about what kinds of products or services they need and don’t currently have.

For example, a company that’s considering starting a business might conduct market research to test the viability of its product or service. If the market research confirms consumer interest, the business can proceed confidently with its business plan . If not, the company can use the results of the market research to make adjustments to the product to bring it in line with customer desires.

What Are the Main Types of Market Research?

The main types of market research are primary research and secondary research. Primary research includes focus groups, polls, and surveys. Secondary research includes academic articles, infographics, and white papers.

Qualitative research gives insights into how customers feel and think. Quantitative research uses data and statistics such as website views, social media engagement, and subscriber numbers.

What Is Online Market Research?

Online market research uses the same strategies and techniques as traditional primary and secondary market research, but it is conducted on the Internet. Potential customers may be asked to participate in a survey or give feedback on a product. The responses may help the researchers create a profile of the likely customer for a new product.

What Are Paid Market Research Surveys?

Paid market research involves rewarding individuals who agree to participate in a study. They may be offered a small payment for their time or a discount coupon in return for filling out a questionnaire or participating in a focus group.

What Is a Market Study?

A market study is an analysis of consumer demand for a product or service. It looks at all of the factors that influence demand for a product or service. These include the product’s price, location, competition, and substitutes as well as general economic factors that could influence the new product’s adoption, for better or worse.

Market research is a key component of a company’s research and development (R&D) stage. It helps companies understand in advance the viability of a new product that they have in development and to see how it might perform in the real world.

Britannica Money. “ Market Research .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Market Research and Competitive Analysis .”

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How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research

From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.

Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples. 

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A comprehensive (and successful) business strategy is not complete without some form of market research—you can’t make informed and profitable business decisions without truly understanding your customer base and the current market trends that drive your business.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct quick, effective market research  using an approach called 'lean market research'. It’s easier than you might think, and it can be done at any stage in a product’s lifecycle.

How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps

What is market research, why is market research so valuable, advantages of lean market research, 4 common market research methods, 5 common market research questions, market research faqs.

We’ll jump right into our 4-step approach to lean market research. To show you how it’s done in the real world, each step includes a practical example from Smallpdf , a Swiss company that used lean market research to reduce their tool’s error rate by 75% and boost their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) by 1%.

Research your market the lean way...

From on-page surveys to user interviews, Hotjar has the tools to help you scope out your market and get to know your customers—without breaking the bank.

The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours.

1. Create simple user personas

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data from people who use websites and products similar to your own. Start by defining broad user categories, then elaborate on them later to further segment your customer base and determine your ideal customer profile .

How to get the data: use on-page or emailed surveys and interviews to understand your users and what drives them to your business.

How to do it right: whatever survey or interview questions you ask, they should answer the following questions about the customer:

Who are they?

What is their main goal?

What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?

Pitfalls to avoid:

Don’t ask too many questions! Keep it to five or less, otherwise you’ll inundate them and they’ll stop answering thoughtfully.

Don’t worry too much about typical demographic questions like age or background. Instead, focus on the role these people play (as it relates to your product) and their goals.

How Smallpdf did it: Smallpdf ran an on-page survey for a couple of weeks and received 1,000 replies. They learned that many of their users were administrative assistants, students, and teachers.

Next, they used the survey results to create simple user personas like this one for admins:

Who are they? Administrative Assistants.

What is their main goal? Creating Word documents from a scanned, hard-copy document or a PDF where the source file was lost.

What is their main barrier to achieving it? Converting a scanned PDF doc to a Word file.

💡Pro tip: Smallpdf used Hotjar Surveys to run their user persona survey. Our survey tool helped them avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and find out who their users really are, in their own words. 

You can design a survey and start running it in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop builder. Customize your survey to fit your needs, from a sleek one-question pop-up survey to a fully branded questionnaire sent via email. 

We've also created 40+ free survey templates that you can start collecting data with, including a user persona survey like the one Smallpdf used.

2. Conduct observational research

Observational research involves taking notes while watching someone use your product (or a similar product).

Overt vs. covert observation

Overt observation involves asking customers if they’ll let you watch them use your product. This method is often used for user testing and it provides a great opportunity for collecting live product or customer feedback .

Covert observation means studying users ‘in the wild’ without them knowing. This method works well if you sell a type of product that people use regularly, and it offers the purest observational data because people often behave differently when they know they’re being watched. 

Tips to do it right:

Record an entry in your field notes, along with a timestamp, each time an action or event occurs.

Make note of the users' workflow, capturing the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘for whom’ of each action.

Don’t record identifiable video or audio data without consent. If recording people using your product is helpful for achieving your research goal, make sure all participants are informed and agree to the terms.

Don’t forget to explain why you’d like to observe them (for overt observation). People are more likely to cooperate if you tell them you want to improve the product.

💡Pro tip: while conducting field research out in the wild can wield rewarding results, you can also conduct observational research remotely. Hotjar Recordings is a tool that lets you capture anonymized user sessions of real people interacting with your website. 

Observe how customers navigate your pages and products to gain an inside look into their user behavior . This method is great for conducting exploratory research with the purpose of identifying more specific issues to investigate further, like pain points along the customer journey and opportunities for optimizing conversion .

With Hotjar Recordings you can observe real people using your site without capturing their sensitive information

How Smallpdf did it: here’s how Smallpdf observed two different user personas both covertly and overtly.

Observing students (covert): Kristina Wagner, Principle Product Manager at Smallpdf, went to cafes and libraries at two local universities and waited until she saw students doing PDF-related activities. Then she watched and took notes from a distance. One thing that struck her was the difference between how students self-reported their activities vs. how they behaved (i.e, the self-reporting bias). Students, she found, spent hours talking, listening to music, or simply staring at a blank screen rather than working. When she did find students who were working, she recorded the task they were performing and the software they were using (if she recognized it).

Observing administrative assistants (overt): Kristina sent emails to admins explaining that she’d like to observe them at work, and she asked those who agreed to try to batch their PDF work for her observation day. While watching admins work, she learned that they frequently needed to scan documents into PDF-format and then convert those PDFs into Word docs. By observing the challenges admins faced, Smallpdf knew which products to target for improvement.

“Data is really good for discovery and validation, but there is a bit in the middle where you have to go and find the human.”

3. Conduct individual interviews

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. They allow you to dig deep and explore their concerns, which can lead to all sorts of revelations.

Listen more, talk less. Be curious.

Act like a journalist, not a salesperson. Rather than trying to talk your company up, ask people about their lives, their needs, their frustrations, and how a product like yours could help.

Ask "why?" so you can dig deeper. Get into the specifics and learn about their past behavior.

Record the conversation. Focus on the conversation and avoid relying solely on notes by recording the interview. There are plenty of services that will transcribe recorded conversations for a good price (including Hotjar!).

Avoid asking leading questions , which reveal bias on your part and pushes respondents to answer in a certain direction (e.g. “Have you taken advantage of the amazing new features we just released?).

Don't ask loaded questions , which sneak in an assumption which, if untrue, would make it impossible to answer honestly. For example, we can’t ask you, “What did you find most useful about this article?” without asking whether you found the article useful in the first place.

Be cautious when asking opinions about the future (or predictions of future behavior). Studies suggest that people aren’t very good at predicting their future behavior. This is due to several cognitive biases, from the misguided exceptionalism bias (we’re good at guessing what others will do, but we somehow think we’re different), to the optimism bias (which makes us see things with rose-colored glasses), to the ‘illusion of control’ (which makes us forget the role of randomness in future events).

How Smallpdf did it: Kristina explored her teacher user persona by speaking with university professors at a local graduate school. She learned that the school was mostly paperless and rarely used PDFs, so for the sake of time, she moved on to the admins.

A bit of a letdown? Sure. But this story highlights an important lesson: sometimes you follow a lead and come up short, so you have to make adjustments on the fly. Lean market research is about getting solid, actionable insights quickly so you can tweak things and see what works.

💡Pro tip: to save even more time, conduct remote interviews using an online user research service like Hotjar Engage , which automates the entire interview process, from recruitment and scheduling to hosting and recording.

You can interview your own customers or connect with people from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. And no need to fret about taking meticulous notes—Engage will automatically transcribe the interview for you.

4. Analyze the data (without drowning in it)

The following techniques will help you wrap your head around the market data you collect without losing yourself in it. Remember, the point of lean market research is to find quick, actionable insights.

A flow model is a diagram that tracks the flow of information within a system. By creating a simple visual representation of how users interact with your product and each other, you can better assess their needs.

You’ll notice that admins are at the center of Smallpdf’s flow model, which represents the flow of PDF-related documents throughout a school. This flow model shows the challenges that admins face as they work to satisfy their own internal and external customers.

Affinity diagram

An affinity diagram is a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to better understand the big picture. For example, if you ask your users about their profession, you’ll notice some general themes start to form, even though the individual responses differ. Depending on your needs, you could group them by profession, or more generally by industry.

We wrote a guide about how to analyze open-ended questions to help you sort through and categorize large volumes of response data. You can also do this by hand by clipping up survey responses or interview notes and grouping them (which is what Kristina does).

“For an interview, you will have somewhere between 30 and 60 notes, and those notes are usually direct phrases. And when you literally cut them up into separate pieces of paper and group them, they should make sense by themselves.”

Pro tip: if you’re conducting an online survey with Hotjar, keep your team in the loop by sharing survey responses automatically via our Slack and Microsoft Team integrations. Reading answers as they come in lets you digest the data in pieces and can help prepare you for identifying common themes when it comes time for analysis.

Hotjar lets you easily share survey responses with your team

Customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the way a typical prospect becomes a paying customer. It outlines their first interaction with your brand and every step in the sales cycle, from awareness to repurchase (and hopefully advocacy).

The above  customer journey map , created by our team at Hotjar, shows many ways a customer might engage with our tool. Your map will be based on your own data and business model.

📚 Read more: if you’re new to customer journey maps, we wrote this step-by-step guide to creating your first customer journey map in 2 and 1/2 days with free templates you can download and start using immediately.

Next steps: from research to results

So, how do you turn market research insights into tangible business results? Let’s look at the actions Smallpdf took after conducting their lean market research: first they implemented changes, then measured the impact.

Implement changes

Based on what Smallpdf learned about the challenges that one key user segment (admins) face when trying to convert PDFs into Word files, they improved their ‘PDF to Word’ conversion tool.

We won’t go into the details here because it involves a lot of technical jargon, but they made the entire process simpler and more straightforward for users. Plus, they made it so that their system recognized when you drop a PDF file into their ‘Word to PDF’ converter instead of the ‘PDF to Word’ converter, so users wouldn’t have to redo the task when they made that mistake. 

In other words: simple market segmentation for admins showed a business need that had to be accounted for, and customers are happier overall after Smallpdf implemented an informed change to their product.

Measure results

According to the Lean UX model, product and UX changes aren’t retained unless they achieve results.

Smallpdf’s changes produced:

A 75% reduction in error rate for the ‘PDF to Word’ converter

A 1% increase in NPS

Greater confidence in the team’s marketing efforts

"With all the changes said and done, we've cut our original error rate in four, which is huge. We increased our NPS by +1%, which isn't huge, but it means that of the users who received a file, they were still slightly happier than before, even if they didn't notice that anything special happened at all.”

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Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. This might include primary research on brand awareness and customer satisfaction or secondary market research on market size and competitive analysis. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

David Darmanin, one of Hotjar’s founders, launched two startups before Hotjar took off—but both companies crashed and burned. Each time, he and his team spent months trying to design an amazing new product and user experience, but they failed because they didn’t have a clear understanding of what the market demanded.

With Hotjar, they did things differently . Long story short, they conducted market research in the early stages to figure out what consumers really wanted, and the team made (and continues to make) constant improvements based on market and user research.

Without market research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters:

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about them, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ‘what’, while research gives you the ‘why’. Big data, user analytics , and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices. Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices , and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and focusing on their customer experience , you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum. Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and product features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you’ll likely need to make changes once your untested business plan gets put into practice.

Lean User Experience (UX) design is a model for continuous improvement that relies on quick, efficient research to understand customer needs and test new product features.

Lean market research can help you become more...

Efficient: it gets you closer to your customers, faster.

Cost-effective: no need to hire an expensive marketing firm to get things started.

Competitive: quick, powerful insights can place your products on the cutting edge.

As a small business or sole proprietor, conducting lean market research is an attractive option when investing in a full-blown research project might seem out of scope or budget.

There are lots of different ways you could conduct market research and collect customer data, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just one research method. Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.

Which method you use may vary based on your business type: ecommerce business owners have different goals from SaaS businesses, so it’s typically prudent to mix and match these methods based on your particular goals and what you need to know.

1. Surveys: the most commonly used

Surveys are a form of qualitative research that ask respondents a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. When we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals about their company’s approach to research , surveys proved to be the most commonly used market research technique.

What makes online surveys so popular?  

They’re easy and inexpensive to conduct, and you can do a lot of data collection quickly. Plus, the data is pretty straightforward to analyze, even when you have to analyze open-ended questions whose answers might initially appear difficult to categorize.

We've built a number of survey templates ready and waiting for you. Grab a template and share with your customers in just a few clicks.

💡 Pro tip: you can also get started with Hotjar AI for Surveys to create a survey in mere seconds . Just enter your market research goal and watch as the AI generates a survey and populates it with relevant questions. 

Once you’re ready for data analysis, the AI will prepare an automated research report that succinctly summarizes key findings, quotes, and suggested next steps.

An example research report generated by Hotjar AI for Surveys

2. Interviews: the most insightful

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep (and reading non-verbal cues), but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice.

Regardless of how you conduct it, any type of in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.

What makes interviews so insightful?

By speaking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll gain greater empathy for their experience , and you can follow insightful threads that can produce plenty of 'Aha!' moments.

3. Focus groups: the most unreliable

Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, or marketing message to gain deeper insights.

What makes focus groups so unreliable?

If you’re new to market research, we wouldn’t recommend starting with focus groups. Doing it right is expensive , and if you cut corners, your research could fall victim to all kinds of errors. Dominance bias (when a forceful participant influences the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study) are two of the many ways your focus group data could get skewed.

4. Observation: the most powerful

During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor).

What makes observation so clever and powerful?

‘Fly-on-the-wall’ observation is a great alternative to focus groups. It’s not only less expensive, but you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other. The only downside is that you can’t get inside their heads, so observation still isn't a recommended replacement for customer surveys and interviews.

The following questions will help you get to know your users on a deeper level when you interview them. They’re general questions, of course, so don’t be afraid to make them your own.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

How you ask this question, and what you want to know, will vary depending on your business model (e.g. business-to-business marketing is usually more focused on someone’s profession than business-to-consumer marketing).

It’s a great question to start with, and it’ll help you understand what’s relevant about your user demographics (age, race, gender, profession, education, etc.), but it’s not the be-all-end-all of market research. The more specific questions come later.

2. What does your day look like?

This question helps you understand your users’ day-to-day life and the challenges they face. It will help you gain empathy for them, and you may stumble across something relevant to their buying habits.

3. Do you ever purchase [product/service type]?

This is a ‘yes or no’ question. A ‘yes’ will lead you to the next question.

4. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve?

This question strikes to the core of what someone’s trying to accomplish and why they might be willing to pay for your solution.

5. Take me back to the day when you first decided you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this goal.

This is the golden question, and it comes from Adele Revella, Founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute . It helps you get in the heads of your users and figure out what they were thinking the day they decided to spend money to solve a problem.

If you take your time with this question, digging deeper where it makes sense, you should be able to answer all the relevant information you need to understand their perspective.

“The only scripted question I want you to ask them is this one: take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this kind of a goal. Not to buy my product, that’s not the day. We want to go back to the day that when you thought it was urgent and compelling to go spend money to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Just tell me what happened.”

— Adele Revella , Founder/CEO at Buyer Persona Institute

Bonus question: is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

This question isn’t just a nice way to wrap it up—it might just give participants the opportunity they need to tell you something you really need to know.

That’s why Sarah Doody, author of UX Notebook , adds it to the end of her written surveys.

“I always have a last question, which is just open-ended: “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” And sometimes, that’s where you get four paragraphs of amazing content that you would never have gotten if it was just a Net Promoter Score [survey] or something like that.”

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research asks questions that can’t be reduced to a number, such as, “What is your job title?” or “What did you like most about your customer service experience?” 

Quantitative research asks questions that can be answered with a numeric value, such as, “What is your annual salary?” or “How was your customer service experience on a scale of 1-5?”

 → Read more about the differences between qualitative and quantitative user research .

How do I do my own market research?

You can do your own quick and effective market research by 

Surveying your customers

Building user personas

Studying your users through interviews and observation

Wrapping your head around your data with tools like flow models, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps

What is the difference between market research and user research?

Market research takes a broad look at potential customers—what problems they’re trying to solve, their buying experience, and overall demand. User research, on the other hand, is more narrowly focused on the use (and usability ) of specific products.

What are the main criticisms of market research?

Many marketing professionals are critical of market research because it can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s often easier to convince your CEO or CMO to let you do lean market research rather than something more extensive because you can do it yourself. It also gives you quick answers so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Do I need a market research firm to get reliable data?

Absolutely not! In fact, we recommend that you start small and do it yourself in the beginning. By following a lean market research strategy, you can uncover some solid insights about your clients. Then you can make changes, test them out, and see whether the results are positive. This is an excellent strategy for making quick changes and remaining competitive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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The 8 types of market research and how to use them

There are eight types of marketing research you can try to stay ahead of the competition. Learn more about marketing research methods and how to use them.

Latest posts on Tips

Typeform    |    08.2024

Typeform    |    07.2024

“If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.”

Doesn’t sound too threatening if you’ve always been successful, right?

Continuing to do what you’ve always done means you’ll fall behind—and probably fade to darkness—to where all the forgotten brands go.

Take Kodak. They were a major player in photography for decades—remember? When digital photography boomed, Kodak kept doing what they always did. Their business floundered and people forgot about them. Well, everyone apart from Pitbull.

Now, look at Fujifilm, one of Kodak’s biggest competitors. They did the opposite and looked for ways to apply their expertise in film to the technology of the new millennium instead. Their company is still going strong.

The same goes for research. If you’re doing the same old types of market research, speaking to the same old people, and doing the same old tired surveys—you’re already behind.

How do you decide what kind of market research you need to do? It all comes down to what you need to know and what your business goals are.

In this article, we’ll explain the various types of market research you can use to solve issues and challenges in your business. We’ll throw you a freebie, too, and provide some market research tips about when to use each strategy.

Let’s get you ahead of the curve.

1. Brand research

Brand research helps with creating and managing a company’s brand, or identity. A company’s brand is the images, narratives, and characteristics people associate with it.

When to use it

Brand research can be used at every stage in a business’s lifecycle, from creation to new product launches and re-branding. There are at least seven types of brand research:

Brand advocacy: How many of your customers are willing to recommend your brand?

Brand awareness : Does your target market know who you are and consider you a serious option?

Brand loyalty: Are you retaining customers?

Brand penetration: What is the proportion of your target market using your brand?

Brand perception : What do people think of as your company’s identity or differentiating qualities?

Brand positioning: What is the best way to differentiate your brand from others in the consumer’s mind and articulate it in a way that resonates?

Brand value: How much are people willing to pay for an experience with your brand over another?

How to do it

A researcher will use several types of market research methods to assess your and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Generally, they will conduct competitor research, both qualitative and quantitative, to get a picture of the overall marketplace. Focus groups and interviews can be used to learn about their emotions and associations with certain brands.

Market research surveys are useful to determine features and benefits that differentiate you from competitors . These are then translated into emotionally compelling consumer language.

