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Market Research Methodologies

Market Research Methods

Market research is a tool to help the company understand the demand in various market segments. With the aid of market research methods, a company can conduct a primary market research or a secondary market research.

The primary market research deals with the ability to conduct market research with the help of questionnaires designed to ask applicable questions directly to the customers and their clients. There are two forms of market research in which market research methods can be applied. They are customer to business market research and business to business market research. In the customer to business market research, the companies directly interact with their individual customers who buy their products and/ or services. However, in business to business market research, the companies conduct a market research towards those businesses that purchase their products or services. In this research, qualitative market research methods are applied.

A secondary market research takes off from the primary market research data and applies market research methods to analyze the raw data collected. It is in this research that the quantitative market research methods are applied.

The qualitative market research methods include the following:

- Surveys: Identifying a sample from the target population is the first step in setting out for a survey. Subsequently, the experts proficiently drafted questionnaire that skillfully bring out the answers that they want from the target population regarding their response to a product or service. The surveys can be conducted over the phone, by post or even email.

- Focus groups: Customers volunteer to be a part of a focus group for a market research session where there is a moderator who asks the questions from the questionnaire that is devised. The respondents' responses are tabulated for analysis.

- Personal interviews: Company representatives personally interview their customers and clients in order to get their personal feedback about the product or service, giving additional information that might be useful. This is usually done with business to business research.

- Field Trials: Companies launch free samples of a product that they are going to introduce in order to lure customers into giving their feedback regarding the product or service.

The quantitative market research methods include the following:

- Median, mean and mode: After the completion of the primary research, secondary research involves the usage of quantitative methods like mean, median and mode.

- Variance Analysis: In this research, the sum of square deviations is derived from the target which is normally the mean or average upon the number of observances. With this analysis you will be able to accurately pinpoint the cause and effect of the profit or loss in the company

Marketing research

Marketing research involves market research methods to help the marketing managers to accurately take decisions regarding marketing strategies for a particular product or service.

There are several characteristics of marketing research and these are mentioned below:

1. Systematic: Market research is systematic, and there are thorough steps involved at each stage of the market research right from selecting a target group for primary research and beyond.

2. Objective: Market research questions are devoid of any emotions or biases. This is important as the target population may have any type of sentiments while filling the questionnaire. An unbiased questionnaire gives the right response and accurate data for analysis.

Most companies hire consultants to carry out market research or marketing research as they usually do not undertake such operations on their own.