market research data methodologies

Discover the insights of 300+ marketing professionals on the essential tools, resources, and skills for success.

• · Brandwatch Academy
• Forrester Wave

Brandwatch Consumer Research

Formerly the Falcon suite

Formerly Paladin

Published October 17 th 2023

10 Essential Methods for Effective Consumer and Market Research

When it comes to understanding the world around you, market research is an essential step.

We live in a world that’s overflowing with information. Sifting through all the noise to extract the most relevant insights on a certain market or audience can be tough.

That’s where market research comes in – it’s a way for brands and researchers to collect information from target markets and audiences.

Once reliant on traditional methods like focus groups or surveys, market research is now at a crossroads. Newer tools for extracting insights, like social listening tools, have joined the array of market research techniques available.

Here, we break down what market research is and the different methods you can choose from to make the most of it.

What is market research, and why is it critical for you as a marketer?

Market research involves collecting and analyzing data about a specific industry, market, or audience to inform strategic decision-making. It offers marketers valuable insights into the industry, market trends, consumer preferences, competition, and opportunities, enabling businesses to refine their strategies effectively.

By conducting market research, organizations can identify unmet needs, assess product demands, enhance value propositions, and create marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience. 

This practice serves as a compass, guiding businesses in making data-driven decisions for successful product launches, improved customer relationships, and a stronger positioning in the business landscape. 

For marketers and insights professionals, market research is an indispensable tool. It helps them make smarter decisions and achieve growth and success in the market.

These 10 market research methods form the backbone of effective market research strategies. 

Continue reading or jump directly to each method by tapping the link below.

• Focus groups
• Consumer research with social media listening
• Experiments and field trials
• Observation
• Competitive analysis
• Public domain data
• Buy research
• Analyze sales data

Use of primary vs secondary market research

Market research can be split into two distinct sections: primary and secondary. These are the two main types of market research.

They can also be known as field and desk, respectively (although this terminology feels out of date, as plenty of primary research can be carried out from your desk).

Primary (field) research

Primary market research is research you carry out yourself. Examples of primary market research methods include running your own focus groups or conducting surveys. These are some of the key methods of consumer research. The ‘field’ part refers to going out into the field to get data.

Secondary (desk) research

Secondary market research is research carried out by other people that you want to use. Examples of secondary market research methods include studies carried out by researchers or financial data released by companies.

10 effective methods to do market research

The methods in this list cover both areas. Which ones you want to use will depend on your goals. Have a browse through and see what fits.

1. Focus groups

It’s a simple concept but one that can be hard to put into practice.

You bring together a group of individuals into a room, record their discussions, and ask them questions about various topics you are researching. For some, it’ll be new product ideas. For others, it might be views on a political candidate.

From these discussions, the organizer will try to pull out some insights or use them to judge the wider society’s view on something. The participants will generally be chosen based on certain criteria, such as demographics, interests, or occupations.

A focus group’s strength is in the natural conversation and discussion that can take place between participants (if they’re done right).

Compared to a questionnaire or survey with a rigid set of questions, a focus group can go off on tangents the organizer could not have predicted (and therefore not planned questions for). This can be good in that unexpected topics can arise; or bad if the aims of the research are to answer a very particular set of questions.

The nature of the discussion is important to recognize as a potential factor that skews the resulting data. Focus groups can encourage participants to talk about things they might not have otherwise, and others might impact the group. This can also affect unstructured one-on-one interviews.

In survey research, survey questions are given to respondents (in person, over the phone, by email, or via an online form). Questions can be close-ended or open-ended. As far as close-ended questions go, there are many different types:

• Dichotomous (two choices, such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’)
• Multiple choice
• Rating scale
• Likert scale (common version is five options between ‘strongly agree’ and ‘strongly disagree’)
• Matrix (options presented on a grid)
• Demographic (asking for information such as gender, age, or occupation)

Surveys are massively versatile because of the range of question formats. Knowing how to mix and match them to get what you need takes consideration and thought. Different questions need the right setup.

It’s also about how you ask. Good questions lead to good analysis. Writing clear, concise questions that abstain from vague expressions and don’t lead respondents down a certain path can help your results reflect the true colors of respondents.

There are a ton of different ways to conduct surveys as well, from creating your own from scratch or using tools that do lots of the heavy lifting for you.

3. Consumer research with social media listening

Social media has reached a point where it is seamlessly integrated into our lives. And because it is a digital extension of ourselves, people freely express their opinions, thoughts, and hot takes on social media.

Because people share so much content on social media and the sharing is so instant, social media is a treasure trove for market research. There is plenty of data to monitor , tap into, and dissect.

By using a social listening tool, like Consumer Research , researchers can identify topics of interest and then analyze relevant social posts. For example, they can track brand mentions and what consumers are saying about the products owned by that brand. These are real-world consumer research examples.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brandwatch (@brandwatch)

Social media listening democratizes insights, and is especially useful for market research because of the vast amount of unfiltered information available. Because it’s unprompted, you can be fairly sure that what’s shared is an accurate account of what the person really cares about and thinks (as opposed to them being given a subject to dwell on in the presence of a researcher).

You might like

Your complete social listening guide.

Learn how to get started with social listening

4. Interviews

In interviews, the interviewer speaks directly with the respondent. This type of market research method is more personal, allowing for communication and clarification, making it good for open-ended questions. Furthermore, interviews enable the interviewer to go beyond surface-level responses and investigate deeper.

However, the drawback is that interviews can be time-intensive and costly. Those who opt for this method will need to figure out how to allocate their resources effectively. You also need to be careful with leading or poor questions that lead to useless results. Here’s a good introduction to leading questions .

5. Experiments and field trials

Field experiments are conducted in the participants’ environment. They rely on the independent variable and the dependent variable – the researcher controls the independent variable in order to test its impact on the dependent variable. The key here is to establish whether there’s causality.

For example, take Hofling’s experiment that tested obedience, conducted in a hospital setting. The point was to test if nurses followed authority figures (doctors) and if the authority figures’ rules violated standards (The dependent variable being the nurses, the independent variable being a fake doctor calling up and ordering the nurses to administer treatment.)

According to Simply Psychology , there are key strengths and limitations to this method.

The assessment reads:

• Strength: Behavior in a field experiment is more likely to reflect real life because of its natural setting, i.e., higher ecological validity than a lab experiment.
• Strength: There is less likelihood of demand characteristics affecting the results, as participants may not know they are being studied. This occurs when the study is covert.
• Limitation: There is less control over extraneous variables that might bias the results. This makes it difficult for another researcher to replicate the study in exactly the same way.

There are also massive ethical implications for these kinds of experiments and experiments in general (especially if people are unaware of their involvement). Don’t take this lightly, and be sure to read up on all the guidelines that apply to the region where you’re based.

6. Observation

Observational market research is a qualitative research method where the researcher observes their subjects in a natural or controlled environment. This method is much like being a fly on the wall, but the fly takes notes and analyzes them later. In observational market research, subjects are likely to behave naturally, which reveals their true selves. 

They are not under much pressure. However, if they’re aware of the observation, they can act differently.

This type of research applies well to retail, where the researcher can observe shoppers’ behavior by day of the week, by season, when discounts are offered, and more. However, observational research can be time-consuming, and researchers have no control over the environments they research.

7. Competitive analysis

Competitive analysis is a highly strategic and specific form of market research in which the researchers analyze their company’s competitors. It is critical to see how your brand stacks up to rivals. 

Competitive analysis starts by defining the product, service, brand, and market segment. There are different topics to compare your firm with your competitors. It could be from a marketing perspective: content produced, SEO structure, PR coverage, and social media presence and engagement. It can also be from a product perspective: types of offerings, pricing structure. SWOT analysis is key in assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

We’ve written a whole blog post on this tactic, which you can read here .

8. Public domain data

The internet is a wondrous place. Public data exists for those strapped for resources or simply seeking to support their research with more data.  With more and more data produced every year, the question about access and curation becomes increasingly prominent – that’s why researchers and librarians are keen on open data.

Plenty of different types of open data are useful for market research: government databases, polling data, “fact tanks” like Pew Research Center, and more. 

Furthermore, APIs grant developers programmatic access to applications. A lot of this data is free, which is a real bonus.

9. Buy research

Money can’t buy everything, but it can buy research. Subscriptions exist for those who want to buy relevant industry and research reports. Sites like Euromonitor, Statista, Mintel, and BCC Research host a litany of reports for purchase, oftentimes with the option of a single-user license or a subscription.

This can be a massive time saver, and you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting from the very beginning. You’ll also get all your data in a format that makes sense, saving you effort in cleaning and organizing.

10. Analyze sales data

Sales data is like a puzzle piece that can help reveal the full picture of market research insights. Essentially, it indicates the results. Paired with other market research data, sales data helps researchers better understand actions and consequences. Understanding your customers, their buying habits, and how they change over time is important.

This research will be limited to customers, and it’s important to keep that in mind. Nevertheless, the value of this data should not be underestimated. If you’re not already tracking customer data, there’s no time like the present.

Choosing the right market research method for your strategy

Not all methods will be right for your situation or your business. Once you’ve looked through the list and seen some that take your fancy, spend more time researching each option.You’ll want to consider what you want to achieve, what data you’ll need, the pros and cons of each method, the costs of conducting the research, and the cost of analyzing the results.

Get it right, and it’ll be worth all the effort.

Former Brandwatch Employee

Share this post

Brandwatch bulletin.

Offering up analysis and data on everything from the events of the day to the latest consumer trends. Subscribe to keep your finger on the world’s pulse.

New: Consumer Research

Make the world your focus group.

With Brandwatch Consumer Research, you can turn billions of voices into valuable insights.

More in marketing

How to market your sustainability as a brand in 2024.

By Emily Smith Mar 18

The Swift Effect: What Brands Can Learn from Taylor Swift

By Emily Smith Feb 29

How B2B Brands Can Benefit from Social Listening

By Ksenia Newton Feb 23

7-Step Guide: Choosing the Right Social Media Monitoring Tool for You

By Emily Smith Feb 20

We value your privacy

We use cookies to improve your experience and give you personalized content. Do you agree to our cookie policy?

