Marketing Research

How does a business grow when customer needs keep changing? How does it know if the product or service is helping the customer or pushing them away to competitors? This is where marketing research becomes the need of the hour.

Whether you casually observe and question how you get the most personalised emails that remember you, or a data-focused individual who finds meaning in numbers, marketing research may interest you. 

This page covers the definition of marketing research, highlighting the ins and outs to get you started to explore the process, trends, and more.

Marketing research combines the process of collecting and analysing all relevant information to understand a target market for a business to succeed. The study includes up-to-date qualitative and quantitative data of customers, competitors, trends, market structure, consumer behaviour, and the effect of advertising and marketing efforts. Marketers collect such data by a variety of methods, including surveys, focus groups, social media listening, marketing analytics, and competitor analysis. 

Marketing research serves a variety of purposes, but the following points are a compilation of the essential objectives that should justify why businesses use it. 

Learning About Preferences of Customers 

Knowing what the customers need or want, tells a business if they are willing to spend on its products or services. Apart from that, it informs about preferences through surveys, focus groups, or interviews that are direct types of feedback from customers. These methods allow researchers to ask specific questions about customer preferences, such as which features or benefits they value most in a product, or how they prefer to receive marketing messages. 

Sales data can also reveal which products are the most popular or which features are useful to a customer, providing insights into what customers are looking for in a product.

Reducing Marketing Costs

Without marketing research, a business can spend an excess on advertising channels and may have no desirable returns. With a structured research and evaluation of results via A/B testing and focus groups, a business can help evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. By measuring the impact of advertising messages and channels, it is possible to optimise their advertising efforts and reduce costs associated with ineffective advertising. 

Staying Ahead of Competition 

 One important objective of marketing research is to help businesses navigate competition in the modern marketplace. In today's business environment, it is nearly impossible for firms to survive without facing competition. Because competitors' reactions can impact a firm's demand, businesses must take appropriate action in response to their competitors' strategies.

The scope of marketing research is wide, covering the following.

Businesses use the marketing mix to promote their products or services. These tactics include product design and development, pricing strategies, promotion or advertising, and distribution or placement of the product. The marketing mix is used to create a competitive advantage in the market.

Marketing research, on the other hand, involves collecting and analysing data to understand customer needs, preferences, and behaviour. The insights can help businesses develop an effective marketing mix that meets the needs of their target audience. 

For example, marketing research may reveal that customers are willing to pay a higher price for a product with certain features or benefits, which can inform pricing strategies and product development.

Marketing research can also help businesses evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing mix. By tracking consumer behaviour and preferences, businesses can identify areas where their marketing mix may be falling short and make adjustments to improve its effectiveness.

Before creating any marketing strategy, you need to follow a step-by-step marketing research process. Depending on the business requirements, the process can include five to seven steps. Below is a basic five-step marketing research process. 

Describing the Problem or Opportunity

The first step in this research is to identify and address the problem or opportunity. It is simply about brainstorming and answering business-and-industry-specific questions.

 The proven way to make this step in the process more organised is to consider 

• The main business problem or opportunity. For example, need more customers to increase revenue.
• Objectives arising from the problem or opportunity. For example, to create a marketing plan to increase revenue from the target audience. 
• Brainstorming broader questions related to the problem or opportunity. For example, to learn why they are abandoning carts, or why don’t the existing customers buy new products.

Devising a Plan for Research 

Now it is time to figure out how you will research to find the information. This is possible through primary and secondary research methods.

Primary Research

Marketing researchers use two methods in this type of research. One is exploratory research. It is done to gather insights through telephonic or online market surveys, one-on-one interviews, A/b tests, or focus groups. The second method is specific research. It looks into specific issues that arise when conducting exploratory research. 

Beyond these, there are more advanced methods you might encounter. 

• Conjoint Analysis - Helps understand how consumers make choices based on different product attributes. For example, researchers can use this to evaluate different combinations of features and prices to determine what customers value most.
• Ethnographic Research: This involves studying consumers in their natural environments to gain an understanding of their behaviours and needs. This may involve home visits and observations that give researchers deep and personal insights.
• Neuromarketing: This emerging field uses methods like EEG (electroencephalography) and eye-tracking to measure brain activity and attention. This helps in understanding consumer responses to marketing stimuli in more detail. Check out some neuromarketing courses online. 

