Market Research  Purpose  Primary Research

Purpose

Market Research: Advantages  Helps focus attention on objectives  Aids forecasting, planning and strategic development  May help to reduce risk of new product development  Communicates image, vision, etc.

Market Research: Disadvantages  Information only as good as the methodology used  Can be inaccurate or unreliable  May stifle initiative and ‘gut feeling’  Always a problem that we may never know enough to be sure!

Primary Research

 First hand information  Expensive to collect, analyse and evaluate  Can be highly focussed and relevant  Care needs to be taken with the approach and methodology to ensure accuracy

Primary Research: Purposes  To determine if – and how much – demand exists for the proposed product/service  To determine qualities/features of the product/service that consumers most desire  To determine characteristics of target consumer

Questions Answered by Primary Research  Should we create and market this product/service?  How should we change the product/service so that the final product satisfies the most consumers?  How would we describe the “typical” consumer of our product?

Types of Questions: Open-Ended  E.g. ‘What features of our product do you find most useful? Why?’  Good: more detail & quality ‘truer’ answers  Bad: time consuming to  respondent  evaluator

Types of Questions: Closed-Ended  E.g. Which factor most influenced your purchase decision:  Price  Quality  Etc.  Good: Quick to complete and evaluate Specific target answers  Bad: Low quality Possible ‘leading’ answers