By using our site you agree to our use of cookies — I Agree

Falcon.io is now part of Brandwatch. You're in the right place!

Existing customer? Log in to access your existing Falcon products and data via the login menu on the top right of the page. New customer? You'll find the former Falcon products under 'Social Media Management' if you go to 'Our Suite' in the navigation.

Paladin is now Influence. You're in the right place!

Brandwatch acquired Paladin in March 2022. It's now called Influence, which is part of Brandwatch's Social Media Management solution. Want to access your Paladin account? Use the login menu at the top right corner.

• Solutions Corporate Market Analysis Customer Experience Product Lifecycle Brand Strategy Research & Insights Higher Education Enrollment Management Academic Program Development Student Success Operations & Finance Advancement Marketing Grants Research & Insights K-12 Education Curriculum and Instruction Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Academic Program Planning and Impact Strategic Planning Teacher Recruitment and Retention Operational Planning School Climate Research & Insights
• Data Analysis
• Qualitative Research
• Strategic Advising
• Benchmarking & Best Practices
• Market Modeling
• Research & Insights By Industry Corporate Higher Education K–12 Education By Type Insights Blog Reports & Briefs Case Studies Webinars All Research & Insights
• Client Testimonials
• Current Openings
• Recruitment Process
• Social Impact
• Careers in Research
• Careers in Sales and Account Management
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Client Login

What are the Market Research Methods?

• August 15, 2023
• Topic: Brand Strategy , Corporate , Corporate Trends , Customer Experience , Market Analysis , Product Lifecycle
• Resource type: Insights Blog

So, you have a question, but you are unsure of how to get your answer. Maybe you are wondering who your target audience is or why you lost out on a deal to your competition. Maybe you are looking to expand into a new market and want to know more about the customers and competitors in the industry. While these examples are similar in the way they help you understand your business better, they all require different market research methodologies to arrive at the answer.  

What are Market Research Methodologies?  

Research methodologies are various ways to perform research to understand your problem. The correct type to employ depends on the answers you are seeking, the information you have, and the information you need to gather. There are many different methods, but most fall into four categories: data analytics, survey, qualitative, and secondary.

In this post, we will provide an overview of the four main research methodologies along with benefits and challenges of each.   

Custom or Syndicated Research  

In addition to the types of methodologies, there are two types of funded research: custom and syndicated.   

Custom research is funded by a single company and is focused on answering the key questions the business seeks to understand. Though more costly, the research design, implementation, and results are unique and targeted toward addressing the funding company’s needs.  

On the other hand, syndicated research is not curated or funded by a specific client; a market research company conducts it to offer data such as industry statistics, current best practices, or recent trends. Though not directly tied to a single company’s situation, businesses often buy syndicated research to gather perspective on their performance and identify areas where custom research can help provide more insight.   

The Four Types Of Market Research   

Data analytics  .

Data analytics research involves collecting and analyzing large sets of data to derive answers, uncover patterns, and predict future outcomes. This method helps you identify and understand things you are aware of but don’t yet understand.

Data can come from a variety of sources including CRM data, historical transactional data, survey data, a third-party publisher, and more to build a holistic map of the situation, identify gaps and discern trends. Data analytics is the most common research method with almost 70% of companies using it in at least one market research project in the past year.  

For example, you might have large sets of historical data and know there is a data-backed answer for how to segment your customers, but you have yet to compile all your information together to identify the answer.  

Benefits and Challenges

Benefits: Analyzing historical data provides a holistic view of a situation by combining different sets of data and modeling potential scenarios and outcomes. You can confirm hypotheses, break biases, and help build cases internally.

Challenges: This method requires a lot of data, and some of that data may be hard to access, hard to generate, or not easily analyzed. This method also requires a lot of time, money, and resources to acquire and parse the correct data.   

Survey research involves gathering opinions, preferences, and experiences by asking a set of questions to a targeted group of people. The focus of survey research is to test theories, assumptions, and hypotheses. The answers are collected from a representative sample of a targeted audience, allowing the researchers to quantify data and generalize the results to the wider population with a reasonable margin of error and strong confidence level.

Survey data can be collected from consumers, other business decision-makers, or your customer lists. Surveys are a very popular market research methodology with over 60% of companies performing at least one survey in the last year.  

For example, you may be wondering how satisfied your customers are, what factors drive satisfaction, and how you compare to key competitors in the market. By surveying your customers and those of key competitors you can understand the drivers of satisfaction and your relative strengths and opportunity areas in the market.  

Benefits and Challenges 

Benefits : Surveys provide an aggregate but statistically significant picture that companies can leverage to make decisions that align with their audiences’ preferences. Surveys also offer the ability to segment answers based on segments of the audience to analyze how different groups respond to the same questions.   

Challenges: Surveys are a fixed set of questions and cannot be adjusted once the survey has been deployed. Responses are limited to the questions posed by the researcher and don’t allow for open-ended qualitative responses. Surveys require many respondents, and depending on the target audience, it can be challenging to find a large enough sample size to provide statistically significant results. Lastly, surveys need to incentivize respondents, which could lead to a high price tag.  

Qualitative Methodologies   

Qualitative research focuses on targeted insights around concepts, opinions, and preferences. Unlike quantitative methods, these market research methodologies leverage a smaller set of data and respondents but allow for more in-depth answers. It also allows for companies to gather follow-up data that delves deeper into the reasoning behind responses  

This method is exploratory in nature to help you formulate hypothesis and establish directional themes or trends. Qualitative research also helps you understand the underlying motivations, attitudes, and perceptions of respondents.  

 The two most common qualitative research methodologies are in-depth interviews and focus groups.  

In-depth interviews  

This market research methodology involves one-on-one conversations between interviewers and those from the target audience. The interview follows a pre-determined set of questions to reveal sentiment, decision-making processes, and unmet needs. With only 40% of companies conducting them, interviews are the least used methodology, likely a result of the challenges mentioned below.  

Benefits : Interviews provide the ability to gather more in-depth answers on customer preferences by allowing researchers to ask follow-up questions to probe deeper and further clarify responses. It also allows respondents to answer in their own words rather than be bound by the available responses offered by a survey. 

Challenges: Interviews are responses from a small group of people and the results cannot be generalized to a wider audience. They are also very challenging to implement. Often, it is a struggle to identify and incentivize enough participants, and the price per respondent can be costly depending on their rarity and level of expertise. It is also critical to enlist an experienced interviewer to ensure that both the initial and follow-up questions are tailored to gather accurate information that fully addresses your target questions.   

  Focus groups   

These facilitator-led group discussions reveal perceptions of or reception to a concept or idea. While the facilitator guides the meeting, the direction of the conversation is determined by the participants creating organic responses that stem from participant perception. Just over half of companies have conducted a focus group in the last year.   

Benefits: F ocus groups allow for exploration of concepts and physical products beyond set responses like those available in through a survey. The social aspect of the focus group can also gather multiple points of view on a topic in one setting. This can add additional insight for both participants in their ongoing feedback and facilitators for their final analysis.

Challenges: Focus groups are kept small to gather meaningful insights from a group of people, something that would be difficult if the group was too large. As such, the sample size is very small, and the responses can‘t be extrapolated to a larger audience.  It is also challenging to find a group of qualified participants that are all available at the same time.

Traditionally, focus groups were conducted in person and there was a higher cost to host the group live. Now depending on the product or concept being reviewed, focus groups can be conducted over video calls, lessening the burden of cost and logistics, however the cost to incentivize members to take part remains. Similar to interviews, you will need to enlist an experienced moderator that can facilitate the conversation and help direct it as needed to ensure the target questions are addressed  

Secondary Research Methodologies     

Secondary research, a lso known as desk research, is leveraging data that already exists to answer your questions. This market research method is helpful for answering questions or deepening your understanding of things you are not directly familiar with but understand. It can be used to understand what others in your market are doing, identify potential markets for growth or expansion, or allow you to compare your organization to others on key performance indicators.  

For example, you might understand that customer preferences have affected your market, but you don’t know the exact changes. However, others have already done related research that can provide context or direct answers to your question. Secondary research is a very popular method with over half ( 55% ) of companies conducting secondary research to get insights they need for their strategies.   

Benefits: Secondary research is one of the quicker methodologies as it leverages existing data. The bulk of the time is spent identifying the problem, accessing existing data, and consolidating it for analysis and insights.   

Challenges: Some of the data you need might require payment, which would increase the cost of the overall project. There is also the risk that a data point needed for your analysis does not exist, requiring you to either speak to an expert or conduct your own research to fill in the gap.  

Picking the Right Research Methodology  

Though there are many options to choose from, the correct market research methodology to implement will be guided by the information you already have and the questions you are trying to answer.

Before you start your research, begin by listing what you know and what you are looking to learn. Some choices are very clear cut. For example, are you looking to learn more about your company’s operations in the hopes of identifying a better strategy? Since you have access to your own data and are looking to learn more, data analytics would be your best path forward.  

Sometimes choosing the right market research methodology might require more thought. For example, are you looking to launch a new product and want to learn more about customer preferences? You could interview customers or launch a focus group, but do you know what questions to ask? And as the sample pool is so small, the results from qualitative methods should not be used to make assumptions about a larger customer base.

The best place to start would be to conduct a survey to the target audience to get a basic understanding of the market and potential customer preferences. If it is a well-known customer base, you may be able to through secondary research by leveraging existing data to analyze the market.  

Discover how leading companies leverage market research for success

Related Content

• Insights Blog

Four Stages of Product Development Where Qualitative Research Counts

• Corporate , Product Lifecycle
• Reports & Briefs

Product Concept Testing: The Secret to Meeting Customer Needs

• Corporate , Customer Experience , Product Lifecycle

Related Research & Insights

Critical Questions for New Product Development

Research & Insights

Receive industry-leading insights directly in your inbox.

If you have difficulty accessing any part of this website or the products or services offered by Hanover Research, please contact us at [email protected] for support.

Become a client

Access the best custom research to help hit your organization’s goals . Request your custom consult below and a member of our team will be in touch.

Have questions? Please visit our contact page .

Let us come to you!