2. Campaign effectiveness

This type of market research is designed to evaluate whether your advertising messages are reaching the right people and delivering the desired results. Successful campaign effectiveness research can help you sell more and reduce customer acquisition costs.

It’s estimated people see up to 5,000 advertising messages each day. That means attention is a scarce resource, so campaign effectiveness research should be used when you need to spend your advertising dollars effectively.

Campaign effectiveness research depends on which stage of the campaign you use it in (ideally, it’s all of them!). Quantitative research can be conducted to provide a picture of how your target market views advertising and address weaknesses in the advertising campaign.

3. Competitive analysis

Competitive analysis allows you to assess your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in the marketplace, providing you with fuel to drive a competitive advantage.

No business exists in a vacuum—competitive analysis is an integral part of any business and market plan. Whether you’re just getting started, moving into a new market, or doing a health check of your business, a competitive analysis will be invaluable.

A researcher will typically choose a few of your main competitors and analyze things like their marketing strategy, customer perceptions, revenue or sales volume, and so on.

Secondary sources such as articles, references, and advertising are excellent sources of competitive information; however, primary research, such as mystery shopping and focus groups, can offer valuable information on customer service and current consumer opinions.

4. Consumer insights

Consumer insights research does more than tell you about who your customers are and what they do. It reveals why customers behave in certain ways and helps you leverage that to meet your business goals.

Knowing your customers deeply is integral to creating a strategic marketing plan. This type of market research can help you anticipate consumer needs, spark innovation, personalize your marketing, solve business challenges, and more.

Consumer insights research should be specific to your business—it’s about getting to know your target audience and customers. Various market research methods can be used, such as interviews, ethnography, survey research, social monitoring, and customer journey research.

Here are some of the characteristics you should understand through consumer insights research:

Purchase habits

Interests, hobbies, passions

Personal and professional information

How they consume media and advertising

5. Customer satisfaction research

Customer satisfaction research is a type of market research that measures customers’ experiences with products or services, specifically looking at how those meet, exceed, or fail to live up to their expectations.

Customer satisfaction is a strong indicator of customer retention and overall business performance. Successful customer satisfaction research should help you understand what your customers like, dislike, and feel needs improvement. You can use this type of market research to look at the quality and design of products, speed and timeliness of delivery, staff and service reliability, knowledge, and friendliness, market price, and value for money.

There are several ways to measure customer satisfaction, most commonly using surveys. An NPS or Voice of the Customer Survey can help you measure customer loyalty. Customer Effort Scoring measures how satisfied people are with customer service or problem resolution. CSAT is any survey that measures customer satisfaction , typically measured using Likert scale surveys . They can be conducted at different points in the customer experience, allowing deeper insight into that moment.

6. Customer segmentation research

Customer segmentation studies aim to divide markets or customers into smaller groups or personas with similar characteristics to enable targeted marketing. By understanding how people in each category behave, you can understand how each influences revenue.

Customer segmentation research is best used if you’re ready to give customers individualized experiences. Not every customer in your target market is the same. The more you understand each specific persona, the easier it is to focus on delivering personalized marketing, build loyal relations, price products effectively, and forecast how new products and services will perform in each segment.

Market researchers use four characteristics to segment customers.

Demographics: demographic information such as age, gender, family status, education, household income, occupation and so on

Geography: where people live, from cities and countries to whether they are city dwellers or suburbanites

Psychographics: socioeconomic status, class, lifestyle, personality traits, generation, interests, hobbies, etc.

Behavior: brand affinity, consumption and shopping habits, spending, etc.

A researcher will identify your current customers and collect data about them through various market research methods, such as surveys, database research, website analytics, interviews, and focus groups. The aim is to gather as much information as possible.

7. Product development

Market research for product development involves using customer knowledge to inform the entire process of creating or improving a product, service, or app and bringing it to market.

Innovation is hard work. A quick Google will tell you that 80–95% of new products fail every year. Conducting market research for product and app development helps minimize the risk of a new product or change going bust as it enters the market. There are three stages where you can use market research:

Conception: The moment you’re thinking about adding something new, market research can find market opportunities and provide insights into customer challenges or their jobs-to-be-done, so you can find a way to fill the gap.

Formation: Once you have an idea, market researchers can help you turn it into a concept that can be tested. You can learn more about strategizing pricing, testing advertising and packaging, value proposition, and so on.

Introduction: Market research can help you gauge attitudes toward the product once it’s in the market and adapt your messaging as it rolls out.

Keep making the product better or find opportunities to introduce it to new markets.

Product development research will utilize different market research methods, depending on the goal of the research. A researcher could present focus groups with product concepts and listen to their opinions, conduct interviews to learn more about their pain points, or perform user testing to see how they interact with an app or website.

8. Usability testing

Usability testing is concerned with understanding how customers use your products in real time. It can involve physical products, like a new blender, or digital products like a website or app.

Usability testing is helpful when you need to detect problems or bugs in early prototypes or beta versions before launching them. It typically costs far less to test a product or service beforehand than to pull a flawed product off the shelves or lose sales because of poor functionality.

There are several types of usability tests, which vary based on whether you’re testing a physical or digital product.

Journey testing involves observing the customer experience on an app or website and monitoring how they perform. This type of study can be done online

Eye tracking studies monitor where people’s eyes are drawn. Generally, they are conducted on websites and apps, but can also be done in stores to analyze where people look while shopping

Learn ability studies quantify the learning curve over time to see which problems people encounter after repeating the same task

Click tracking follows users’ activity on websites to evaluate the linking structure of a website

Checklist testing involves giving users tasks to perform and recording or asking them to review their experience

Combining types of market research with Typeform

When it comes to market research, you need to ask yourself what business challenge or question you’re trying to address. Then, select the appropriate methods and tools, such as market research automation , to simplify your process.From there, the world of useful data and actionable insights will open to you.

About the author

We're Typeform - a team on a mission to transform data collection by bringing you refreshingly different forms.

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The Ultimate Guide to Market Research: Types, Benefits, and Real-World Examples

Ryan Fratzke

Partner & Executive Strategist

Today's consumers hold a lot of power when making purchase decisions. With a quick inquiry in a search engine or search bar within a social media platform, they can access genuine reviews from their peers without relying on sales reps.

Considering this shift in consumer behavior, adjusting your marketing strategy so it caters to the modern-day buying process is essential . To achieve this, you must thoroughly understand your target audience, the market you operate in, and the factors influencing their decision-making.

This is where market research can be leveraged so you stay current with your audience and industry. 

Article Overview

In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about how to conduct market research, including:

• Why market research is essential for understanding your target audience, the market you operate in, and factors influencing decision-making
• What are the different types of market research, such as primary and secondary market research
• How to collect information about your customers and target market to determine the success of a new or existing product, improve your brand, and communicate your company's value
• Real-world examples of companies leveraging market research

What is market research?

Market research is a necessary process that involves collecting and documenting information about your target market and customers. This helps you determine the success of a new product, improve an existing one, or understand how your brand is perceived. You can then turn this research into profits by  developing marketing strategies and campaigns to effectively communicate your company's value .

While market research can provide insights into various aspects of an industry, it is not a crystal ball that can predict everything about your customers. Market researchers typically explore multiple areas of the market, which can take several weeks or even months to get a complete picture of the business landscape.

Even by researching just one of those areas, you can gain better insights into who your buyers are and what unique value proposition you can offer them that no other business currently provides.

Of course, you can simply use your industry experience and existing customer insights to make sound judgment calls. However, it's important to note that market research provides additional benefits beyond these strategies. There are two things to consider:

• Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. Your immediate resources may equal those of your competition's immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
• Your brand's customers do not represent the entire market's attitudes, only those who are attracted to your brand.

The market research services industry is experiencing rapid growth , indicating a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from approximately $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 5%. 

Your competitors have highly skilled individuals within the industry, meaning your available personnel resources are likely similar to those of your competitors. So what are you going to do to get ahead?

You’re going to do thorough market research, which is why seeking answers from a larger sample size is essential. Remember that your customers represent only a portion of the market already attracted to your brand, and their attitudes may not necessarily reflect those of the entire market. You could be leaving money on the table by leaving out untapped customers .

Why do market research?

Market research helps you meet your buyers where they are. Understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired outcomes is invaluable as our world becomes increasingly noisy and demanding. This knowledge will help you tailor your product or service to appeal to them naturally. 

What’s even better is when you're ready to grow your business, market research can also guide you in developing an effective market expansion strategy.

Market research provides valuable insights into factors that impact your profits and can help you to :

• Identify where your target audience and current customers are conducting their product or service research
• Determine which competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• Keep up with the latest trends in your industry and understand what your buyers are interested in
• Understand who makes up your market and what challenges they are facing
• Determine what influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
• Analyze consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Assess the demand for the business initiatives you're investing in
• Identify unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be turned into selling opportunities
• Understand consumer attitudes about pricing for your product or service.

Market research provides valuable information from a larger sample size of your target audience, enabling you to obtain accurate consumer attitudes. By eliminating any bias or assumptions you have about your target audience, you can make better business decisions based on the bigger picture. 

As you delve deeper into your market research, you will come across two types of research: primary and secondary market research . Simply put, think of two umbrellas beneath market research - one for primary and one for secondary research. In the next section, we will discuss the difference between these two types of research. That way, if you work with a market who wants to use them, you’ll be ready with an understanding of how they can each benefit your business.

Primary vs. Secondary Research

Both primary and secondary research are conducted to collect actionable information on your product. That information can then be divided into two types: qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative research focuses on public opinion and aims to determine how the market feels about the products currently available. On the other hand, quantitative research seeks to identify relevant trends in the data gathered from public records. 

Let's take a closer look at these two types.

Primary Research

Primary research involves gathering first-hand information about your market and its customers. It can be leveraged to segment your market and create focused buyer personas . Generally, primary market research can be categorized into exploratory and specific studies.

Exploratory Primary Research

This type of primary market research is not focused on measuring customer trends; instead, it is focused on identifying potential problems worth addressing as a team. It is usually conducted as an initial step before any specific research is done and may involve conducting open-ended interviews or surveys with a small group of people.

Specific Primary Research

After conducting exploratory research, businesses may conduct specific primary research to explore issues or opportunities they have identified as necessary. Specific research involves targeting a smaller or more precise audience segment and asking questions aimed at solving a suspected problem. Specific primary research reveals problems that are unique to your audience so you can then offer a unique (and valuable) solution.

Secondary Research

Secondary research refers to collecting and analyzing data that has already been published or made available in public records. This may include market statistics, trend reports, sales data, and industry content you already can access. Secondary research really shines when you go to your competitors . The most commonly used sources of secondary market research include:

• Public sources
• Commercial sources
• Internal sources

Public Sources

When conducting secondary market research, the first and most accessible sources of information are usually free . That’s right–these public sources are free and at your fingertips so there’s no reason for you to not be checking them out and leveraging them for your own gain.

One of the most common types of public sources is government statistics. According to Entrepreneur, two examples of public market data in the United States are the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor & Statistics. These sources offer helpful information about the state of various industries nationwide including:

Commercial Sources

Research agencies such as Pew, Fratzke, Gartner, or Forrester often provide market reports containing industry insights from their own in-depth studies . These reports usually come at a cost if you want to download and obtain the information, but these agencies are experts at what they do, so the research is most likely valuable.

Internal Sources

Internal sources of market data can include average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other data on the health of old and new accounts. They are often overlooked when it comes to conducting market research because of how specific the data is; however, these sources can be valuable as they provide information on the organization's historical data.

By analyzing this information, you can gain insights into what your customers want now . In addition to these broad categories, there are various ways to conduct market research. Let’s talk about them.  

Types of Market Research

• Interviews (in-person or remote)

Focus Groups

• Product/ Service Use Research

Observation-Based Research

Buyer persona research, market segmentation research, pricing research.

• Competitive Analysis Research

Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Brand awareness research, campaign research.

Interviews can be conducted face-to-face or virtually, allowing for a natural conversation flow while observing the interviewee's body language. By asking questions about themselves, the interviewee can help you create buyer personas , which are made by using information about the ideal customer, such as:

• Family size 
• Challenges faced at work or in life 

And other aspects of their lifestyle. This buyer profile can shape your entire marketing strategy , from the features you add to your product to the content you publish on your website. Your target audience will feel that the marketing was made just for them and will be drawn to your product or service.

Focus groups are market research involving a few carefully selected individuals who can test your product, watch a demonstration, offer feedback, and answer specific questions. This research can inspire ideas for product differentiation or highlight the unique features of your product or brand that set it apart from others in the market.  This is a great market research option to gain specific feedback, which you can use to improve your services .

Product/Service Use Research

Product or service usage research provides valuable insights into how and why your target audience uses your product or service.  This research can help in various ways including:

•  Identifying specific features of your offering that appeal to your audience. 
• Allowing you to assess the usability of your product or service for your target audience. 

According to a report published in 2020, usability testing was rated the most effective method for discovering user insights, with a score of 8.7 out of 10. In comparison, digital analytics scored 7.7, and user surveys scored 6.4.

Observation-based research is a process that involves observing how your target audience members use your product or service. The way that you intended your product or service to be used may not be the actual way that it is used. Observation-based research helps you understand what works well in terms of customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX), what problems they face, and which aspects of your product or service can be improved to make it easier for them to use.

To better understand how your potential customers make purchasing decisions in your industry, it is essential to know who they are. This is where buyer persona research comes in handy. Buyer or marketing personas are fictional yet generalized representations of your ideal customers. They give you someone to whom you want your marketing efforts to empathize and move, even though they don’t really exist. 

Gathering survey data and additional research to correctly identify your buyer personas will help you to visualize your audience so you can streamline your communications and inform marketing strategy . Key characteristics to include in a buyer persona are:

• Job title(s)
• Family size
• Major challenges

Market segmentation research enables you to classify your target audience into various groups or segments based on specific and defining characteristics. This method allows you to understand their needs, pain points, expectations, and goals more effectively.

Pricing research can provide valuable insights about the prices of similar products or services in your market. It can help you understand what your target audience expects to pay for your offerings and what would be a reasonable price for you to set. Correct pricing is important because if you set it too high, consumers will go to your cheaper competitor; but if you set it too low, your consumers may become suspicious of your product or service and still end up with your competitor. This information allows you to develop a solid pricing strategy aligning with your business goals and objectives. 

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses are incredibly valuable as they provide a deep understanding of your market and industry competition. Through these analyses, you can gain insights like: 

• What works well in your industry 
• What your target audience is already interested in regarding products like yours
• Which competitors you should work to keep up with and surpass 
• How you can differentiate yourself from the competition

Understanding customer satisfaction and loyalty is crucial to encouraging repeat business and identifying what drives customers to return (such as loyalty programs, rewards, and exceptional customer service). Researching this area will help you determine the most effective methods to keep your customers coming back again and again. If you have a CRM system, consider further utilizing automated customer feedback surveys to improve your understanding of their needs and preferences.

Brand awareness research helps you understand the level of familiarity your target audience has with your brand. It provides insights into your audience members' perceptions and associations when they think about your business.This type of research reveals what they believe your brand represents. This information is valuable for developing effective marketing strategies, improving your brand's reputation, and increasing customer loyalty .

To improve your marketing campaigns, you need to research by analyzing the success of your past campaigns among your target audience and current customers. This requires experimentation and thoroughly examining the elements that resonate with your audience. By doing so, you can identify the aspects of your campaigns that matter most to your audience and use them as a guide for future campaigns. 

Now that you understand the different market research categories and types let's look at how to conduct your market research.  Using our expertise and experience, we’ve created a step-by-step guide to conducting market research.

How to Do Market Research (Detailed Roadmap)

• Define the problem or objective of the research. 
• Determine the type of data needed. 
• Identify the sources of data. 
• Collect the data. 
• Analyze the data. 
• Interpret the results. 
• Report the findings. 
• Take action based on the findings.

1. Define the problem or objective of the research

Defining the problem or objective of the research is the first step in conducting market research. This involves identifying the specific issue that the research is trying to address. It is essential to be clear and specific about the research problem or objective, as it will guide the entire research process.

2. Determine the type of data needed

After defining the research problem or objective, the next step is determining the data type needed to address the issue. This involves deciding whether to collect primary or secondary data. Primary data is collected directly from the source, while secondary data is collected from existing sources such as government reports or market research studies.

3. Identify the sources of data

Once the data type has been determined, the next step is identifying the data sources. This involves identifying potential sources of primary and secondary data that can be used to address the research problem or objective. Primary data sources can include surveys, focus groups, and interviews, while secondary data sources can include government reports, industry publications, and academic journals.

4. Collect the data

After identifying the data sources, the next step is to collect the data. This involves designing and implementing a data collection plan consistent with the research problem or objective. The data collection plan should specify the methods and procedures for collecting data, sample size, and sampling method.

5. Analyze the data

Once the data has been collected, the next step is to analyze the data. This involves organizing, summarizing, and interpreting the data to identify patterns, relationships, and trends. The research problem or objective should guide the data analysis process and be conducted using appropriate statistical methods and software.

6. Interpret the results

After analyzing the data, the next step is to interpret the results. This involves drawing conclusions from the data analysis and using the results to address the research problem or objective. It is essential to analyze the results objectively and to avoid making assumptions or drawing conclusions that are not supported by the data.

7. Report the findings

Try identifying common themes to create a story and action items.To make the process easier, use your favorite presentation software to create a report, as it will make it easy to add quotes, diagrams, or call clips.

Feel free to add your flair, but the following outline should help you craft a clear summary:

• Background: What are your goals, and why did you conduct this study?
• Participants: Who you talked to? A table works well to break groups down by persona and customer/prospect.
• Executive Summary: What were the most exciting things you learned? What do you plan to do about it?
• Key Findings: Identify the key findings using data visualizations and emphasize key points.
• Recommendations + Action Plan: Your analysis will uncover actionable insights to fuel strategies and campaigns you can run to get your brand in front of buyers earlier and more effectively. Provide your list of priorities, action items , a timeline, and its impact on your business.

8. Take action based on the findings

The final step in conducting market research is to take action based on the findings. This involves using the results to make informed decisions about the marketing strategy, product development, or other business decisions. It is important to use the findings to drive action and to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the action taken continuously.

How to Prepare for Market Research Projects

Identify a persona group to engage, prepare research questions for your market research participants, list your primary competitors.

The idea is to use your persona as a reference point for understanding and reaching out to your industry's audience members. Your business might cater to more than one persona, and that's completely acceptable! However, you must be mindful of each persona while strategizing and planning your content and campaigns. 

How to Identify the Right People to Engage for Market Research

When selecting a group on which to conduct market research , it is essential to consider individuals with the same characteristics as your target audience. 

If you need to research multiple target audiences, recruit separate groups for each one. Select people who have recently interacted with you by looking through social media for post interactions or seeing if they’ve made recent purchases from you.

If you are planning to conduct an evaluation, it is recommended that you focus on people who have completed it within the last six months. However, if you have a longer sales cycle or a specific market, you can extend the period up to a year. It is crucial to ask detailed questions during the evaluation, so the participants' experience must be fresh.

Gather a mix of participants

If you want to expand your customer base, you’re going to want to get viewpoints of your product or service from every angle. Consider getting this mix by recruiting individuals who have already purchased your product, those who have bought a competitor's product, and those who haven't purchased anything. While targeting your existing customers may be the easiest option, gathering information from non-customers can help you gain a more balanced market perspective .

