Market Research: What it Is, Methods, Types & Examples

We live in a world full of information. But finding reliable data about your market or audience isn’t easy. That’s where market research comes in.

Market research helps brands and researchers understand their target audience and make smart decisions. The market research industry is growing fast, with new tools and methods appearing all the time.

For beginners, it can be hard to know where to start. That’s why we’ve created this simple guide.

Learn the basics, discover why market research important, what primary and secondary research are, and how to use market research data to stay ahead of the game.

What is Market Research

Market research is the process of collecting information about your target audience or market. It helps businesses understand what people want, need, or think. This can include things like customer opinions, buying habits, or market trends.

With this information, companies can make smarter decisions about products or services to improve customer satisfaction and gain a competitive edge.

Market research is an integral part of a marketing strategy. Check out how to set marketing objectives correctly to reach your audience.

There are many ways to gather useful information about your market and audience. Each method helps you understand customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. Below are some of the most popular market research techniques:

How to Conduct Market Research

Before launching new products and services or improving existing ones, businesses must first understand their target market’s interests, competition, and market demand. Market research is the procedure of gathering all of this data.

Who are their potential customers? What do they want? Who are the competitors? Market research helps answer these questions.

There are different ways to do this. A company can build an in-house research team, hire a market research analyst, or work with a third-party agency. Understanding market demand, customer preferences, and competition helps businesses create better products and stronger marketing strategies.

Many companies rely on gut feeling when launching products. But skipping market research often leads to disappointing results, showing that even the best ideas can fail without proper research.

Why Market Research Is So Important

• It follows a scientific approach, using both numbers (quantitative data) and opinions (qualitative data).
• It shows if there is real demand for a product or service.
• It helps predict future sales and market trends.
• It uncovers customer preferences, pain points, and buying behavior.
• It identifies the best ways to market and sell your product.
• It highlights what competitors are doing well and where they fall short.
• It helps segment your audience so you can target them more effectively.
• It reduces risk and increases the chances of success.

• Effective marketing research may determine the market capability of any specific company or brand.
• The study assures that the soon-to-be-released product or service will match consumer expectations and market demand.

Step-by-Step of Market Research

Market research helps businesses collect information from different places to understand emerging trends and how customers behave. This information is then studied to help create better products, offer unique services, or even start new businesses.

Exploring more unusual or less obvious marketing research topics can also give helpful insights that basic market research might miss.

If you’ve just started a business and feel unsure about how to market your startup — whether it’s a small shop or an online project — don’t worry. We’ll guide you through it.

Market research is an important part of your business plan. It helps you make smart decisions and market your startup with confidence. The market research process usually includes these simple steps:

1. Understand What You Want to Know

Before you start, be clear about your goal. Market research can answer many different questions, but you need to focus.

Ask yourself:

• Are you testing a new product idea?
• Do you want to know if there’s demand for your service?
• Are you trying to understand your competitors?

Let’s say you’re thinking about starting a small meal delivery business in your town. You want to know if people would order healthy meals to their homes.

2. Decide How You’ll Collect Information

There are two main ways to do research:

• Primary research: You collect new information yourself (surveys, interviews, observing people).
• Secondary research: You use public domain data (industry reports, online reviews, competitor websites, government data).

Tip: Start with secondary research — it’s cheaper and faster. Then, if you still have unanswered questions, do your own primary research.

You can check local Facebook groups and food delivery apps to see what options already exist and what people are saying about them.

3. Gather the Data

This is when you get the facts. If you’re doing primary research, talk to real people — potential customers, experts, or even competitors (indirectly). You can:

• Run an online survey
• Have short interviews
• Watch how people shop or use similar products

Create a quick online poll asking people if they’d order healthy meals. You also talk to a few busy parents or office workers to hear their pain points.

4. Gathering and Analyzing Data

It’s the most important part of marketing research since the outcomes are only as accurate as the data collected.

In this digital age, tools like Survicate’s Hubspot surveys have become invaluable, as they offer seamless integration with customer relationship management systems.

A company might utilize email strategies with questions, online surveys, one-on-one interviews, and other methods to gather client feedback.

The information gathered must be analyzed to determine how the consumers and market will react to “soon-to-be-introduced” products.

