Content

• Steps
• Advice

Investigations are an important part of market research, helping to measure customer trends and tastes in a given market. Diverse in size, design and purpose, market surveys are an extremely important source of data, helping companies or organizations determine products or services that are appropriate for their target market and how promote them. The steps below will give you the basics of market investigation as well as some tips to optimize the results.

Steps

Part 1 of 3: Identify the right market

1. 

   Clearly target the market investigation. Before making a plan, you need to have a clear understanding of what your ultimate goal is. What do you want to learn? You want to try to assess the acceptability of a new product? You might also consider the effectiveness or reach of your target audience as your target. Whatever it is, make sure it's very clear on your mind.
   • For example, let's say you have a company that supplies and repairs computer equipment.The goal of the market survey might be to determine how many students at a local university know about the business and how likely they are to reach you for their purchase of a product or use of a computer repair service. much.

2. 

   
   
   Define and define the nature, scope and size of the market. Before you start investigating a particular market, you need to understand it. Choose demographic and geographic parameters, identify customers by product type, and grasp the number of people present in the market.
   • Narrow down to a short list of desired data, such as consumption habits or average income.
   • The above business and computer repair scenario will be relatively simple. You just have to focus on college students. However, you may also want to target high-income students or more technology-interested students who are more likely to buy.

3. 

   
   
   Determine what aspects you want to investigate in that market. It completely depends on your marketing goals and they are incredibly diverse. If you are going to launch a new product, you probably want to know how much recognized or desired it is in a given market. Or, you might want to learn about specific market habits, such as when, where, and how much you spend. Make sure you have a clear idea of ​​what you want to learn.
   • At the same time, you also need to clarify the desired type of information. You can use qualitative questions to gather information that is not directly measurable, such as whether a customer has suggestions to help improve the product or service. Or, you can also ask a quantitative question to obtain digital or numerical information, such as asking customers to rate the performance of a product on a scale of 1 to 10.
   • You may also want to determine exactly what attracts customers to buy your product. In this case, don't forget to ask very specific questions to recent shoppers (in the past month) about their buying experience and the source of information to help them find the product. From there, promote more appreciated aspects and improve any problems that are weak or lacking.
   • Continuing the example above, you can either focus on returning an old customer or the possibility that a new customer will choose your business over the competition.

4. 

   
   
   Determine when and where customers can be reached. You can conduct an investigation at the mall or on the street, over the phone, online or by mail. Results may be inconsistent, depending on the time of day and the time of year. Please choose the method and timing that best suits your investigation.
   • Consider customers when approaching. It can be a predefined target demographic or simply a group of customers who have used a product or service.
   • Don't forget who your target audience is, especially if you are using internet surveys. In many cases, you may not be able to reach your target market through online channels, especially if your audience is older.
   • For example, a computer repair business may decide to interview students in-person at the center of the campus or conduct an online interview through a frequently visited website.

5. 

   Determine the type of survey you use. The survey can be divided into two general groups: questionnaires and interviews. The only difference lies in who records the respondents' feedback: in the questionnaire group, the respondents write their responses and in the interview, the interviewer will rewrite the responses. what they say. There are also a number of other options, such as how to conduct an investigation, online or in person. Investigations can also be done in groups or individually.
   • The questionnaire can be contacted and questionnaire in person, mailed or online. Interviews can be done by face-to-face or phone interviews.
   • Questionnaires are an effective form of market survey with closed questions. However, they limit the respondent's ability to express their thoughts, and printing can be expensive.
   • Interviewing allows the interviewer to build up more questions to explore more deeply and clearly the thoughts of the respondents. However, this form takes more time.
   • Group investigation using questionnaires can be an effective way because respondents can collaborate and provide more informative feedback.

6. 

   Consider using an online investigation platform. They are cost effective in organizing surveys as well as organizing results. You just have to look online and compare a few found platforms, determine which platform is with the right tools. Make sure those are reputable platforms. You should also consider whether your target market is computer proficient enough for online investigations.
   • One of the most recognized and reputable platforms is SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, SurveyGizmo and PollDaddy.
   advertisement

Part 2 of 3: Collecting the best results

1. 

