Starting a business is a challenging endeavor that requires time, money, and continuous learning. In our blogs, we cover how to start a business with brief overviews. In our hub, we aim to provide you with everything you need to go through
Starting a business is a challenging endeavor that requires time, money, and continuous learning. In our blogs, we cover how to start a business with brief overviews. In our hub, we aim to provide you with everything you need to go through each step. Our first step is conducting market research.
Throughout the steps, we’ll provide insights from Paul Akers, the owner of FastCap, and a Lean Expert who has created hundreds of products for woodworkers and cabinet makers.
There are four basic steps to conducting market research:
- Understand “what is marketing research and which type is right for my business?
- Perform market research.
- Analyze the data.
- Use the research to make decisions.
We’ll start by exploring some of the concepts involved in market research analysis to help you perform it yourself.
Step 1: What is market research in business?
Market research is the process of gathering information about target customers to better understand their views about a product or service. The primary ways of classifying market research are:
- The method of the collection
- Common types of market research
Let’s look at each.
The method of collection
Market research normally uses six methods of collection when looking for answers:
- Primary market research
- Secondary market research
- Qualitative research
- Quantitative research
- Exploratory research
- Specific Research
Let’s look at each.
Primary market research
Primary research is the original research conducted directly by an organization. It is used to find out what customers are interested in. It can be done through questionnaires, interviews, or videos. Primary market research is used for understanding the underlying needs and desires of consumers.
Primary market research helps us to understand the needs, wants, and behaviors of potential buyers. It is the basis for the buyers’ persona. It helps us to formulate marketing strategies that can be used to meet those needs and wants.
Secondary market research
Secondary market research is a process of finding information about a product or service through other sources. This includes looking up other companies that are in the same market as your company and finding out what they are doing.
A company should conduct secondary market research to find out if the product or service has been done before, which will help them figure out how they can differentiate their product from competitors.
Secondary research can be used to gain information about competitors, pricing, distribution channels, etc. It also helps the company save time by not having to conduct primary research that has already been performed.
Researching competitors before you start your business is not only crucial for success but essential for survival in the business world where everyone is trying to get ahead.
What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?
One is focused on themes while the other is focused on information that can be processed numerically. Let’s look at each.
Qualitative research is focused on finding themes that run through interviews and surveys. This type of research is more focused on opinions and is more art than statistical analysis, but in some cases, you can turn this type of research into data that can use statistical analysis.
For instance, a question like the one below converts a qualitative data point into a quantitative data point, making it easier to compare how happy someone was with their food.
You might perform qualitative research along with market validation after you have created a prototype of a new product.
This research is focused on information that can be easily processed with statistical analysis software. For instance, median household income would be easy to statistically calculate if you gather the data for the target customers’ income. Market research analysts love this kind of data because it is easier to process.
Exploratory research is market research that looks for a better understanding. For instance, you may have come to this site doing exploratory research about how to do market research for a startup. After you’ve gained broader information about marketing research methods, you might move on to more specific research.
Specific research is when market researchers are looking to answer a very specific question using market data. This research might include searching for a specific concept or item. For example, the lowest cost statistical software for a company that will have ten users of the software. You might also want to research the history of a business location before deciding to sign a lease because some shopping centers have high turnover.
To find the answer, you’ll probably want to go with Google Workspace because Forms, Sheets, and other useful business tools are included in the same package as your email. Google is the primary email provider for small and medium-sized businesses.
Market research may include a combination of primary and secondary data, quantitative and qualitative data, exploratory and specific research. Now that you understand the market research definition, let’s look at the common market research methods and what questio