8 Types of Market Research & How to utilize them to your Benefit

What is Market Research?

Market research is about gathering specific details about the consumers, current and emerging trends, and competitors that can help companies to make strategic decisions about marketing their products/services. Market research and analysis benefits entrepreneurs to keep up with the latest trends, make better business decisions and maintain the competitive edge of their business. You can be a start-up owner or a businessman wishing to expand, market research is vital to understand your target markets and boost sales.

The global market research services business is predicted to rise from $76.42 billion in 2021 to $82.62 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.1%. The market will reach $108.61 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 7.1%. The numbers describe how outsourcing market research is proving profitable for businesses across the globe.

Market research provides insight into:
• Consumer needs & preferences
• Buying behaviour
• Price sensitivities
• Competitor strengths and weaknesses
• Market share of the competitor
• Current and emerging trends

There’s a saying- Failing to prepare means preparing to fail. A business cannot thrive if it fails to do the critical research to understand new trends, new product/service advancements, and most importantly, consumer needs. 9% of firms lose their clients to their competitors when they don’t conduct market research to gain their customer loyalty and retention. The majority of the products plummet as they don’t outsource market research services. It helps any business to personalize products as per the consumer needs, stay relevant and stay ahead of the others.

Why Market Research is so important?

We’d like to quote Henry Ford here- if you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always got.

In terms of market research and analysis, if we keep doing what we’ve always done, there’s a good chance that we might fall behind and might become outdated. Let us discuss an example here:

Kodak for instance. Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film for almost a hundred years. However, when digital photography began, Kodak didn’t adapt to it and kept doing what it did. Eventually the company didn’t just plummet, but trimmed down examples like this. While Kodak sank, Fujifilm, its biggest rival, reinvented itself and rose to meet the digital challenge in unexpected ways. Needless to say that Fujifilm sailed successfully ahead.

Similarly, if you keep doing the research the same old way, chances are that your firm might end up much like Kodak did. So how to choose the methods of market research you need? Let us list down the types of market research you can use to get the desired success in your business.

8 Types of Market Research

There are many types of market research services that you can utilize to meet the exact business goals.

Brand Research

What is it?
Brand research creates & manages the brand/identity of a company. It can be a logo, image, narrative, or attributes people can relate to.

When to use it?
It can be used at the beginning, during the brand makeover, or at any stage in a company’s lifecycle. It can be used for product launches and re-branding. Look at the following types of brand research-

• Brand advocacy: How many shoppers are inclined to suggest your brand to others?
• Brand awareness: Does your target audience know who you are and think of you as a good option?
• Brand loyalty: Do you retain clients?
• Brand insight: How much of your target audience is using your product/service?
• Brand impression: What do people think of your firm’s identity or products/services?
• Brand positioning: How to differentiate your brand from others and how to communicate it in a way that resonates with the audience?
• Brand value: How much are people willing to pay for your brand over another?

Campaign Effectiveness Research

What is it?
This is to assess whether your advertising campaigns are getting to the right audience and giving the expected results. This research can help you sell better and reduce client acquisition expenses.

When to use it?
On average people see nearly 5000 advertising messages every day which means holding the attention is a challenging job. Campaign effectiveness research can be used when you want to effectively advertise the product/service.

How will the research be done?
Campaign effectiveness research should be utilized for all the stages of the campaign. Experts perform the research to know how the target market views the promotion while also identifying the loopholes in it.

Competitive Analysis Research

What is it?
Competitive analysis empowers the business to evaluate your competitor’s strengths and shortcomings in the domain, giving you the power to gain a competitive advantage.

When to use it?
Irrespective of the field and its businesses, competitive analysis forms the very core of any business and market plan. You might have just entered the field, moved to another one, or conducting a business health check, a competitive analysis will help majorly.

How will the research be done?
A competitive analysis expert will select your main competitors and study factors such as their marketing plan, client perceptions, revenue, sales volume, and more factors you would need insights on.

Articles and references are also ideal sources of competitive data. Even a general market visit, discussion with focus groups can offer useful knowledge on client service and current customer sentiments.

Consumer Insights Research

What is it?
Consumer insights research tells you about who your clients are and what they do. It shows why buyers behave in a particular way and helps you use that to your advantage. This research also gives you a peek into purchase habits of the shoppers.

When to use it?
While developing a strategic marketing plan, in-depth knowledge of the consumers is essential. This helps you predict buyer needs, innovate, customize the marketing plan, remove the obstacles, and more.

How will the research be done?
The experts utilize several market research methods like interviews, consumer psychology, survey, social monitoring, and consumer journey to help your business.

Customer Satisfaction Research

What is it?
Customer satisfaction research estimates consumers’ experiences with products/services, particularly looking at how the satisfaction levels are met, exceeded, or fail to live up to the anticipation.

When to use it?
Client satisfaction gives you an idea about client retention and overall business performance. Good customer satisfaction research tells you about what your consumers like, and dislike and what can be improved.

How will the research be done?
The research is commonly conducted through surveys. Using Voice of the Customer Survey, CSAT, and Customer Effort Scoring client loyalty can be assessed. The surveys can be performed at various points in the client experience, allowing deeper insight into that moment.

Customer Segmentation Research

What is it?
Consumer segmentation separates markets or consumers into smaller clusters or personalities with identical attributes to facilitate targeted marketing. When you learn how people in each cluster behave you also know how it impacts the business revenue.

When to use it?
Research is useful when you want to provide personalized experiences to your clients. When you know better about each particular persona, you can easily focus on delivering customized marketing, building loyal relations, pricing products smartly, and predicting how new products/services will perform in each segment.

How will the research be done?
Experts conduct the research using four characteristics like demographics (age, gender, family status, education, household income, occupation), geography (where people live), psychographics (class, lifestyle, personality traits), and behaviour (Brand affinity, consumption, and shopping habits).

Product Development Research

What is it?
In product development market research, client knowledge gets utilized to design the process of either creating or improving the product/service.

When to use it?
Inventing a completely new, original product isn’t a cakewalk. Due to the lack of innovation, a lot of product fails. What market research does here is that it minimizes the risk or saves the product from failing before it enters the market. Product research can be used before conceptualizing, building, and introducing the product.

How will the research be done?
The experts will provide product concepts to the targeted audience and listen to their views, take interviews to know more about what makes them satisfied or what lacks in the product.

Utility Test

What is it?
The utility test gives you an understanding of how consumers use your products in real-time. The test might include a washing machine, refrigerator, website, or an application.

When to use it?
A utility test is necessary to find out if there are any issues in early product mock-ups or beta versions. Real-time testing of the product costs way less than launching a defective product & experience loss due to poor functionality.

How will the research be done?
• The performance of a newly launched app or a website can be observed online to see how it performs. The consumer experience can be monitored online.
• Eye-tracking studies scan where people look where they shop. The process can be done via apps/websites and also can be done at stores.
• Users’ activities also can be followed online to assess the structure of connecting hyperlinks.

eDataMine- Your trustworthy Outsourcing Partner

Outsourcing market research and analysis can help you avoid common blunders and boost your business. Without this, you might fail to connect with consumers, miss out on better opportunities, be open to risks, make flawed business decisions, and eventually lose the client base to your competitors.

You can outsource web research, market research services to our professionals. Being well-versed with diverse domains, they provide research solutions tailored to your business. With our years of experience, let us help you discover the insights your business needs to succeed. Grow your brand with the best research and business intelligence endeavours. To know what we can do for you, write to us at info@edatamine.com