Receive industry insights directly in your inbox.

Our newsletters are packed with helpful tips, industry guides, best practices, case studies, and more. Enter your email address below to opt in:

How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

Access best-in-class company data

Get trusted first-party funding data, revenue data and firmographics

What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry. The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

Related Articles

• Entrepreneurs
• 15 min read

What Is Competitive Analysis and How to Do It Effectively

Rebecca Strehlow, Copywriter at Crunchbase

17 Best Sales Intelligence Tools for 2024

• Market research
• 10 min read

How to Do Market Research for a Startup: Tips for Success

Jaclyn Robinson, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at Crunchbase

Search less. Close more.

Grow your revenue with Crunchbase, the all-in-one prospecting solution. Start your free trial.

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content

A magazine for young entrepreneurs

The best advice in entrepreneurship

Subscribe for exclusive access, the complete guide to market research: what it is, why you need it, and how to do it.

Written by Mary Kate Miller | June 1, 2021

Comments -->

Get real-time frameworks, tools, and inspiration to start and build your business. Subscribe here

Market research is a cornerstone of all successful, strategic businesses. It can also be daunting for entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup or start a side hustle . What is market research, anyway? And how do you…do it?

We’ll walk you through absolutely everything you need to know about the market research process so that by the end of this guide, you’ll be an expert in market research too. And what’s more important: you’ll have actionable steps you can take to start collecting your own market research.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the organized process of gathering information about your target customers and market. Market research can help you better understand customer behavior and competitor strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide insight for the best strategies in launching new businesses and products. There are different ways to approach market research, including primary and secondary research and qualitative and quantitative research. The strongest approaches will include a combination of all four.

“Virtually every business can benefit from conducting some market research,” says Niles Koenigsberg of Real FiG Advertising + Marketing . “Market research can help you piece together your [business’s] strengths and weaknesses, along with your prospective opportunities, so that you can understand where your unique differentiators may lie.” Well-honed market research will help your brand stand out from the competition and help you see what you need to do to lead the market. It can also do so much more.

The Purposes of Market Research

Why do market research? It can help you…

• Pinpoint your target market, create buyer personas, and develop a more holistic understanding of your customer base and market.
• Understand current market conditions to evaluate risks and anticipate how your product or service will perform.
• Validate a concept prior to launch.
• Identify gaps in the market that your competitors have created or overlooked.
• Solve problems that have been left unresolved by the existing product/brand offerings.
• Identify opportunities and solutions for new products or services.
• Develop killer marketing strategies .

What Are the Benefits of Market Research?

Strong market research can help your business in many ways. It can…

• Strengthen your market position.
• Help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.
• Help you identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Minimize risk.
• Center your customers’ experience from the get-go.
• Help you create a dynamic strategy based on market conditions and customer needs/demands.

What Are the Basic Methods of Market Research?

The basic methods of market research include surveys, personal interviews, customer observation, and the review of secondary research. In addition to these basic methods, a forward-thinking market research approach incorporates data from the digital landscape like social media analysis, SEO research, gathering feedback via forums, and more. Throughout this guide, we will cover each of the methods commonly used in market research to give you a comprehensive overview.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Primary and secondary are the two main types of market research you can do. The latter relies on research conducted by others. Primary research, on the other hand, refers to the fact-finding efforts you conduct on your own.

This approach is limited, however. It’s likely that the research objectives of these secondary data points differ from your own, and it can be difficult to confirm the veracity of their findings.

Primary Market Research

Primary research is more labor intensive, but it generally yields data that is exponentially more actionable. It can be conducted through interviews, surveys, online research, and your own data collection. Every new business should engage in primary market research prior to launch. It will help you validate that your idea has traction, and it will give you the information you need to help minimize financial risk.

You can hire an agency to conduct this research on your behalf. This brings the benefit of expertise, as you’ll likely work with a market research analyst. The downside is that hiring an agency can be expensive—too expensive for many burgeoning entrepreneurs. That brings us to the second approach. You can also do the market research yourself, which substantially reduces the financial burden of starting a new business .

Secondary Market Research

Secondary research includes resources like government databases and industry-specific data and publications. It can be beneficial to start your market research with secondary sources because it’s widely available and often free-to-access. This information will help you gain a broad overview of the market conditions for your new business.

Identify Your Goals and Your Audience

Before you begin conducting interviews or sending out surveys, you need to set your market research goals. At the end of your market research process, you want to have a clear idea of who your target market is—including demographic information like age, gender, and where they live—but you also want to start with a rough idea of who your audience might be and what you’re trying to achieve with market research.

You can pinpoint your objectives by asking yourself a series of guiding questions:

• What are you hoping to discover through your research?
• Who are you hoping to serve better because of your findings?
• What do you think your market is?
• Who are your competitors?
• Are you testing the reception of a new product category or do you want to see if your product or service solves the problem left by a current gap in the market?
• Are you just…testing the waters to get a sense of how people would react to a new brand?

Once you’ve narrowed down the “what” of your market research goals, you’re ready to move onto how you can best achieve them. Think of it like algebra. Many math problems start with “solve for x.” Once you know what you’re looking for, you can get to work trying to find it. It’s a heck of a lot easier to solve a problem when you know you’re looking for “x” than if you were to say “I’m gonna throw some numbers out there and see if I find a variable.”

How to Do Market Research

This guide outlines every component of a comprehensive market research effort. Take into consideration the goals you have established for your market research, as they will influence which of these elements you’ll want to include in your market research strategy.

Secondary Data

Secondary data allows you to utilize pre-existing data to garner a sense of market conditions and opportunities. You can rely on published market studies, white papers, and public competitive information to start your market research journey.

Secondary data, while useful, is limited and cannot substitute your own primary data. It’s best used for quantitative data that can provide background to your more specific inquiries.

Find Your Customers Online

Once you’ve identified your target market, you can use online gathering spaces and forums to gain insights and give yourself a competitive advantage. Rebecca McCusker of The Creative Content Shop recommends internet recon as a vital tool for gaining a sense of customer needs and sentiment. “Read their posts and comments on forums, YouTube video comments, Facebook group [comments], and even Amazon/Goodreads book comments to get in their heads and see what people are saying.”

If you’re interested in engaging with your target demographic online, there are some general rules you should follow. First, secure the consent of any group moderators to ensure that you are acting within the group guidelines. Failure to do so could result in your eviction from the group.

Not all comments have the same research value. “Focus on the comments and posts with the most comments and highest engagement,” says McCusker. These high-engagement posts can give you a sense of what is already connecting and gaining traction within the group.

Social media can also be a great avenue for finding interview subjects. “LinkedIn is very useful if your [target customer] has a very specific job or works in a very specific industry or sector. It’s amazing the amount of people that will be willing to help,” explains Miguel González, a marketing executive at Dealers League . “My advice here is BE BRAVE, go to LinkedIn, or even to people you know and ask them, do quick interviews and ask real people that belong to that market and segment and get your buyer persona information first hand.”

Market research interviews can provide direct feedback on your brand, product, or service and give you a better understanding of consumer pain points and interests.

When organizing your market research interviews, you want to pay special attention to the sample group you’re selecting, as it will directly impact the information you receive. According to Tanya Zhang, the co-founder of Nimble Made , you want to first determine whether you want to choose a representative sample—for example, interviewing people who match each of the buyer persona/customer profiles you’ve developed—or a random sample.

“A sampling of your usual persona styles, for example, can validate details that you’ve already established about your product, while a random sampling may [help you] discover a new way people may use your product,” Zhang says.

Market Surveys

Market surveys solicit customer inclinations regarding your potential product or service through a series of open-ended questions. This direct outreach to your target audience can provide information on your customers’ preferences, attitudes, buying potential, and more.

Every expert we asked voiced unanimous support for market surveys as a powerful tool for market research. With the advent of various survey tools with accessible pricing—or free use—it’s never been easier to assemble, disseminate, and gather market surveys. While it should also be noted that surveys shouldn’t replace customer interviews , they can be used to supplement customer interviews to give you feedback from a broader audience.

Who to Include in Market Surveys

• Current customers
• Past customers
• Your existing audience (such as social media/newsletter audiences)

Example Questions to Include in Market Surveys

While the exact questions will vary for each business, here are some common, helpful questions that you may want to consider for your market survey. Demographic Questions: the questions that help you understand, demographically, who your target customers are:

• “What is your age?”
• “Where do you live?”
• “What is your gender identity?”
• “What is your household income?”
• “What is your household size?”
• “What do you do for a living?”
• “What is your highest level of education?”

Product-Based Questions: Whether you’re seeking feedback for an existing brand or an entirely new one, these questions will help you get a sense of how people feel about your business, product, or service:

• “How well does/would our product/service meet your needs?”
• “How does our product/service compare to similar products/services that you use?”
• “How long have you been a customer?” or “What is the likelihood that you would be a customer of our brand?

Personal/Informative Questions: the deeper questions that help you understand how your audience thinks and what they care about.

• “What are your biggest challenges?”
• “What’s most important to you?”
• “What do you do for fun (hobbies, interests, activities)?”
• “Where do you seek new information when researching a new product?”
• “How do you like to make purchases?”
• “What is your preferred method for interacting with a brand?”

Survey Tools

Online survey tools make it easy to distribute surveys and collect responses. The best part is that there are many free tools available. If you’re making your own online survey, you may want to consider SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, or Zoho Survey.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis is a breakdown of how your business stacks up against the competition. There are many different ways to conduct this analysis. One of the most popular methods is a SWOT analysis, which stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” This type of analysis is helpful because it gives you a more robust understanding of why a customer might choose a competitor over your business. Seeing how you stack up against the competition can give you the direction you need to carve out your place as a market leader.

Social Media Analysis

Social media has fundamentally changed the market research landscape, making it easier than ever to engage with a wide swath of consumers. Follow your current or potential competitors on social media to see what they’re posting and how their audience is engaging with it. Social media can also give you a lower cost opportunity for testing different messaging and brand positioning.

SEO Analysis and Opportunities

SEO analysis can help you identify the digital competition for getting the word out about your brand, product, or service. You won’t want to overlook this valuable information. Search listening tools offer a novel approach to understanding the market and generating the content strategy that will drive business. Tools like Google Trends and Awario can streamline this process.

