10 Killer Factors Influencing Marketing Research in 2023
Market research is an essential factor that influences every business's growth. That's why every company should take into account marketing research before launching their products or services.
After all, it's only through market research that you can ensure that your new products are well-aligned with the expectations of your target markets. In essence, with proper market research, you can almost predict the success of your new launches.
While that seems straightforward, many factors influence the efficiency of your market research. That’s why this article will discuss in detail some of the factors involved as well as why it's vital for every business to conduct market research.
What is Market Research?
Essentially, marketing research is a specific, systematic procedure for collecting data, evaluating, and interpreting data. The data may relate to a target market, consumer habits, rival businesses, or the industry as a whole. This is the cornerstone of any flourishing business.
Market research serves various purposes, from locating a new market for your products or services and effectively responding to market opportunities or risk factors to starting a new company's brand. Generally, it helps owners make well-informed business decisions.
The bottom line is; market research plays a vital role in every business operation. That's because it takes the guesswork out of innovation and funnels your resources into ideas that have great potential.
Types of Market Research Methods
The whole point of market research is to derive marketing insights from actual data. While you can hire a market research firm to offset your marketing needs, it's always safer to do your own market research and back up your decisions with real and specific market data.
Market research may differ from company to company, but the core market research methods include; qualitative research, quantitative research, and primary and secondary research.
1. Primary Research
Primary research is the collection of data firsthand. Instead of relying on existing secondary information, you go directly to the source. It is also referred to as field research. Primary research entails gathering information pertinent to a specific research context.
For example, if a small business administration requires information about the changing needs of their target markets, they can use primary research methods to obtain specific research findings.
That's because, with primary research, you have more control over the market research method, you get up-to-date information, and it focuses on the individual market rather than the mass market.
2. Secondary Market Research
Secondary market research compiles previously conducted studies or information for analysis. In essence, unlike primary market research, it uses secondary data. Besides, the secondary research method is also ideal for small businesses and start-ups looking for a low-cost data collection method.
While there are multiple ways to acquire secondary data, mostly this data originates from previously collected data acquired by a third party. Secondary research comes in handy when you need a quick understanding of the target customers.
In some cases, this secondary research method can be known as desk research. Popular secondary market research sources include magazines, television, government statistics, and journals.
3. Qualitative Research
This kind of market research explores a concept from a descriptive lens. Therefore, qualitative data focuses more on examining the meaning behind certain consumer attitudes and beliefs. It's more about emotions and consumer opinions than numbers.
Therefore, marketers can use this market research method to understand the sentiment of their target markets. They understand what motivates shoppers when buying things, what they think about a specific product, and why.
That will help marketers uncover key insights which can be utilized in developing products, services and a solid marketing strategy. You can collect this data remotely, through a focus group or in person.
4. Quantitative Research
On the other hand, quantitative marketing research is a more numbers-driven approach. It focuses on gathering quantitative data that can be quantified and measured. For instance, the number of views on a post, sales, or time spent on a web page.
Therefore, quantitative research can help to shed light on specific statistical information about a product line or business structure. Generally, it's useful for both large enterprises and start-ups.
But due to the complex nature of quantitative research, it's further subdivided into; experimental research, survey research, descriptive research, correlational research and quasi-experimental research.
Why is Marketing Research Important For a Business?
Marketing research is an essential technique in every business owner's marketing strategy. So much so that it could even prevent project failure and, while at it, ensure you engage in profitable business activities.
By conducting market research, your business will benefit in the following ways
i. It helps to create a solid business plan
Market analysts use statistical techniques to analyze the market's potential, making it easier for business owners to develop an effective business plan and marketing strategy.
ii. Identify new business opportunities
With marketing research, businesses can understand consumer demand and quickly identify sectors they should invest in. Also, you can pinpoint possible drivers of change and give you the opportunity to respond to the needs of your target market.
iii. Market research helps detect possible risk factors
Since market research investigates market trends in detail, companies can easily detect risk factors in their niche. In that, companies can plan their marketing strategies in a way that they can prevent foreseeable economic dangers.
iv. Evaluate customer satisfaction
With proper market research, you can evaluate your customer's shopping experience and identify gaps in your marketing strategies. Such data helps develop marketing strategies that focus on ultimate customer satisfaction.
v. Competitor analysis
The market research also helps you identify the mistakes made by competitor companies in your industry. That gives you hints on how to stand out from the competition innovatively.
Factors that Largely Influence the Success of Your Market Research
Various factors influence the success of your market research. Therefore, to gather data, you need to pay close attention to these factors as they affect your survey results. Below are some of these factors.
1. Marketing Goals
Before embarking on your marketing research, you should establish clear objectives. By focusing on specific goals, you can establish a more focused study. Therefore, you don't want to ask your respondents too many irrelevant questions when conducting your customer surveys.
You want to focus on inquiring about things that will add value to your marketing strategy. That will also increase your chances of accomplishing specific objectives and effectively acquiring all the primary information.
2. The Target Audience
Another key to an effective marketing research study is understanding your target audience. After all, the more focused your target audience is, the better and more relevant the data you obtain will be.