We recommend taking the following steps to select a mix of participants:

• Create a list of customers who made a recent purchase . This is usually the most accessible group to recruit. If you have a CRM system with list segmentation capabilities, run a report of deals that closed within the past six months and filter it for the characteristics you're looking for. Otherwise, work with your sales team to get them a list of appropriate accounts.
• Create a list of customers who were in an active evaluation but didn't make a purchase. You should get a mix of buyers who either purchased from a competitor or decided not to purchase. Again, you can obtain this list from your CRM or your Sales team's system to track deals.
• Use social media to call for participants. Try reaching out to people who follow you on social media but decided not to buy from you. Some may be willing to talk to you and explain why they did not purchase your product.
• Leverage your network . Spread the word that you're conducting a study to your coworkers, former colleagues, and LinkedIn connections. Even if your direct connections don't qualify, some will likely have a coworker, friend, or family member who does.
• Choose an incentive to motivate participants to spend time on your study. If you're on a tight budget , you can reward participants for free by giving them exclusive access to content. 

Related Resources:

• Digital Marketing Strategy: Keep It Simple
• 5 Marketing Predictions for the Looming Recession
• Recession Proof Marketing Strategies for Your Business
• Marketing Operations Framework - The Five Ps
• Biggest Marketing Challenges Leaders Face
• Digital Marketing Benchmarks & KPIs - How To Compare Your Performance

Preparation is key when conducting research in hopes of gaining productive and informative conversations. This involves creating a discussion guide, whether it is for a focus group, an online survey, or a phone interview. The guide should help you cover all the relevant topics and manage your time efficiently.

The discussion guide should be in an outline format, with an allocated time and open-ended questions for each section. All the questions must be open-ended, as asking closed questions may lead the interviewee to respond with a simple "yes" or "no" answer. You may need more detailed answers to make informed decisions, so be sure to ask follow-up questions as necessary.  Also leave out any leading questions as they may unintentionally influence the interviewee's response, skewing your research results.

It's essential to identify your competitors accurately and you may even have some hidden in plain sight.  There are some instances where your company's business division might compete with your main product or service, even though that company's brand might have a different focus. Take a look at Apple:  the company is known primarily for its laptops and mobile devices, but Apple Music competes with Spotify over its music streaming service.

From a content perspective, you might compete with a blog, YouTube channel, or similar publication for inbound website visitors — even though their products don't overlap with yours. An example of this is when a toothpaste company might compete with publications like Health.com or Prevention on specific blog topics related to health and hygiene, even though the magazines don't sell oral care products.

Here are a few ways to build your competitor list:

• Check your industry quadrant on G2 Crowd: This is a significant first step for secondary market research in some industries. G2 Crowd aggregates user ratings and social data to create "quadrants" that show companies as contenders, leaders, niche players, or high performers in their respective industries. G2 Crowd specializes in digital content, IT services, HR, e-commerce, and related business services.
• Download a market report: Companies like Forrester and Gartner offer free and gated market forecasts yearly on the vendors leading their industry. On Forrester's website, for example, you can select "Latest Research" from the navigation bar and browse Forrester's latest material using a variety of criteria to narrow your search. These reports are good assets to save on your computer.
• Use social media : Social networks can be excellent company directories if you use the search bar correctly. On LinkedIn, for example, select the search bar and enter the name of the industry you're pursuing. Then, under "More," select "Companies" to narrow your results to the businesses that include this or a similar industry term on their LinkedIn profile.

Identifying Content Competitors

Search engines can be beneficial when it comes to secondary market research . To identify the online publications competing with your business, start with the overarching industry term you identified earlier, and then come up with more specific industry terms that are related to your company . For example, if you run a catering business, you might consider yourself a "food service" company, as well as a vendor in "event catering," "cake catering," "baked goods," and so on.

Once you have this list, follow these steps:

• Google it: Running a search on Google for the industry terms that describe your company can be very beneficial. You may come across a mix of product developers, blogs, magazines, and other websites.
• Compare your search results against your buyer persona: Remember the persona you created during the primary research stage? You can use it to evaluate whether a publication you found through Google could steal website traffic from you. If the website's content aligns with what your buyer persona would want to see, it is a potential competitor and should be added to your list of competitors.

After a series of similar Google searches for the industry terms you identify with, look for repetition in the website domains that have come up.

When searching, examine the first two or three pages of results. These websites are considered reputable sources of content in your industry and should be monitored closely as you create your collection of videos, reports, web pages, and blog posts.

Market Research Examples

Mcdonald's focus on customer feedback and profiling.

McDonald's invests in developing a detailed consumer profile to attract and retain customers, including parents of young children who appreciate the family-friendly atmosphere and menus. The brand seeks feedback from customers through surveys and questionnaires in stores, social media, and its mobile app. It also monitors customer feedback on digital channels.

Nike's Extensive Research and Collaboration for Running Shoes Development

Nike invests heavily in creating running shoes that cater to the needs of its customers, which it determines through extensive market research and customer surveys. The brand goes to great lengths to understand its customers' preferences, such as the type of running surface, the distance they run, and their running style, to develop shoes that meet their specific needs.

In addition to customer surveys, Nike also collaborates with athletes to develop shoes that cater to their specific requirements. This research helps Nike improve its existing running shoe models and innovate new ones, ensuring that the brand stays ahead of the competition.

Disney employs focus groups that specifically cater to children to test out their new characters and ideas.

The Walt Disney Company invests millions of dollars in creating captivating stories tested for their effectiveness with children, the intended audience. Disney executives hold focus groups with preschoolers and kindergartners several times a year to gather their opinions and feedback on TV episodes, Disney characters, and more. 

This market research strategy is effective because children are the ultimate audience that Disney aims to please. The collected feedback helps the company improve existing content to meet the preferences of its audience and ensure continued success as a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

KFC tested its meatless product in specific markets before launching it nationwide.

In 2019, KFC began developing and testing a meatless version of its famous chicken. However, instead of immediately launching the product nationwide, they decided to test it in select stores in the Atlanta, Georgia area. 

This is an innovative and practical approach to market research, as it allows the company to determine the product's sales performance on a smaller scale before committing too many resources to it. If the meatless chicken fails to gain popularity in Georgia, KFC can make the necessary changes to the product before introducing it to the broader market.

Yamaha conducted a survey to determine whether to use knobs or sliding faders on the Montage keyboard.

Yamaha is a Japanese corporation that produces various products, from motorcycles to golf cars to musical instruments. When it began developing its new Montage keyboard, the team was unsure whether to use knobs or sliding faders on the product. 

To address this dilemma, Yamaha used Qualtrics to send a survey to their customers. Within just a few hours , they received 400 responses. By using survey feedback, Yamaha ensured that it was designing a product that would perfectly meet the preferences of its audiences.

The Body Shop used social listening to determine how to reposition brand campaigns based on customer feedback.

The Body Shop is a well-known brand that offers ethically sourced and natural products. They take pride in their core value of sustainability. The Body Shop team tracked conversations to understand the sustainability subtopics that were most important to their audiences. 

They found that their customers cared a lot about refills. Based on this information, the Body Shop team confidently relaunched their Refill Program across 400 stores globally in 2021, with plans to add another 400 in 2022. Market research confirmed that their refill concept was on the right track and also highlighted the need for increased efforts to demonstrate how much the Body Shop cares about its customers' values .

VideoTranscript

The takeaway.

Fratzke Consulting offers a comprehensive suite of market research services to help brands gain valuable insights into their target market, competitors, and industry trends. Our expert team utilizes various primary and secondary research methods to gather accurate and unbiased data, including surveys, competitive research, and industry reports. With Fratzke Consulting, you'll have the tools to succeed in today's rapidly evolving business landscape.

Interested in learning more? Book a free audit consultation today.

Ryan Fratzke is a Partner and Executive Strategist at Fratzke, specializing in transforming mid-size businesses into human-centered brands through storytelling, strategy, culture, and technology. 

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Market research: Everything you need to know

Last updated

5 February 2023

Reviewed by

Market research is key to developing any product or service to ensure you’re creating something that people actually want to use. This can save your company time and money while ensuring a customer-centric reputation from day one.

This guide looks at the ins and outs of market research from past and present. Keep reading to discover the power of market research and everything you need to know. 

• What is market research?

Market research is how businesses explore, learn, and gather information about a market or a specific market segment. You gather the research data in different ways, depending on your primary purpose. Reasons to undertake market research include wanting to:

Uncover potential buyer needs or market trends

Test how attractive new product ideas may be before you develop them

Learn buyer opinions about existing products and services compared to your competitors 

• When to use market research

To differentiate your brand from your competitors, you need the right data. Market research makes it easier to create a brand, product, or service that appeals to current and potential buyers.

You and your team must decide how valuable a business idea or a new or modified product may be before integrating it into your overall business plan. The data you collect gives you the basis for those decisions.

Market research is a critical part of strategic business planning. It tests ideas, enables effective resource allocation, and tightens your relationship with your current and future customer base.

You decide which methods to use based on the data you want to collect, why you want to collect it, and how you'll make the best use of it.

• Why do market research?

Effective market research gives you enough valuable data to make the right decisions. You want to minimize risk and optimize your marketing to maximize revenue and hit targets. Those decisions mainly revolve around how you can:

Build or improve on your brand identity

Attract more new buyers

Increase sales to existing buyers using upsell, cross-sell, and down-sell strategies

Improve your marketing impact to build better sales relationships 

Maintain or expand your market share

Catch, overtake, or stay ahead of your competitors

Decide the best ways to communicate with your target markets

Identify any product, service, or performance issues and how you may correct them

When you use accurate and comprehensive market research data, you can successfully enter a new market or grow your turnover in an existing one.

• How often should you do market research?

You should do market research frequently. That way, you will know you're still meeting buyer needs as they change before current sales levels potentially fall off. You can successfully introduce new or modified products and services by consulting your market to meet additional or changing needs and wants.

• Outcomes of good market research

Customer motivations change. People often buy a product or service to solve a problem, achieve a goal, satisfy a desire, or support an aspiration.

Motivations may be at the forefront of a buyer's mind: 'I am hungry, so I will buy something to eat.' 

Or they may be more subtle: 'I need new footwear, and I also want to look cool.' Researchers call this achieving or displaying approved cultural status.

When you know which motivations result in different groups of people buying savory or sweet food to satisfy that immediate hunger need, you can deliver focused advertising messages and make the greatest impact. 

What 'cool' means to Gen Z or Millennial buyers is often different, so knowing how to differentiate your marketing will deliver a high impact. Making the right advertising decisions can create and grow demand, which you’ll meet to meet.

To take a different example, let’s look at middle managers who aspire to the C-Suite. They’re likely to choose an office product or system which will solve the current processing problem, improve efficiencies, and maximize productivity. However, they’ll also select a product that makes them look innovative and budget-minded in the eyes of their colleagues and superiors. 

A high-tech crash is devastating. Office equipment that provides full technology backup and integrates with the corporate network, the cloud, and all mobile devices while delivering high-quality presentation materials should be an attractive product. Researching these broader issues will separate you from competitors who only research at an office-operational level. 

Your sales presentations will need to do two things:

Focus on the basic features, advantages, and benefits of your product

Raise the buyer's thinking about the career implications of buying from you

When you know and understand which motivators encourage buying decisions and which of those are more important than others, you can:

Make or modify products and services that you know will appeal to your target markets

Advertise, market, and sell more effectively

This is how you rise above and separate your company, products, and services from your competitors.

Motivations change, so market research keeps you in the loop

Another reason for doing market research is that motivations change. They change with age and broader fashion and lifestyle trends in the B2C universe, while business trends influence motivations in the B2B universe.

It's critical to know how your chosen market segments perceive your brand and offerings as their key motivations evolve. Market research gives you practical answers about your product or service while learning how your target market feels about them. Now we've looked at the what and the why, let's move on to the how.

• What are the main types of market research?

There are three main types of market research. In addition, it helps to know four terms before we look at the research methods.

Exploratory and specific market research

Exploratory market research is about asking questions to learn something new. If a business idea leads to a potential new offering, exploratory research will help you determine whether there is a market for it and how big that may be.

Specific market research would follow the exploratory phase. It deep dives into specific issues, problems, and possible solutions the exploratory phase exposed. Or you could use it to learn more about your current offerings in your existing markets.

Primary and .css-1yhk21f{display:inline;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;} .css-kl9n25{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;background:transparent;border:0;color:inherit;cursor:pointer;-webkit-flex-shrink:0;-ms-flex-negative:0;flex-shrink:0;display:inline;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-kl9n25:disabled{opacity:0.6;pointer-events:none;} secondary market research

Primary research is what you, your team, or market research consultants do. You go straight to your target group and get the information you want. The information may be exploratory or specific.

Secondary research is about collecting what's already out there. It could be census data, academic research publications, survey results from government agencies, your trade association, and even your competitors. Facebook and other online sites mine vast amounts of data about their members and make it available for very target-specific marketing campaigns.

Now, let's look at the three main types of research.

What is online market research?

When you do market research on the internet, you're doing online market research. You can do both qualitative and quantitative studies and a secondary web search for published data that you want.

Qualitative research may include videos of current buyers using your products, one-on-one interviews, and group discussions. You will see how they use your products and how they and others respond to using them.

Quantitative research gathers data from surveys, questionnaires, and polls. Online research means participants can opt in, rather than your team cold-calling or mailing the survey. They can also take it at a time that suits them, making them more likely to be focused and thoughtful.

What you learn tells you about purchasing behavior and the user's perspective of advantages and shortcomings. Depending on the survey you create, results might tell you things like: 

What buyers have bought previously

Why they bought those items

How they assess your product

How your product compares to your competitors' products

What they will base future purchase decisions on.

Some benefits of online market research

Detailed and wide-ranging online research tends to be cheaper than other methods. Data collection is:

Recorded directly, rather than collecting it from separate groups or surveyors

Less likely to have inputting errors

Quicker to do an in-depth analysis of the raw results and complete them faster

Quicker to do reruns to provide nuanced opinion data

Easier for survey management to oversee and complete the reports

Faster to get the reports out to interested parties

What are paid market research surveys?

You pay people to attend an online session, ask prepared questions, and record the answers. You ask the same questions to each survey participant about the product or brand in question. After the session, you review and summarize all the answers to provide common opinions for your analysis.

When the group members can handle and use a product, they can more easily comment on it and compare it with other products from your company or competitors. Sometimes, you may wish to do the survey in real time. This could occur at a supermarket where the participant responds to the product merchandising of you and your competitors.

Choose your paid participants carefully. You want them to display your ideal niche market personas' approaches, attitudes, beliefs, and emotional responses.

What is a market study?

Market studies are extensive and best before developing a major innovation. You want to ensure the whole market finds the innovation appealing and affordable over a long time rather than just a small segment. Your study will investigate market dynamics and what motivates or demotivates purchase decisions. The study will include the following:

The size of the potential market in terms of potential buyers

Purchase histories of similar products or products that served a similar purpose

Likely purchase frequency of the primary and secondary products

Likely price ranges the target market will find acceptable

Competitor market share

Competitor advantages and shortcomings as perceived by your target market

Needs and wants not currently being met by products comparable to your new product

Let’s imagine you’re launching a new vacuum cleaner. You can identify a broader market by looking into purchase histories of similar products. Brooms did the job vacuum cleaners do today. 

Identifying the purchase frequency of primary and secondary products is also wise. If you sell heavy-duty vacuum cleaners, you’ll know they’re not easy to carry around. So how likely is your customer to also buy a lightweight vac for minor or quick cleaning? They may even add a hand-held vac to their cleaning arsenal to remove pet hairs and easily clean the drapes and blinds. 

• The history of market research

Before we discuss the specific steps to plan and execute successful market research, let's look at the history of this fascinating subject.

One of the earliest market research studies happened in 1914. Charles Parlin of Curtis Publishing Company said that automobile manufacturers could no longer sell what they decided, but what their customers wanted. 

His boss, Mr. Curtis, asked him to visit hundreds of dealerships to see where the rubber actually met the road. Parlin gave 2,500 sheets of research to his boss, so they could decide which advertisements worked best. Running better ads meant more advertising revenue, meaning wider magazine distribution. This also helped Mr. Curtis charge higher advertising fees.

Market research became something of a science in the 1920s. Rather than a local retailer or manufacturer speaking with local customers to see what they did and didn’t want, the Roaring Twenties’ mass product advertising and nationwide distribution demanded a more powerful approach. 

Automobiles encouraged the growth of city suburbs, while increased electricity supply meant companies could sell appliances. Commercial radio channels, telephone communication, and going to the movies reduced the feeling of rural and small-town isolation. Suddenly, everyone wanted what was once only available to a few. Manufacturing and innovation took off.

Making it, advertising it, and shipping it did not guarantee sales. Getting people to want it meant effective advertising. Making adverts that worked resulted in Daniel Starch coming up with a theory in 1920: People had to see and read attractive yet believable ads to act on them.

Starch and his team stopped as many people in the street as possible. They showed them an ad and asked if they remembered seeing it. If they had seen it, Starch asked which magazine they saw the ad in, what they thought of it, and whether they acted on it.

They collated the data to compare which magazine ads had the greatest effect on buying decisions.

George Gallup developed the research not by showing people ads but by asking: 

If they could remember which ads they'd seen

What they thought of them

What they did about it

His team eventually did face-to-face and telephone surveys.

Radio stations began to use Gallup's methods, asking people what they remembered hearing. They aimed to encourage manufacturers and retailers to run certain ads to appeal to their listeners.

In the 1930s, Robert Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld of Columbia University began focus groups to understand buyers, their preferences, objections, and motivations. This research uncovered mismatches between what people said and what they did.

They learned that a dominating group member could say something about their own experience or behavior and ask the group if others had noticed the same. Other group members sometimes agreed because the dominant member was persuasive, not because it was true for them. Many just went along with it, proving how much group dynamics matter. 

After World War II, market research became more concerned with understanding what made certain people respond to certain types of ad messages from a personal point of view.

Ernest Dichter used Freudian psychology to develop motivational research. While he went a little overboard on Freudian interpretation (people use soap to cleanse themselves of sin), he got his message out to advertisers. He surmised that if you figure out the personality of your product, you will know how to market it to people who exhibit the same personality traits.

Before we smacked gender roles on the head, Dichter would have linked an efficient, house-proud housewife to an effective vacuum cleaner. She needed a product that gave her home a permanent clean appearance. Her husband would love coming home to a shiny house, and her lady friends would be in awe. It's not just about vacs being better than brooms.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, computers and telephones enabled quantitative methods to be the focus of market researchers. Telephone surveys began to replace face-to-face interviews. John Howard said qualitative and quantitative research should work side-by-side. 

Researchers used psychology, sociology, and management science techniques to study buyer motivations and how their emotions impacted owning and consuming certain products and services. Focus groups became the order of the day once again.

Psychologists like Allan Pease, who pioneered studies in body language, began to develop the theory of buyer personas. He said that how companies advertise and sell to people is just as important as the psychological, social, and emotional principles researchers had previously developed.

In the 1970s and 80s, Neil Rackham further determined how critical it is to understand how senior execs make major purchase decisions. Researching your market from their point of view is critical. While you may have ascertained a need for the product, further market research must understand how C-Suite execs go through the purchase decision-making process.

That brings us up to date. Market research has developed into a sophisticated scientific process. When you research effectively, you’ll get the data you need to build your business.

• The steps for conducting market research

Researchers use different models, but we’ve included all the steps, so you won't miss anything.

As with all projects, actions fall into four categories: Planning, execution, assessment, and implementation.

1. Planning

Identify the need for a particular market research project

Review what you have done so far and already know to ensure your research will be direct, broad, and deep enough to deliver your intended results

Decide on the purpose and desired outcomes of your study

Determine your research objectives

Choose your research team and methodology

2. Execution

Create the research project methodology and process  (qualitative, quantitative, primary, or secondary) to deliver on the objectives 

Determine your research methods (i.e., online surveys, focus groups)

Create your data collection forms, questionnaires, etc.