Ready to Kick Your Business Into High Gear?

Now that you’ve completed the guide to market research you know you’re ready to put on your researcher hat to give your business the best start. Still not sure how actually… launch the thing? Our free mini-course can run you through the essentials for starting your side hustle .

About Mary Kate Miller

Mary Kate Miller writes about small business, real estate, and finance. In addition to writing for Foundr, her work has been published by The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more. She lives in Chicago.

Related Posts

Create Viral Infographics That Boost Your Organic Traffic

How to Create a Video Sales Letter (Tips and Tricks from a 7-Figure Copywriter)

How to Write a Sales Email That Converts in 2024

What Is a Media Kit: How to Make One in 2024 (With Examples)

Namestorming: How to Choose a Brand Name in 20 Minutes or Less

10 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness without Increasing Your Budget

What Is a Content Creator? A Deep Dive Into This Evolving Industry

Content Creator vs Influencer: What’s the Difference?

How Much Do YouTube Ads Cost? A Beginner’s Pricing Breakdown

How to Get Podcast Sponsors Before Airing an Episode

How Founders Can Overcome Their Sales Fears with AJ Cassata

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel & Gain Subscribers Quickly

How to Write Good Instagram Captions That Hook Your Audience

Discovering the Best CRM for Consultants

10 Instagram Growth Hacks For More Engaged Followers (Without Running Ads)

FREE TRAINING FROM LEGIT FOUNDERS

Actionable Strategies for Starting & Growing Any Business.

4 Types of Market Research + 6 New Ways to Do It Smarter

In June this year, 500 business leaders shared their favorite types of market research with me via a direct external survey.

Astonishingly, 83% of people said the same thing: favoring qualitative research ( specifically market research surveys ) over anything else.

Having a favorite is all good and well, but as we know, variety is the spice of life. By avoiding dependency on any single type of market research, you get a relevant, unbiased view of your market and opportunities at all times.

Spoiler alert 🚨 The types of market research I outline in this post will speed up your time to insight significantly. Instead of a process that spans days and weeks, certain tasks can be done and dusted in a few hours at most.

To help you stay on top of your game, I’m outlining the different types of market research, their benefits, and how to use them. As a bonus, I’m sharing six modern ways to do market research using digital research intelligence tools (like Similarweb).

The 4 types of market research

1. Primary research

Primary research is the first-hand collection of data. You go directly to a source instead of relying on existing information. It’s also known as field research.

Who is it for? Doing primary research involves collecting information relevant to a specific research context. For instance, if data is required about the shifting needs of a target market , primary research methods are a great way to explore this.

How to collect the data? Usually, an individual will go into the marketplace (field) to find the information they need.

Benefits of primary research

• You get more control over the research methodologies.
• The information is up-to-date.
• Because data is relevant, it reveals current trends, not outdated ones.
• Most primary research addresses the individual market instead of the mass market.
• The data collector retains ownership of the data.

Types of primary research

The right research method depends on the goal of the research and the resources available. Here are five of the best ways to do primary research.

• Ethnographic or observational research
• Trials or experiments
• Focus groups

2. Secondary research

Secondary research collates existing information or research for analysis. Essentially, it’s a type of market research that uses second-hand data.

Who is it for? Secondary research is ideal for start-ups and small businesses, needing a type of market research that’s low-cost and quick to undertake.

How to collect the data? Secondary data is collected from various places but always comes from existing third-party information.

Benefits of secondary research

• A low-cost type of research
• It’s quick to conduct
• Data is easy to access
• Initial findings can help shape any longer-term investment in primary research
• Anybody can do it; there’s no professional training required
• Gives you a broad understanding of a topic quickly

Types of secondary research

Most secondary market research methods can be done for free. It’s also called desk research . Here are some of the most popular places to obtain that data.

• Internet search engines
• Trade associations
• Research companies
• Media outlets
• Industry experts
• Government and non-government agencies
• Digital intelligence platforms (like Similarweb)
• Educational institutions
• Company reports
• Academic journals
• Public libraries
• Competitor websites

If you’d like to learn more, read our complete guide to desk research .

3. Qualitative research

Qualitative research aims to understand opinions, beliefs, experiences, attitudes, and interactions by collecting and analyzing non-numerical data. It helps researchers understand why things are so, through observation or unstructured questioning.

Compared to quantitative methods, this is more of a touchy-feely type of market research. It’s more about emotions and opinions than crunching numbers.

Who is it for? Any business or start-up can use (and benefit from) qualitative research. To understand the sentiment of a target audience or market in detail, this type of research uncovers key insights which help shape and develop products, services, and strategies.

How to collect the data? You can conduct qualitative research remotely or in person. What’s key is that the data is collected first-hand, directly from an individual or group of people.

Benefits of qualitative research

• Captures shifting attitudes or sentiments within a target group.
• Can uncover key insights that numbers alone couldn’t reveal.
• More targeted research, often more concentrated compared to quantitative research.
• Cost and speed can be managed more effectively with smaller groups.
• Promotes authenticity in discussions as responses aren’t formed by pre-set constraints.
• Greater flexibility than other research methods as questions can be adapted over time.

Types of qualitative research

• Participant observation
• Ethnography
• Case Studies
• Grounded theory (using research to generate a theory)
• Thematic analysis (looks to identify or interpret patterns and their connected meanings)
• Open-ended surveys
• Diary or Journal logging
• Phenomenological study (where you take a customer or individual, and examine things from their perspective)

Read More: 83 Qualitative Research Questions & Examples

4. Quantitative research

Quantitative research is focused on collecting, analyzing, and comparing numerical data. It’s predominantly used to make predictions, spot trends , find patterns, and establish averages. It deals with primary and secondary data, as long as it is represented in numerical form.

Who is it for? Quantitative research provides data that can shed light on statistical information about a market or business. It’s useful for start-ups and established companies and can help with forecasting, market sizing , market validation , and more.

How to collect the data? Using various methods, quantitative research is systematically collected and recorded to do analysis in a database through graphics, charts, and tables.

Benefits of quantitative research

• Data can be analyzed reliably and consistently.
• Studies can be easily replicated in the future or a different market.
• It’s possible to do a broader study with large sample sizes.
• Fewer variables are involved as data is often close-ended.
• Automation makes data collection quicker and easier to conduct.
• More cost-effective than qualitative research.

Types of quantitative research

Due to the often complex nature of this type of market research, I’ve added a quick explainer.

• Experimental research Also referred to as true experimentation, this relies on theory. In most cases, multiple theories that have not yet been proven. An analysis is carried out to prove or disprove the theory.
• Descriptive research This is used better to understand a specific situation, population, or phenomenon. It seeks only to measure (not manipulate) variables through observation to investigate them thoroughly.
• Survey research Quite simply, this uses a range of online or offline polls to understand what customers or a group of people think about products, services, and more.
• Quasi-experimental research Similar to experimental research, it aims to evaluate a cause-and-effect relationship amongst variables. However, it’s a dependent and independent variable in this case.
• Correlational research This is typically undertaken to determine a relationship between two closely related entities. It explores how each entity impacts the other and examines key changes.

Read More: 98 Quantitative Market Research Questions & Examples

Mixed-method research approach

Discover a better way to do market research.

Get the data you need to adapt to market changes and industry trends in an instant.

6 modern types of market research

Outside the four core types of market research, there are modern ways to discover valuable information that can leverage better insights. If you’re looking for new types of research that’ll help you quickly find new opportunities to go after, read on.

1. Competitor research

In-depth competitor analysis allows you to quickly find growth opportunities, by taking a detailed look at what is and isn’t working for your rivals. What’s more, it can help you spot emerging trends and shifts, so you can take action when and where it matters most.

These are some of the things you can expect to uncover with competitive market research:

• Understand how to track and target your competitors’ audiences.
• Discover the best traffic sources to see where rivals are gaining referrals from.
• Establish a clear view of rival’s market share across any industry.
• See traffic changes over time amongst industry leaders and emerging players.
• Find out which channels are working best for competitors.
• Benchmark your business against others in your space.
• Track a customized list of players in your sector to see gains and losses.

Read more: This post explains how to start doing competitive research .

2. Audience research

Consumer insights are fundamental to the success of any organization, regardless of size or sector. Through the analysis of consumer behavior, you can drive better engagement, discover new digital strategies , and develop a more detailed understanding of your prospects and customers.

Here are just a few examples of how doing audience-based research can help:

• Better understand audience interests relative to an industry or your rivals.
• Measure audience loyalty .
• See where they spend their time online.
• Build a picture of an audience layered with insights from real-world browsing habits.
• Uncover key demographics , interests, and geographies of an audience.

To help you get started, here are four audience analysis examples .

3. Content and keyword research

At the last count, there were roughly 1.93 billion websites online, and I’m not even going to get into how many social media accounts there are. But with so many digital channels, you must ensure your content and company can be easily found online. This is where ( and why ) content and keyword-based market research deliver immense value.

Get it right, and you’ll reap the benefits through more visitors, leads, conversions, and revenue. The golden nugget you uncover with keyword and content research is a greater understanding of an audience. Although most people would associate keyword research with SEO, it serves a dual purpose.

To get started, do a competitive content analysis within your market.

4. Campaign effectiveness

Knowing how effective a specific type of advertising channel, message, or format is for a target audience can quickly help you determine where’s best to spend your marketing dollars. By researching the effectiveness of ads in your space, you can more easily see the best places to invest your time and effort.

This type of market research helps you:

• Find out if paid advertising is working or not.
• Discover the highest-converting ads.
• See what types of creatives work best for your target audience.
• Look at competitors’ total spend in a specific channel.
• View social media referrals and their impact on website traffic.
• Drill-down into top-performing ads to see messaging, visuals, and more.

5. Mobile app market research

Mobile-first consumer habits have seen industries turned on their heads overnight. For most, it’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ mobile apps will infiltrate their market. In any industry, seeing the impact of apps in your space is vital. The need to see a complete view of the digital landscape is rising fast.