Ask yourself:

• What are people complaining about?
• What do they want that they can’t find?
• How big is the demand?
• What are competitors doing well? Where are they failing?

5. Communicate Outcomes

The presentation of the market research report is the process’s final phase. The higher management works on the best approaches and techniques to capitalize on the opportunity or address the issue.

Based on what you’ve learned, adjust your business strategy. You may discover your original plan needs tweaks — that’s normal. It’s better to know now than after wasting money.

6. Test Your Idea on a Small Scale

Don’t go all-in just yet. Test your product or service with a small group first. This is called a pilot or soft launch.

For example, with your food delivery business, you can offer a one-week meal plan to a small group of customers, ask for feedback, and improve based on what they say.

7. Keep Researching, Always

Market research isn’t something you do once and forget. Consumer behavior and preferences change, competitors improve, and new trends appear. Keep your finger on the pulse.

Regularly send short customer feedback forms. You can also conduct competitive analysis of different market segments to check what your competitors are offering every few months.

Market Research Methods

Market research uses different methods to collect useful information. Qualitative methods, like interviews or focus groups, help you understand people’s opinions, feelings, and motivations.

Quantitative methods, like surveys or online polls, provide numbers and statistics to show trends or preferences. Using both methods gives a full picture of your market and helps you make better decisions. Here, we check out the most popular methods of market research and how they work.

1. Observation Market Research

Observational consumer research means watching what people do without asking them questions. It helps you see what products customers actually use or buy.

For example, if your business is new in a nearby area, watching what customers choose is more useful than just calling and asking. A shopkeeper can notice which brands or products customers buy most often and put those items in a good spot to attract more buyers.

2. Experimental Market Research

Experimental market research uses tests and experiments to find out which marketing methods work best. For example, a store might place the best-selling products right at the front to see if this spot increases sales.

Another example is running the same advertisement in two different places in a newspaper, one on the front page and one on the back page, to see which ad catches more readers’ attention. Sometimes, marketers also try different styles, like using ads with lots of white space versus busy ads, to understand what grabs people’s interest more.

These experiments give businesses valuable insights that help them make better decisions about how to promote their products or services.

3. Survey Market Research

The most common type of marketing research is conducting surveys. Various inquiries are posed to the various market customers using this strategy.

Marketers collect data from all consumers and note their perspectives and interpretations of distinguishing variables.

However, capturing descriptive data is more trustworthy than capturing customer opinions and interpretations. As a result, surveys may be split into three categories:

Opinion Survey

This survey asks people for their opinions on various topics. Since answers are often given quickly, some responses might not be very accurate or thoughtful. People may give opinions without much thinking, so the results can sometimes be unreliable.

Descriptive Survey

In this survey, customers are asked specific questions about the brand or product they use. While the answers help describe customer experiences, they aren’t always completely accurate. Sometimes, people give answers they think the interviewer wants to hear, rather than their true thoughts.

Interpretative Survey

This method involves understanding and explaining people’s answers, but it can be tricky because personal feelings don’t always come through clearly. The person analyzing the responses must be open-minded and careful to interpret what the respondents really mean, even if the information covers many different topics.

However, with the advancement of sentiment analysis software, there is potential for more nuanced understanding and interpretation of emotions, enabling interpreters to better capture and convey the underlying sentiments in various contexts.

Types of Market Research

Businesses collect data through feedback, surveys, research journals, or publicly available sources. They may decide whether to release new items after analyzing the data. Marketing research may be classified into two sorts depending on the available sources: primary market research and secondary market research. Let’s explore these in more detail.

1. Primary Market Research

Primary market research is when brands collect information directly from customers or through a hired research center. Instead of relying on public data or industry trend reports, they gather fresh, original data to better understand customer needs and market trends. This type of research happens in two main stages:

Exploratory Research

In this first stage, researchers use open-ended questions to learn about the problems or challenges customers face. The goal is to gather broad consumer insights that can help improve existing products or come up with new ideas. For example, a company might ask customers what they don’t like about current products or what features they wish they had.

