Market Research

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You can save yourself a lot of money doing research before you enter into business. You need to find out if there is a market for what you have to offer and who your market is. By finding the right people and the right customers for your service your company could make a great profit. You can only benefit from knowing as much as you can about your market and your competitors. Find out if there are companies in your area who are offering the same as your company. If you know who your competiotors are and what they have to offer then you will be able to compete against them.

Market research?
Market research is vital to the success of your business, this type of research can be used to evaluate your own companys chances of succeeding, it can help you to determine the size of your intended market, the demand, the price you will be able to charge for your product or service and it will give you an idea of the amount of profit you can anticipate you will make..
You may be able to find out the basics from such things as library’s, journals, databases, magazines, business information centers and published research studies. Other types of information will be hard to gather and you ahould be careful how you use this information to benefit your business.

Primary Research
In order to find all the information you require you may need to conduct Primary Research. Conducting your own surveys to create market data, using questionnaires or interviewing people in order to obtain the information. Conclusions can be formed and reliable results obtained after having sampled a small percentage of your targeted market.
Primary Research can be either 'qualitative' – providing definitive market information or 'quantitative' – providing statistically valid market information.

Qualitative Research can provide definitive market information. Peoples opinions, attitudes and behaviors are noted and any problems can be defined and thus hopefully resolved.
Personal interviews – ‘surveys on a one to one basis’ and focus groups – ‘interviewing a small number of people using a script’ are good examples of qualitative research.
Quantitative Research is used to provide statistics to help substantiate any theory you may have in your marketing information thus minimizing any risks being taken. It can be expensive and more time consuming as it often involves Personal Surveys, Telephone Surveys and Mail Surveys.
Quantitative research can help you gather statistically valid market information. Some common uses for quantitative research include:

Ad-hoc Market Research
Data is gathered at one point in time from one sample of respondents and focuses on specific marketing problems that appear.

Continuous Research
Continuous research means that the same group of people are interviewed repeatedly. For example consumer panels – ‘the buying information of a particular household is collected over a period of time.’

Field Research
People are interviewd directly, these people are usually targeted as they are believed to be the sort of people that a business would wish to supply or would require the services of that business.
A company can find out vital information such as: what customers want, how they wish to receive a product or service, how they would prefer to pay for a product or service and how regular they would require the product or service.

Telephone research
There are a vast amount of companies ringing people in order to russle up business and more and more people are becoming less tollererant of this kind of research. Try to keep this type of research for business to business dealings. You should always call and ask to speak to the person who deals with whatever it is that you are wishing to sell, you should make a note of their name and always ask to speak to them in any further future business matters.

Postal surveys
Postal Surveys can be generated from the general public or from businesses. Surveys should be quick, simple and easy to complete. People will not want the expense of sending back a survey or questionnaire so make sure postage is paid for them. A reward or the chance of winning something could entice people to complete your survey.