   Select a sample size. To obtain reliable results, the sample size should be statistically significant. You may want to create sub-prototypes, such as "male", "18-24 years old", etc. to reduce the risk that the results are biased towards certain groups of people.
   • Sample size requirements depend on the accuracy desired. The larger the sample, the higher the reliability. For example, the survey with 10 participants gave very large marginal error (about 32 percent), meaning that this data was fundamentally unreliable. However, a 500-size sample will give you a more satisfactory margin of error - 5 percent.
   • If possible, let participants disclose the demographic information themselves. It can be general or specific information, depending on your wishes. Also, don't forget to design these questions at the top of the questionnaire / interview.
     • Be forewarned, though, that many people tend to shy away from investigating asking for personal information.
   • As the owner of the computer supply and repair business in the above example, you'll want to interview a statistically significant number of students, perhaps by subject area, age or gender.

2. 

   Prepare a list of questions that will provide the answers that will provide the necessary data for your market research. The question should be specific and to the point, completely clear, and as few words as possible.
   • If your goal is to get the client's true mindset, focus on building open-ended questions that the client can answer with his or her own mind instead of multiple choice or placement questions. class.
   • However, if you want a numerical result, make sure the answers do it, one way or another. For example, you could have participants rate a product or service on a scale of 1 to 10.

3. 

   Find a way to quantify the responses received. If you do research on hobbies, you may want the respondents to rate the sensation with numbers or keywords. If asking about money, use range of values. If the responses are descriptive, decide how to group them after completing the survey.
   • For a computer business, for example, you might ask students to rate between 1 and 10 their likelihood of visiting the store or the type of computer accessories they most want, depending on the type of information you need.

4. 

   Identify variables that can influence the results obtained. These often include the personality of the subject most likely to respond to a survey. For unbiased results, you need to find ways to reduce their influence on the results.
   • For example, as a computer business owner, you can do this through audience screening. If you think that engineering students are the main customer group, only accept their results, although it is probably easier for history or language students to agree to participate in the investigation.

5. 

   Ask someone else to review the list of questions. Do not pre-test investigations, be it with friends or colleagues, to make sure the questions are really plausible, the answers received are not difficult to quantify, and investigations are easy to do. Specifically, ask test subjects to make sure:
   • The list of questions is not too long and complicated.
   • The investigation does not make emotional assumptions about the target market
   • The question was asked as directly as possible.
   advertisement

Part 3 of 3: Conducting an investigation

1. 

   Plan a time and place to investigate. Make sure you have chosen the right one, making sure to get the model with the largest size. In addition, an investigation may also be conducted online. Then, make sure you post them where your target traffic is highest, or have emailed them to the most viable addresses.
   • For the online survey, this will be how long the questionnaire is open (how long should the respondent complete the question).
   • For example, the target market for an engineer-computer business is often busy all day in the engine room. Therefore, it is necessary to arrange an investigation before or after this time.

2. 

   If using the questionnaire, check the list again. Carefully reread it a few times and have someone else do the same. Remember that the investigation should take no longer than five minutes and the question should be really simple.

3. 

   Conduct investigation, maximizing sample size and accuracy of the response. Remember that you may have to do it more than once or in different locations to get the full results. Just make sure the investigation is kept completely the same between different times and locations. If not, the results may be inconsistent.
   • For example, as a computer business owner, you can choose a few different survey locations and dates to better fit your student schedule.

4. 

   Analyze the results. Record and categorize responses by number, averaging, and analyzing different choices (very high or low). Read through and analyze open answers to get an overview of how participants responded and what their thoughts were. From there, create a report summarizing what you find, even if it is only for your personal use.
   • Go through it all, find truly excellent feedback from customers. Anything memorable, creative or positive can be bookmarked and reused for a company's advertising campaign.
   advertisement

Advice

• In essence, market surveys lack flexibility, and should be conducted consistently with all participants in order to obtain standardized results. This means that you cannot adjust the focus of the investigation during the entire process, even if you realize that many extremely important factors have been missed. These are both strengths and weaknesses of market investigations and this should be considered when developing a survey program.
• It is always better to do a specific investigation than to try and embrace a lot of things. The less embrace, the more useful and detailed the collected data.
• Provide accurate results. The faithful result from a small sample is much better than "building" just because it wants to increase the sample size.