With that in mind, understand precisely who you'd like to reach by analyzing who your products and services are intended for. Identify the key characteristics of your audience including their age, gender, marital status, educational background, hobbies, and income, among other factors.
Once you've understood your target audience, present them with your products and services. Remember, if you are not asking the right people, your market research data will point you in the wrong direction.
3. Competition
The competition will always be there in any market sector. But if you want to create a winning market strategy and stay ahead of your competition, you need to do a competitive analysis and look at how well your competitors respond to customer needs. That's the only way you can always have a competitive edge in the market.
Also, look into how many companies offer the same products and services as you and the results they can obtain. Analyze what your target audience appreciates about your competitors and what you could improve.
If customers are interested in certain things that are not well covered, that could be an investment opportunity.
4. Technology
Technology has, over the years, become an indispensable factor influencing market research. And with the latest generation of technology, you can test various aspects of your brand's marketing.
For instance, you can test the creative concept of your brand, packaging, and marketing campaign and even simulate a retail environment. That will help you identify elements that your potential customers find attractive.
Especially with the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, marketers have made significant advances toward effective market research. With AI, brands can now optimize specific research processes and enable new functionalities such as the evaluation of customer experience, personalization, text analysis, as well as the management of big data.
5. The Survey Method and Questions
The survey method and questions you chose for conducting your market analysis are also crucial to your market research success. You can either complete your survey as an interview or a questionnaire. The interviews will give you direct feedback from the interviewer, while the questionnaires offer independent responses from the average consumer.
Besides the survey method, you must also pay attention to the survey questions. Writing these questions will take some thought as you want them to help you effectively accomplish your marketing research goals.
Determine the questions you need to ask to gather the data you need to accomplish your marketing research goals. On top of that, ensure you've written down the questions in a language your targeted respondents can understand. In this case, it will help to avoid jargon words and slang.
And before you release the survey questions, have multiple people look at them. You'll be surprised to discover that other people may interpret the questions in your survey differently, although they seem to make sense to you.
6. Market Research Budget
Your marketing research budget goes hand in hand with your ROI. After all, your marketing research budget dictates how much money you have available and how it should be spent.
On the flip side, without an adequate market research budget and plan, your company may be unable to cover its costs, significantly affecting your reputation and financial position.
That's why you need a solid budget to conduct effective market research, as it will help you plan, measure your spending, and manage your resources so that every expense is carefully thought out.
7. Timing
Consumers frequently and drastically alter their habits. Therefore, brands must collect data to help them modify customer interactions and adjust to evolving and shifting buying habits in due time.
This emphasizes the necessity of having access to real-time data, which can more accurately describe the context and consumer markets. This significant paradigm shift must also align with how quickly and effectively marketing programs are evolving to meet business needs.
Companies can meet customer expectations and continuously improve their product offerings by conducting a better and real-time competitive analysis.
8. Regulatory Factors
Local or national laws and regulations may impact your market research plan. Your ability to market and sell your products may be affected by consumer rights, product labelling, and health and safety laws.
Regional regulatory differences may exist, but they are all there to safeguard consumers and businesses. It is crucial to ensure that none of them is broken by your marketing efforts. To successfully market your good or service, you must understand what is and isn't legal.
9. Market Research Automation Tools
Today, most market research has become dominated by technology; hence, we can't rule out the impact of automation on the success of your product research campaign. Automation drives research based on consolidated research methodologies, which ensure maximum efficiency in analyzing data collected.
Market research can be time-consuming but all thanks to automation, market analysts can devote more time to analyzing the learned insights and any potential business-level implications or conclusions. At the same time, the precision offered by automation tools makes it possible to produce excellent outcomes in terms of actionable data, quality, and speed.
10. Analytics Tools for Market Research
Tools for market research are crucial because they offer details about the target market, sales data, consumer preferences, rivals, and potential risks and business opportunities. With market research tools, salespeople and marketing managers can better understand how consumer behaviour.
With the aid of market research tools, future projections can be made with greater accuracy. And since the marketing team will be able to make more informed decisions, that will largely contribute to the success of the business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What are the seven core steps of market research?
A: The core steps of market research include; defining the problem, developing a marketing research strategy, acquiring the research materials, collecting the data, analyzing the data, compiling the data, and implementing the data-driven strategies.
Q: What's the main reason why companies conduct market research?
A: Market research aims to examine the market for a specific product or service to determine how the target market will respond to it.
Q: Which are the most common types of market research data collection techniques?
A: Market research data collection methods include; in-depth interviews, online surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.
Q: How is quantitative market research different from qualitative market research?
A: While quantitative research focuses on numbers and seeks to explain theories, qualitative research is more about understanding why things happen the way they do.
Q: Can you use more than one research method to conduct your marketing research?
A: Yes, it's recommended that you use more than one research method as it gives you a more balanced approach. While the numbers will tell you a lot about what's happening, you need to understand why things are happening that way.
Q: Why is market research so valuable for brands?
A: Market research helps you understand your customer's needs and how well your business systems can connect with existing and potential customers.
Q: How can you categorize quantitative research? Secondary or Primary?
A: Quantitative research can be both primary and secondary. That's because primary and secondary data can either be numbers-based or opinions-based.
