The primary goal of any market research project is to achieve an increased understanding of the subject matter.

The information collected through market research can be divided in two categories, primary information which is gathered through primary research like Email, telemarketing and personal interviews. The other category, secondary information is gathered through secondary research on compiled database organized by a source.

Primary Research

When research is conducted to gather original data, it is called primary research. For this original research plan must be devised for data collection, data input and then the production and analysis of the subsequent results. Although it is a lengthy and expensive to conduct, results of the research are original hence more relevant to the needs of the client.  The two basic types of primary research are qualitative and quantitative

Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is numerically oriented, and requires measurement of market phenomena and often involves statistical analysis. The main rule with quantitative research is that every respondent is asked the same series of questions. The approach is very structured and normally involves large numbers of interviews/questionnaires.

Qualitative Research
Qualitative research provides an understanding of how or why things are as they are. Unlike quantitative research there are no fixed set of questions but, instead, a topic guide is used to explore various issues in-depth. The discussion between the interviewer and the respondent is largely determined by the respondents’ own thoughts and feelings. As with quantitative techniques, there are also various types of qualitative methodologies.

Descriptive research is the most commonly used and the basic reason for using this is to identify the cause of a market phenomena. For instance, this research could be done in order to find out about a which particular age group is buying a particular brand of a consumer good, and whether a company’s market share differs between geographical regions or to discover the number of competitor a company has in a targeted marketplace.

Casual Research is done to find out the consequent effect of changing one variable on another. The research is used to measure what impact a specific change will have on existing market conditions and helps to predict hypothetical scenarios upon which a company can base its business plan. To summarize, causal research is a way of forecasting how different actions now will have an impact on a business in the future.

Exploratory research allows market researcher to gain a greater understanding of a specific subject about which little is known. For example, just because generally we have idea that 3G phones exist, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we understand how they work. Exploratory research can help to garner information in this instance. It differs mainly in design from descriptive research, exploratory research is used principally to gain a deeper understanding of something. The design is far more flexible and dynamic than that of descriptive research.

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Everywhere you look there is a company willing to pay people to participate in their surveys. It seems like a win win situation, the participants get paid for providing their opinion, the market research company gets paid for conducting the research and the companies, that fund the research, gathers valuable data.

But, how valuable is that data?

Well run surveys are still vital to those companies who wish to research a market and obtain feedback on particular products or services. Many people are willing to express an opinion, and a small incentive like a chance to win a prize or a small payment is often all that is required to encourage people to give up their time and participate.

For years market research companies have assembled groups of participants into survey pools or survey panels, groups of people willing to provide an opinion on a range of subjects. Often incentives of nominal value were offered as a ‘thank you’ for the participant’s time; however the explosion of ‘paid for taking surveys’ websites has spawned a new profession – the professional survey participant (PSP).

For companies that are relying on market research generated by panels of PSP’s the question they must ask is how flawed is the data that they are relying on? Does the average PSP represent a cross section of society or a niche? What social group do they really belong to and is it smart for a company to base research on groups of people that are willing to comment part time, and sometimes, full time, on anything and everything?

Not all panels should be tarnished with a negative brush after all customer and employee surveys to name just two rely on a survey pool. However, customers and employees are to some degree stakeholders in a company’s research, by participating customers will benefit from better products and services, employees will be able to voice concerns and help make improvements to working conditions and methods, more importantly the views of the customer and the employee are valuable. Likewise panels that are made up of hand picked participants chosen for their knowledge, expertise and experience are equally valid and in some cases a necessity.

The panels that should be questioned are those that are assembled by surveys that rely on large volumes of the general public whose motivation for participating is only the reward they will receive, they will often have no knowledge, understanding or interest as to the ‘who’, ‘why’ or ‘what’ of the research that is being carried out.

Research companies that attract either part-time or full time PSP’s rarely make any reference about the importance of the research they conduct but instead concentrate on offers of easy money and extra income.

Some survey methods will be more vulnerable than others, the most vulnerable perhaps being the online surveys itself. Company’s that use PSP research data have to ask themselves how many surveys would it take for each PSP to realise that the more surveys they take the more cash or other incentives they receive. Will they after completing three or four surveys even think about the question or just click on any random response?