Some of the key things you can uncover through app intelligence -focused research include:

• Find trending apps in any sector, specifically looking at growth/decline.
• App usage and engagement metrics across multiple markets.
• Analyze an app’s ranking over time.
• Identify underserved markets and spot opportunities to break into new spaces.
• Evaluate iOS vs. Android stats to determine which platform is optimal for an audience.
• View the performance of competitors’ apps over time.
• Compare app performance metrics directly against desktop or mobile web channels.
• Determine whether or not to invest in a mobile app for your business.

6. Market segmentation

Understanding whole market trends are useful. But the real pearls of wisdom can be found when you slice and dice a market into manageable portions. Market segmentation is important for businesses to identify and target specific customer groups, tailor their products and services, and measure their performance. This type of market research helps you:

• Deliver personalized marketing
• Identify market shifts
• Find opportunities for growth in specific segments of a market
• Improve targeting
• Allocate resources more efficiently
• Improve customer engagement and loyalty
• Increase return on investment by identifying opportunity segments

Choosing the right type of market research

Whatever your industry, role, or experience, the type of market research you choose will influence key decisions in your business. With rapid shifts in consumer behavior and emerging threats now virtually an everyday thing, you need a broad and relevant view of the landscape. No single type of market research alone gives a complete picture.

Organizations must keep a finger on the pulse to stay relevant, adapt, and compete. While using traditional types of market research is key, you can gain key insights much quicker, often for a much lower cost, using modern tools like Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence .

Why not take it for a trial run today? For free.

What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative research? Quantitative research is based on numbers and seeks to explain theories or hypotheses. In contrast, qualitative research is more about understanding the ‘how’ and ‘why’ things happen.

Should I use more than one market research method at a time? Yes, it’s important to take a balanced approach when choosing the best type of research. While it’s vital to clearly understand what is happening, you also need to consider the ‘why’ things happen.

What type of market research is best for start-ups? Most start-ups use secondary research as it’s quick and affordable. However, there are many benefits to conducting first-hand primary research as well.

What types of market research can you do for free? Most secondary research is free to conduct. If you have access to a list of subjects or prospects, you can also use market research surveys to conduct primary market research for free.

Is quantitative research primary or secondary? It can be both. Secondary and primary data can be quantitative (number-based) or qualitative (verbal or opinion-based).

Related Posts

From AI to Buy: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Retail

How to Conduct a Social Media Competitor Analysis: 5 Quick Steps

Industry Research: The Data-Backed Approach

Wondering what similarweb can do for you.

Here are two ways you can get started with Similarweb today!

Learn / Blog / Article

Back to blog

How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research

From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.

Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples. 

Last updated

Reading time.

A comprehensive (and successful) business strategy is not complete without some form of market research—you can’t make informed and profitable business decisions without truly understanding your customer base and the current market trends that drive your business.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct quick, effective market research  using an approach called 'lean market research'. It’s easier than you might think, and it can be done at any stage in a product’s lifecycle.

How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps

What is market research, why is market research so valuable, advantages of lean market research, 4 common market research methods, 5 common market research questions, market research faqs.

We’ll jump right into our 4-step approach to lean market research. To show you how it’s done in the real world, each step includes a practical example from Smallpdf , a Swiss company that used lean market research to reduce their tool’s error rate by 75% and boost their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) by 1%.

Research your market the lean way...

From on-page surveys to user interviews, Hotjar has the tools to help you scope out your market and get to know your customers—without breaking the bank.

The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours.

1. Create simple user personas

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data from people who use websites and products similar to your own. Start by defining broad user categories, then elaborate on them later to further segment your customer base and determine your ideal customer profile .

How to get the data: use on-page or emailed surveys and interviews to understand your users and what drives them to your business.

How to do it right: whatever survey or interview questions you ask, they should answer the following questions about the customer:

Who are they?

What is their main goal?

What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?

Pitfalls to avoid:

Don’t ask too many questions! Keep it to five or less, otherwise you’ll inundate them and they’ll stop answering thoughtfully.

Don’t worry too much about typical demographic questions like age or background. Instead, focus on the role these people play (as it relates to your product) and their goals.

How Smallpdf did it: Smallpdf ran an on-page survey for a couple of weeks and received 1,000 replies. They learned that many of their users were administrative assistants, students, and teachers.

Next, they used the survey results to create simple user personas like this one for admins:

Who are they? Administrative Assistants.

What is their main goal? Creating Word documents from a scanned, hard-copy document or a PDF where the source file was lost.

What is their main barrier to achieving it? Converting a scanned PDF doc to a Word file.

💡Pro tip: Smallpdf used Hotjar Surveys to run their user persona survey. Our survey tool helped them avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and find out who their users really are, in their own words. 

You can design a survey and start running it in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop builder. Customize your survey to fit your needs, from a sleek one-question pop-up survey to a fully branded questionnaire sent via email. 

We've also created 40+ free survey templates that you can start collecting data with, including a user persona survey like the one Smallpdf used.

2. Conduct observational research

Observational research involves taking notes while watching someone use your product (or a similar product).

Overt vs. covert observation

Overt observation involves asking customers if they’ll let you watch them use your product. This method is often used for user testing and it provides a great opportunity for collecting live product or customer feedback .

Covert observation means studying users ‘in the wild’ without them knowing. This method works well if you sell a type of product that people use regularly, and it offers the purest observational data because people often behave differently when they know they’re being watched. 

Tips to do it right:

Record an entry in your field notes, along with a timestamp, each time an action or event occurs.

Make note of the users' workflow, capturing the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘for whom’ of each action.

Don’t record identifiable video or audio data without consent. If recording people using your product is helpful for achieving your research goal, make sure all participants are informed and agree to the terms.

Don’t forget to explain why you’d like to observe them (for overt observation). People are more likely to cooperate if you tell them you want to improve the product.

💡Pro tip: while conducting field research out in the wild can wield rewarding results, you can also conduct observational research remotely. Hotjar Recordings is a tool that lets you capture anonymized user sessions of real people interacting with your website. 

Observe how customers navigate your pages and products to gain an inside look into their user behavior . This method is great for conducting exploratory research with the purpose of identifying more specific issues to investigate further, like pain points along the customer journey and opportunities for optimizing conversion .

With Hotjar Recordings you can observe real people using your site without capturing their sensitive information

How Smallpdf did it: here’s how Smallpdf observed two different user personas both covertly and overtly.

Observing students (covert): Kristina Wagner, Principle Product Manager at Smallpdf, went to cafes and libraries at two local universities and waited until she saw students doing PDF-related activities. Then she watched and took notes from a distance. One thing that struck her was the difference between how students self-reported their activities vs. how they behaved (i.e, the self-reporting bias). Students, she found, spent hours talking, listening to music, or simply staring at a blank screen rather than working. When she did find students who were working, she recorded the task they were performing and the software they were using (if she recognized it).

Observing administrative assistants (overt): Kristina sent emails to admins explaining that she’d like to observe them at work, and she asked those who agreed to try to batch their PDF work for her observation day. While watching admins work, she learned that they frequently needed to scan documents into PDF-format and then convert those PDFs into Word docs. By observing the challenges admins faced, Smallpdf knew which products to target for improvement.

“Data is really good for discovery and validation, but there is a bit in the middle where you have to go and find the human.”

3. Conduct individual interviews

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. They allow you to dig deep and explore their concerns, which can lead to all sorts of revelations.

Listen more, talk less. Be curious.

Act like a journalist, not a salesperson. Rather than trying to talk your company up, ask people about their lives, their needs, their frustrations, and how a product like yours could help.

Ask "why?" so you can dig deeper. Get into the specifics and learn about their past behavior.

Record the conversation. Focus on the conversation and avoid relying solely on notes by recording the interview. There are plenty of services that will transcribe recorded conversations for a good price (including Hotjar!).

Avoid asking leading questions , which reveal bias on your part and pushes respondents to answer in a certain direction (e.g. “Have you taken advantage of the amazing new features we just released?).

Don't ask loaded questions , which sneak in an assumption which, if untrue, would make it impossible to answer honestly. For example, we can’t ask you, “What did you find most useful about this article?” without asking whether you found the article useful in the first place.

Be cautious when asking opinions about the future (or predictions of future behavior). Studies suggest that people aren’t very good at predicting their future behavior. This is due to several cognitive biases, from the misguided exceptionalism bias (we’re good at guessing what others will do, but we somehow think we’re different), to the optimism bias (which makes us see things with rose-colored glasses), to the ‘illusion of control’ (which makes us forget the role of randomness in future events).

How Smallpdf did it: Kristina explored her teacher user persona by speaking with university professors at a local graduate school. She learned that the school was mostly paperless and rarely used PDFs, so for the sake of time, she moved on to the admins.

A bit of a letdown? Sure. But this story highlights an important lesson: sometimes you follow a lead and come up short, so you have to make adjustments on the fly. Lean market research is about getting solid, actionable insights quickly so you can tweak things and see what works.

💡Pro tip: to save even more time, conduct remote interviews using an online user research service like Hotjar Engage , which automates the entire interview process, from recruitment and scheduling to hosting and recording.

You can interview your own customers or connect with people from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. And no need to fret about taking meticulous notes—Engage will automatically transcribe the interview for you.

4. Analyze the data (without drowning in it)

The following techniques will help you wrap your head around the market data you collect without losing yourself in it. Remember, the point of lean market research is to find quick, actionable insights.

A flow model is a diagram that tracks the flow of information within a system. By creating a simple visual representation of how users interact with your product and each other, you can better assess their needs.

You’ll notice that admins are at the center of Smallpdf’s flow model, which represents the flow of PDF-related documents throughout a school. This flow model shows the challenges that admins face as they work to satisfy their own internal and external customers.

Affinity diagram

An affinity diagram is a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to better understand the big picture. For example, if you ask your users about their profession, you’ll notice some general themes start to form, even though the individual responses differ. Depending on your needs, you could group them by profession, or more generally by industry.

We wrote a guide about how to analyze open-ended questions to help you sort through and categorize large volumes of response data. You can also do this by hand by clipping up survey responses or interview notes and grouping them (which is what Kristina does).