Secondary Research

This kind of research utilises the available information. The sources can be governmental institutions, public libraries, finance institutions, and academic institutions. 

The plan to gather data depends on the budget and the objectives you outlined in the first step of the marketing research process. The second step is required for figuring out how you can gather such data. 

Conducting Research 

Post finalising your plan for research, you conduct it. Typically, new businesses start with secondary research to gather generalised data that is publicly available. This information provides a direction to what type of primary research you should be conducting.

A few things to consider when conducting research are 

1. The data needs to be unbiased
2. Focus on a mix of open- and closed-ended questions that provide objective answers
3. Not just rely on the consumer’s final purchase stage but focus on exploring the unique customer touchpoints (refer to customer journey maps)

You will want both quantitative and qualitative data to obtain statistics and deeper reasons to your research questions.

Analysing Results from Data 

Now you gathered all the data, it’s time to analyse it. This is the time when you make the information meaningful that caters to helping the business. Types of data analysis include predictive analysis, descriptive analysis, and prescriptive analysis among others. These will give you insights on correlation between unexplored data points, on consumer behaviour and more. 

Taking Action 

Once you analysed and created meaning for all the data, you must focus on applying that data to your upcoming marketing plan. 

Maybe, the data showed you that the demographic for your product or service is working professionals in ages between 30 and 40. You can then think of planning your communications on social media that is humorous and informative. If the age group were the Gen Z, you may have to think for communicating about social issues and use social platforms like BeReal or TikTok.

ResearchAndMarkets.com predicted three years back that the global market research services market would reach USD 90.79 billion in 2025. The prediction grew more than expected, up to 93.29 billion at the beginning og this year. The same predicts this would increase to $109.67 billion in 2029. 

Marketing research today is no longer stuck in the heyday of collecting non-targeted template-based surveys and calling it a day.

Now is the tech-savvy age of customer-centricity. That’s why micro-surveys (shorter and more focused) promise 60% more response rates than a traditional one, according to Survey Sparrow. 

It is also about utilising AI to test concepts in real-time and keep the overall approach more Agile. Literally, all of Spotify is agile market research. Like, the latest AI DJ feature that rolled out to personalise the listening experience more.

It’s the dependency on unique customer data and keeping up with technology. Learning marketing research today makes more sense when strategy is entirely data-driven. 

Here are some trends that ResearchAndMarkets.com has highlighted. 

Here are some case studies of marketing research done by two popular brands in different industries. 

Kellogg's Eye-Tracking VR Marketing Breakthrough

• Challenge: To decode consumer product interaction and store navigation dynamics
• Innovation: Deployed eye-tracking technology in virtual reality to map shopper behaviour and emotional responses.
• Impact: Data-driven merchandising optimisation that enhanced store layout strategy and product placement effectiveness.

McDonald's All-Day Breakfast Strategic Breakthrough

• Research: Investigated customer desires, market trends, and operational challenges that revealed widespread demand for breakfast after traditional hours.
• Design: Strategically reimagined menu and kitchen processes to enable seamless all-day breakfast offerings. Even these were to respond to evolving consumer preferences.
• Outcome: Successful launch that drove significant sales growth, with U.S. same-store sales increasing by 5.7% and outperforming the fast-food segment.

There is no one way to excel in marketing research. You can start with the following: 

1. Pursue online marketing research courses to get a hang of technical concepts and terminology. You can do many of them at your own pace. Ideally, you should choose courses that offer projects. They will help you get hands-on experience in the field. If you are a complete beginner and wish to get a broad idea, choose free marketing research courses. 
2. Constantly read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch videos of experts and visit forums to reinforce your learning and stay updated with market trends.  

If you like to test your knowledge more on such topics, take these courses.

1. Customer Insights: Quantitative Techniques on Coursera
2. Certified Market Research Analyst on Vskills
3. Understand customers needs and online behaviours on Google Skillshop
4. An Introduction to Neuromarketing on Coursera

Marketing research is beneficial for all businesses and every industry. It is also gaining popularity today as all brands face tough market competition. With a marketing research certification, knowledge of the technical concepts will help you make educated decisions, irrespective of business size.