Market Research

Frustrated with the mundaneness of your job, you realize what better time to fulfill your dreams of being an entrepreneur than now. You switch gears and choose to join the tech industry. But with limited market knowledge, how will you drive your business to success? This is where market research comes in.

Market research helps to answer your questions about:¹

1. The emerging trends in the market 

2. The size of the market

3. The competitors

4. The consumer behavior

5. And, whether the product or service you want to introduce would be viable for your target market

Having these sorts of answers would allow a company to understand their target market whilst also gaining insight into consumer opinions. Given that the goal is to produce something that meets a market need, market research is the ultimate litmus test to find out how to do it. This information is vital for the profitability of a business and the foundation of marketing and sales plans. It is the key component in any business’s research and development stage.

Market research uses a combination of primary and secondary research methods. Primary research is when we are collecting our own original data from the subject of interest. Here, you would ask questions specifically related to your product, service, or business. Data would often be gathered using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, either through focus groups, interviews, or questionnaires.

Secondary research is the collection of second-hand data from an external source. Essentially, you are learning from research that has already been conducted. Much of this information can be gathered from web sources such as population census data from the government, published research reports, and literature reviews from research conducted by other organizations in the same industry.

So, how do we go about conducting market research?

1. Determine your goal(s): You are investing a lot of time and money into your research. It is important that you end up with valuable answers. So, you would want to outline and specify the goals you want to achieve with the study. The study would aim to provide an answer to a clearly defined question. For example, what are the target market’s specific preferences for a smartwatch product?

2. Decide who your study participants are: You can’t possibly collect information on every single person there is. You need to define the type of consumers that would be studied to best answer your question (i.e. your target market). It is also important to be aware of sampling biases at this stage and the sort of compensation you are willing to give your participants for their time.

3. Design your method: Now that you have decided on your research participants, how are you going to study them? Here, based on the type of participants you decide to study, you would determine whether conducting primary or secondary market research is more appropriate and the particular research method you are going to use to collect your data.

4. Collect and analyze your data: It is time to conduct your study and analyze the data you have collected. This is all summarized into a research report.

5. Draw from your research to make decisions: Having completed your study, you can now use your results to make informed decisions about the problem you initially had. Referring back to the smartwatch example in step 1, the data you have analyzed should tell you what your target market is looking for in a smartwatch. This should help you with your product design choices and its overall functionality.