“For an interview, you will have somewhere between 30 and 60 notes, and those notes are usually direct phrases. And when you literally cut them up into separate pieces of paper and group them, they should make sense by themselves.”

Pro tip: if you’re conducting an online survey with Hotjar, keep your team in the loop by sharing survey responses automatically via our Slack and Microsoft Team integrations. Reading answers as they come in lets you digest the data in pieces and can help prepare you for identifying common themes when it comes time for analysis.

Hotjar lets you easily share survey responses with your team

Customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the way a typical prospect becomes a paying customer. It outlines their first interaction with your brand and every step in the sales cycle, from awareness to repurchase (and hopefully advocacy).

The above  customer journey map , created by our team at Hotjar, shows many ways a customer might engage with our tool. Your map will be based on your own data and business model.

📚 Read more: if you’re new to customer journey maps, we wrote this step-by-step guide to creating your first customer journey map in 2 and 1/2 days with free templates you can download and start using immediately.

Next steps: from research to results

So, how do you turn market research insights into tangible business results? Let’s look at the actions Smallpdf took after conducting their lean market research: first they implemented changes, then measured the impact.

Implement changes

Based on what Smallpdf learned about the challenges that one key user segment (admins) face when trying to convert PDFs into Word files, they improved their ‘PDF to Word’ conversion tool.

We won’t go into the details here because it involves a lot of technical jargon, but they made the entire process simpler and more straightforward for users. Plus, they made it so that their system recognized when you drop a PDF file into their ‘Word to PDF’ converter instead of the ‘PDF to Word’ converter, so users wouldn’t have to redo the task when they made that mistake. 

In other words: simple market segmentation for admins showed a business need that had to be accounted for, and customers are happier overall after Smallpdf implemented an informed change to their product.

Measure results

According to the Lean UX model, product and UX changes aren’t retained unless they achieve results.

Smallpdf’s changes produced:

A 75% reduction in error rate for the ‘PDF to Word’ converter

A 1% increase in NPS

Greater confidence in the team’s marketing efforts

"With all the changes said and done, we've cut our original error rate in four, which is huge. We increased our NPS by +1%, which isn't huge, but it means that of the users who received a file, they were still slightly happier than before, even if they didn't notice that anything special happened at all.”

Subscribe to fresh and free monthly insights.

Over 50,000 people interested in UX, product,
 digital empathy, and beyond, receive our newsletter every month. No spam, just thoughtful perspectives from a range of experts, new approaches to remote work, and loads more valuable insights. If that floats your boat, why not become a subscriber?

I have read and accepted the message outlined here: Hotjar uses the information you provide to us to send you relevant content, updates and offers from time to time. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of any email.

Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. This might include primary research on brand awareness and customer satisfaction or secondary market research on market size and competitive analysis. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

David Darmanin, one of Hotjar’s founders, launched two startups before Hotjar took off—but both companies crashed and burned. Each time, he and his team spent months trying to design an amazing new product and user experience, but they failed because they didn’t have a clear understanding of what the market demanded.

With Hotjar, they did things differently . Long story short, they conducted market research in the early stages to figure out what consumers really wanted, and the team made (and continues to make) constant improvements based on market and user research.

Without market research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters:

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about them, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ‘what’, while research gives you the ‘why’. Big data, user analytics , and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices. Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices , and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and focusing on their customer experience , you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum. Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and product features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you’ll likely need to make changes once your untested business plan gets put into practice.

Lean User Experience (UX) design is a model for continuous improvement that relies on quick, efficient research to understand customer needs and test new product features.

Lean market research can help you become more...

Efficient: it gets you closer to your customers, faster.

Cost-effective: no need to hire an expensive marketing firm to get things started.

Competitive: quick, powerful insights can place your products on the cutting edge.

As a small business or sole proprietor, conducting lean market research is an attractive option when investing in a full-blown research project might seem out of scope or budget.

There are lots of different ways you could conduct market research and collect customer data, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just one research method. Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.

Which method you use may vary based on your business type: ecommerce business owners have different goals from SaaS businesses, so it’s typically prudent to mix and match these methods based on your particular goals and what you need to know.

1. Surveys: the most commonly used

Surveys are a form of qualitative research that ask respondents a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. When we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals about their company’s approach to research , surveys proved to be the most commonly used market research technique.

What makes online surveys so popular?  

They’re easy and inexpensive to conduct, and you can do a lot of data collection quickly. Plus, the data is pretty straightforward to analyze, even when you have to analyze open-ended questions whose answers might initially appear difficult to categorize.

We've built a number of survey templates ready and waiting for you. Grab a template and share with your customers in just a few clicks.

💡 Pro tip: you can also get started with Hotjar AI for Surveys to create a survey in mere seconds . Just enter your market research goal and watch as the AI generates a survey and populates it with relevant questions. 

Once you’re ready for data analysis, the AI will prepare an automated research report that succinctly summarizes key findings, quotes, and suggested next steps.

An example research report generated by Hotjar AI for Surveys

2. Interviews: the most insightful

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep (and reading non-verbal cues), but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice.

Regardless of how you conduct it, any type of in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.

What makes interviews so insightful?

By speaking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll gain greater empathy for their experience , and you can follow insightful threads that can produce plenty of 'Aha!' moments.

3. Focus groups: the most unreliable

Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, or marketing message to gain deeper insights.

What makes focus groups so unreliable?

If you’re new to market research, we wouldn’t recommend starting with focus groups. Doing it right is expensive , and if you cut corners, your research could fall victim to all kinds of errors. Dominance bias (when a forceful participant influences the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study) are two of the many ways your focus group data could get skewed.

4. Observation: the most powerful

During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor).

What makes observation so clever and powerful?

‘Fly-on-the-wall’ observation is a great alternative to focus groups. It’s not only less expensive, but you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other. The only downside is that you can’t get inside their heads, so observation still isn't a recommended replacement for customer surveys and interviews.

The following questions will help you get to know your users on a deeper level when you interview them. They’re general questions, of course, so don’t be afraid to make them your own.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

How you ask this question, and what you want to know, will vary depending on your business model (e.g. business-to-business marketing is usually more focused on someone’s profession than business-to-consumer marketing).

It’s a great question to start with, and it’ll help you understand what’s relevant about your user demographics (age, race, gender, profession, education, etc.), but it’s not the be-all-end-all of market research. The more specific questions come later.

2. What does your day look like?

This question helps you understand your users’ day-to-day life and the challenges they face. It will help you gain empathy for them, and you may stumble across something relevant to their buying habits.

3. Do you ever purchase [product/service type]?

This is a ‘yes or no’ question. A ‘yes’ will lead you to the next question.

4. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve?

This question strikes to the core of what someone’s trying to accomplish and why they might be willing to pay for your solution.

5. Take me back to the day when you first decided you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this goal.

This is the golden question, and it comes from Adele Revella, Founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute . It helps you get in the heads of your users and figure out what they were thinking the day they decided to spend money to solve a problem.

If you take your time with this question, digging deeper where it makes sense, you should be able to answer all the relevant information you need to understand their perspective.

“The only scripted question I want you to ask them is this one: take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this kind of a goal. Not to buy my product, that’s not the day. We want to go back to the day that when you thought it was urgent and compelling to go spend money to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Just tell me what happened.”

— Adele Revella , Founder/CEO at Buyer Persona Institute

Bonus question: is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

This question isn’t just a nice way to wrap it up—it might just give participants the opportunity they need to tell you something you really need to know.

That’s why Sarah Doody, author of UX Notebook , adds it to the end of her written surveys.

“I always have a last question, which is just open-ended: “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” And sometimes, that’s where you get four paragraphs of amazing content that you would never have gotten if it was just a Net Promoter Score [survey] or something like that.”

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research asks questions that can’t be reduced to a number, such as, “What is your job title?” or “What did you like most about your customer service experience?” 

Quantitative research asks questions that can be answered with a numeric value, such as, “What is your annual salary?” or “How was your customer service experience on a scale of 1-5?”

 → Read more about the differences between qualitative and quantitative user research .

How do I do my own market research?

You can do your own quick and effective market research by 

Surveying your customers

Building user personas

Studying your users through interviews and observation

Wrapping your head around your data with tools like flow models, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps

What is the difference between market research and user research?

Market research takes a broad look at potential customers—what problems they’re trying to solve, their buying experience, and overall demand. User research, on the other hand, is more narrowly focused on the use (and usability ) of specific products.

What are the main criticisms of market research?

Many marketing professionals are critical of market research because it can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s often easier to convince your CEO or CMO to let you do lean market research rather than something more extensive because you can do it yourself. It also gives you quick answers so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Do I need a market research firm to get reliable data?

Absolutely not! In fact, we recommend that you start small and do it yourself in the beginning. By following a lean market research strategy, you can uncover some solid insights about your clients. Then you can make changes, test them out, and see whether the results are positive. This is an excellent strategy for making quick changes and remaining competitive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

Related articles

6 traits of top marketing leaders (and how to cultivate them in yourself)

Stepping into a marketing leadership role can stir up a mix of emotions: excitement, optimism, and, often, a gnawing doubt. "Do I have the right skills to truly lead and inspire?" If you've ever wrestled with these uncertainties, you're not alone.

Hotjar team

The 7 best BI tools for marketers in 2024 (and how to use them)

Whether you're sifting through campaign attribution data or reviewing performance reports from different sources, extracting meaningful business insights from vast amounts of data is an often daunting—yet critical—task many marketers face. So how do you efficiently evaluate your results and communicate key learnings? 

This is where business intelligence (BI) tools come in, transforming raw data into actionable insights that drive informed, customer-centric decisions. 

6 marketing trends that will shape the future of ecommerce in 2023

Today, marketing trends evolve at the speed of technology. Ecommerce businesses that fail to update their marketing strategies to meet consumers where they are in 2023 will be left out of the conversations that drive brand success. 

Geoff Whiting

Join thousands of product people at Insight Out Conf on April 11. Register free.

Insights hub solutions

Analyze data

Uncover deep customer insights with fast, powerful features, store insights, curate and manage insights in one searchable platform, scale research, unlock the potential of customer insights at enterprise scale.