Although telephone surveys and focus groups will be less prone to the problem of people responding in a random or unconsidered manner with each telephone survey they take, and focus group they attend, they are becoming less like a member of the general public and more like a professional respondent.

A survey can have many purposes and not all surveys are conducted with a view to being impartial and fair. Like a tobacco company that funds research into the effects of nicotine, the findings can be manipulated to reinforce a particular line of argument. Panels and PSP’s have their place but if a company is relying on good and accurate market research data – beware the survey panel!

Let’s look at 3 areas of market research that will help determine the profitability of any product under consideration.

1) Demand

The product or service has to fill a need for the customer, and determining this ahead of time will help minimize any time and cost invested. Avoid the costly mistake of assuming your own enthusiasm for a product will be matched by the marketplace.

Patience and diligence must be applied in our research to insure our marketing success. A simple Google search is a good start to judge the level of demand for any product type we may want to sell online. Also checking out Amazon and similar merchant sites will give a good indication as to product demand.

2) Competition

Next we need to determine the level of competition we face provided our research has already shown a good demand. Competition is good however too much competition can make our efforts tougher by increasing our marketing costs and decreasing our profit margins.

Here we need to take a look at the search results we found researching the demand to see how many of your competitors are paying to advertise to this market. In the right hand column you’ll see ads that are paid for by your competition. You can roughly determine how much competition you’ll be facing by the number of paid ads you find. Simply scroll thru the pages of your search results to see how many ads there are.

Realizing most people when searching for something usually won’t go much beyond page 2 or 3 in the results, you can assume that the deeper these ads show up in the results, the more competitive there is.

3) Market Niche Research

This area of your research concerns markets that appear to have a great demand and perhaps too much competition to make it worth your while. In such cases you may want to dig deeper into the market itself to see what current consumers needs may still be unfulfilled.

A simple strategy here is to do a search for ‘market/product specific’ forums targeting of course the product you’re interested in. The results will be a list of forums you can visit for this market enabling you to view questions or concerns people may have. By taking these ‘ideas’ you’ve discovered from within the forums you can again perform the same type of research to determine any demand and potential competition before committing any more time, energy, or money.

Obviously these online market research techniques we’ve reviewed are fundamental in nature. Much more detail can be given in all areas of the research process; however this detail is outside the scope and intentions of this article. The point is with a little bit of research, you can increase your chances success when selecting what it is you may want to sell online.

The concept of marketing therefore, is one that ends up being “iffy” in the sense that it is thought of connected to the concept of sales – and we all hate salesmen, don’t we? But the fact of the matter is that marketing is vastly different from other sorts of aspects of capitalism in that it is the part of capitalism that actually cares about what people want for themselves. Sure, money is made out of it, but it’s still the principle of the thing that counts.

Market research is mostly geared towards learning what people want and need, and making sure that they get it. This is why market research and market researchers are very important in our day and age. It’s essentially the heart and the soul of capitalism. And not enough people seem to realize this. All they think, when they’re being interviewed or surveyed and the like is that “they’re just trying to make money off of me”. But if you look into it a little bit closer, you will find that there is more to marketing research than just “selling”.

For more information and tips visit, http://freemarketresearchreports.com

Some of their main excuses include:

• “Sales people talk to customers all the time. They bring a lot of customer insight.”
• “Customer research is done for product development, and that isn’t a constant need.”
• “Internally, the discretionary annual marketing budget leans toward marketing communications, like new literature campaigns, mailings, etc. to drive growth.”

Smart Business interviewed Jeanne Fec, Senior Principal of Frank Lynn & Associates Inc., to learn more about using formal customer research to optimize investments in new products and drive growth in sales and market share.

What about using the sales force for research? Aren’t they the critical interface between a company and their customers?

The sales force is one of the biggest investments a company makes, and it can be used as a “conduit” to understanding customer sentiment. This is important. But there are two problematic issues in gathering customer insight from the company sales force.