Specific Research

After identifying issues during exploratory research, this stage focuses on finding concrete solutions. It also looks for new opportunities based on current market trends and customer preferences. For example, if exploratory research showed customers want healthier snack options, specific research might test different recipes or packaging designs to meet that need.

The following data collection strategies are used in primary research:

• Distributing a questionnaire or launching an online poll to solicit customer feedback.
• Conducting surveys through the internet, in-person, or by phone regarding present and soon-to-be-introduced items.
• Interacting with focus groups through online questionnaires or in-person interviews.
• Conducting in-depth interviews via phone, one-on-one, or online.

2. Secondary Market Research

Secondary market research means collecting data from sources that are already available to the public, either online or offline. Instead of gathering new information directly from customers, researchers use existing reports, articles, and data to learn about the market.

For example, analysts often use online tools to find popular keywords, which are the words people type into search engines when looking for products or services. Knowing which keywords are popular helps businesses focus their advertising on what customers are actually searching for.

Some common ways to conduct secondary research include:

• Reading posts and comments on social media, as well as articles in magazines, newspapers, and blogs.
• Using official data from government sources like census reports and public studies.
• Reviewing research from trade organizations, academic papers, case studies, and industry reviews.

3. Quantitative Research

Quantitative research involves collecting numbers and statistics to understand what people think or feel. Most people expect to see charts, graphs, and data when they hear about market research.

This kind of research gathers information using surveys, polls, questionnaires, or even counting behaviors through observation. The goal is to get measurable results that show how many people have a certain opinion or behave in a certain way.

Because the results are numbers, researchers can test ideas clearly and fairly without personal bias. For example, they can find out what percentage of customers like a product or how many prefer one brand over another.

Surveys are the most common way to do quantitative research because they make it easy to collect data from many people.

Analyzing this data involves looking for patterns and connections, but it doesn’t assume one thing causes another, it just shows relationships. This process requires understanding statistics and math to make smart conclusions from the data.

4. Qualitative Research

When you hear “qualitative research,” you probably think of interviews and focus groups, where people talk about their feelings and opinions. These have been the most common methods for a long time.

But in recent years, new technology has made it easier to run focus groups online, especially after 2020. Still, focus groups aren’t the only way to learn about customers.

There are many creative ways to gather deep insights, like using heat maps that show where people focus their attention, asking people to keep diaries or scrapbooks about their experiences, or tracking their feelings over time. These methods give richer, more detailed information than simple surveys or traditional focus groups.

Sometimes, focus groups alone don’t provide enough context or deeper understanding, so combining them with other creative methods helps researchers learn more about what really matters to customers.

To generate the correct insights for their stakeholders, insight teams can leverage data integration tools to get a centralised view of research tasks and procedures.

Examples of Market Research

The best way to understand the value of market research is to see how it works in practice. Below are two market research examples that show how it helped different groups better understand their target market and improve their services.

Example #1: Helping Schools with Market Research

A nonprofit organization wanted to improve education for children in under-resourced schools who face learning challenges. To understand these challenges better, they collected detailed feedback from teachers and community groups working closely with children aged 0 to 18. This information helped the nonprofit learn about the real problems and obstacles that students and educators face every day.

Using this data, the organization developed new programs and resources designed with a human-centered approach. This means their solutions were created to meet the actual needs of children and teachers, making them more effective.

Example #2: Testing a Handmade Product

A soap maker started by giving samples of their handcrafted soaps to friends and family to get honest feedback. While the initial response was positive, they wanted to learn more about the wider market.

To do this, they looked at social media to see how many people were interested in natural and handmade soaps. At the same time, they studied customer reviews on popular e-commerce sites for similar products to understand what buyers liked or disliked.

This market research showed that while many customers liked handmade soaps, they cared a lot about eco-friendly packaging. With this insight, the soap maker decided to focus on designing sustainable and environmentally friendly packaging, while keeping the soap quality the same. This change enabled the product to better align with customer values, thereby increasing its chances of success in the market.

Conclusion

Solid market research surveys require time, effort, and money to perform, so it makes sense to invest these resources only if they yield a favorable return. Market research is still crucial in running a prosperous business since it is well worth the expense.

Of course, it will not guarantee your company’s success, but market research findings will certainly provide you with the information you need to make informed decisions that will propel your company forward.