Any product that hits the market aims to be sold. If there are legitimate reasons for consumers to buy a product, they will buy the product. Market research helps with that. It understands the reasons a consumer buys any product.

There are many cultural, societal and personal reasons that lead to people buying things. Often, people don’t even know that they want to buy a product. We can understand these factors that influence consumer behavior using market research.

Market research can either be primary, secondary, or a mixed combination of both. Primary researchers conduct their studies directly using telephonic interviews, online polls, targeted group conversations, or older sales records. Secondary researchers conduct their studies using data collected by primary researchers. They also use reports, data presented on websites, or blogs. Companies like Opinionest conduct market research using a combination of primary and secondary researching techniques to get the best of both worlds.

The one thing that all market researchers have in common are questions – they all ask basic questions. These basic questions include:

• Descriptive questions about the customers

• Age
• Occupation
• Income
• Lifestyle
• Preferences
• Educational qualifications
• Gender

• Inquisitive questions about what they buy right now

• Customer buying habits
• Preferred products and services
• Preferred quantity of purchase
• Preferred suppliers
• Features they like the most
• Preferred price points

• Targeted questions about what makes a customer buy a product or service

• Depending on the product/service and its uses, researchers attempt to probe into a consumer’s head.
• Some customers prefer aesthetic while some prefer usability.

• Speculative questions about what makes a customer buy the specific product/service that’s the focus of the market research

• Data Scientists collect detailed information about markets, sales figures and consumer buying motivations. Researchers view this data and compare it against information collected via the questions.
• The information gathered can turn speculations into educated guesses, making the odds of a product’s success higher.
• The detailed questions provide detailed answers.

There’s an entire industry around collecting and analyzing data. From industry studies to credit reports, from market surveys to research papers; these companies do it all. Depending on what service you use, the market research firm will charge you accordingly. It’s worth it, as conducting research requires industry specific expertize, physical manpower and technology. Also, these companies know which topics are relevant to look into and which aren’t.

Many companies prefer to have in-house market research wings to conduct their own research. These research wings conduct telephonic interviews with their consumer base. They devise detailed questionnaires to be filled by customers as part of a survey. They also collect data based on social media trends. All the shared social media activity, engagement, and analytics are analyzed and sorted on the basis of likes, dislikes, preferences, and expectations.

As a company, if you don’t wish to dedicate resources and personnel to the same, you can just hire a market research firm and a company that conducts online surveys to do the job. These days, people voice most of their opinions online. These market researches provide a lot of valuable insights about marketing.

While picking which marketing agencies or methodologies to employ, you need to conduct a bit of industry specific research on your own. You must weigh the costs and the benefits of all your probable prospects based on:

• The relative size of the companies
• Whether the company is global or local
• How quickly you need to become a web-based business
• How similar the ownership structure of the firm is to your business – prefer uniformity
• Age of the company – new companies are successful and long-standing companies have a reputation

Once again, this market research is important. The data that’s gathered and then analyzed helps predict how much your business stands to profit once your product/service launches. This data also helps predict how the current marketplace might shift in the future.

The important steps to follow while spending your market research money include:

1. Know as much about your market as you can. Once you understand what your target market needs, you can make your research more focused. This highly focused research is highly valuable.
2. Learn to prioritize as it’s impossible to research everything. Based on the results you generate as part of the first step, concentrate on the relevant information. Here, relevant information is insights that generate the quickest and the highest payback.
3. Don’t spend a lot of money on just research. Less-expensive research alternatives exist. Instead of running entire data analysis campaigns, just run a few surveys initially.
4. Don’t shy away from Do-It-Yourself. Estimate the cost of performing the research yourself. The Internet will readily help with that. Instead of spending a lot of money, you can just hire some independent service to collect the information for you. Your dreams can’t come true for free but they shouldn’t come at an astronomical price tag either.

In the wise words of Dan Zarrella, “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed." If your eyes are closed, you won’t be able to drive for much longer. If you’re ever looking to go someplace, you’ll need to drive. Proper data is like an all-seeing eye. So, either conduct your own market research or hire someone else to do it for you properly.