Select your research targets (past, present, potential customers, or specific customer segments if you know them) 

Decide on the number of people you will contact, plus where and how to contact them. For your research to be reliable, the number must be large enough to be a good cross-section of your target market.

Collect the data

3. Assessment

Analyze the data

Decide on any follow-ups to collect more data or to refine your understanding of what you have already collected

Decide if further analysis of the data will deliver relevant and valuable nuanced opinions

Review the results

Write the report

Present the research findings and recommendations to appropriate stakeholders

4. Implementation

Based on the research results and recommendations, determine what impactful actions to execute to deliver your intended business results.

• How to get started

Your first step is to review what you have in your hand and decide who to share it with. When you and your team are clear about all the aspects of market research we've shared, you can decide which ideas, market segments, and products or services you should be researching. 

Should you be using a customer insights hub?

Do you want to discover previous research faster?

Do you share your research findings with others?

Do you analyze research data?

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14 Market Research Examples

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

Example #1: National bank’s A/B testing

You can learn what customers want by conducting experiments on real-life customer decisions using A/B testing. When you ensure your tests do not have any validity threats, the information you garner can offer very reliable insights into customer behavior.

Here’s an example from Flint McGlaughlin, CEO of MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute, and the creator of its  online marketing course .

A national bank was working with MECLABS to discover how to increase the number of sign-ups for new checking accounts.

Customers who were interested in checking accounts could click on an “Open in Minutes” link on the bank’s homepage.

Creative Sample #1: Anonymized bank homepage

After clicking on the homepage link, visitors were taken to a four-question checking account selector tool.

Creative Sample #2: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool

After filling out the selector tool, visitors were taken to a results page that included a suggested package (“Best Choice”) along with a secondary option (“Second Choice”). The results page had several calls to action (CTAs). Website visitors were able to select an account and begin pre-registration (“Open Now”) or find out more information about the account (“Learn More”), go back and change their answers (“Go back and change answers”), or manually browse other checking options (“Other Checking Options”).

Creative Sample #3: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool results page

After going through the experience, the MECLABS team hypothesized that the selector tool wasn’t really delivering on the expectation the customer had after clicking on the “Open in Minutes” CTA. They created two treatments (new versions) and tested them against the control experience.

In the first treatment, the checking selector tool was removed, and instead, customers were directly presented with three account options in tabs from which customers could select.

Creative Sample #4: Checking account landing page Treatment #1

The second treatment’s landing page focused on a single product and had only one CTA. The call-to-action was similar to the CTA customers clicked on the homepage to get to this page — “Open Now.”

Creative Sample #5: Checking account landing page Treatment #2

Both treatments increased account applications compared to the control landing page experience, with Treatment #2 generating 65% more applicants at a 98% level of confidence.

Creative Sample #6: Results of bank experiment that used A/B testing

You’ll note the Level of Confidence in the results. With any research tactic or tool you use to learn about customers, you have to consider whether the information you’re getting really represents most customers, or if you’re just seeing outliers or random chance.

With a high Level of Confidence like this, it is more likely the results actually represent a true difference between the control and treatment landing pages and that the results aren’t just a random event.

The other factor to consider is — testing in and of itself will not produce results. You have to use testing as research to actually learn about the customer and then make changes to better serve the customer.

In the video How to Discover Exactly What the Customer Wants to See on the Next Click: 3 critical skills every marketer must master , McGlaughlin discussed this national bank experiment and explained how to use prioritization, identification and deduction to discover what your customers want.

This example was originally published in Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want .

Example #2: Consumer Reports’ market intelligence research from third-party sources

The first example covers A/B testing. But keep in mind, ill-informed A/B testing isn’t market research, it’s just hoping for insights from random guesses.

In other words, A/B testing in a vacuum does not provide valuable information about customers. What you are testing is crucial, and then A/B testing is a means to help better understand whether insights you have about the customer are either validated or refuted by actual customer behavior. So it’s important to start with some research into potential customers and competitors to inform your A/B tests.

For example, when MECLABS and MarketingExperiments (sister publisher to MarketingSherpa) worked with Consumer Reports on a public, crowdsourced A/B test, we provided a market intelligence report to our audience to help inform their test suggestions.

Every successful marketing test should confirm or deny an assumption about the customer. You need enough knowledge about the customer to create marketing messages you think will be effective.

For this public experiment to help marketers improve their split testing abilities, we had a real customer to work with — donors to Consumer Reports.

To help our audience better understand the customer, the MECLABS Marketing Intelligence team created the 26-page ConsumerReports Market Intelligence Research document (which you can see for yourself at that link).

This example was originally published in Calling All Writers and Marketers: Write the most effective copy for this Consumer Reports email and win a MarketingSherpa Summit package and Consumer Reports Value Proposition Test: What you can learn from a 29% drop in clickthrough .

Example #3: Virtual event company’s conversation

What if you don’t have the budget for A/B testing? Or any of the other tactics in this article?

Well, if you’re like most people you likely have some relationships with other human beings. A significant other, friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, customers, a nemesis (“Newman!”). While conducting market research by talking to these people has several validity threats, it at least helps you get out of your own head and identify some of your blind spots.

WebBabyShower.com’s lead magnet is a PDF download of a baby shower thank you card ‘swipe file’ plus some extras. “Women want to print it out and have it where they are writing cards, not have a laptop open constantly,” said Kurt Perschke, owner, WebBabyShower.com.

That is not a throwaway quote from Perschke. That is a brilliant insight, so I want to make sure we don’t overlook it. By better understanding customer behavior, you can better serve customers and increase results.

However, you are not your customer. So you must bridge the gap between you and them.

Often you hear marketers or business leaders review an ad or discuss a marketing campaign and say, “Well, I would never read that entire ad” or “I would not be interested in that promotion.” To which I say … who cares? Who cares what you would do? If you are not in the ideal customer set, sorry to dent your ego, but you really don’t matter. Only the customer does.

Perschke is one step ahead of many marketers and business leaders because he readily understands this. “Owning a business whose customers are 95% women has been a great education for me,” he said.

So I had to ask him, how did he get this insight into his customers’ behavior? Frankly, it didn’t take complex market research. He was just aware of this disconnect he had with the customer, and he was alert for ways to bridge the gap. “To be honest, I first saw that with my wife. Then we asked a few customers, and they confirmed it’s what they did also. Writing notes by hand is viewed as a ‘non-digital’ activity and reading from a laptop kinda spoils the mood apparently,” he said.

Back to WebBabyShower. “We've seen a [more than] 100% increase in email signups using this method, which was both inexpensive and evergreen,” Perschke said.

This example was originally published in Digital Marketing: Six specific examples of incentives that worked .

Example #4: Spiceworks Ziff Davis’ research-informed content marketing

Marketing research isn’t just to inform products and advertising messages. Market research can also give your brand a leg up in another highly competitive space – content marketing.

Don’t just jump in and create content expecting it to be successful just because it’s “free.” Conducting research beforehand can help you understand what your potential audience already receives and where they might need help but are currently being served.

When Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) published its annual State of IT report, it invested months in conducting primary market research, analyzing year-over-year trends, and finally producing the actual report.

“Before getting into the nuts and bolts of writing an asset, look at market shifts and gaps that complement your business and marketing objectives. Then, you can begin to plan, research, write, review and finalize an asset,” said Priscilla Meisel, Content Marketing Director, SWZD.

This example was originally published in Marketing Writing: 3 simple tips that can help any marketer improve results (even if you’re not a copywriter) .

Example #5: Business travel company’s guerilla research

There are many established, expensive tactics you can use to better understand customers.

But if you don’t have the budget for those tactics, and don’t know any potential customers, you might want to brainstorm creative ways you can get valuable information from the right customer target set.

Here’s an example from a former client of Mitch McCasland, Founding Partner and Director, Brand Inquiry Partners. The company sold a product related to frequent business flyers and was interested in finding out information on people who travel for a living. They needed consumer feedback right away.

“I suggested that they go out to the airport with a bunch of 20-dollar bills and wait outside a gate for passengers to come off their flight,” McCasland said. When people came off the flight, they were politely asked if they would answer a few questions in exchange for the incentive (the $20). By targeting the first people off the flight they had a high likelihood of reaching the first-class passengers.

This example was originally published in Guerrilla Market Research Expert Mitch McCasland Tells How You Can Conduct Quick (and Cheap) Research .

Example #6: Intel’s market research database

When conducting market research, it is crucial to organize your data in a way that allows you to easily and quickly report on it. This is especially important for qualitative studies where you are trying to do more than just quantify the data, but need to manage it so it is easier to analyze.

Anne McClard, Senior Researcher, Doxus worked with Shauna Pettit-Brown of Intel on a research project to understand the needs of mobile application developers throughout the world.

Intel needed to be able to analyze the data from several different angles, including segment and geography, a daunting task complicated by the number of interviews, interviewers, and world languages.

“The interviews were about an hour long, and pretty substantial,” McClard says. So, she needed to build a database to organize the transcripts in a way that made sense.

Different types of data are useful for different departments within a company; once your database is organized you can sort it by various threads.

The Intel study had three different internal sponsors. "When it came to doing the analysis, we ended up creating multiple versions of the presentation targeted to individual audiences," Pettit-Brown says.

The organized database enabled her to go back into the data set to answer questions specific to the interests of the three different groups.

This example was originally published in 4 Steps to Building a Qualitative Market Research Database That Works Better .

Example #7: National security survey’s priming

When conducting market research surveys, the way you word your questions can affect customers’ response. Even the way you word previous questions can put customers in a certain mindset that will skew their answers.

For example, when people were asked if they thought the U.S. government should spend money on an anti-missile shield, the results appeared fairly conclusive. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed thought the country should and only six percent were unsure, according to Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls .

But when pollsters added the option, "...or are you unsure?" the level of uncertainty leaped from six percent to 33 percent. When they asked whether respondents would be upset if the government took the opposite course of action from their selection, 59 percent either didn’t have an opinion or didn’t mind if the government did something differently.

This is an example of how the way you word questions can change a survey’s results. You want survey answers to reflect customer’s actual sentiments that are as free of your company’s previously held biases as possible.

This example was originally published in Are Surveys Misleading? 7 Questions for Better Market Research .

Example #8: Visa USA’s approach to getting an accurate answer

As mentioned in the previous example, the way you ask customers questions can skew their responses with your own biases.

However, the way you ask questions to potential customers can also illuminate your understanding of them. Which is why companies field surveys to begin with.

“One thing you learn over time is how to structure questions so you have a greater likelihood of getting an accurate answer. For example, when we want to find out if people are paying off their bills, we'll ask them to think about the card they use most often. We then ask what the balance was on their last bill after they paid it,” said Michael Marx, VP Research Services, Visa USA.

This example was originally published in Tips from Visa USA's Market Research Expert Michael Marx .

Example #9: Hallmark’s private members-only community

Online communities are a way to interact with and learn from customers. Hallmark created a private members-only community called Idea Exchange (an idea you could replicate with a Facebook or LinkedIn Group).

The community helped the greeting cards company learn the customer’s language.

“Communities…let consumers describe issues in their own terms,” explained Tom Brailsford, Manager of Advancing Capabilities, Hallmark Cards. “Lots of times companies use jargon internally.”

At Hallmark they used to talk internally about “channels” of distribution. But consumers talk about stores, not channels. It is much clearer to ask consumers about the stores they shop in than what channels they shop.

For example, Brailsford clarified, “We say we want to nurture, inspire, and lift one’s spirits. We use those terms, and the communities have defined those terms for us. So we have learned how those things play out in their lives. It gives us a much richer vocabulary to talk about these things.”

This example was originally published in Third Year Results from Hallmark's Online Market Research Experiment .

Example #10: L'Oréal’s social media listening

If you don’t want the long-term responsibility that comes with creating an online community, you can use social media listening to understand how customers talking about your products and industry in their own language.

In 2019, L'Oréal felt the need to upgrade one of its top makeup products – L'Oréal Paris Alliance Perfect foundation. Both the formula and the product communication were outdated – multiple ingredients had emerged on the market along with competitive products made from those ingredients.

These new ingredients and products were overwhelming consumers. After implementing new formulas, the competitor brands would advertise their ingredients as the best on the market, providing almost magical results.

So the team at L'Oréal decided to research their consumers’ expectations instead of simply crafting a new formula on their own. The idea was to understand not only which active ingredients are credible among the audience, but also which particular words they use while speaking about foundations in general.

The marketing team decided to combine two research methods: social media listening and traditional questionnaires.

“For the most part, we conduct social media listening research when we need to find out what our customers say about our brand/product/topic and which words they use to do it. We do conduct traditional research as well and ask questions directly. These surveys are different because we provide a variety of readymade answers that respondents choose from. Thus, we limit them in terms of statements and their wording,” says Marina Tarandiuk, marketing research specialist, L'Oréal Ukraine.

“The key value of social media listening (SML) for us is the opportunity to collect people’s opinions that are as ‘natural’ as possible. When someone leaves a review online, they are in a comfortable environment, they use their ‘own’ language to express themselves, there is no interviewer standing next to them and potentially causing shame for their answer. The analytics of ‘natural’ and honest opinions of our customers enables us to implement the results in our communication and use the same language as them,” Tarandiuk said.

The team worked with a social media listening tool vendor to identify the most popular, in-demand ingredients discussed online and detect the most commonly used words and phrases to create a “consumer glossary.”

Questionnaires had to confirm all the hypotheses and insights found while monitoring social media. This part was performed in-house with the dedicated team. They created custom questionnaires aiming to narrow down all the data to a maximum of three variants that could become the base for the whole product line.

“One of our recent studies had a goal to find out which words our clients used to describe positive and negative qualities of [the] foundation. Due to a change in [the] product’s formula, we also decided to change its communication. Based on the opinions of our customers, we can consolidate the existing positive ideas that our clients have about the product,” Tarandiuk said.

To find the related mentions, the team monitored not only the products made by L'Oréal but also the overall category. “The search query contained both brand names and general words like foundation, texture, smell, skin, pores, etc. The problem was that this approach ended up collecting thousands of mentions, not all of which were relevant to the topic,” said Elena Teselko, content marketing manager, YouScan (L'Oréal’s social media listening tool).

So the team used artificial intelligence-based tagging that divided mentions according to the category, features, or product type.

This approach helped the team discover that customers valued such foundation features as not clogging pores, a light texture, and not spreading. Meanwhile, the most discussed and appreciated cosmetics component was hyaluronic acid.

These exact phrases, found with the help of social media monitoring, were later used for marketing communication.

Creative Sample #7: Marketing communicating for personal care company with messaging based on discoveries from market research

“Doing research and detecting audience’s interests BEFORE starting a campaign is an approach that dramatically lowers any risks and increases chances that the campaign would be appreciated by customers,” Teselko said.

This example was originally published in B2C Branding: 3 quick case studies of enhancing the brand with a better customer experience .

Example #11: Levi’s ethnographic research

In a focus group or survey, you are asking customers to explain something they may not even truly understand. Could be why they bought a product. Or what they think of your competitor.

Ethnographic research is a type of anthropology in which you go into customers’ homes or places of business and observe their actual behavior, behavior they may not understand well enough to explain to you.

While cost prohibitive to many brands, and simply unfeasible for others, it can elicit new insights into your customers.

Michael Perman, Senior Director Cultural Insights, Levi Strauss & Co. uses both quantitative and qualitative research on a broad spectrum, but when it comes to gathering consumer insight, he focuses on in-depth ethnographic research provided by partners who specialize in getting deep into the “nooks and crannies of consumer life in America and around the world.” For example, his team spends time in consumers’ homes and in their closets. They shop with consumers, looking for the reality of a consumer’s life and identifying themes that will enable designers and merchandisers to better understand and anticipate consumer needs.

Perman then puts together multi-sensory presentations that illustrate the findings of research. For example, “we might recreate a teenager’s bedroom and show what a teenage girl might have on her dresser.”

This example was originally published in How to Get Your Company to Pay Attention to Market Research Results: Tips from Levi Strauss .

Example #12: eBags’ ethnographic research

Ethnographic research isn’t confined to a physical goods brand like Levi’s. Digital brands can engage in this form of anthropology as well.

While usability testing in a lab is useful, it does miss some of the real-world environmental factors that play a part in the success of a website. Usability testing alone didn’t create a clear enough picture for Gregory Casey, User Experience Designer and Architect, eBags.

“After we had designed our mobile and tablet experience, I wanted to run some contextual user research, which basically meant seeing how people used it in the wild, seeing how people are using it in their homes. So that’s exactly what I did,” Gregory said.

He found consumers willing to open their home to him and be tested in their normal environment. This meant factors like the television, phone calls and other family members played a part in how they experienced the eBags mobile site.

“During these interview sessions, a lot of times we were interrupted by, say, a child coming over and the mother having to do something for the kid … The experience isn’t sovereign. It’s not something where they just sit down, work through a particular user flow and complete their interaction,” Gregory said.

By watching users work through the site as they would in their everyday life, Gregory got to see what parts of the site they actually use.

This example was originally published in Mobile Marketing: 4 takeaways on how to improve your mobile shopping experience beyond just responsive design .

Example #13: John Deere’s shift from product-centric market research to consumer-centric research

One of the major benefits of market research is to overcome company blind spots. However, if you start with your blind spots – i.e., a product focus – you will blunt the effectiveness of your market research.

In the past, “they’d say, Here’s the product, find out how people feel about it,” explained David van Nostrand, Manager, John Deere's Global Market Research. “A lot of companies do that.” Instead, they should be saying, “Let's start with the customers: what do they want, what do they need?”

The solution? A new in-house program called “Category Experts” brings the product-group employees over as full team members working on specific research projects with van Nostrand’s team.

These staffers handle items that don’t require a research background: scheduling, meetings, logistics, communication and vendor management. The actual task they handle is less important than the fact that they serve as human cross-pollinators, bringing consumer-centric sensibility back to their product- focused groups.

For example, if van Nostrand’s team is doing research about a vehicle, they bring in staffers from the Vehicles product groups. “The information about vehicle consumers needs to be out there in the vehicle marketing groups, not locked in here in the heads of the researchers.”

This example was originally published in How John Deere Increased Mass Consumer Market Share by Revamping its Market Research Tactics .

Example #14: LeapFrog’s market research involvement throughout product development (not just at the beginning and the end)

Market research is sometimes thought of as a practice that can either inform the development of a product, or research consumer attitudes about developed products. But what about the middle?

Once the creative people begin working on product designs, the LeapFrog research department stays involved.

They have a lab onsite where they bring moms and kids from the San Francisco Bay area to test preliminary versions of the products. “We do a lot of hands-on, informal qualitative work with kids,” said Craig Spitzer, VP Marketing Research, LeapFrog. “Can they do what they need to do to work the product? Do they go from step A to B to C, or do they go from A to C to B?”

When designing the LeapPad Learning System, for example, the prototype went through the lab “a dozen times or so,” he says.

A key challenge for the research department is keeping and building the list of thousands of families who have agreed to be on call for testing. “We've done everything from recruiting on the Internet to putting out fliers in local schools, working through employees whose kids are in schools, and milking every connection we have,” Spitzer says.

Kids who test products at the lab are compensated with a free, existing product rather than a promise of the getting the product they're testing when it is released in the future.

This example was originally published in How LeapFrog Uses Marketing Research to Launch New Products .

Related resources

The Marketer’s Blind Spot: 3 ways to overcome the marketer’s greatest obstacle to effective messaging

Get Your Free Test Discovery Tool to Help Log all the Results and Discoveries from Your Company’s Marketing Tests

Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want

Online Marketing Tests: How do you know you’re really learning anything?

