As consumers, we all hear about Market Research that goes into the Research and Development process. Although, many consumers and even business professionals don’t know the exact steps involved. I will cover Market Research in this article.
The first step is researching the problems & objectives and establishing a hypothesis. The marketer must first define the underlying problem and to do so I will use the example provided in class. For a Opera Company, the underlying problem was low ticket sales. The marketer must research what caused this underlying problem which happened to be the poor attitude of the younger generation. These days, teenagers and young adults are more entranced with digital media rather than traditional performance entertainment. Therefore, the objective would be to find out the psychological determinants (covered in the consumer buying behavior article) involved with the demographic’s poor attitude towards traditional performance entertainment. The hypothesis of such a problem & objective could be to the effect of: if the younger demographics are turned away from the Opera because it’s uncool then what would make it cool again.
The second step is conducting informal & formal investigations. The marketer would research the younger demographics’ psychological determinants by investigating a sample of the demographic’s population. The data taken from an informal investigation is typically done through observational research, focus groups, and casual interviewing; whereas, formal investigation is typically done through survey methods such as mail survey questionnaires, personal interviews, and telephone interviews. Tips for informal investigation would be to observe the buying behavior situation, focus on group stimulation of ideas in a focus group, and ask close ended questions for casual interviews to articulate the general problem and evaluate the extent of the interviewee’s biased opinion. Tips for formal investigation would be to keep mail survey questionnaires short, close ended and carefully worded to avoid ambiguity but ask open ended questions, be flexible to give immediate feedback on answers, and build good report during personal and telephone interviews.
The third step is collecting & analyzing the data to report and follow up on the results. Data collection is best done through a CRM database if the interviewees are established customers but if not a common spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel would suffice. The marketer would then analyze the data and prepare a report. I have covered the statistical methods I learned in my statistics course throughout the previous statistics series of articles. My Marketing professor suggested the use of a single/multiple regression line which would professionally illustrate the results of a successful Market Research strategy. The final step would be to pitch such results to the client or higher ups. In the Opera company example, my professor found out that the Opera appealed to an older audience due to their advanced education and acquired taste and the younger audience appreciated a more social event. Therefore, the Opera company could make their Opera a social event and educate the younger generation to develop the acquired taste and ticket sales would rise. My professor followed up on the performance of such results and it turned out that educating the younger generation raised ticket sales.
These three steps are the condensed steps my Marketing professor taught us of a Market Research strategy. In the next article, I’ll cover the product strategy and new product development process that goes into the other half of the Research and Development.
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