How to get started with market research – Q&A roundup

A panel of experts recently shared tips for small businesses on how to research their potential market. Here are the highlights of their discussion
Focus group
The best way to organise a focus group is to use experienced professionals, says Peter Jackling. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian Linda Nylind/Guardian

Debbie Bray is director of research & creative development at Morph Research

Do your research early: Carrying out research in the early stages is a fantastic way of exploring:

How people react to your idea/product.

What they feel the benefits are. What the potential triggers to wanting to engage or purchase your product/service?

What sounds exciting or more difficult to understand about it?

From this, you can develop the idea more effectively and overcome any early barriers. There are so many cost-effective ways of researching ideas. Early-stage research can save people a lot of money, time and emotion by ensuring the product or service appeals.

Running a market stall can be a great way of chatting to potential customers: Market stalls, and and to some extent pop-up shops, can be a really effective way of testing out a potential market. There are many stalls available in lots of areas such as local fairs, craft markets, farmers' markets and school events, which are often quite cheap. It can be a cost-effective way of targeting the right type of customer for you, if you have done your research beforehand. Look into the event or organisation that is letting the stalls, the area it's in, its popularity and advertising.

It's a great way of talking to potential customers to find out what they think of your products and how they compare with what competitors offer, basically getting a dialogue going to understand more about what customers want and look for and also how they talk about different products and services. You can also learn from others – who has a great looking stall, who is taking a unique approach, offering really good customer service and so on.

But can you afford to invest the time and effort into setting up a stall? Can you afford to do this and will you be able to produce sufficient, good-quality stock for the stall in the timescale? Being rushed and stressed is not going to be a great experience for you or your customers.

Why is a qualitative approach – one that studies human behaviour – important when carrying out market research? Qualitative research (qual) is often essential when carrying out research among new ideas/products and indeed existing products. Qual is anchored in finding out what people think by exploring people's motivations, behaviour, desires and needs. Once you understand this, it enables you to develop ideas or create more relevant ones.

Qual research enables you to spend time with people, discussing and debating ideas, thoughts and behaviour, often in-situ. For example, I recently carried out some research for the National Gallery about for reasons people visit and how they felt when they were in the gallery. The most effective way of doing this was actually talking to people in the gallery to understand in more detail about the whole visiting experience, including the more emotive reasons. Seeing actual behaviour is often more useful than reported/recalled behaviour.

On another project, we wanted to understand reactions to a new product idea for young mums. As part of the project we went shopping with some young mums to understand, first hand, their shopping experience and purchasing journey and behaviour, before we conducted some discussion (focus) groups to look at the actual product in more detail.

Qual research, by its very nature, is flexible and less structured so conversations and discussions can evolve about a product/service or idea that you might not have been expecting, often resulting in new ideas or reiterations of an idea.

Tony Harper is the managing director of IPSOS Observer at IPSOS MORI

Getting the wording of your questions right is paramount: Different wording can elicit different responses and no matter who you interview, you need to get realistic answers back in order to have confidence in your decisions. That's where a research practitioner is useful, even if you end up going down a DIY route to actually do the survey.

When doing your own research, perhaps avoid those who know you well: I would probably avoid talking to people too close to you – or at least avoiding those who will not be sufficiently honest in the way they respond to your ideas and questions. My mum always thinks I've got good ideas!

Colin Auton is managing director of CI Research

Take care not to alert a competitor to your research: You have to be sensitive to alerting the competition when undertaking research, especially if you are looking to test a new product or service concept. Market research solutions can be developed to ensure that this is kept to a minimum. In these instances we would typically conduct the research anonymously (ie the respondent is not made aware of the survey sponsor). Additionally, we would also make sure that the respondent is not left with anything that they might pass on to a competitor.

What's the best way to get effective market research for a single geographical area? If it's your local town or village then you may be best approaching people in your local high street and asking if they would be willing to take part in a short survey. If it's regional then there may be the opportunity to engage with your target audience through an online panel provider – these are companies who have a panel of thousands of people who happily take part in research in return for points that they can convert to prizes.

Tim Britton is the chief operating officer at YouGov for Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Check what's out there already: There is loads of published information that can help you for free (or for a relatively small cost). Try searching under YouGov SixthSense, Data Monitor or Mintel. All have a wide range of reports on offer.

Jane Frost CBE is the CEO of the Market Research Society

All feedback is useful: Not understanding your customer can be a lot more expensive than doing the research. A lot of research sources for initial scoping of opportunities are free, and as your business builds you will get oodles of information from sales, distributors feedback – and don't forget complaints. Seriously, all feedback is useful and better than customer apathy. You will need to think carefully about how you collect and store this input in a way that you can interrogate later and build on as your business grows. SME founders have told MRS conferences that one thing they do regret is not taking advice on how to create and format their data collection.

Peter Jackling is the managing director of the Independent Consultants Group (ICG)

The best way to organise a focus group is to use experienced professionals:

They will:

advise on recruitment of respondents.

organise a representative group of respondents.

use an impartial moderator to guide the discussions.

summarise and interpret the findings for you, and advise on what action should follow.

There are serious skills involved here, so it is not advisable to do it yourself. However, clients are encouraged to participate by developing a discussion guideline for the moderator and by watching and listening – but not participating (which would seriously influence what people say) – usually using a viewing studio with a one-way mirror.

To see the full Q&A session, click here.