How do typical sales people spend their time? If they are good account managers, it is with existing, high-value customers. Here is the gap. How do we learn from those outside the sales force’s circle of presence? Companies that consistently maintain double-digit growth make it a point to learn and act upon perceptions, purchasing behaviors and expectations of prospective and low-profile customers.

Then there is focus and motivation. Sales people are trained and paid to sell. It is a challenge to get reliable and effective market research from salespeople. A formal customer research effort more effectively delivers unbiased data. Customers will also note the extra effort taken to understand their perspective.

Are there additional reasons to use consistent customer or non-customer research?

Research and development is another big investment that market research can optimize. Numerous companies fail to include external customer research in the product development process.

Engineering-driven organizations are especially vulnerable here. Great ideas are put into motion because they seem to solve problems or outstrip the competition on design and capabilities.

Successful marketing strategies must also take into account the size, sensitivity and buying behavior of target end-user segments. This is a step best filled with regular collection of insight from those customers. But we still have clients come to us regularly with great products, seeking a market to buy them.

End-user research can effectively and efficiently answer critical acceptance questions before a more significant investment is made. These basic questions can be incorporated into a research methodology that can be conducted in person, over the phone or via questionnaire.

Give us some examples of key research questions.

Certainly. Let’s continue with our example of a new technology product being prepared for a launch.

Technology: Does the technology meet the customer’s needs or solve the problem? Is it perceived to be robust enough? Or overkill for the existing situation?

Economics: Are the benefits greater than the cost? Developing an actual selling price is a challenge in any research methodology, but good research can define a value-based price range in the mind of the customer.

Timing: Are prospective customers capable and willing to make a purchase in the short term? Asking questions about purchase cycles, budgets, approval processes, centralized versus decentralized buying behaviors, and other timing questions will help gauge opportunity forecasts.

Environment: Research questions can assist in understanding behaviors that have a high impact on success. For example, you can test the customer’s internal environment, which means the customer’s level of sophistication and readiness to adopt the new technology. It is also critical to understand the customer’s external environment, such as alliances with competitors or previous negative experiences. In the overall scheme of things, this type of research investment is small relative to the cost of R&D and product development.

We’ve talked about customer satisfaction research, new customer access and new product research. Are there other ways that research helps companies grow?

Good research has proven to help companies maintain current share, grow within their customer base, and strategically grow outside of it. There is one additional benefit research can deliver. Customer research can tell us how to raise the bar. It informs us about unmet needs, or identifies unique benefits that competitors do not deliver.

Where should one start?

The most important decisions a small business needs to take into consideration right off the bat when making a competitive business plan is what needs to be done and then how the business’ time, energy and money will be spent doing the tasks that need to be done. Time, energy and money are the only things that any business can spend so proper planning right at the beginning will assure the best and highest uses of these resources.

So step one is for business owners to do their market research (to determine what needs to be done). Step two is to determine how to get it done in a timely fashion and how to get it done right.

Solo entrepreneurs who have the do it yourself (DIY) mentally must realize that the need to allocate these resources applies to them as well. Consider this: It may not be in the best interest of the business to take a significant amount of time gaining expertise; whether that is in getting the necessary knowledge for doing market research or for professional web development solutions as examples. This is true especially when there is a limited budget. The cost of staying in the learning/development stage will ultimately take its toll. This will be seen when a business loses out on potential revenue that would have been gained if development had been ramped up more quickly. Not to mention: delaying will allow the competition to get a lead.

Market research to determine what business the needs are and then deciding how to allocate time, energy and money correctly is so crucial. The reality is that it is also so often ineffectively done. Ultimately it will determine whether entrepreneurship successfully launching an idea will ever even happen.

Why then do entrepreneurs fail to do these two steps? Simple and trite as it may seem, it is nevertheless true. Most entrepreneurs do not know what they do not know. They do not know how to research their market. They do not know how to create an effective business plan, based on their time, energy and money, which will get them to where they want to go. They don’t know how to get the market research data that they need to create a competitive marketing strategy. They don’t know about the best practices for a real online marketing strategy and how it will create a powerful web identity.