Featured reads

Tips and tricks

Four ways Dovetail helps Product Managers master continuous product discovery

Product updates

Dovetail retro: our biggest releases from the past year

How to affinity map using the canvas

Events and videos

© Dovetail Research Pty. Ltd.

Market research: Everything you need to know

Last updated

5 February 2023

Reviewed by

Market research is key to developing any product or service to ensure you’re creating something that people actually want to use. This can save your company time and money while ensuring a customer-centric reputation from day one.

This guide looks at the ins and outs of market research from past and present. Keep reading to discover the power of market research and everything you need to know. 

• What is market research?

Market research is how businesses explore, learn, and gather information about a market or a specific market segment. You gather the research data in different ways, depending on your primary purpose. Reasons to undertake market research include wanting to:

Uncover potential buyer needs or market trends

Test how attractive new product ideas may be before you develop them

Learn buyer opinions about existing products and services compared to your competitors 

• When to use market research

To differentiate your brand from your competitors, you need the right data. Market research makes it easier to create a brand, product, or service that appeals to current and potential buyers.

You and your team must decide how valuable a business idea or a new or modified product may be before integrating it into your overall business plan. The data you collect gives you the basis for those decisions.

Market research is a critical part of strategic business planning. It tests ideas, enables effective resource allocation, and tightens your relationship with your current and future customer base.

You decide which methods to use based on the data you want to collect, why you want to collect it, and how you'll make the best use of it.

• Why do market research?

Effective market research gives you enough valuable data to make the right decisions. You want to minimize risk and optimize your marketing to maximize revenue and hit targets. Those decisions mainly revolve around how you can:

Build or improve on your brand identity

Attract more new buyers

Increase sales to existing buyers using upsell, cross-sell, and down-sell strategies

Improve your marketing impact to build better sales relationships 

Maintain or expand your market share

Catch, overtake, or stay ahead of your competitors

Decide the best ways to communicate with your target markets

Identify any product, service, or performance issues and how you may correct them

When you use accurate and comprehensive market research data, you can successfully enter a new market or grow your turnover in an existing one.

• How often should you do market research?

You should do market research frequently. That way, you will know you're still meeting buyer needs as they change before current sales levels potentially fall off. You can successfully introduce new or modified products and services by consulting your market to meet additional or changing needs and wants.

• Outcomes of good market research

Customer motivations change. People often buy a product or service to solve a problem, achieve a goal, satisfy a desire, or support an aspiration.

Motivations may be at the forefront of a buyer's mind: 'I am hungry, so I will buy something to eat.' 

Or they may be more subtle: 'I need new footwear, and I also want to look cool.' Researchers call this achieving or displaying approved cultural status.

When you know which motivations result in different groups of people buying savory or sweet food to satisfy that immediate hunger need, you can deliver focused advertising messages and make the greatest impact. 

What 'cool' means to Gen Z or Millennial buyers is often different, so knowing how to differentiate your marketing will deliver a high impact. Making the right advertising decisions can create and grow demand, which you’ll meet to meet.

To take a different example, let’s look at middle managers who aspire to the C-Suite. They’re likely to choose an office product or system which will solve the current processing problem, improve efficiencies, and maximize productivity. However, they’ll also select a product that makes them look innovative and budget-minded in the eyes of their colleagues and superiors. 

A high-tech crash is devastating. Office equipment that provides full technology backup and integrates with the corporate network, the cloud, and all mobile devices while delivering high-quality presentation materials should be an attractive product. Researching these broader issues will separate you from competitors who only research at an office-operational level. 

Your sales presentations will need to do two things:

Focus on the basic features, advantages, and benefits of your product

Raise the buyer's thinking about the career implications of buying from you

When you know and understand which motivators encourage buying decisions and which of those are more important than others, you can:

Make or modify products and services that you know will appeal to your target markets

Advertise, market, and sell more effectively

This is how you rise above and separate your company, products, and services from your competitors.

Motivations change, so market research keeps you in the loop

Another reason for doing market research is that motivations change. They change with age and broader fashion and lifestyle trends in the B2C universe, while business trends influence motivations in the B2B universe.

It's critical to know how your chosen market segments perceive your brand and offerings as their key motivations evolve. Market research gives you practical answers about your product or service while learning how your target market feels about them. Now we've looked at the what and the why, let's move on to the how.

• What are the main types of market research?

There are three main types of market research. In addition, it helps to know four terms before we look at the research methods.

Exploratory and specific market research

Exploratory market research is about asking questions to learn something new. If a business idea leads to a potential new offering, exploratory research will help you determine whether there is a market for it and how big that may be.

Specific market research would follow the exploratory phase. It deep dives into specific issues, problems, and possible solutions the exploratory phase exposed. Or you could use it to learn more about your current offerings in your existing markets.

Primary and .css-1yhk21f{display:inline;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;} .css-1v6ncx0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;background:transparent;border:0;color:inherit;cursor:pointer;display:inline-block;-webkit-flex-shrink:0;-ms-flex-negative:0;flex-shrink:0;display:inline;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;} secondary market research

Primary research is what you, your team, or market research consultants do. You go straight to your target group and get the information you want. The information may be exploratory or specific.

Secondary research is about collecting what's already out there. It could be census data, academic research publications, survey results from government agencies, your trade association, and even your competitors. Facebook and other online sites mine vast amounts of data about their members and make it available for very target-specific marketing campaigns.

Now, let's look at the three main types of research.

What is online market research?

When you do market research on the internet, you're doing online market research. You can do both qualitative and quantitative studies and a secondary web search for published data that you want.

Qualitative research may include videos of current buyers using your products, one-on-one interviews, and group discussions. You will see how they use your products and how they and others respond to using them.

Quantitative research gathers data from surveys, questionnaires, and polls. Online research means participants can opt in, rather than your team cold-calling or mailing the survey. They can also take it at a time that suits them, making them more likely to be focused and thoughtful.

What you learn tells you about purchasing behavior and the user's perspective of advantages and shortcomings. Depending on the survey you create, results might tell you things like: 

What buyers have bought previously

Why they bought those items

How they assess your product

How your product compares to your competitors' products

What they will base future purchase decisions on.

Some benefits of online market research

Detailed and wide-ranging online research tends to be cheaper than other methods. Data collection is:

Recorded directly, rather than collecting it from separate groups or surveyors

Less likely to have inputting errors

Quicker to do an in-depth analysis of the raw results and complete them faster

Quicker to do reruns to provide nuanced opinion data

Easier for survey management to oversee and complete the reports

Faster to get the reports out to interested parties

What are paid market research surveys?

You pay people to attend an online session, ask prepared questions, and record the answers. You ask the same questions to each survey participant about the product or brand in question. After the session, you review and summarize all the answers to provide common opinions for your analysis.

When the group members can handle and use a product, they can more easily comment on it and compare it with other products from your company or competitors. Sometimes, you may wish to do the survey in real time. This could occur at a supermarket where the participant responds to the product merchandising of you and your competitors.

Choose your paid participants carefully. You want them to display your ideal niche market personas' approaches, attitudes, beliefs, and emotional responses.

What is a market study?

Market studies are extensive and best before developing a major innovation. You want to ensure the whole market finds the innovation appealing and affordable over a long time rather than just a small segment. Your study will investigate market dynamics and what motivates or demotivates purchase decisions. The study will include the following:

The size of the potential market in terms of potential buyers

Purchase histories of similar products or products that served a similar purpose

Likely purchase frequency of the primary and secondary products

Likely price ranges the target market will find acceptable

Competitor market share

Competitor advantages and shortcomings as perceived by your target market

Needs and wants not currently being met by products comparable to your new product

Let’s imagine you’re launching a new vacuum cleaner. You can identify a broader market by looking into purchase histories of similar products. Brooms did the job vacuum cleaners do today. 

Identifying the purchase frequency of primary and secondary products is also wise. If you sell heavy-duty vacuum cleaners, you’ll know they’re not easy to carry around. So how likely is your customer to also buy a lightweight vac for minor or quick cleaning? They may even add a hand-held vac to their cleaning arsenal to remove pet hairs and easily clean the drapes and blinds. 

• The history of market research

Before we discuss the specific steps to plan and execute successful market research, let's look at the history of this fascinating subject.

One of the earliest market research studies happened in 1914. Charles Parlin of Curtis Publishing Company said that automobile manufacturers could no longer sell what they decided, but what their customers wanted. 

His boss, Mr. Curtis, asked him to visit hundreds of dealerships to see where the rubber actually met the road. Parlin gave 2,500 sheets of research to his boss, so they could decide which advertisements worked best. Running better ads meant more advertising revenue, meaning wider magazine distribution. This also helped Mr. Curtis charge higher advertising fees.

Market research became something of a science in the 1920s. Rather than a local retailer or manufacturer speaking with local customers to see what they did and didn’t want, the Roaring Twenties’ mass product advertising and nationwide distribution demanded a more powerful approach. 

Automobiles encouraged the growth of city suburbs, while increased electricity supply meant companies could sell appliances. Commercial radio channels, telephone communication, and going to the movies reduced the feeling of rural and small-town isolation. Suddenly, everyone wanted what was once only available to a few. Manufacturing and innovation took off.

Making it, advertising it, and shipping it did not guarantee sales. Getting people to want it meant effective advertising. Making adverts that worked resulted in Daniel Starch coming up with a theory in 1920: People had to see and read attractive yet believable ads to act on them.

Starch and his team stopped as many people in the street as possible. They showed them an ad and asked if they remembered seeing it. If they had seen it, Starch asked which magazine they saw the ad in, what they thought of it, and whether they acted on it.

They collated the data to compare which magazine ads had the greatest effect on buying decisions.

George Gallup developed the research not by showing people ads but by asking: 

If they could remember which ads they'd seen

What they thought of them

What they did about it

His team eventually did face-to-face and telephone surveys.

Radio stations began to use Gallup's methods, asking people what they remembered hearing. They aimed to encourage manufacturers and retailers to run certain ads to appeal to their listeners.

In the 1930s, Robert Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld of Columbia University began focus groups to understand buyers, their preferences, objections, and motivations. This research uncovered mismatches between what people said and what they did.