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• Market Research: Types, Methods & Survey Examples

New products and services don’t just happen; they are the result of interactions with consumers, market assessment, and other similar activities that can be aptly described as market research. Market research allows manufacturers and service providers to evaluate the feasibility of their product or service by providing valuable insights into consumer needs and behaviors. 

With no doubt, conducting market research is the first step in the realization of a new product or service. Understanding what market research is and how to go about it, can unlock a plethora of benefits for your product or service; especially in terms of sales and consumer engagements. 

What is Market Research?

Market research is an investigation into the viability of a new product or service in terms of its target market(s). It is a process of evaluation that entails carrying out a feasibility study for a product or service through interacting with its potential customers and possible target markets.

One way to understand market research is to view it as an aggregation of different processes and actions that ultimately influence your everyday decision making. For instance, before stocking your home with groceries, you conduct some background checks to ascertain that you really need them. 

Market research bridges the gap between a product or service and the consumer or target market. The insights gained through market research help the manufacturer or service provider to create a product or service solution that caters to the specific needs of the target market. 

Types of Market Research

There are two types of market research, namely; the primary market research and secondary market research. In primary market research , the organization collects data directly from the sources while in secondary market research , the organization relies on already gathered information to understand the target market. 

Primary Market Research

Primary market research is a research approach that entails gathering information from target markets; either through a third-party or by getting in touch with consumers directly. This type of market research can take a qualitative or quantitative approach , and the data gathered can be exploratory or specific. 

Exploratory data is typically open-ended or generic in nature while specific data is close-ended and tailored to definite scenarios. As mentioned earlier, primary market research can be segmented into 2 – qualitative market research and quantitative market research . 

• Quantitative Market Research 

Quantitative market research is a research approach that gathers quantifiable data from the target market and consumers. This research methodology allows organizations to gain definite insights into the peculiarities of a target market using different tools like surveys , polls, and questionnaires. 

Quantitative market research adopts a scientific approach to data collection and it leverages deductive reasoning in order to arrive at useful insights that can inform practical decision making. Here, the organization takes a calculated guess (hypothesis), collects data and analyzes the data in order to confirm or refute the hypothesis. 

• Qualitative Market Research 

Qualitative market research is an investigative approach that gathers qualitative data from target markets using tools and methods like focus groups and interviews. Qualitative market research works with a small but highly validated sample size in order to gather objective data that translates to insightful information. 

This research approach can be adopted when you need to gather data bothering on the psychological profile or perception of the research subject(s). Results from qualitative market research can help an organization to refocus its brand on the specific needs of the market by allowing you to understand the consumers’ behaviors. 

Primary Market Research Methods  

• Surveys/Online Questionnaires

A survey is a research tool that is used to collect data from a predetermined research sample. It typically consists of a set of standardized questions in which respondents provide answers to either online or offline via paper forms. 

One of the many advantages of using a survey for primary market research is that it allows you to gather data from a large sample size that effectively represents your target market. In addition to this, a survey is a convenient method of data collection and it also helps you to save time and cost. 

In spite of these advantages, a major challenge experienced with surveys and online questionnaires is survey bias. This happens when respondents provide false or inaccurate answers due to a number of reasons including fatigue and poor comprehension of the questions. 

Examples of surveys include Demographic survey , employee satisfaction survey , and market survey . 

An interview is a data collection method that involves interacting personally with research subjects in order to collect relevant information from them. During an interview, the researcher (interviewer) asks the respondent a set of questions that can be close-ended or open-ended depending on the predetermined objectives. 

There are 3 types of interviews that can be used in primary market research, namely; structured interview , semi-structured interview, and unstructured interview . Structured interviews are close-ended because they make use of premeditated questions while an unstructured interview is open-ended as it relies on spontaneity.   

A semi-structured interview is a type of qualitative interview that has a set of premeditated questions, yet, allows the interviewer to explore new developments in the cause of the interview. In some way, it represents the midpoint between structured and unstructured interviews.

As a result of its one-on-one nature, an interview allows for detailed data collection and also helps you to gather more accurate and objective information from respondents in quantitative market research. Apart from the verbal answers provided, gestures and non-verbal communication also provide useful insights during interviews. 

• Observation  

Observation is a data collection method that involves paying attention to research subjects as they interact in their natural environment in order to gather useful insights into their behaviors. It is a common research method and it can be quantitative or qualitative in nature. 

In quantitative observation, the researcher focuses on the numbers; that is, observing the research subject in terms of numerical values like age, weight, and volume. Qualitative observation, on the other hand, utilizes the 5 sensory organs, together with subjective parameters, while examining research variables. 

Observation, whether qualitative or quantitative , is the easiest and most common method of data collection. Also, it results in more accurate data because the researcher has the opportunity to filter and verify the information that has been observed from the research subjects. 

However, this method of data collection is quite subjective because it is prone to generalizations from the researcher. Since the quality of data gathered via the observation method can be affected by the researcher’s bias , it is important for observation to be carried out by an expert. 

Observation can also take a naturalistic or participant approach. In naturalistic observation, the researcher is absolutely removed from the research environment; that is, he or she has no direct contact with the research subjects as they interact and exhibit their behaviors. 

• Focus Groups  

A focus group is a small set of demographically diverse participants who are brought together to provide a series of information about a product or service. It is one of the most common methods of gathering data in primary market research. 

The interactions in the focus group are usually coordinated by the moderator who ensures that the conversation remains within the boundaries of the research aim and objectives. This ensures that the data collected is relevant to market research. 

A focus group can be made up of 6-12 individuals and the questions asked can be both close-ended and open-ended in nature depending on the peculiarities of the research. Focus groups are designed to identify and understand perceptions and to gain insights into how consumers feel about a particular product or service. 

Apart from being an easy way to gather data from target markets, focus groups enable you to gather in-depth information about the feelings, views, and perceptions of the consumers in relation to your product or service. Participants can freely communicate their viewpoints and confirm or refute each other’s experiences. 

Secondary Market Research 

Secondary market research takes an investigative approach where the organization depends on available information in order to gain insights into consumers and target markets. Here, the organization does not gather information directly from the research subjects, rather, it depends on existing data. 

Secondary market research data can be collected from different sources including libraries, journals, newspapers, publications, and a research thesis. Also, this type of research helps organizations to save time and money instead of investing resources in data gathering and processing from scratch. 

Secondary Market Research Methods 

• Reporting   

Reporting is a secondary research method that involves collecting data from relevant sources, which is subjected to further verification and analysis. You can use reporting tools to extract data from different sources including newspapers, NGO reports, and news websites.  

When reporting data, you should rely on sources that clearly communicate important information and provide integral details about the market that can serve as a valid footstool to decision-making for an organization. Data accuracy is key as false data can negatively affect your research findings. 

• Existing Market Research   

Existing market research is an effective and verifiable source of data in secondary market research as it contains specific information about the research environment and subject(s). Even though data from existing market research has a high level of accuracy, you will need to introduce new research questions as you make use of this data source.

Examples of sources of existing market research include business journals and archives. 

Importance of Market Research  

• In-depth Information about Market Needs : Market research provides insights into the needs, preferences, and perceptions of consumers. This information is useful in improving products and services and making them more customer-centric.
• Product Feasibility : Market research helps you understand whether a new product or service will be accepted by the target market. In other words, it provides information on the feasibility of a product before its launch. 
• Informs marketing strategy: Market research is the first step in the development of an effective marketing strategy. Findings from market research provide unique insights into the requirements of your target market and the best way to communicate your unique selling point to them. 
• Better Decision-Making : It allows for more accurate and informed decision-making for organizations. 
• Increased Sales and Revenue: Market research helps you develop products that are more suited to your target market – ultimately leading to increased sales over time.
• Identify New Business Opportunities : After carrying out market research, you will be better informed on the needs of the market and the best way to cater to these needs via your product or service. With this information, you’ll be able to identify untapped business opportunities in the market. 
• Precise Advertisement : With better knowledge of the needs of your target market, you would be able to create advertising campaigns that appeal to them and can convert leads across multiple channels. 
• Competitive advantage: Marketing research also sets you ahead of your competition. When you understand what your target market needs, you would be able to create products and services that meet these needs; thus, giving you a competitive edge. 

What Must Be Included in Your Market Research?

• Competition

Having a clear understanding of your competition; especially in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, will help you to create an effective marketing strategy for your product or service. Competition, however, is not always uni-dimensional; that is, Organization A vs Organisation B. 

To effectively identify your competition, you need to identify organizations that offer similar product(s) and/or services as yours within a specific industry. You can curate a list of these organizations using social media channels and market reports. 

If you are venturing into a new industry, conducting market research will help you understand important factors like pricing and packaging. Market research also helps you understand your competitor’s behaviors and how to better position your product and service. 

• Customer Demographics

When carrying out market research, you should focus on understanding the demographic distribution of consumers in your target market as this will help you create a product that appeals to them. It gives you a clearer idea of market interests, consumers’ buying habits, purchasing power, and their preferences. 

Understanding your consumers’ demographics will help you create a buyer persona which is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. As you create a buyer persona, be sure to include important information like age, spending habits, gender, location, and income. 

Achieving synergy between the location of your business and the geographical concentration of your customers is important for your product/service success. Hence, your market research must include a detailed description of the best physical environment for your business and you can also detail the reasons for your choice. 

Choosing the right location for your business increases your brand visibility and it also makes your marketing more effective. When your business is situated in an environment where its products and services are in high demand, you will record a boost in sales and increased profits. 

This goes without saying as the essence of conducting market research is to better understand your product’s feasibility before it is introduced to the market. Hence, in carrying out market research, you must gather pieces of information that are specific to your product.

You should provide a detailed product description and also create an outline of the value and unique selling point(s) of your product. You can also provide an overview of the product feature and other information like its logo and name.   

Capital refers to the assets needed to create your product and it can be economic or financial in nature. Economic capital includes tools and machinery needed for production while financial capital is the money; that is debt and equity, used in business operations and expansion. 

As one of the 4 factors of production, capital plays an important role in determining the feasibility of a new product. In your market research, you should state how much capital you need to cater to all business processes related to your product. 

How to Create Market Research Surveys with Formplus  

Administering an online survey with Formplus is an effective way to conduct market research.  Use this 6-step guide to create your market research survey with Formplus: 

• Sign in to your Formplus account to access the form builder. If you do not have a Formplus account, create one here . 

• Click on the Create new form button to get started.  
• Start by adding a title to your form, e.g. Market Research Survey. 
• Next, drag and drop preferred fields into your form from the sidebar menu in the form builder. You can edit form fields by clicking on the pencil icon and the save button after each edit. 

• After dragging and dropping preferred fields into your form, click on Save to move to the form customization section. Here, you can tweak the appearance of your form by adding background images, inserting your business logo, changing the form font, etc. to make it more visually appealing. 

• When satisfied with how your form looks, you can copy the URL and share it with respondents. You can also share your market research survey with your online community. 

Conclusion  

Carrying out market research is very important when introducing a new product or service to the market. With market research, you’d understand the feasibility of your business and make informed business decisions.  

An online survey is one of the simplest and most effective ways of doing this. With Formplus , you can create market surveys or get started with this  market research survey template in a few minutes and share it with respondents using any of the easy-to-use multiple sharing options.

Connect to Formplus, Get Started Now - It's Free!

• market research
• market research method
• market research survey
• primary market research
• secondary market research
• types of market research
• busayo.longe

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Qualitative Market Research Methods + Examples

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Qualitative market research is one of the most effective ways to understand consumer sentiment . If you really want to know how people feel about a product or business; and the ‘why’ behind it, qualitative research will tell you what you need to know.

This guide covers qualitative market research methods, including the different tools and techniques, their benefits, and examples of qualitative research in action.

What is qualitative market research?

Qualitative market research uncovers key insights into how people feel about a product or brand. It’s more of a touchy-feely type of market research than quantitative research , often performed with a small, handpicked group of respondents.

There are many different ways to conduct qualitative research. These include focus groups, interviews, ethnographic, observational research, and even biometrics. Although it takes time to conduct and analyze results, it’s one of the most popular types of market research .

Qualitative market research methods

Market research surveys are the most widely used qualitative market research method. Perhaps that’s down to their ease of use, availability, or the low cost of getting them out, in, and analyzed. But let’s be honest; all types of market research have pros and cons, which is exactly why picking the right technique is key.

Focus groups

What it is: Focus groups can be done in person or online. Participants are selected from within a target market or audience. Typically, people answer questions about the how, what, and why of a specific topic. While focus group formats vary, participant numbers should always be limited to ensure each person has the chance to contribute.

Best for: This type of qualitative market research is beneficial for testing new concepts or products in a market. It’s also good for getting feedback on existing products and things like usability, functionality, and ease of use.

Good to know: Online focus groups are becoming increasingly popular. As no interaction is required between participants, running them online allows responses to be collected in minutes without impacting data quality . It also reduces costs and means more people can attend due to fewer travel or time constraints.

What it is: Interviews are a tried-and-trusted qualitative research method that can be done in person or over the phone. It’s a highly personal approach that takes a conversational format between just two or three people. Researchers ask pre-set questions designed to collect intel and insights for further analysis. Interview formats vary depending on the research questions .

Best for Granular feedback from people within a target market or a target persona. Researchers obtain details about a person’s intentions, beliefs, motivations, and preferences.

Helpful Scroll to the qualitative market research examples section and view a copy of our template for customer interviews at Similarweb.

Read more: 83 Qualitative Research Questions & Examples

What it is: Most people have used or consumed case study content in the past without necessarily realizing it’s a type of qualitative research. It analyzes contextual factors relevant to a specific problem or outcome in detail. Case study research can be carried out by marketing professionals or researchers and typically follows a structured approach, exploring a problem, the solution, and its impact.

Case studies can take anything from one month upwards to a year to develop and often involve using other types of qualitative market research, such as focus groups or interviews, to inform key content.

Best for: They’re more commonly used as a marketing tool to showcase a solution or service’s impact within a target market or use case. But, new product or service developments are two other popular applications.

What it is: One of the lesser-known methods of qualitative market research is biometrics. There’s an article about this on Bloomberg , showcasing how Expedia uses biometrics in its market research stack. The format for their project takes the trusty focus group scenario, adding a modern twist.

In this example, research participants were asked to attach a set of skin response sensors to their hands. But there could also be eye-tracking, emotional analysis, heat mapping, or facial sensors being used to track responses in tandem. Individuals were tasked with surfing the web; a researcher requested they do specific tasks or carry out a search in a self-directing manner. Responses are recorded, analyzed, and translated into meaningful insights.

Depending on the tech being used, the direction, and the goal of the research, this type of qualitative market research can show:

• How people surf the web or use a site
• The way people react in a specific situation
• How they respond to content, CTAs, layouts, promotions, tasks, or experiences
• Insights into what drives people to take action on a site

Best for: Larger digital-first companies with a budget to suit; those who want to perform UX testing to improve the content, customer journey, experience, or layout of a website.

Insightful The adoption of biometric technology in market research was at an all-time high in 2020. With the technology becoming more widely available, the adoption cost will likely fall, making it more accessible to a larger pool of organizations.

Ethnography

What it is: Enthnograprhic market research (EMR) is one of the costliest types of qualitative research. An experienced ethnographic researcher is needed to design and conduct the study. It analyzes people in their own environment, be it at home, an office, or another location of interest.

Research can take place over a few hours, months, or even years. It’s typically used during the early-stage development of a user-centric design project. But it can also be useful in identifying or analyzing issues arising once a product or service has gone to market.

Best for: It’s widely adopted within useability, service design, and user-focused fields. Getting under the skin of a design problem helps develop a deeper understanding of issues a product should solve. Outcomes help to build improvements or new features in products or services.

Grounded theory

What it is: Researchers use various qualitative market research methods, such as surveys or interviews, and combine them with other types of secondary market research to inform outcomes. Typically, participant groups are between 20-60, making it a larger sample size than focus groups. Responses are collated, and a series of specialist coding techniques are used to formulate a theory that explains behavioral patterns.

Best for: Organizations can better understand a target audience by using research to generate a theory. The findings provide explanations that can inform design decisions or spark new innovation through features or improvements to products or services. A typical use case could be when particularly heavy use of a product occurs or frustrations arise with usability – grounded theory is then used to explore the reasoning behind these behaviors.

Observational

What it is: Contrary to belief, this type of qualitative market research can occur remotely or on-site. A researcher will observe people via camera or being physically present in a shopping mall, store, or other location. Systematic data are collated using subjective methods that monitor how people react in a natural setting. Researchers usually remain out of sight to ensure they go undetected by the people they observe.

Best for: Low-budget market research projects. Suited to those with a physical store or who seek to examine consumer behavior in a public setting. Researchers can see how people react to products or how they navigate around a store. It can also provide insights into shopping behavior, and record the purchase experience.

Useful to know: Observational research provides more effective feedback than market research surveys. This is because instinctive reactions are more reflective of real-world behaviors.

Online Forums

What it is: A web message board or online forum is quick and easy to set up. Most people know how they work, and users’ names can be anonymized. This makes it a safe space to conduct group research and gain consensus or garner opinions on things like creative concepts, promotions, new features, or other topics of interest. The researcher moderates it to ensure discussions remain focused and the right questions are asked to thoroughly explore a topic.

Organizations typically invite between 10-30 participants, and forums are open for anything between 1-5 days. The researcher initiates various threads and may later divide people into subgroups once initial responses are given.

Here’s an example.

If a group of male participants indicates they dislike a specific content on the forum. The moderator would create a subgroup on the fly, with the intent of probing into the viewpoints of that group in more detail.

Best for: Discussing sensitive research topics that people may feel uncomfortable sharing in a group or interview. Getting feedback from people from a broad area and diverse backgrounds is easy. And a more cost-effective way to run focus groups with similar aims and outcomes.

What it is: For a survey to be considered a type of qualitative market research, questions should remain open and closed-ended. Surveys are typically sent digitally but can also be done in person or via direct mail. Feedback can be anonymous or with user details exposed. Surveys are a type of primary research and should be tailored to the research goals and the audience. Segmentation is a great way to uncover more about a select group of people that make up a target persona or market.

Best for: A low-cost way to question a large group of people and gain insights into how they feel about a topic or product. It can be used to flesh out usability issues, explore the viability of new features, or better understand a target audience in almost any sector. Surveys can also be used to explore UX or employee experience in greater detail.

Read more: 18 Ways Businesses Can Use Market Research Surveys

Diary or journal logging

What it is: When you think about it, almost all qualitative research methods aim to help you understand the experiences, lives, and motivations of people. What better way is there to connect with how people think and feel than a journal? Yes, it’s pretty much exactly what it claims to be; a simple note-taking exercise that records regular input, insights, feelings, and thoughts over a period of time.

A survey or focus group captures sentiment at a single point in time. Whereas journal logging gives way to more frequent input without any pressures of time to consider. It’s also more reliable data, as there’s no requirement for people to think about and recall data, as input occurs at the moment. Popular formats include digital diaries, paper journals, and voice journals.

Key parameters are set out from the start. And offer prompts so people know what to record, how often they need to make an entry, the time of day (if relevant), how much they should write, and the purpose or goal of the research.

Best for: Measuring change or impact over time. They’re also a great tool to establish things like:

• Usage scenarios
• Motivations
• Changes in perception
• Behavioral shifts
• Customer journeys  

Start building your story with Similarweb today

Benefits of qualitative market research

• Flexible – It can be adjusted according to the situation. For example, if the questions being asked aren’t yielding useful information, the researcher can change direction with open questions and adapt as needed.
• Clear and open communication –  Forums like these can help a brand and its customers communicate effectively. The voice of the customer is paramount, and participants are encouraged to express their values and needs freely.
• Provides detailed information – One of the biggest draws of qualitative research is the level of detail given by respondents. Data collected can be vital in helping organizations gain an in-depth understanding of consumer pain points and perspectives.
• Improve retention – Qualitative research gets under the hood, helping an organization know how consumers think or feel about a business or its products. The intel can shape future offerings or improve service elements, thus boosting loyalty.