The following three reasons are typical ways that entrepreneurs respond when they do not know.

The first response is the hit or miss approach of just taking action. The success of this will depend on how adroit a business owner is at developing the necessary skills and making the adjustments on the fly. This approach can lead to a lot of wasted resources which will be spent because of lack of knowledge. It is not cost effective.

The second response is to learn every aspect that is needed for successfully running the business before moving ahead. This happens for example when a startup online business, for example, tries to reinvent the web development, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing(SEM), social media optimization (SMO), pay per click (PPC) and customer relationship management (CRM) wheels. Reinvention is a time wasting and unwieldy task that is destines to side track the entrpreneur; sometimes indefinitely. An example of this is seen in the case of startup business owners who continue to spend time and money on endless seminars and products that promise to solve all of their problems; except they never get started. These entrepreneurs are more correctly defined as opportunity seekers rather than serious business owners.

The third response is for the entrepreneur to gain a broad education in the business planning processes that will be needed to develop the business. The business owner can determine which levels of expertise already exist and which ones need to be bolstered. This is the entrepreneur who makes an assessment of the highest and best use of time, energy and money. This entrepreneur will be asking questions such as:

- How do I get the market research analysis I need to create and keep a competitive edge?
- Are adequate web development solutions available in house? Do I need a dedicated team or should I hire a professional?
- How do I keep abreast of the rapidly evolving internet marketing landscape? How will I get the specialized skills that are needed to participate in the interactive world of Web 2.0? Measure and analyze results?
- What are best inbound marketing practices?
- How can I find the best ways to extend marketing dollars?
- Will my business be better off with an in house staff or will virtual office management be better?
- Do I need an extensive sales force or can web based CRM software automate a lot of this?
- How can I make the best hiring choices and provide the training that is needed?

Clearly, the questions that must be addressed by a startup business as well as an established one are considerable. This is why the third response is the only one that makes sense.

A successful business owner will wisely decide not to do it all since this is not the highest use of time, energy or money. By keeping educated about current trends and what a successful business needs, the business owner will be in a position to make appropriate decisions. The decision on what should be done in house and what should to be outsourced needs to be made.

Marketing research firms agree that the best business plan for a startup or existing business is to get the help of a marketing partner who already has the new Web 2.0 marketing tools and most importantly knows how to effectively use them. They can help determine what needs to be done and the best ways to get them done. Can a startup business afford this? Expert services are highly affordable. The real question is can your business afford not to use them?

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What is Market Research?

Market research is systematic gathering, evaluation and analysis of data relating to sale and distribution of financial products and services regarding consumers’ preferences. In marketing process, Research services India provides an approximate analysis of market demand either for a new product, or for existing products, as well as appropriate methods of distributing those product.

Market Research Company India

An extensive Market Research Indian company like ours collects all the queries of the marketers, providing market Research Agency with the required information’s for a smooth journey through the phases of the process of marketing. Data analytics Indian services provide an accurate and quality research output by being totally reliable & providing competitively superior analysis that require rapid, time-certain and cost effective delivery.

Major market research agency includes areas Researches in business to business(B2B), business to consumer(b2c), industrial research, social research, media research, channel and retail research, product and packaging research, brand research, corporate and employee research, pricing research and business-specialized consumer research.

What an expert says?

Experts of the market research industry feel that the future and scope of outsourcing various software or web development services is bright and India is definitely one of the emerging names that rank high in IT and web service sector.

Primary market research information is gathered through direct mail, telemarketing, and personal interviews. Secondary information can be compiled and organized by a source. Secondary information generally tracks trends within a market, an industry, a demographic group, or a geographic region. Sources of secondary market research information include government reports, trade association records, newspaper and magazine surveys, university-sponsored research, local chamber of commerce records, on-line services, and competitors’ annual reports.

Data analytics Indian financial Research step by step solution:

1. Prepare to Collect Data

2. Collect the Data

3. Validate, Enter & Store Data

4. Extract & Transfer Data

5. Cleanse & Transform Data

6. Analyze, Interpret Data

7. Certify & Advise Consequences

8. Final action