To launch a new product, a company studies the market, competitors, and consumer behavior. One way to do this is through marketing research. Let’s figure out how it’s done.
What is Marketing Research
Who conducts research and why
Why do research?
Types of Marketing Research
Stages of Marketing Research
Expert advice
Read Also:DRR in Marketing: How to Calculate and Improve the Indicator
What is Marketing Research
Table of Contents
Telling people about a product, inspiring them to buy it, and maintaining their loyalty are the goals of marketing. It creates value for a product or service, and the client is willing to pay for this value. But in a competitive market, the situation is more complicated: the choice is large, and the buyer is looking for the best option. Therefore, a marketer who wants to create the most profitable offer on the market has to keep the value under control – to ensure that his product is superior to the competitors’ products.
In addition, there are external factors that can affect the value of a product or service, such as technological breakthroughs or changes in the economy. These cannot be controlled, but must be monitored and taken into account in marketing efforts.
Marketing research is the search for and analysis of market data and its use to achieve business goals. When conducting marketing research, a company collects information, interprets it, and creates an information and analytical base for decision-making. Research helps reduce uncertainty, and therefore risks for the company.
To help a business develop and increase profits, a marketer must be able to analyze the market capacity. This is taught in the course “Market Analysis and Assessment”. Students go all the way from choosing a methodology to studying trends. At the end of the course, they have a universal algorithm that can be used to solve work problems.
Who conducts research and why
In a small company, marketing research can be done by one marketer, in large companies – by an entire department. Some companies turn to agencies that specialize in marketing research. They can be conducted once – for a specific project and to complete a one-time business task. For example, to assess the market size when releasing a new product. Or systematically, over a long period of time. For example, a monthly consumer survey on the quality of the company’s customer service.
Why do research?
Marketing research helps to solve three problems:
1. Search for opportunities to open a business and assess the development potential
For example, before launching a new product, a company wants to know the existing market capacity . And when scaling a business, it wants to find niches that have growth potential for its product.
2. Development, refinement, and evaluation of marketing activities
For example, research on whether brand awareness increased after TV advertising.
3. Improving the overall marketing process
For example, obtaining information about which communication channels with consumers are used in a market that is new to the company.
Types of Marketing Research
Marketing research methods can be divided into qualitative and quantitative.
Qualitative research
It is necessary to study and describe the situation, understand the meaning of what is happening, choose the direction for further research, find new ideas and develop hypotheses for testing. They are based on the opinions, views, impressions of consumers and market experts. The result is ideas and insights that can be worked with.
Quantitative research
Based on the collection and analysis of quantitative data. With their help, cause-and-effect relationships, patterns of change are identified, and the reliability of hypotheses is tested. Mathematical modeling and statistics are used for this. The result of this research method is clear conclusions based on the collected data.
Depending on the method, marketing research can be of different types. Let’s look at the most popular ones:
Desk research
The researcher searches for as much open information on the topic as possible, systematizes it, and creates a report that answers the questions posed. For example, this can be used to collect consumer feedback on a product or information on competitors and their marketing communications.
 In-depth interviews
Necessary for researching consumer needs ( CustDev , or Customer development). This is a qualitative method of marketing research that is used at all stages of working with a product: from checking an idea to assessing usability. It is conducted in the form of an interview with questions. Respondents discuss the motives for their behavior, problems and experience of solving them, expectations and reality.
 Focus group
A qualitative research method that helps to obtain in-depth information about the target audience. Interviews are conducted with a group of respondents at the same time. The goals of focus groups coincide with the goals of in-depth interviews. The difference is that here respondents discuss the topic together. This way, you can get more information in a short period of time.
Survey
A quantitative research method in which respondents answer pre-formulated questions.
Questionnaires can be standardized – with a clear sequence of closed questions that are the same for all respondents. This is how marketers obtain quantitative data. For example, about the characteristics of the product audience and customer preferences.
Non-standardized surveys include open-ended questions and response-based question branch options. They can be used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data in research .
A/B testing . Compare the behavior of two groups of users: test and control, to test a marketing hypothesis. For example, if you add a block with a story about warranty obligations to the product description card on the marketplace, the product will be purchased more often.
Then the test group of buyers is offered such a card, and the control group is offered the card in its original form. After comparing the results, it will become clear whether the hypothesis is correct. If it is, you can start redesigning all the other product cards.
Read Also:Blog to the rescue: how does advertising work for bloggers and how much does it cost
Stages of Marketing Research
Marketing research is carried out in five stages:
1. Get a request from the business
You need to find out the problem that the business is trying to solve, determine what questions need to be answered during the research process and what information to get as a result of the marketing research.
2. Select an appropriate research method
In most cases, qualitative methods are used to first identify hypotheses about the subject of the study, and then quantitative methods are used to confirm the validity and reliability of these findings. However, there may be other options depending on the objectives of the study.
3. Determine the data collection method
At this stage, the marketer decides what data is best to use for collecting information: primary or secondary. Primary data is collected for research purposes for the first time, for example, when communicating with consumers or market experts. This can be done through a survey or interview, or by observing participants.
Secondary data is data that was previously collected for purposes other than research, such as marketing research from an external agency or an upload from Yandex Metrica , which contains information about the audience of visitors to the company’s website.
4. Collect and prepare data
It is important that the output contains the necessary data and in a form that is convenient for analysis. Sounds simple, but there are many pitfalls here.
After collection, the data must be checked for omissions and completeness. Identify “outliers” – abnormal indicators that are significantly out of the range.
For example, a businessman decided to sell ice cream at the entrance to a park. To do this, he collected data for a month: including how many people on average pass through this entrance. As a result, he saw that from the 5th to the 10th of the month, the traffic doubled, and then decreased again. It turned out that at this time a pipe burst on the neighboring street, and people bypassed this area through the park. The data on the traffic of the point, collected from the 5th to the 10th, deviate from the average indicators and can be considered an outlier.
5. Analyze and interpret the data
After processing the data, the results of the marketing research must be presented as an answer to the main questions.