1. Your how to guide for conducting effective market research.

2. Market Research
Refers to marketing activities designed to discover the opinions, beliefs and preferences of potential and existing customers.

3. Market Research

4. Change the way that you think!
From: Thinking about what YOU want.
To: Thinking about what the MARKET wants or needs.

5. Secondary Market Research
Existing information
Government information
Trade Groups and Journals
Business Magazines and Reports
Local Community Resources

6. Secondary Market Research
Advantages
Disadvantages
Data or information that is already available is generally cheaper and faster to collect and analyze.
Secondary data is second-hand, so the results might be outdated or can become obsolete quickly.
Secondary research often provides an insight into changes or trends in the industry.
The data or information might be in an inappropriate format for the market researcher as it has been collected for another purpose.
There is a huge range of sources that the market researcher can use especially with online sources.
Secondary research might only provide partial information. Again because it has been collected for another purpose.
Findings are usually based on a large sample size so the results are statistically valid.
Unlike primary research, secondary data and information is widely available to competitors.

7. Primary Market Research
Surveys: Document that contains a series of questions used to collect data for a specific purpose.
Interviews: 1 on 1 discussions with target customers to get their opinions about a product or a service.
Focus Groups: a small group selected from a wider population and sampled for its members’ opinions about a product or service
Observations: watching customers perform certain activities, recording relevant facts, actions and behaviors

8. Primary Market Research
Advantages
Disadvantages
Primary research is carried out for a specific purpose, so directly addresses the questions that need to be answered.
Can be time consuming to collect and analyze data.
It is up to date information.
Collecting the data can be very costly.
The information is confidential and unique.
Can not be sure of the validity as poor questions could lead to biased results.

9. Challenges What questions to ask Where to find information
How to understand and present

10. First Activity Groups: Santiago, Marco P. Joustinne
Jade, Toño, Christine
Lily, Manuel, Randy
Melodie, Thomas

11. Chocolate Bar
Develop a 6 question market research survey to understand what type of chocolate bar to sell to students ages Ask questions that will help you design a new product that people in that age group will want to buy.
What is your favorite type of chocolate? Rank your top 3 favorite ingredients. Rank your top 3 favorite chocolate bars. How often do you purchase chocolate bars? Where do you buy chocolate bars? How much are you willing to spend for a normal sized chocolate bar?

12. Understanding the entire package
Remember that the product, placement, price are all part of the decision for why people buy. Do not limit yourself only to product when asking the questions.

13. How to frame the questions:
Closed-ended questions that can be answered with a yes or no response. (Quantitative)
Open-ended questions allow you to obtain qualitative answers like why someone prefers one brand over the other.
Ask them to rank in order of preference.
Create sentence starter or fill in the blank sentence.

14. Market Research Activity for your project
What industry is your product in?
Who is the market that you are targeting?
How large is the market?
How can you find out more about the tourism and local growth rate in Guanacaste?
Who are the main competitors?
What are the potential customers looking for?
Where are the potential customers located?

15. Activity Sheet Question Primary/Secondary Where to find information
What industry is your product in?
Who is the market that you are targeting?
How large is the market?
How can you find out more about the tourism and local growth rate in Guanacaste?
Who are the main competitors?
What are the potential customers looking for?
Where are the potential customers located?

16. Industry data
From Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Other web sites that show industry data.