subject: Importance of Market Research to launch a Business in New Market [print this page] Market research is an effort to ascertain the worth or demand of the product in the market as well as the standing of the enterprise in the industry. It may be defined as the systematic and objective process of collecting, generating, analyzing, and interpreting information and communicating the findings for use in making marketing decisions. It helps the firm to identify and evaluate the marketing opportunities and exploit them for the firms profitability.
Why Market Research?
Make Marketing Decisions:Marketing research helps the marketers to make a decision about the product or service. Sometimes a marketer might believe that the new product or service is useful for the customers. However, research may show that customers do not need a product or are meeting their needs with a certain competitor product and so on. Similarly good marketing research strives to provide options for the successful introduction of new products and services. This makes the market entry of a new product or service less risky.
Survive the Competition:Marketing research helps in ascertaining and understanding competitor information such as their identity, marketing network, customer focus and scale of operations. This helps in surviving and in certain cases, even leaving behind the competition. Moreover, with market research you can also help understand the under-served consumer segments and consumer needs that have not been met.
Helps to Decide Target Markets:Research helps provide customer information in terms of their location, age, buying behavior and gender. This helps the marketers zero in on the target markets and customers for their products and services.
Maximize Profits:Apart from profit maximizing steps such as item optimization, customer profitability analysis, and price elasticity, marketing research allows you to find out methods that can help you maximize profits. For example, a product's price elasticity research can help you ascertain the impact of an increased price on the sales and the profits of a product. This emphasis on profitability also helps the company's focus to shift from maximizing sales to increasing the profits of a company. This helps the company survive in the long run and maximize its profits.
Increasing the Sales:Increasing the sales of your products or services helps a company in maximizing its profits. By understanding the customer's needs, wants and attitude towards the products and determining whether your products fit the bill, marketers can increase their sales. This helps in not only increasing the sales to the target customers and people already using the product but also converting the non users into customers for the product.
One importance of marketing research is that no matter what industry you engage in, you will be able to identify your potential customers, their preferences, and determine if you will generate high number of sales in your target area.
Remember that each individual has his or her own personal taste and have different reasons and willingness to pay for a particular product or service. One importance of marketing research is it will give you ideas on what your target market prefers to purchase and will give you a good head start and broaden your perspective for future expansion of your business.
There will also be time where your target market would prefer a different design or presentation of your product and this will lead to more sales.
Another importance of marketing research and also the main reason why it is necessary is to discover how many and what your competition is doing. It is always generally a good idea to check on how your competitors are doing and make sure at least that your product or services have leverage over what you completion has to offer. This will give you better insight on what you are up against so you can deal with your competitors better. This is in turn, will help you start on the right track and give you a wider scope for the future ensuring your success.
Market research can also help you to determine what types of marketing methods you should use. If your customers tend to respond to print media over online media, focus more money on printingbrochureand flyers. If they respond to pay-per-click marketing, consider adding more keywords and then add other types of online marketing like email newsletters.
Important Types of Market Research:
Qualitative Research
Quantitative Research
Various Other Kinds Of Market Research:
Market Testing
Concept Testing
Demand Estimation
Mystery Shopping
Demand Estimation
Distribution Channel Audits
Market Segmentation Research
Importance of Market Research to launch a Business in New Market
