Market research and analysis is an important part of business, specially at the time of commencement. Marketing research acts as a blueprint to run the operations and to facilitate decision making, it is an integral part of the planning process.

Market research services have transformed into a broader concept with the development of technology. There are many types of marketing research that can be done based on the business specification and requirements. Let's look at the most basic types of marketing research process.

Types of Market research

·       Primary Research

This involves public surveys which are carried out to analyse the target markets and to assess the status of ‘demand and supply' of your business product in the potential marketplace. This type of research lays foundation for primary business activities and it also helps in exploring business ideas to establish a framework.

·       Secondary Research

This is more of an improvised version of the primary research. It involves more rigorous practices like public polls, interviews, live surveys etc., to extend the analysis of target market and to gain an insight to the preferences of the customers available within the market. The research also involves competitive analysis to ascertain business competitors and their policies.

·       Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is focused on assuring the factors related to the products and services created by your business. It focuses on group of consumers and suppliers to set the quality standards and to improve quality as per the demand of market. Observation and feedbacks are two main factors involved for this research.

·       Quantitative Research

This type of research is based on target market analysis in terms of market coverage and product/services supplied with respect to the demand. It helps your business to grow and capture untouched markets while keeping a check on supply as per the demand of the market to avoid surplus flow and to retain maximum profits.

Importance of Market Research

·       Developing Business Strategy

Market research and analysis play a significant role in devising and developing business strategies. On the basis of analytical report, business owner's can create their own strategies based on logical data instead of following the best-practices or assumptions laid by other business organizations. This gives a unique identity to your business and helps in creating your brand image.

·       Understand customer behaviour

Customers are life blood of any business, it is said that, ‘Whoever gets closer to customer, wins’. Outsourced market research helps in assessing customers and their preferences. This is important to align your products and services as per their needs which improves the user experience and keeps customers attached to your business. This ensures that customers are being heard and your businesses always have a room for improvement based on their feedback.

·       Understanding marketplace

It is very crucial to understand the nature of market you are targeting or operating in. For example, outsourced market research to India will help you to analyse Indian marketplace and what scale of business they support. It is highly risky to enter a marketplace without knowing its nature. Once you understand the nature of market, it becomes easy to plan out future business moves.

·       Business growth

One of the sole reasons to use market research services is to facilitate business growth. Business runs on statistical data to ascertain the growth rate. Market research and analysis provides all typed of data related to your business model which can be used to boost your business by applying the right techniques. Market research works for all business type irrespective of the industry you are operating in, which makes it important for every business.

Read More: Reasons to Outsourced Market Research & Analysis

Why your business requires market research?

·       Explore opportunities and overcome challenges

Market research and analysis brings much needed business opportunities based on the rigorous data collection. It gives a heads-up on future growth opportunities which can be utilized by business owners. It will also help you to anticipate losses and overcome challenges by making you aware of the current market trends, so you can avoid the pitfalls and operate business smoothly.

·       Reduce business risk

Business risk is good but it need to be a calculated risk otherwise it could negatively affect your business. With the help of market research services you can analyse all the factors like product response, pricing trends, customer's behaviour etc., this helps you to anticipate any business risk involved, in fact, any risk can be turned into an opportunity by making the right changes in the business process.

·       Optimize sales channel

Sales channel are the backbone of business and with smart use of market research and analysis you can improve your sales channel and add new channels to boost your sales. For ex, Social media is a new sales channel which can be used by doing market research to utilize the current trends for your business. In this way, market research works in every direction to grow your business processes.

·       Time and Cost effective

Outsourced market research and analytics facilitate several benefits for a single price which is highly cost effective for business. It saves your time and resources which you need to incur to setup business functions. With the help of market analysis you get multifaceted reports. This cuts off the additional cost of business development and saves money which can be used on other business process.

·       Survive competition

Competitors facilitate growth but in order to do so, one need to analyse the strategies of the competitor and perform better in comparison to them. Competitive analysis helps in evaluating the competitor and their business, based on which, you can devise your own strategies to stay ahead and provide better quality of service than your competitors.

Conclusion

Market research and analysis is a broader concept and you can gain value from it in multiple ways. All you need to do is to balance the qualitative and quantitative aspect of market research by following apt research techniques that suits your business type. A well developed research plan will bring growth opportunities for your business, eliminate risk factors, optimize sales channels and boost business profit.

If your business is now considering Market research and analytics then contact us. We are happy to help you.