Market Research
Engaging in market research is not for the “faint of heart” or insignificant budgets. If you have not undertaken primary research before, please consult with colleagues who have and engage someone who has broad and deep experience in two dimensions: market research and general marketing. The former alone will give you lots of data with little analysis and likely will want to survey more people than your budget might allow. Adding the latter can give you the balance needed to keep things under control. Make sure you get an estimate for analysis along with the data in any quote.
Market Research Types
There are two primary types of market research:
- Secondary research – published articles that cite other research
- Primary research – surveys of people thought to be representative of a given population as a whole
Secondary Research
This is “free” but it can be very difficult to understand since you really don’t know the details about those surveyed nor the actual questions asked. I will guarantee you that most market research you see cited in the media is hopelessly biased to make a point, not actually discover a finding.
Primary Research
There are cost-effective options here, as well as, more expensive ones totally under your control. The price range is very broad based on the number of questions, the type of person to be surveyed, the type of interview and the detail required.
Costs
Figures can vary, but around $12 per completed interview for a 15-question web-based survey is not unusual. Additionally, you need to survey enough people that you can drill down into the results. About 300 people will work for simple surveys, but the typical number of questions desired (35 – 40) drives up the population to be sure that you don’t get survey fatigue. The result is the total number of respondents grows to 1,200 or more.
Questions
Care must be taken to keep questions unambiguous, neutral and succinct. In the early 1980s an undisclosed PC company, wanted to find out what was the mix of monochrome to color monitors. So, they asked the question as follows, “Do you have a color or monochrome monitor?” and stated that a monochrome monitor only displayed text in a single color. Over 70% of those surveyed said they had a color monitor, even though industry shipments were the reverse. When we engaged with them and did some digging, we found out that many were confused about what was a monochrome versus a color monitor. Since the screen background of a monochrome monitor was black, while the text was in white, green or amber … their interpretation was that it was two colors and therefore not monochrome, but rather color!
More
There is much more involved in developing and conducting a good market research project. Just contact us to have a discussion about cost-effective design and options.