Qualitative market research examples

Whether you’ve carried out qualitative research in the past or not, it’s never a bad idea to look at what others are doing. Who knows, it could inspire your research project or give you an example of qualitative research in action to use as a base.

Here are three qualitative market research examples in action!

Example 1: This Voice of Customer questionnaire is an example of qualitative research we use here at Similarweb. 

Example 2: A market research survey used in retail. It’s sent out with a digital copy of a store receipt and aims to explore how people feel about their in-store experience.

Example 3: A case study report published by Forrester Consulting. It highlights the ROI of Similarweb following a period of use and a forward-looking estimation.

A smarter way to get Similar results in less time

While different in nature, qualitative and quantitative research go hand in hand. In short, qualitative can explain what quantitative research shows. While qualitative research costs vary, it takes time to plan, conduct, and analyze. Not everybody has the luxury of time or the resources to carry out their own qualitative market research. And with how fast markets and consumer behaviors shift, it’s not always the optimal solution.

Feature spotlight: Audience Analysis 

Similarweb’s audience behavior research tool shows you where people in your target market spend their time online. Uncovering critical, unbiased insights at pace.

• Audience metrics show you demographics , geographics , audience loyalty , and interests.
• Competitive insights allow you to see any rivals’ reach and unpack their successes.
• Visualize your target market like never before – layered with insights that show where and how they spend time online.
• Segment your audience to see industry-specific consumer interests.
• Discover untapped audiences to acquire and grow your share of market.

As a single source of truth, Similarweb Research Intelligence lets you get the measure of the digital world that matters to you most. At a glance, you can see what’s happening in any market, and drill down into any rival or audience group to spot trends, analyze changes, and inform key decisions; fast. As far as market research tools go, it’s the only platform that brings together feedback from mobile web, desktop, and mobile apps in a single place. Giving you a complete and comprehensive picture of your digital landscape.

Wrapping Up…

Compared to quantitative research, the qualitative approach can take more time and cost more money. But, there are distinct benefits that make it hard to dismiss. While statistical research can show you the ‘what,’ ‘who,’ and ‘when’, qualitative research complements this and helps uncover the ‘why’ and ‘how’ – giving you the complete picture.

From the high-hitting budget owners to the SMBs who need to research a market or audience, qualitative research is a vital tool that’ll help you uncover insights and focus on growth.

Digital intelligence platforms like Similarweb can give you a framework to outline a story that can be filled in with qualitative research later down the line.

What’s the difference between quantitative and qualitative research methods? Qualitative market research is a type of primary research method that explores how people think and feel about a topic. Quantitative research is statistics-based and analyses numerical data.

What are the different types of qualitative market research? The most popular types of qualitative market research include Focus groups, interviews, ethnography, case studies, grounded theory, observational, online forums, open-ended surveys, biometrics, narrative, thematic analysis, diary or journal logging, thematic analysis, and phenomenological study.

How is qualitative research used in marketing? Qualitative market research serves as a tool that helps marketing teams identify consumer needs, refine product messaging, generate ideas for campaigns, discover new channels, and develop targeted campaigns that resonate with target audiences.

What Types of Questions are Asked in Qualitative Market Research? Qualitative market research often focuses on open-ended questions that allow respondents to provide detailed answers about their attitudes, opinions, and experiences. Examples of questions include: What factors influence your decision to purchase a particular product or service? How do you use a product or service? What do you like or dislike about a product or service?

What are the Limitations of Qualitative Market Research? Qualitative market research can be subjective and may be limited by the number of participants and the amount of time available for research. Additionally, qualitative research does not provide quantitative data , which can be useful for measuring and comparing consumer behavior.

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

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30 Market Research Questions to Ask

• by Alice Ananian
• September 18, 2024

Ever feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks? Welcome to the wild world of startups and product launches! But here’s a little secret: the most successful entrepreneurs aren’t just guessing – they’re armed with a powerful tool that turns hunches into hard data. Enter the unsung hero of business strategy: market research questions.

In this guide, we’re diving deep into the art and science of crafting market research questions that’ll give you the inside scoop on your target audience, validate your million-dollar idea, and help you dodge those pesky “why didn’t anyone want this?” moments. So, grab your notepad (or, let’s be real, open a new tab) – it’s time to turn your market research into a superpower!

Top Market Research Questions to Ask (Your Ticket to Customer Clarity)

In this section, we’ll explore a comprehensive set of market research questions designed to provide deep insights into your target market. These carefully curated questions serve as powerful tools for decoding customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. We’ve organized them into key categories, each addressing a critical aspect of market understanding – from foundational startup inquiries to nuanced pricing strategies. 

By leveraging these questions effectively, you’ll be well-equipped to make data-driven decisions and develop products that truly resonate with your audience. Let’s dive into each category and uncover the questions that will illuminate your path to market success.

Market Research Questions for Startups: Laying the Groundwork

• “What problem does our product solve, and how urgent is this problem for potential customers?”
• “Who are our early adopters likely to be, and what motivates them?”
• “What current solutions are people using, and why aren’t they fully satisfied?”
• “How large is our potential market, and what’s its growth trajectory?”
• “What regulatory or industry challenges might we face?”

Remember, as a startup, you’re not just gathering data – you’re building a narrative about why your solution needs to exist. These questions help you paint that picture with vibrant, data-driven strokes.

Market Research Questions About Target Audience: Getting to Know Your People

• “What demographic and psychographic characteristics define our ideal customer?”
• “Where does our target audience hang out online and offline?”
• “What brands do they currently love, and why?”
• “What are their biggest pain points related to our product category?”
• “How do they typically make purchasing decisions in our space?”

Pro Tip: Prelaunch’s Customer Insights feature is like having a secret window into your audience’s mind. It aggregates data from various sources, giving you a 360-degree view of who your customers really are – not just who you think they are.

Market Research Questions for Customer Reservations: Anticipating Objections

• “What concerns might prevent someone from trying our product?”
• “What previous experiences have made customers wary of solutions like ours?”
• “What level of risk are potential customers willing to take on a new product?”
• “What assurances or guarantees would make customers feel more comfortable?”
• “How important is brand reputation in our product category?”

Addressing these reservations head-on in your marketing and product development can turn skeptics into believers.

Market Research Questions About Product Validation: Ensuring You’re on the Right Track

There are two main categories that are worth taking a look at here. Which one you fit into will be based on whether your product is new or if you already have alternatives aka competition. 

Questions for a New Product

• “How well does our product concept resonate with potential users?”
• “What features are must-haves vs. nice-to-haves?”
• “How does our product compare to existing alternatives in the market?”
• “What would make our product a ‘must-buy’ for our target audience?”
• “Are there any unexpected use cases for our product we haven’t considered?”

Psst… Prelaunch’s In-depth Interview feature is a game-changer here. It allows you to conduct nuanced, qualitative research that digs deeper than surface-level surveys. You’ll uncover the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ of customer behavior.

Questions for Competitor and Alternative Products

• “What do customers love about our competitors’ products?”
• “What’s missing from current market offerings?”
• “How loyal are customers to existing brands in our space?”
• “What would it take for someone to switch from a competitor to our product?”
• “Are there any underserved niches within our broader market?”

Market Research Questions About Pricing and Value Perception

• “What price range do potential customers expect for a product like ours?”
• “How price-sensitive is our target market?”
• “What value-added features could justify a premium price?”
• “How do customers perceive the relationship between price and quality in our category?”
• “What pricing models (subscription, one-time purchase, freemium) appeal most to our audience?”

Getting pricing right is more art than science, but these questions will give you a solid foundation from which to start.

Expert Tips on How to Use Market Research Questions Effectively

Crafting the different types of market research questions is only half the battle. To truly leverage these inquiries for maximum impact, consider the following expert tips and strategies:

1. Diversify Your Research Methods

While we’ve focused on questions, remember that the medium is as important as the message.

• Quantitative Surveys : Ideal for gathering numerical data and spotting trends across large samples. Use platforms like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms for wide distribution.
• Qualitative Interviews : Perfect for deep dives into individual experiences. Consider using Prelaunch’s in-depth interview feature to uncover nuanced insights.
• Focus Groups : Great for observing group dynamics and generating ideas. Virtual focus groups can be cost-effective alternatives to in-person sessions.
• Observational Studies : Sometimes, watching customer behavior in natural settings can reveal insights they might not articulate in a survey or interview.

Pro Tip: Triangulate your findings by cross-referencing data from multiple methods. This approach helps validate your insights and uncover blind spots.

2. Embrace Iterative Research

Market research isn’t a one-and-done affair. Treat it as an ongoing process:

• Start with broad, exploratory questions to identify key areas of interest.
• Use initial findings to formulate more specific, targeted questions.
• Regularly revisit and update your research to track changes in market sentiment.
• Create a feedback loop where research informs product development, which in turn informs future research questions.

3. Master the Art of Question Crafting

The way you phrase your questions can significantly impact the quality of responses:

• Open-ended vs. Closed Questions : Use closed questions (yes/no, multiple choice) for quantitative data and open-ended questions for qualitative insights.
• Avoid Leading Questions : Instead of “How much did you love our product?”, ask “What was your experience with our product?”
• Use Scales Wisely : When using numerical scales, clearly define what each number represents.
• Consider Cultural Context : Be mindful of cultural differences that might affect how questions are interpreted.

4. Mitigate Bias in Your Research

Bias can sneak into your research in numerous ways:

• Selection Bias : Ensure your sample truly represents your target market. Don’t just survey existing customers.
• Response Bias : Be wary of respondents telling you what they think you want to hear. Anonymous surveys can help.
• Confirmation Bias : Actively seek out information that challenges your assumptions.
• Question Order Bias : The sequence of questions can influence responses. Randomize order where appropriate.

5. Leverage Technology and AI

Modern tools can supercharge your market research process :

• Use AI-powered analytics tools to identify patterns in large datasets.
• Employ sentiment analysis on social media data to gauge public opinion.
• Utilize chatbots for initial screening questions before deeper human-led interviews.
• Consider predictive analytics to forecast market trends based on historical data.

6. Context is King: Analyze with Perspective

Raw data is just the starting point. To extract meaningful insights:

• Always consider the broader market context when interpreting data.
• Look for correlations between different data points.
• Compare your findings with industry benchmarks and competitor data.
• Consider both statistical significance and practical significance of your results.

7. From Insights to Action

The true value of market research lies in its application:

• Create clear, actionable recommendations based on your findings.
• Prioritize insights based on potential impact and feasibility of implementation.
• Develop a clear roadmap for incorporating insights into your product development and marketing strategies.
• Set up key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the impact of changes made based on your research.

8. Ethical Considerations

As you delve into market research, keep ethics at the forefront:

• Always obtain informed consent from participants.
• Be transparent about how data will be used and stored.
• Protect participant privacy and anonymity.
• Consider the potential impact of your research on vulnerable populations.

9. Communicate Findings Effectively

The best insights are useless if they’re not understood and acted upon:

• Tailor your reporting style to your audience (e.g., executive summaries for C-suite, detailed reports for product teams).
• Use data visualization tools to make complex findings more digestible.
• Tell a story with your data – connect the dots between different insights.
• Always include a “So what?” section that clearly outlines the implications of your findings.

By implementing these expert tips, you’ll elevate your market research from a mere fact-finding mission to a powerful strategic tool. Remember, the goal isn’t just to gather data, but to gain actionable insights that drive your business forward. With practice and persistence, you’ll be able to ask the right questions, in the right way, to the right people – and use those answers to make informed decisions that propel your startup or product launch to new heights.

From Questions to Quantum Leaps: Turning Insights into Action

Congratulations! You’ve now got a treasure trove of market research questions that would make even the most seasoned entrepreneurs jealous. But remember, the magic isn’t in the questions themselves – it’s in how you use the answers to catapult your startup or product launch into the stratosphere.

So, go forth and question everything (seriously, everything). Use these market research questions as your launchpad, but don’t be afraid to get creative and dive into the specifics of your unique market. And remember, in the dynamic world of startups and product launches, the learning never stops. Keep asking, keep listening, and watch as your business transforms from a great idea into an unstoppable force in the market.

Now, armed with these powerful market research questions, you’re ready to turn the tables on uncertainty and make informed decisions that’ll have your competition wondering, “How did they know that?” Your next breakthrough is just a question away!

Alice Ananian

Alice has over 8 years experience as a strong communicator and creative thinker. She enjoys helping companies refine their branding, deepen their values, and reach their intended audiences through language.

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The A-Z of Market Research - Your Ultimate Glossary

This A-Z glossary is a  reference tool for professionals in the market research industry. It encompasses an array of commonly used terms and concepts that are integral to effective market research practices. Covering everything from fundamental methodologies to specialized techniques, this glossary provides definitions that clarify the jargon often found in the field. Whether you are an experienced researcher, new to the industry, or a client aiming to enhance your understanding of research reports, this resource helps you to quickly access key market research terminology. Dive in and leverage this knowledge to elevate your expertise and drive impactful insights.

A/B Testing

A method of comparing two versions of a webpage or app against each other to determine which one performs better. It involves randomly showing the two variants (A and B) to users and analyzing which one drives more conversions. Read more about AB testing on HBR.

Access panels

A database of individuals who have agreed to be available for surveys of varying types and topics. They are used to save time and money in recruiting respondents for market research.

Accompanied shopping

A specialized type of individual depth interview where respondents are interviewed while they shop in a retail store. It combines observation with detailed questioning.

Alternative hypothesis

The hypothesis in statistical testing where some difference or effect is expected. It's the opposite of the null hypothesis.

Ambiguous question

An ambiguous question in market research is a poorly constructed query that lacks clarity and precision, allowing for multiple interpretations by respondents. These questions can lead to confusion and inconsistent answers, as different individuals may understand and respond to the question in varying ways. This ambiguity often stems from vague language, lack of context, or the inclusion of multiple concepts within a single question. As a result, ambiguous questions can compromise the reliability and validity of research data, potentially leading to misguided conclusions and decisions. Researchers must strive to craft clear, specific questions to ensure accurate and meaningful responses that truly reflect the opinions and experiences of their target audience.

A type of stimulus material where key frames for a television advertisement are drawn or computer generated with an accompanying soundtrack. They are used to test advertisement concepts before full production.

Annotation method

An approach to analyze qualitative data using codes or comments on transcripts to categorize points made by respondents.

ANOVA (Analysis of Variance)

A statistical test for the differences among the means of two or more variables. It's commonly used to compare multiple groups in experimental designs. Read more about ANOVA at Oxford University .

Area sampling

A type of cluster sampling where clusters are created based on the geographic location of the population of interest.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The use of computer algorithms and systems to simulate human intelligence and perform tasks such as data analysis or decision making. In market research, AI is increasingly used for data processing and analysis. Find out more about what AI is here .

Audience's thinking sequence

The sequence of thoughts that people go through when they are being communicated with. Understanding this helps in crafting effective marketing messages.

An examination and verification of the movement and sale of a product. There are three main types: wholesale audits, retail audits, and home audits.

A chart that uses a series of bars positioned horizontally or vertically to represent the values of various items. It's a common way to visually represent data in market research reports.

In market research, particularly when dealing with cross tabulations, the base refers to the total number of respondents or observations that form the foundation for calculating percentages or other statistical measures. It represents the entire sample or a specific subset of the sample for which data is being analyzed. The base is crucial for understanding the context and significance of reported percentages, as it indicates the size of the group from which conclusions are drawn. For instance, if a survey reports that 60% of respondents prefer a certain product, the base tells us how many people that percentage represents, allowing for more accurate interpretation of the data's reliability and representativeness.

Bayes' theorem

A mathematical formula that provides a way to update the probability of an event based on new information. In market research, it's used to estimate the likelihood of a target audience having certain characteristics.

Read more about Bayes rule in perception, action and cognition with Cambridge University's Machine Learning Group

Behavioural science

An interdisciplinary field applying theories and techniques mainly from psychology to uncover what consumers value and provide solutions to pricing, choice architecture, perceptions, and behaviors.

A term describing the significant volume and variety of data available to organizations and the increased frequency in which they are generated. It's increasingly important in market research for uncovering insights.

The use of physiological or behavioral characteristics to identify and verify a person's identity. In market research, it's used to authenticate survey respondents and measure physical responses to stimuli.

An abbreviated title for the term web log, meaning a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and ideas. In market research, blogs can be a source of consumer insights.

Brand Equity Modelling

The creation of a Brand Equity measure and any Key Driver analysis to determine what drives Brand Equity. It helps in understanding and quantifying a brand's strength.

Let’s explore how well a brand's product qualities match what consumers truly desire. Understanding this alignment is key to optimizing your brand's positioning. Here are a few points to consider:

• What does your audience value? Discover the qualities that resonate with them.
• How do you measure this alignment? Use insights to refine your approach.
• Empower your brand strategy! When you align with customer desires, you create a stronger connection.

By focusing on these aspects, you’ll not only enhance your brand's appeal but also engage your audience in a meaningful way. 

Brand mapping

A projective technique involving presenting competing brand names to respondents and getting them to group them into categories based on certain dimensions. It helps understand brand perceptions and positioning.

Brand personalities

A projective technique where respondents imagine a brand as a person and describe their looks, clothes, lifestyles, etc. It helps understand brand perceptions and associations.

Brand Price Trade Off

A technique for establishing brand and price preferences by presenting respondents with branded products at various price points. It helps in understanding price sensitivity and brand loyalty.

Canonical Correlations

A statistical technique used to identify how much one set of independent variables drives another set of dependent variables. It's particularly useful when there are multiple dependent variables or categorical variables.

CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing)

A method where laptop computers, tablets, or mobile devices are used instead of paper-based questionnaires for face-to-face interviewing. It allows for more complex questionnaires and immediate data entry.

Discover a powerful market research method designed specifically for the automotive industry! This approach helps gather valuable insights about consumer preferences and pinpoint potential issues with a vehicle before it hits the production line. Here’s how it works:.

• Participants engage with a pre-production or prototype vehicle.
• They share their thoughts and feedback, enabling manufacturers to make informed decisions.

This collaborative process empowers users and ensures that their voices shape the final product. 

Cartoon completion

A projective technique which involves a cartoon that the respondent has to complete. It's used to uncover underlying attitudes or perceptions.

CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing)

A telephone interviewing method where interviewers input respondents' answers directly into a computer-based questionnaire. It allows for complex routing and immediate data entry.

CATS (Completely Automated Telephone Surveys)

Telephone interviews that use interactive voice technology and require no human interviewer. Respondents answer closed-ended questions using their touch-tone telephone.

Causal research

Research that examines whether one variable causes or determines the value of another variable. It's used to understand cause-and-effect relationships in marketing phenomena.

CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing)

Also known as online interviewing, CAWI involves respondents filling in a self-completion questionnaire delivered via the internet. It allows for complex routing and multimedia stimuli.

Research which involves collecting data from every member of the population of interest. It's typically used when the population is small or when complete data is required.

CHAID (CHi Squared Automatic Interaction Detection)

A type of decision tree technique based on significance testing. It's used to create rules to classify future respondents into identified groups or detect interrelationships between different questions.

Web-based platforms that can be used for online focus groups where individuals are recruited to discuss a subject online, usually using text. They allow for real-time qualitative research with geographically dispersed participants.

Chatbot survey

A traditional survey presented to the respondent in the form of an online conversation. Instead of answering static questions, respondents engage in a conversational exchange or chat.

