What are the 3 main types of market research methodologies?
Would you like to know why your consumers are not buying your products? Do you want to discover what they want so you can give it to them? Are you interested in launching a new product, service, or marketing campaign, but you’re not sure what will work?
In this case and in many other situations in your business, market research is the way to get all the answers you need. Through market research, you can collect data from your target consumers that will help you understand their wants and needs. With this information, you can make informed decisions about your business that will lead to success.
What is Market Research?
Market research is vital for organizations or businesses that want to introduce new products or services. By conducting research with potential consumers, businesses can discover their target market, collect and document opinions, and make informed decisions.
Market research can be conducted directly by businesses or can be outsourced to agencies that have expertise in this process.
The process of market research can be done through deploying surveys, interacting with a group of people also known as a sample, conducting interviews, and other similar processes.
The primary purpose of conducting market research is to understand or examine the market associated with a particular product or service, to decide how the audience will react to a product or service. The information obtained from conducting market research can be used to tailor marketing/ advertising activities or to determine what are the feature priorities/service requirement (if any) of consumers.
Why is market research important?
Conducting customer research is an important way to reduce customer churn, elevate your business and achieve customer satisfaction. Here are some reasons why customer research is essential and should be a key part of any business:
-It allows you to understand your target market and customers, what they want and how they make decisions
-Through research you can develop new products or services that appeal to your target market
-You can improve your marketing campaigns and strategies by learning what works with your target market and what doesn’t
-You can identify areas of opportunity for your business
-Conducting customer research regularly can help you stay ahead of the competition
The field of market research has rapidly evolved in recent years, thanks in large part to social media platforms and other burgeoning technologies that have made it easier than ever to collect and analyze information. However, while big data has changed how researchers around the world collect and analyze information, it hasn’t necessarily changed the ways in which studies are designed. Below, we outline the three core types of market research. Keep in mind that a quality research strategy usually incorporates aspects of all three!
Exploratory Research
Exploratory research is conducted when there are few or no previous studies to refer to, and its focus is on gaining insights and familiarity for later investigation. This type of research is undertaken when problems are in a preliminary stage of investigation.
The goals of exploratory research are to produce insights such as:
Familiarity with basic details, settings and concerns.
Well-grounded picture of the situation being developed.
Generation of new ideas and assumption, development of tentative theories or hypotheses.
Exploratory research is the key to gathering in-depth, qualitative data from experts and consumers via interviews and focus groups. This type of research is also beneficial in finding rich secondary research materials, such as books, reports, and trade journals.
Descriptive Research
Descriptive research designs provide valuable information about the ins and outs of a particular research problem. Studies under this type can help answer questions about who, what, when, where, how, and sometimes even why, though they can’t always conclusively ascertain the last one. Descriptive research is used to obtain information and paint a general picture of “what exists” in terms of variables or conditions in any given situation. Specifically, researchers can use descriptive research techniques to gather data on consumers, product market potential or target group opinions and actions. By analyzing the information collected, they can draw conclusions and/or make correlations about the market.
Causal Research
Causal research, or explanatory research, is a study done to find out if two different situations have a cause-and-effect relationship. Many alternative factors can affect cause-and-effect, so researchers do experiments to collect statistical evidence of the connection between the situations. Then they analyze the data to learn more about how the relationship works and if it can be applied to a larger context.
While causal research is useful in giving us insights, we should be cautious about basing our actions solely on its results. This is because it can be difficult to isolate and verify any one variable’s ability to cause a particular effect. Therefore, it is important to consider other types of research before making decisions.
There are three main types of market research methodologies that are used today in market research. All three have their own benefits and drawbacks, so it’s best to have multiple research methods in place to help you gain a better understanding of the market. We hope that this blog post has helped you gain more insight in market research and how to utilize it to help your business grow! If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us anytime at www.philomathresearch.com Thank you for reading!