8 Types of Market Research to Consider In 2022 Have you ever set up some healthy snacks for a party or guests and found out later that most people preferred junk food? Market research can tell you which cards to play in your hand when it comes to marketing strategies, so you don’t end up going overboard on the wrong things. Market research falls into several different categories. The most common are primary, secondary research. Find compact definitions for each and learn why it’s important to manage these various areas of the marketing cycle. Marketing research is the process of gathering information about a specific target audience’s attitude and opinion regarding a product or service, as well as collecting data on the target market’s demographics, psychographics, usage and buying behavior. The findings from this process are used for various purposes including evaluating ad campaign success, improving production and product development, defining marketing strategy and tactics, accounting for sales over time, measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty, making predictions about future demands, supporting pricing decisions and analyzing competitors or alternative products using marketing intelligence. When taking part in market research, there are two main approaches that most businesses follow – primary and secondary research. Both techniques of marketing research involve people interacting with the industry in different ways, which is why it’s important to choose an approach that is most effective for your own business and aims.
1. Primary Research Primary research is the set of data that you collect yourself, going directly to the source. Because it is your own unique data, it becomes your property. Two types of raw data are gathered from the participants, either exploratory or conclusive. The first type is gathered to determine what needs to be discovered before finding a successful solution and the second one when we are looking for broken links in our understanding of the problem and how we can go about solving it, using the previous research as guidance. Focus groups – A focus group is the type of research that sorts out what people want by asking them in a meeting where someone (a moderator) can guide their thinking and they discuss the answers with one another. This is how you get insights such as how to improve your product or service. This method is great for gathering the opinions of a lot of people in a relatively short amount of time but can have some control issues that must be addressed by the interviewer. The interviewer must not only prepare ways to gather answers and record responses, but they need to also carry on an engaging conversation with all participants until the survey is done – this might cause interviewers to alter responses due to cognitive dissonance. Participants (either consciously or subconsciously) may also alter their answers based on who asked the question i.e., acquiescence bias, dominance bias or researcher bias.