A statistical test which tests the 'goodness of fit' between the observed distribution and the expected distribution of a variable. It's commonly used to analyze the relationship between categorical variables.

Choice Based Conjoint

A specific type of conjoint analysis where respondents are asked to make choices between different sets of products/services to derive the overall appeal of each component part. It's used to understand consumer preferences and trade-offs.

Closed question

A closed question in market research is a type of survey question that limits respondents to choosing from a predetermined set of answer options. Unlike open-ended questions, closed questions do not allow for free-form responses. They typically come in two main forms: dichotomous questions, which offer only two possible answers (e.g. yes/no, true/false), and multiple-choice questions, which provide several options to choose from. Closed questions are valued for their ability to generate easily quantifiable data, simplify the analysis process, and reduce the time and effort required from respondents. However, they may also limit the depth of insights by constraining respondents to predefined choices, potentially missing nuanced or unexpected responses that could be captured by open-ended questions.

Cluster analysis

A statistical technique used to group similar objects or individuals. In market research, it's often used for market segmentation, grouping consumers with similar characteristics or behaviors.

Cluster sampling

A probability sampling approach in which clusters of population units are selected at random and then all or some of the units in the chosen clusters are studied. It's often used when it's impractical or expensive to sample from a widely dispersed population.

The procedures involved in translating responses into a form that is ready for analysis. It typically involves assigning numerical codes to responses, especially for open-ended questions.

Coefficient alpha

See Cronbach alpha.

Coefficient of determination

A measure of the strength of linear relationship between a dependent variable and independent variables. It indicates how much of the variance in the dependent variable is predictable from the independent variable(s).

Concept boards

Introducing a dynamic tool for gathering valuable insights: stimulus materials! These boards showcase various product, advertising, and packaging designs, helping you collect feedback on exciting new products or campaigns. Here’s what you need to know:

• What are they? A set of boards that illustrate different designs.
• Why use them? To engage your audience and gather their thoughts on potential innovations.
• How they help: Empower you to make informed decisions based on real feedback.

We’re here to foster collaboration and curiosity—let’s explore new ideas together! What designs resonate with you? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Confidence level

The probability that the true population value will be within a particular range (result +/– sampling error). It's typically set at 95% in market research studies.

Conjoint analysis

A statistical technique to understand what combination of a limited number of attributes is most influential in the consumer's decision-making process. It's often used in product development and pricing research.

Constant sum scales

A scaling approach which requires the respondent to divide a given number of points, usually 100, among a number of attributes based on their importance to the individual. It forces respondents to make trade-offs between attributes.

Construct validity

An analysis of the underlying theories and past research that supports the inclusion of various items in a scale. It's most commonly considered in two forms: convergent validity and discriminant validity.

Content analysis

The analysis of any form of communication, whether it's advertisements, newspaper articles, television programmes, or taped conversations. It's frequently used for the analysis of qualitative research data.

Content analysis software

Software used for qualitative research which counts the number of times that pre-specified words or phrases appear in text. It's used to analyze large volumes of textual data efficiently.

Content validity

A subjective yet systematic assessment of how well a rating scale measures a topic of interest. For example, a group of subject experts may be asked to comment on the extent to which all of the key dimensions of a topic have been included.

Continuous research

See Longitudinal research.

Contrived observation

A research approach which involves observing participants in a controlled setting. It allows researchers to manipulate variables and observe their effects on behavior.

Convenience sampling

Convenience sampling is a non-probability sampling method in market research where participants are selected based on their accessibility and willingness to participate, rather than through random selection. This approach involves choosing readily available individuals or groups that are easy for the researcher to reach, such as passersby in a shopping mall, students on a university campus, or online volunteers. While convenience sampling offers advantages in terms of speed, cost-effectiveness, and ease of implementation, it comes with significant limitations. The primary drawback is the potential for bias and lack of representativeness, as the sample may not accurately reflect the characteristics of the broader target population. This can lead to skewed results and limit the generalizability of the research findings, making it less suitable for studies requiring high levels of accuracy or those aiming to make broad inferences about a population.

Convergent validity

A measure of the extent to which the results from a rating scale correlate with those from other scales or measures of the same topic/construct. It's used to assess the validity of measurement scales.

Text files placed on a user's computer by web retailers in order to identify the user when they next visit the website. In market research, they can be used to track online behavior.

Correlation

Let’s dive into a statistical approach that helps us explore the relationship between two variables! Here’s what you need to know:

• Understanding relationships : This method uses an index to clearly describe both the strength and direction of the relationship between variables.
• Empower your insights : By examining these connections, you can gain valuable insights into how different factors interact.

Isn’t it exciting to uncover these relationships? Feel free to share your thoughts or questions!

Cost per complete (CPC)

A common term in quantitative research for the price paid per completed survey. This calculation usually includes the cost of the sample, fielding costs, and the cost of using the survey software.

Critical path method (CPM)

A managerial tool used for scheduling a research project. It's a network approach that involves dividing the research project into its various components and estimating the time required to complete each component activity.

Cronbach Alpha

Cronbach's Alpha , also known as coefficient alpha, is a widely used statistical measure in market research to assess the internal consistency reliability of a multi-item scale. It quantifies how closely related a set of items are as a group, typically in questionnaires or surveys where multiple questions aim to measure the same underlying construct. The coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating greater internal consistency. Generally, an alpha of 0.7 or higher is considered acceptable in most research scenarios, though this can vary depending on the field and purpose of the study. Cronbach's Alpha is particularly valuable in developing and validating measurement scales for concepts like customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, or employee engagement. It helps researchers ensure that the items in their scale are measuring the same concept consistently, thus improving the overall reliability and validity of their research instruments.

Cross tabulation (crosstab)

A technique used to analyze and compare the relationship between two or more variables. It involves creating a table that shows the distribution of one variable across the different categories of another variable.

Cross sectional research

Research studies that are undertaken once, involving data collection at a single point in time, providing a 'snapshot' of the specific situation. It's the opposite of longitudinal research.

Customer database

A manual or computerized source of data relevant to marketing decision making about an organization's customers. It's a valuable resource for customer relationship management and targeted marketing efforts.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

A prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. It's used to determine how much to invest in acquiring or retaining a customer.

CX (Customer Experience)

Refers to how customers feel or perceive all aspects (touchpoints) when they buy goods or services or interact with a business. It's crucial for understanding and improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Data analysis errors

Non-sampling errors that occur when data is transferred from questionnaires to computers by incorrect keying of information. They can be minimized through data cleaning and validation processes.

Data cleaning

To ensure data quality before analysis, it's essential to conduct computerized checks on your data. This friendly process helps you:

• Identify inconsistencies
• Detect any unexplained missing responses

Taking this crucial step empowers you to work with reliable information and make informed decisions. Let's embrace good data practices together! 

Data conversion

The reworking of secondary data into a format that allows estimates to be made to meet the researcher's needs. It's often necessary when using data from different sources or time periods.

Data fusion

The process of combining multiple data sources into a single, comprehensive representation of information. In market research, it's used to gain a more complete understanding of consumer behavior and market trends.

Refers to the type of data to be analyzed in a hierarchical survey. For example, in a healthcare study, analysis could be based at the doctor, patient, or therapy level.

Data mining

The process of discovering patterns and knowledge from large amounts of data using techniques such as statistical analysis and machine learning. It's used to extract useful insights and make data-driven decisions.

Data validation

The verification of the appropriateness of the explanations and interpretations drawn from qualitative data analysis. It's crucial for ensuring the credibility and trustworthiness of qualitative research findings.

Degrees of freedom (d.f.)

The number of observations (i.e., sample size) minus one. It's used in various statistical calculations and tests.

Depth interview

Descriptive statistics.

Statistics that help to summarize the characteristics of large sets of data using only a few numbers. The most commonly used are measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion.

Desk research

See Secondary research.

A continuous measurement tool used to gather feedback from participants when watching or listening to content media. Participants indicate their continuous level of agreement/like or disagreement/dislike with the content being presented.

Dichotomous questions

Dichotomous questions are survey or interview questions that offer only two possible response options, typically "Yes" or "No". While these questions are easy for respondents to answer, they yield limited information due to their binary nature.

Discrete Choice Modeling

A statistical technique used to predict a choice from a set of two or more alternatives. It's often used in market research to understand consumer preferences and decision-making processes.

Discriminant analysis

A statistical technique that uses responses to a set of questions to predict existing group membership. The output can then be used to classify future respondents into the same groups.

Discriminant validity

A measure of the extent to which the results from a rating scale do not correlate with other scales from which one would expect it to differ. It's used to assess the validity of measurement scales.

Discussion guide

Used to structure and direct focus groups or depth interviews with participants. It serves as a guide for the facilitator or interviewer, providing questions, topics, and prompts to cover during the discussion.

Disproportionate stratified random sampling

A form of stratified random sampling where the units or potential respondents from each population set are selected according to the relative variability of the units within each subset.

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) research

DIY research refers to market research methods that can be conducted independently, without professional assistance. This approach is generally more cost effective and faster than traditional market research techniques.

Double opt-in (DOI)

Refers to a person who has agreed to join a research panel and has confirmed their agreement through a two-step verification process. It helps ensure explicit consent and accurate contact information.

Double-barrelled question

A badly constructed question where two topics are raised within one question. It should be avoided as it can lead to confusion and inaccurate responses.

Doughnut chart

A form of pie chart which allows different sets of data (e.g., for different years) to be shown in the same chart. It's useful for comparing proportional data across categories.

Emotion recognition

The use of AI algorithms to detect and interpret human emotions, often through analysis of facial expressions, voice, or text. It's used in market research to understand emotional responses to products or advertisements.

Ethnography

A research method used for investigating cultural practices, rituals, consumer behavior, routines, and social norms. It helps unearth previously unseen opportunities by looking at people's worlds in an authentic way.

Eye tracking

A method of measuring and analyzing where and how people look at visual information. In market research, it's used to understand how people interact with visual stimuli like advertisements or product packaging.

Face to face survey

Research which involves meeting respondents in person and interviewing them using a paper-based questionnaire, a laptop computer, tablet, or mobile device. It allows for more complex questions and use of visual aids.

Facial tracking

A method of measuring and analyzing facial expressions and movements. In market research, it's used to understand emotional responses to advertising, products, and other stimuli.

Factor Analysis

A statistical technique to examine the similarities between items in order to identify a more concise summary of themes. It's often used for data reduction or to identify underlying constructs.

Focus group

A qualitative research method used to gather data through group discussions. Participants are brought together in a moderated setting to discuss a specific topic, product, or service.

Frequency distributions

See Holecounts.

Funnel sequence

A method for ordering questions in a questionnaire that starts with broad, general topics and gradually narrows down to more specific, detailed questions. This approach helps ease respondents into the survey, building rapport and context before addressing more complex or sensitive issues, potentially improving the quality and depth of responses.

The funnel sequence is a common and effective technique in questionnaire design, particularly useful for in-depth interviews and complex surveys.

Gabor Granger

A pricing technique used to understand price elasticity for set products. Respondents are asked how likely they are to purchase a product at different price points, allowing researchers to establish optimal pricing.

Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)

A method of measuring changes in the electrical conductance of the skin, which can indicate changes in emotional arousal. In market research, it's used to understand emotional reactions to stimuli.

Gamification

The process of adding game-like elements to a research activity to engage participants and collect data in a more interactive way. It can lead to better quality data by making surveys more engaging and fun.

GANTT chart

A managerial tool used for scheduling a research project. It's a form of flowchart that provides a schematic representation incorporating the activity, time, and personnel requirements for a given research project.

Geo-fencing in market research

The use of GPS or RFID technology to define a geographic boundary, then trigger a response when a mobile device enters or leaves the area. It's used in location-based market research and mobile surveys.

Geodemographic profiling

A profiling method which uses postal addresses to categorize different neighborhoods in relation to buying power and behavior. It's useful for targeted marketing and location-based strategies.

Grounded theory

Grounded Theory is a systematic methodological approach to qualitative research, particularly valuable in market research when exploring new or poorly understood phenomena. Unlike traditional research methods that begin with a hypothesis, Grounded Theory starts with data collection and analysis, allowing theories to emerge from the data itself. Researchers using this method gather information through various qualitative techniques such as interviews, focus groups, or observations, and then analyze this data through a process of coding and constant comparison. As patterns and concepts emerge, researchers develop theories that are "grounded" in the actual experiences and perspectives of the participants. This approach is especially useful in uncovering consumer motivations, decision-making processes, or market trends that may not be apparent through conventional research methods. While more time-consuming and complex than some other research techniques, Grounded Theory can provide deep, nuanced insights that lead to innovative marketing strategies or product development ideas.

Group depth interviews

See Focus group.

Group moderator

The interviewer responsible for the management and encouragement of participants in a group discussion. They play a crucial role in facilitating productive discussions and ensuring all participants contribute.

Research undertaken in a central hall or venue commonly used to test respondents' initial reactions to a product, package, or concept. It's also known as a Central Location Test (CLT).

A graphical representation of data where values are depicted by color. In market research, they're often used to show where people click on websites or focus their attention in visual stimuli.

Holecounts refer to the number of respondents who selected each possible answer for each question in a survey. This concept is also known as frequency distributions or topline numbers, providing a basic summary of how responses are distributed across answer options.

An assumption or proposition that a researcher puts forward about some characteristic of the population being investigated. It's tested through research to determine if it's supported or refuted.

IDI (InDepth Interview)

A qualitative research method using a relatively open, discovery-oriented approach to obtain detailed information about a topic from a participant. It allows for deep exploration of individual perspectives and experiences.

IHUT (In Home Usage Test)

A market research method that allows consumers to test products in their own homes. Participants are given a product to use and are asked to provide feedback on its features, benefits, and overall satisfaction.

Impact indices

Measure the impact any independent variable has on changing a dependent variable. Often used when the independent variables are binary, it can evaluate the impact of different product qualities on preference.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

A psychological measurement technique used to uncover unconscious biases. It measures a respondent's automatic associations between mental representations of objects in memory and evaluations, attitudes, or stereotypes.

Implicit assumption

A badly constructed question where the researcher and the respondent are using different frames of reference as a result of assumptions that both parties make about the question being asked.

Independent samples

Samples in which the measurement of the variable of interest in one sample has no effect on the measurement of the variable in the other sample. It's important for certain statistical tests.

Internal data

Secondary data sourced from within the organization that is requiring the research to be conducted. It can include sales data, customer records, and previous research findings.

Interquartile range

A measure of dispersion that calculates the difference between the 75th and 25th percentile in a set of data. It's useful for understanding the spread of the middle 50% of the data.

Interval data

Similar to ordinal data with the added dimension that the intervals between the values on a scale are equal. However, the ratios between different values on the scale are not valid.

Interviewer bias

Bias and errors in research findings can significantly impact results, stemming from the actions of the interviewer. Factors such as the selection of interview subjects, the methodology employed during the interview process, and the precision in recording responses can all influence the integrity of the data. It's crucial to understand these elements to ensure reliable outcomes in research.

Interviewer Quality Control Scheme (IQCS)

A quality control scheme for interviewers in the UK. The scheme is aimed at improving selection, training, and supervision of interviewers.

Judgement sampling

A non-probability sampling procedure where a researcher consciously selects a sample that he or she considers to be most appropriate for the research study. It relies on the researcher's expertise but may introduce bias.

Key Driver Analysis

The analysis of the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables. Its purpose is to determine whether a relationship exists and the strength of the relationship, used to help prioritize what to focus on.

Kiosk-based survey

A survey often undertaken at an exhibition or trade show using touch screen computers to collect information from respondents. It can be cheaper to administer compared to traditional exit surveys with human interviewers.

Kruskal's relative importance analysis

A type of Key Driver Analysis used as an alternative to other techniques such as ordinary regression analysis. It's particularly useful when there is missing data or when variables are strongly related to each other.

Latent Class Analysis

A statistical method used to identify subgroups of related cases from multivariate categorical data. It's often used in market segmentation to identify groups with similar response patterns.

Leading question

A badly constructed question that tends to steer respondents toward a particular answer. Sometimes known as a loaded question, it should be avoided to prevent biased responses.

Least filled quota sampling

A variation of quota sampling where the research team attempts to fill the quotas in the most efficient way possible by selecting respondents from the sub-population that has the lowest representation in the sample.

Least squares approach

A regression procedure that is widely used for deriving the best-fit equation of a line for a given set of data involving a dependent and independent variable.

Lifetime value

The present value of the estimated future transactions and net income attributed to an individual customer relationship. It's crucial for customer relationship management and marketing strategy.

Likert scale

A rating scale which requires the respondent to state their level of agreement with a series of statements about a product, organization, or concept. It typically uses five points from "Strongly agree" to "Strongly disagree".

Linear regression

Used to find out the relative importance of different drivers in order to re-create a dependent variable. For example, the influence of brand imagery items on brand appeal.

Logistic regression

Used to find out the relative importance of different drivers in order to re-create a dependent variable when the dependent variable is binary. It's particularly useful in propensity modeling.

Longitudinal research

A study involving data collection at several periods in time, enabling trends over time to be examined. It may involve asking the same questions on multiple occasions to the same respondents or to respondents with similar characteristics.

Machine learning

A subset of AI that involves training computer models to learn from data and make predictions or decisions. In market research, it's increasingly used to automate much of the classification and analysis of both structured and unstructured data.

Mall intercept interviews

A type of market research technique where participants are approached in a shopping mall or other public area and asked to participate in a survey or interview. It allows for the collection of data from a diverse sample in a specific geographic location.

Market Basket Analysis

A data mining technique used to understand purchasing behavior by finding associations between different items that customers place in their "shopping baskets". It's often used in retail to inform product placement and promotions.

Market Research Online Communities (MROCs)

Groups of individuals recruited and engaged by a market research company to participate in ongoing research studies, surveys, and discussions about a specific topic or product. They provide ongoing insights and feedback.

Marketing research

The collection, analysis, and communication of information undertaken to assist decision making in marketing. It encompasses a wide range of methods and techniques to understand markets, consumers, and marketing effectiveness.

MaxDiff (Maximum Difference Scaling)

A technique used to understand relative importance or appeal amongst a list of features/statements. Respondents choose the most and least appealing/important items from sets, resulting in a ranking of all items.

MBC (Menu-Based Conjoint)

A specific type of conjoint analysis able to handle a variety of menu choice situations in which respondents make from one to multiple choices in the process of building their preferred selection.

The arithmetic average calculated by summing all of the values in a set of data and dividing by the number of cases. It's one of the most common measures of central tendency.

Measures of central tendency

Measures that indicate a typical value for a set of data by computing the mean, mode, or median. They provide a single value that attempts to describe a set of data.

Measures of dispersion

Measures that indicate how 'spread out' a set of data is. The most common are the range, the interquartile range, and the standard deviation.

The median is a measure of central tendency in statistics that represents the middle value in a sorted dataset. When all values are arranged in ascending or descending order, the median is the value that divides the dataset into two equal halves. It's one of the three primary measures of central tendency, alongside the mean and mode.

The method for calculating the median depends on whether the number of values in the dataset is odd or even.

Odd numbers Formula: Median position = (n + 1) / 2, where n is the number of values.

Even numbers Formula: Median = (Value at position n/2 + Value at position (n/2) + 1) / 2

Method Bias

When we say method we broadly refer to aspects of a test or task that can be a source of systematic measurement error. In a questionnaire, this includes the wording of instructions and items, or the response format (e.g. Likert, Visual Analogue Scale, etc). Many researchers, such as Podsakoff, MacKenzie, and Podsakoff’s (2012), also consider a study’s measurement context as a potential methodfactor.

