Tips on how to Conduct Market Research

Most marketing students know the story of Clever Hans. He was a horse who was proclaimed to have an extraordinary talent – to be able to count. When they asked a math question, he would stomp his hooves to the right number. The owner generally seemed to believe it. It was only after further research that someone figured out that the horse could not count but looked for a small and inadvertent cue from his owner that he had reached the right number. Only the horse knew he couldn’t count.
This story illustrates how important it is to be very careful in marketing research. Even if you mean to do it honestly, you can accidently skew your research. For instance, let’s say that you are trying to find out whether someone thinks that you should change to a different recipe for your product. You may get two different responses from the same person depending on how you word the question. For instance, you may get different feedback from the questions “Do you think we should change our hundred year old family recipe?” and “Do you think we should try out an exciting new recipe?” You want to look at all of the questions on any surveys or other marketing materials and make sure that they are as objective as possible.
You should look at a variety of different marketing research techniques. They each have different advantages and disadvantages. Surveys are a way to reach a lot of people and can ask about a wide variety of topics such as how people like your product, advertising campaigns and so forth. You can give this out in person, via the mail or via e-mail. You can provide incentives for people to respond. Some people make focus groups to evaluate different aspects of a product, advertising, packaging and other important characteristics.
When you get the information back you will want to evaluate it carefully. Remember that not everything that people write will be accurate. For instance, let’s say someone is doing a survey because they get points from a website. They may want to get through it as quickly as possible so they may just answer questions without even reading them. There are different marketing research techniques to identify people who are answering this way (such as asking the same question in different ways). Also, be careful to make a causal relationship in data that is just related. You also want to make sure that your research targets your audience. If you find out that the marketing subjects would prefer the product a different way but they don’t buy your product anyways, then that will not be useful.
Marketing research can help you understand your customers better to find out the best to ways to make and sell your product. Heed the above tips when conducting this important activity.
Updated On: 09/21/2010 Published On: 09/21/2010 Article ViewerClose
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