Market Research should be at the heart of your business. The insight that this provides will be the knowledge foundation upon which you will define your ideal client, build your business proposition and marketing strategy. Market research can be key not only to understand your customer better but also to understand the competitor activity to help inform and support any new product development.
What is Market Research?
Put simply it is the process of gathering and using information & insights about your business, market and clients to help you make more informed decisions. The challenge is working out the smart questions to ask, understanding the gaps which you have and deciding who to talk to.
There are two types of market research techniques and which can be used to understand different aspects of your business – Qualitative and quantitative:
Qualitative research is defined by the CIM as “research that does not use numerical data but relies on interviews, focus groups, etc usually resulting in findings which are more detailed and subjective.”
Quantative research is defined by the CIM as “research which concentrates on statistics and other numerical data, gathered through opinion polls, consumer satisfaction surveys, etc.
