A Guide To Performing Market Research

Curious as to how to conduct market research for your company or your product? Market research is vitally important if you are wondering about setting up an organization, introducing a merchandise, or discontinuing products as well. This research can tell you developments when it comes to purchases, what consumers are demanding, your competition, and things including these. The useful info was given by a pro in web design who helped businessmen with Internet advertising and quadracentifiable optimisation which could promote business.

When it comes to how to conduct market research certainly you’ll have a company attend to this for you, and for those with the money for that kind of investment this is often a wise choice. Should you be seeking to open a retail store or need to find out market trends that affect a product or service you currently offer, the value you pay for this research can result in the decisions you make.But you may be wondering how to conduct market research on your own, or in conjunction with the information you get from a research company. Consider some fast tips in this regard.

When considering how to conduct market research you need to understand your customer base. If you’re selling wedding dresses, your customer base will be different than if you’re selling skateboards. This might become more complicated if your business is more general, such as working a bookstore, but even within a setting such as this you can study the customers that visit the store.

Your customer base may also be understood if you look at current sales. For example, if you own that bookstore, what books are selling versus those that are not? This is part of how to conduct market research; understand the products that are already selling versus ones that rarely leave the shelves. If you see that romantic paperbacks are selling a lot better than how-to manuals, you may have a better idea of your customer base already.

How many trade journals can you get? Can you really read them and study them carefully? This too is part of how to conduct market research; those journals often contain market research in terms of sales trends, customer demands, and so on. They may have reports from other companies similar to yours that talk about new products and services they offer that are selling briskly.

Studying the trade may also mean attending trade shows and conferences, or going online to search for new trends. There are lots of companies that report on trends and make these reports available online, and you simply need to do the legwork to find out about these things. It’s not hard to figure out how to conduct market research yourself but it does mean doing that research in numerous places as possible, from your own business or sales floor to a trade show booth of a competitor as well as their website.

Tips to Writing Effective Surveys

How to create a survey using Survey Galaxy

Designing surveys is considered easy; but is it? The reality is that writing surveys is easy but writing surveys that will be effective is a little bit more difficult. The following are twenty tips that if followed will help you with your survey questionnaire design and help you write effective surveys.

1. What is the purpose of the survey?

There are many reasons for conducting questionnaires. By phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When compiling a survey don’t lose sight of its purpose.

2. Title the survey

The title of the survey is an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so encourage them that the investment they make will be worthwhile.

3. Keep the survey as short as possible

Every question that is asked should be asked for a reason. Minimize asking questions that will provide you with ‘nice to know’ information and concentrate instead on ‘need to know’ questions.

4. Use plain English, avoid jargon and acronyms, maintain consistency and don’t ask questions that may result in ambiguous answers

Care must be taken in wording a question. If a question can be interpreted in more ways than one then there is a risk that any analysis of the survey results will be worthless or at the very least misleading.

5. Don’t have long questions

Try to use short sentences wherever possible. Long questions can cause a respondent discomfort and lead to them abandoning the survey.

6. Ask only one question at a time

Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like athletics and tennis?’

7. Don’t influence the answer

Do not load the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell alcohol to children be prosecuted?’ is unlikely to have any value.

8. Ensure that the selected answer format allows the respondent to answer the question being asked

Ensure that the respondent is able to answer how they really feel or they may abandon the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “Can’t say”, “Don’t know” or similar response option.

9. At the same time that you compile the survey consider, when the survey is complete, how the compiled data is going be analysed

Appreciate that questions that allow for a free text open ended response, such as when asking the respondent for their comments, is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider grouping answers. For example “How long have you worked here?” – ‘less than 1 year’, ‘between 1 and 6 years’ and ‘more than 6′.

10. Try and ensure that the questionnaire flows

Group questions into clear categories as this will make it easier for the participants completing the survey.

11. Target your respondents carefully

You may want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t easily control the respondents consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents who don’t fit your target profile.

12. Allow respondents to expand on their answers and/or make comments

By allowing respondents to make additional comments you will increase their satisfaction level and the comments will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Keep in mind though that for a large sample collection it may be difficult to analyze free text open ended responses.

13. If you are conducting a confidential survey ensure that your pledge for confidentiality is honoured

If you have assured the respondents that the survey is confidential ensure that the individual data is not to be shared with anyone and the information is not going to be used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained and any contact information deleted after the survey is complete.

14. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable

If your respondents are to be anonymous then appreciate that you will be unable to follow up or match “pre” or “post” surveys. Allowing people to remain anonymous will however allow people to respond without possible peer pressure.

15. Carefully consider what the best response format will be

It is good practice to maintain a consistency in the format used for responses. When creating your survey keep in mind that when analysing the data single selection radio buttons are easier to analyse than multiple selection check boxes. If a radio response can be used do not use a check box.

16. Inform the respondent as to how much time the survey will take to complete

If the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions then respondent drop can increase. It is good practice to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so that the participants can determine the best time to complete the survey.

17. Inform respondents of the survey end date

Try and encourage your invited respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise the respondents of the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.

18. Trial the survey

Before publishing a live survey publish the survey as a trial to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to ensure that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.

19. Before publishing the survey proof read the survey several times

Check more than once that the survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If possible get someone else to proof read the survey before you publish, if no one else is available then take a break before checking again.

20. Say ‘Thank You’

To complete surveys respondents have to devote their time and should be thanked either in a covering letter, at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider an incentive such as a reward or entry into a prize draw.

To get started there are numerous survey software websites to choose from.

What Market Research Will Tell You

What are the things you can learn by conducting effective market research?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to target your marketing and fine tune your product or service.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your service or product appeal to specific age group? Do you know who your potential customers are and where they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Are your products and services value for money? How do your products and services compare to those of your competitors? Can you deliver, do you deliver, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there enough good advice and assistance on hand? Do people find it easy to buy from you? Are all your staff properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. What marketing channels are available to you, which ones should you focus on and which, if any, should you drop?

Do the right people understand your marketing message? Does your marketing material properly represent your brand? Do you use the right promotion channels? Are you reaching your target audience?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.