Read our tips for reducing Method Bias

Mixed Mode Studies

Research studies that use a variety of collection methods in a single survey (e.g., using the same questionnaire online and face to face) in order to improve response rates and representativeness.

The mode is a statistical measure that represents the value that appears most frequently in a dataset. It's one of the three main measures of central tendency, alongside the mean and median. The mode is particularly useful for understanding the most common or typical value in a dataset, especially when dealing with categorical or discrete data.

Examples of Mode Calculation:

Example 1: Unimodal Data Dataset: 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7  Mode: 5 (appears three times)

Example 2: Bimodal Data Dataset: Red, Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, Blue, Purple  Modes: Red and Blue (each appears twice)

Example 3: No Mode Dataset: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5  No mode (all values appear once)

Monadic testing

A survey method where each respondent only evaluates one concept out of several being tested. It's commonly used in the early stages of product or concept development.

Multi stage sampling

A sampling approach where a number of successive sampling stages are undertaken before the final sample is obtained. It's often used when a complete list of the population is not available.

Multidimensional scaling

A statistical technique used to visualize the level of similarity of individual cases in a dataset. In market research, it's often used to create perceptual maps of brands or products.

Multiple discriminant analysis

A statistical technique used to classify individuals into one of two or more segments (or populations) on the basis of a set of measurements.

Multiple regression analysis

A statistical technique to examine the relationship between three or more variables and also to calculate the likely value of the dependent variable based on the values of two or more independent variables.

Multivariate data analysis

Statistical procedures that simultaneously analyze two or more variables on a sample of objects. Common techniques include multiple regression analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, and conjoint analysis.

Mystery shopping

A method of testing the quality of services provided to customers by using researchers posing as regular customers. It's used to assess whether employees are following company procedures or industry guidelines.

Short for "national representative sample," it refers to a research sample that is intended to be representative of the entire population of a country or region. It's crucial for studies aiming to generalize findings to a whole population.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

A branch of AI that involves understanding and generating human language. In market research, it's used for tasks such as sentiment analysis, text classification, and chatbot interactions.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A measure of customer loyalty and advocacy, calculated by asking customers how likely they are to recommend a company's products or services to others. It's widely used as a simple metric of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Netnography

A qualitative research method used to study online communities. It involves the systematic observation and analysis of the interactions, communications, and content generated by a group of people on the internet.

Neuroscience

Used in market research to provide an accurate and unbiased measure of consumer response. Techniques such as EEG and fMRI are used to measure brain activity and understand how people respond to marketing stimuli.

Nominal data

Numbers assigned to objects or phenomena as labels or identification numbers that name or classify but have no true numeric meaning. They're used for categorization only.

Non probability sampling

A set of sampling methods where a subjective procedure of selection is used, resulting in the probability of selection for each member of the population of interest being unknown. It's often used when probability sampling is not feasible.

Non response errors

An error in a study that arises when some of the potential respondents do not respond. This may occur due to respondents refusing or being unavailable to take part in the research.

Non sampling error

Errors that occur in a study that do not relate to sampling error. They tend to be classified into three broad types: sampling frame error, non-response error, and data error.

Normal distribution

A continuous distribution that is bell-shaped and symmetrical about the mean. It's important in statistics because many natural phenomena follow this distribution.

Null hypothesis

The hypothesis that is tested and is the statement of the status quo where no difference or effect is expected. It's typically what researchers try to disprove in statistical testing.

Observation

A data gathering approach where information is collected on the behavior of people, objects, and organizations without any questions being asked of the participants. It can provide insights into natural behavior.

Omnibus surveys

A data collection approach that is undertaken at regular intervals for a changing group of clients who share the costs involved in the survey's set-up, sampling, and interviewing. It's a cost-effective way to ask a few questions to a large sample.

Open ended question

Questions which allow respondents to reply in their own words. There are no pre-set choices of answers and the respondent can decide whether to provide a brief one-word answer or something very detailed and long.

Ordinal data

Numbers that have the labeling characteristics of nominal data, but also have the ability to communicate the rank order of the data. The numbers do not indicate absolute quantities, nor do they imply that the intervals between the numbers are equal.

Paired interviews

An in-depth interview involving two respondents such as married couples, business partners, teenage friends, or a mother and child. It can provide insights into shared decision-making processes.

Panel research

A research approach where comparative data is collected from the same respondents on more than one occasion. Panels can provide information on changes in behavior, awareness, and attitudes over time.

Participant observation

A research approach where the researcher interacts with the subject or subjects being observed. The best-known type of participant observation is mystery shopping.

Participant Validation

A validation technique that involves taking the findings from qualitative research back to the participants/respondents that were involved in the study and seeking their feedback. It helps ensure the validity of qualitative findings.

Passive data

Data that is collected without actively seeking out the information from a respondent/participant. This type of data is generated naturally through actions such as website visits, online purchases, geolocation, and social media activity.

Pearson's product moment correlation

A correlation approach that is used with interval and ratio data. It measures the strength and direction of the linear relationship between two variables.

Perceptual mapping

An analysis technique which involves the positioning of objects in perceptual space. Frequently used in determining the positioning of brands relative to their competitors.

Photo sorts

A projective technique which uses a set of photographs depicting different types of people. Respondents are then asked to connect the individuals in the photographs with the brands they think they would use.

A type of bar chart which uses pictures of the items being described rather than bars. It can make data more visually appealing and easier to understand quickly.

Pilot testing

The pre-testing of a questionnaire prior to undertaking a full survey. Such testing involves administering the questionnaire to a limited number of potential respondents in order to identify and correct flaws in the questionnaire design.

Placement tests

The testing of reactions to products in the home and where they are to be used. Respondents are given a new product to test in their own home or office, and their experiences and attitudes are then collected.

Population of interest

The total group of people that the researcher wishes to examine, study, or obtain information from. It typically reflects the target market or potential target market for the product or service being researched.

Predictive analytics

The use of data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data. It's increasingly used in market research to forecast trends and behaviors.

Price Sensitivity Management (Van Westendorp)

A technique used to understand price preferences. Respondents are asked at what price they would consider a product to be too expensive, too cheap, etc. The optimal price point is determined where an equal proportion of respondents have said "too cheap" and "too expensive".

Primary data

Data collected by a program of observation, qualitative or quantitative research either separately or in combination to meet the specific objectives of a marketing research project. It's collected specifically for the research at hand.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

A descriptive method of multivariate analysis used to analyze numeric questions. It converts a set of observations of possibly correlated variables into a set of values of linearly uncorrelated variables called Principal Components.

Probability sampling

A set of sampling methods where an objective procedure of selection is used, resulting in every member of the population of interest having a known probability of being selected. It allows for statistical inference from the sample to the population.

Programme evaluation and review technique (PERT)

A managerial tool used for scheduling a research project. It involves a probability-based scheduling approach that recognizes and measures the uncertainty of project completion times.

Projective questioning

A qualitative research technique that asks respondents to consider what other people would think about a situation, rather than directly asking about their own opinions. Also known as third-party techniques, these methods are used to uncover deeper attitudes or beliefs that respondents might be unwilling or unable to express directly about themselves.

This technique is part of a broader category of projective techniques used in market research to gain insights into consumers' subconscious thoughts and feelings

Proportionate stratified random sampling

A form of stratified random sampling where the units or potential respondents from each population subset are selected in proportion to the total number of each subset's units in the population. It ensures representation of all subgroups in the sample.

Psychographic segmentation

A method of dividing a market into segments based on consumers' personality traits, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. It goes beyond demographic segmentation to understand the psychological aspects of consumer behavior.

Purchase intent scales

A scaling approach which is used to measure a respondent's intention to purchase a product or potential product. It's often used in concept testing and new product development research.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is an unstructured research approach with a small number of carefully selected individuals used to produce non-quantifiable insights into behavior, motivations, and attitudes. Methods include focus groups and in-depth interviews.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research is a structured research approach involving a sample of the population to produce quantifiable insights into behavior, motivations, and attitudes. It typically involves larger sample sizes and statistical analysis.

Questionnaire design process

A stepped approach to the design of questionnaires. It involves determining the information needed, question content, question wording, response format, and question sequence.

Quota sampling

Quota sampling is a non-probability sampling technique used in market research to create a sample that reflects specific proportions of characteristics in the target population. In this method, researchers divide the population into subgroups or "cells" based on relevant demographic or psychographic variables such as age, gender, income, or education level. For each subgroup, a quota is set that corresponds to its proportion in the overall population. Researchers then collect data from individuals within each subgroup until the predetermined quotas are met. While quota sampling aims to achieve a representative sample and can be more cost-effective than probability sampling methods, it is subject to potential bias in the selection process. This is because the final choice of respondents within each quota is often left to the researcher's discretion, which may inadvertently introduce selection bias and limit the generalizability of results.

A measure of dispersion that calculates the difference between the largest and smallest values in a set of data. It's a simple measure of variability but is sensitive to outliers.

Actual 'real' numbers that have a meaningful absolute zero. All arithmetic operations are possible with such data, including meaningful ratios.

A statistical approach to examine the relationship between two variables. It identifies the nature of the relationship using an equation and can be used for prediction.

Reliability of scales

Refers to the extent to which a rating scale produces consistent or stable results. Stability is most commonly measured using test-retest reliability and consistency is measured using split-half reliability.

Research brief

A written document which sets out an organization's requirements from a marketing research project. This provides the specification against which the researchers will design the research project.

River sampling

A method that invites respondents to take a survey via online banners, ads, promotions, offers, and invitations placed on various websites and social media. Respondents are screened and routed to appropriate surveys based on their characteristics.

Role playing

A projective technique which involves a respondent being asked to act out the character of a brand. It can reveal perceptions and associations with the brand that might not be expressed directly.

When designing a questionnaire, routing refers to the survey logic that allows you to change or limit the content based on previous answers given by respondents. Also known as branching or skip logic.

A subset of the population of interest. In market research, we typically study a sample and use statistical inference to draw conclusions about the wider population.

Sampling error

The difference between the sample value and the true value of a phenomenon for the population being surveyed. It can be expressed mathematically, usually as the survey result plus or minus a certain percentage.

Scaling questions

Questions that ask respondents to assign numerical measures to subjective concepts such as attitudes, opinions, and feelings. Common types include Likert scales and semantic differential scales.

Screening criteria

Criteria used to ensure that the participants in a study are relevant, qualified, and representative of the target population. Screening questions are usually asked at the start of the study and may include demographics as well as questions such as brand usage and product ownership.

Screening questionnaire

A questionnaire used for identifying suitable respondents for a particular research activity, such as a group discussion or in-depth interview.

Secondary data

Information that has been previously gathered for some purpose other than the current research project. It may be data available within the organization (internal data) or information available from published and electronic sources originating outside the organization (external data).

Segmentation

The process of dividing markets into groups of people or occasions that are similar to each other, but different from other groups. It's used to target marketing efforts more effectively.

Semantic differential scales

A scaling approach which requires the respondent to rate a brand or concept using a set of bipolar adjectives or phrases (e.g., helpful and unhelpful; friendly and unfriendly). Each pair of adjectives is separated by a seven-category scale with neither numerical nor verbal labels.

The study of symbols and signs and how they communicate meaning. In market research, it involves analyzing the visual and linguistic elements of product packaging, advertising, and branding to understand cultural and emotional associations.

Sensory testing

A method of evaluating the characteristics of a product or food by measuring how it is perceived by the senses of smell, taste, sight, touch, and sound. It's used to assess product attributes and quality.

Sentence completion

A projective technique which involves providing respondents with an incomplete sentence or group of sentences and asking them to complete them. It can reveal underlying attitudes or perceptions.

Sentiment analysis

A form of text analytics that uses natural language processing and machine learning to determine the emotion expressed in a text. It's commonly used to analyze survey responses, user/customer feedback, and product reviews.

Sequential monadic testing

A survey method whereby each respondent provides feedback on two or more concepts in the same survey. The concepts should be presented in a random order to avoid order bias.

Share of Shelf (SOS)

A metric used to measure the proportion of space a product or brand occupies on a retail shelf compared to its competitors. It helps understand the visibility and accessibility of a product in the retail environment.

Share of Voice (SOV)

A measure of the proportion of advertising a brand or product receives compared to others in the same category. It helps understand how often a brand is advertised relative to its competitors.

Share of Wallet (SOW)

A metric used to measure a company's market share in terms of customer spending. It represents the proportion of a customer's total spending on a given product or service category that is going to a particular company.

Shelf impact testing equipment

Used to determine the visual impact of new packaging when placed on shelves next to competitors' products. It helps assess how well a product stands out in a retail environment.

Simple random sampling

A probability sampling method where every possible member of the population has an equal chance of being selected for the survey. Respondents are chosen using random numbers.

Simulated test markets

A research approach used to predict the potential results of a product launch and to experiment with changes to different elements of a product's marketing mix. It relies on simulated or laboratory-type testing and mathematical modeling.

Snowball sampling

Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling procedure where additional respondents are identified and selected on the basis of referrals from initial respondents. It tends to be used where the population of interest is small or difficult to identify.

Social media analytics

The use of data from social media platforms to understand consumer behavior and sentiment, as well as to track the performance of campaigns or products. It provides insights into online conversations and trends.

Spearman's rank-order correlation

Spearman's rank-order correlation, often referred to as Spearman's rho , is a non-parametric statistical measure used to assess the strength and direction of the relationship between two ordinal variables. This technique is particularly valuable in market research when dealing with ranked data or when the relationship between variables may not be linear. It works by converting the raw scores of each variable into ranks and then calculating the correlation between these ranks. The resulting correlation coefficient ranges from -1 to +1, where -1 indicates a perfect negative correlation, +1 a perfect positive correlation, and 0 no correlation. Spearman's correlation is robust to outliers and doesn't require the assumption of normally distributed data, making it a versatile tool for analyzing various types of ordinal data in market research, such as customer satisfaction ratings, preference rankings, or Likert scale responses.

Split half reliability

Measures the internal consistency of a summated rating scale and refers to the consistency with which each item represents the overall construct of interest. The method involves randomly dividing the various scale items into two halves.

Standard deviation

A measure of dispersion that calculates the average distance that the values in a data set are away from the mean. It provides a measure of how spread out the data is.

Stapel scales

A scaling approach which is a variation of the semantic differential scaling approach. It uses a single descriptor and 10 response categories with no verbal labels.

Stimulus materials

Materials used in group discussions and individual depth interviews to communicate the marketer or advertiser's latest creative thinking for a product, packaging, or advertising to the respondents.

Stratified random sampling

A probability sampling procedure in which the chosen sample is forced to contain potential respondents from each of the key segments of the population. It ensures representation of all important subgroups.

Structural Equation Modelling

A statistical technique for testing and estimating causal relationships, using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions. It allows for the construction of variables which are not measured directly.

Structured observation

A research approach where observers use a record sheet or form to count phenomena or to record their observations. It provides a systematic way of collecting observational data.

System 1 & System 2 thinking

A concept in psychology that describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts. System 1 is fast, instinctive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. This concept is applied in market research to understand consumer decision-making processes.

Systematic sampling

A probability sampling approach similar to a simple random sample but which uses a skip interval (i.e., every nth person) rather than random numbers to select the respondents.

A hypothesis test about a single mean if the sample is too small to use the Z test. It's commonly used to determine if there is a significant difference between the means of two groups.

Tabular method of analysis

A method for analyzing qualitative research data using a large sheet of paper divided into boxes. It allows for systematic organization and comparison of qualitative data.

Test-retest reliability

Measures the stability of rating scale items over time. Respondents are asked to complete scales at two different times under as near identical conditions as possible.

Text Mining

The process of deriving high-quality information from text. It involves the discovery of patterns and trends in large volumes of unstructured text data.

Trend Analysis

A technique used to analyze the direction and rate of change in data over time. It's used to predict future values based on historical data.

Triangulation

Using a combination of different sources of data where the weaknesses in some sources are counterbalanced with the strengths of others. It increases the validity and reliability of research findings.

TURF (Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency)

An analysis used for providing estimates of media or market potential and devising optimal communication and placement strategies. It's particularly useful for deciding on product ranges or media mixes.

Type I error

A Type I error, also known as a "false positive," is a fundamental concept in statistical hypothesis testing that has significant implications for market research. It occurs when a researcher incorrectly rejects a true null hypothesis, essentially concluding that there is a significant effect or relationship when, in reality, there isn't one. The probability of committing a Type I error is denoted by alpha (α), which is typically set at 0.05 or 0.01 in market research studies. This means that researchers accept a 5% or 1% chance of falsely detecting an effect. Type I errors can lead to misguided business decisions, such as implementing ineffective marketing strategies or product changes based on falsely perceived consumer preferences. To mitigate this risk, researchers must carefully consider their significance levels and sample sizes, and potentially employ multiple testing corrections when conducting numerous statistical tests simultaneously.

Type II error

A Type II error, also known as a "false negative," is a crucial concept in statistical hypothesis testing within market research. It occurs when a researcher fails to reject a false null hypothesis, essentially concluding that there is no significant effect or relationship when, in reality, one does exist. The probability of committing a Type II error is denoted by beta (β), and its complement (1-β) represents the power of the statistical test. Type II errors can have serious implications in market research, potentially leading to missed opportunities or overlooked insights. For instance, a company might fail to detect a genuine consumer preference or market trend, resulting in lost competitive advantage. To reduce the risk of Type II errors, researchers often increase sample sizes, choose more sensitive statistical tests, or adjust the significance level, balancing this against the risk of Type I errors. Understanding and managing both types of errors is essential for conducting robust and reliable market research.

See Population of interest.

Unstructured questions

See Open-ended questions.

Usability Testing

A technique used to evaluate a product by testing it with representative users. It's often used for websites, apps, and software to identify any usability problems and collect qualitative and quantitative data . Read more about usability testing on Prolific .

User generated content (UGC)

Online material such as comments, profiles, photographs that is produced by end users. It can be a valuable source of insights in market research.

UX (User Experience)

Refers to the overall experience of a person using a product or service, including the design, functionality, and ease of use. UX research is used to understand how people interact with a product, website, or service, and to identify areas for improvement.

Whether the subject requiring to be measured was actually measured. It's a crucial concept in ensuring that research findings are meaningful and accurate.

Verification

The process of checking and verifying the accuracy and reliability of data collected during research. This includes reviewing data for errors, inconsistencies, and missing information.

Viewing rooms

Specialist facilities/locations for group discussions. They are set out in the form of a boardroom or living-room setting with video cameras or a large one-way mirror built into one wall.

Virtual reality

Technology that can be used in market research to create immersive experiences for consumers, allowing researchers to gather data on how consumers interact with products and brands in a simulated environment.

VoC (Voice of Customer)

A research method used to collect customer feedback. It captures how customers feel about a business, product, or service, providing insights that can help create a stronger customer experience.

Refers to the second generation of the World Wide Web, characterized by the shift from static websites to dynamic, interactive, and user-generated content. It has significant implications for online market research.

Refers to the next generation of the World Wide Web, characterized by the integration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the decentralized web. It aims to create a more intelligent, rich, and interconnected web.

Web scraping

A technique used in market research to gather large amounts of data from the internet, such as information on prices, product reviews, or social media sentiment. This data can then be used to gain insights into market trends and consumer behavior.

The process of adjusting the value of survey responses to account for over- or under-representation of different categories of respondent. It's used to make the sample more representative of the population.

Word association tests

A projective technique that involves asking respondents what brands or products they associate with specific words. It's useful for understanding brand imagery and building rapport in group discussions.

A visual depiction of words used by respondents in qualitative research, open-ended survey questions, or content appearing on social media or reviews. The font size of the words is determined by the frequency of use.

A hypothesis test about a single mean where the sample size is larger than 30. It's used when the population standard deviation is known and the sample size is large.

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