They learned that a dominating group member could say something about their own experience or behavior and ask the group if others had noticed the same. Other group members sometimes agreed because the dominant member was persuasive, not because it was true for them. Many just went along with it, proving how much group dynamics matter. 

After World War II, market research became more concerned with understanding what made certain people respond to certain types of ad messages from a personal point of view.

Ernest Dichter used Freudian psychology to develop motivational research. While he went a little overboard on Freudian interpretation (people use soap to cleanse themselves of sin), he got his message out to advertisers. He surmised that if you figure out the personality of your product, you will know how to market it to people who exhibit the same personality traits.

Before we smacked gender roles on the head, Dichter would have linked an efficient, house-proud housewife to an effective vacuum cleaner. She needed a product that gave her home a permanent clean appearance. Her husband would love coming home to a shiny house, and her lady friends would be in awe. It's not just about vacs being better than brooms.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, computers and telephones enabled quantitative methods to be the focus of market researchers. Telephone surveys began to replace face-to-face interviews. John Howard said qualitative and quantitative research should work side-by-side. 

Researchers used psychology, sociology, and management science techniques to study buyer motivations and how their emotions impacted owning and consuming certain products and services. Focus groups became the order of the day once again.

Psychologists like Allan Pease, who pioneered studies in body language, began to develop the theory of buyer personas. He said that how companies advertise and sell to people is just as important as the psychological, social, and emotional principles researchers had previously developed.

In the 1970s and 80s, Neil Rackham further determined how critical it is to understand how senior execs make major purchase decisions. Researching your market from their point of view is critical. While you may have ascertained a need for the product, further market research must understand how C-Suite execs go through the purchase decision-making process.

That brings us up to date. Market research has developed into a sophisticated scientific process. When you research effectively, you’ll get the data you need to build your business.

• The steps for conducting market research

Researchers use different models, but we’ve included all the steps, so you won't miss anything.

As with all projects, actions fall into four categories: Planning, execution, assessment, and implementation.

1. Planning

Identify the need for a particular market research project

Review what you have done so far and already know to ensure your research will be direct, broad, and deep enough to deliver your intended results

Decide on the purpose and desired outcomes of your study

Determine your research objectives

Choose your research team and methodology

2. Execution

Create the research project methodology and process  (qualitative, quantitative, primary, or secondary) to deliver on the objectives 

Determine your research methods (i.e., online surveys, focus groups)

Create your data collection forms, questionnaires, etc.

Select your research targets (past, present, potential customers, or specific customer segments if you know them) 

Decide on the number of people you will contact, plus where and how to contact them. For your research to be reliable, the number must be large enough to be a good cross-section of your target market.

Collect the data

3. Assessment

Analyze the data

Decide on any follow-ups to collect more data or to refine your understanding of what you have already collected

Decide if further analysis of the data will deliver relevant and valuable nuanced opinions

Review the results

Write the report

Present the research findings and recommendations to appropriate stakeholders

4. Implementation

Based on the research results and recommendations, determine what impactful actions to execute to deliver your intended business results.

• How to get started

Your first step is to review what you have in your hand and decide who to share it with. When you and your team are clear about all the aspects of market research we've shared, you can decide which ideas, market segments, and products or services you should be researching. 

Get started today

Go from raw data to valuable insights with a flexible research platform

Editor’s picks

Last updated: 5 February 2024

Last updated: 26 February 2024

Last updated: 5 March 2024

Last updated: 26 May 2023

Last updated: 11 April 2023

Last updated: 9 March 2024

Last updated: 19 December 2023

Last updated: 22 July 2023

Last updated: 7 February 2024

Last updated: 30 January 2024

Last updated: 26 September 2023

Last updated: 1 June 2023

Last updated: 16 November 2023

Last updated: 31 January 2024

Last updated: 22 February 2024

Latest articles

Related topics, log in or sign up.

Get started for free

How To Do Market Research: Definition, Types, Methods

Jan 2, 2024

11 min. read

Market research isn’t just collecting data. It’s a strategic tool that allows businesses to gain a competitive advantage while making the best use of their resources. Research reveals valuable insights into your target audience about their preferences, buying habits, and emerging demands — all of which help you unlock new opportunities to grow your business.

When done correctly, market research can minimize risks and losses, spur growth, and position you as a leader in your industry. 

Let’s explore the basic building blocks of market research and how to collect and use data to move your company forward:

Table of Contents

What Is Market Research?

Why is market research important, market analysis example, 5 types of market research, what are common market research questions, what are the limitations of market research, how to do market research, improving your market research with radarly.

Market Research Definition: The process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a market or audience.

Market research studies consumer behavior to better understand how they perceive products or services. These insights help businesses identify ways to grow their current offering, create new products or services, and improve brand trust and brand recognition .

You might also hear market research referred to as market analysis or consumer research .

Traditionally, market research has taken the form of focus groups, surveys, interviews, and even competitor analysis . But with modern analytics and research tools, businesses can now capture deeper insights from a wider variety of sources, including social media, online reviews, and customer interactions. These extra layers of intel can help companies gain a more comprehensive understanding of their audience.

With consumer preferences and markets evolving at breakneck speeds, businesses need a way to stay in touch with what people need and want. That’s why the importance of market research cannot be overstated.

Market research offers a proactive way to identify these trends and make adjustments to product development, marketing strategies , and overall operations. This proactive approach can help businesses stay ahead of the curve and remain agile as markets shift.

Market research examples abound — given the number of ways companies can get inside the minds of their customers, simply skimming through your business’s social media comments can be a form of market research.

A restaurant chain might use market research methods to learn more about consumers’ evolving dining habits. These insights might be used to offer new menu items, re-examine their pricing strategies, or even open new locations in different markets, for example.

A consumer electronics company might use market research for similar purposes. For instance, market research may reveal how consumers are using their smart devices so they can develop innovative features.

Market research can be applied to a wide range of use cases, including:

• Testing new product ideas
• Improve existing products
• Entering new markets
• Right-sizing their physical footprints
• Improving brand image and awareness
• Gaining insights into competitors via competitive intelligence

Ultimately, companies can lean on market research techniques to stay ahead of trends and competitors while improving the lives of their customers.

Market research methods take different forms, and you don’t have to limit yourself to just one. Let’s review the most common market research techniques and the insights they deliver.

1. Interviews

3. Focus Groups

4. Observations

5. AI-Driven Market Research

One-on-one interviews are one of the most common market research techniques. Beyond asking direct questions, skilled interviewers can uncover deeper motivations and emotions that drive purchasing decisions. Researchers can elicit more detailed and nuanced responses they might not receive via other methods, such as self-guided surveys.

Interviews also create the opportunity to build rapport with customers and prospects. Establishing a connection with interviewees can encourage them to open up and share their candid thoughts, which can enrich your findings. Researchers also have the opportunity to ask clarifying questions and dig deeper based on individual responses.

Market research surveys provide an easy entry into the consumer psyche. They’re cost-effective to produce and allow researchers to reach lots of people in a short time. They’re also user-friendly for consumers, which allows companies to capture more responses from more people.

Big data and data analytics are making traditional surveys more valuable. Researchers can apply these tools to elicit a deeper understanding from responses and uncover hidden patterns and correlations within survey data that were previously undetectable.

The ways in which surveys are conducted are also changing. With the rise of social media and other online channels, brands and consumers alike have more ways to engage with each other, lending to a continuous approach to market research surveys.

3. Focus groups

Focus groups are “group interviews” designed to gain collective insights. This interactive setting allows participants to express their thoughts and feelings openly, giving researchers richer insights beyond yes-or-no responses.

One of the key benefits of using focus groups is the opportunity for participants to interact with one another. They spark discussions while sharing diverse viewpoints. These sessions can uncover underlying motivations and attitudes that may not be easily expressed through other research methods.

Observing your customers “in the wild” might feel informal, but it can be one of the most revealing market research techniques of all. That’s because you might not always know the right questions to ask. By simply observing, you can surface insights you might not have known to look for otherwise.

This method also delivers raw, authentic, unfiltered data. There’s no room for bias and no potential for participants to accidentally skew the data. Researchers can also pick up on non-verbal cues and gestures that other research methods may fail to capture.

5. AI-driven market research

One of the newer methods of market research is the use of AI-driven market research tools to collect and analyze insights on your behalf. AI customer intelligence tools and consumer insights software like Meltwater Radarly take an always-on approach by going wherever your audience is and continuously predicting behaviors based on current behaviors.

By leveraging advanced algorithms, machine learning, and big data analysis , AI enables companies to uncover deep-seated patterns and correlations within large datasets that would be near impossible for human researchers to identify. This not only leads to more accurate and reliable findings but also allows businesses to make informed decisions with greater confidence.

Tip: Learn how to use Meltwater as a research tool , how Meltwater uses AI , and learn more about consumer insights and about consumer insights in the fashion industry .

No matter the market research methods you use, market research’s effectiveness lies in the questions you ask. These questions should be designed to elicit honest responses that will help you reach your goals.

Examples of common market research questions include:

Demographic market research questions

• What is your age range?
• What is your occupation?
• What is your household income level?
• What is your educational background?
• What is your gender?

Product or service usage market research questions

• How long have you been using [product/service]?
• How frequently do you use [product/service]?
• What do you like most about [product/service]?
• Have you experienced any problems using [product/service]?
• How could we improve [product/service]?
• Why did you choose [product/service] over a competitor’s [product/service]?

Brand perception market research questions

• How familiar are you with our brand?
• What words do you associate with our brand?
• How do you feel about our brand?
• What makes you trust our brand?
• What sets our brand apart from competitors?
• What would make you recommend our brand to others?

Buying behavior market research questions

• What do you look for in a [product/service]?
• What features in a [product/service] are important to you?
• How much time do you need to choose a [product/service]?
• How do you discover new products like [product/service]?
• Do you prefer to purchase [product/service] online or in-store?
• How do you research [product/service] before making a purchase?
• How often do you buy [product/service]?
• How important is pricing when buying [product/service]?
• What would make you switch to another brand of [product/service]?

Customer satisfaction market research questions

• How happy have you been with [product/service]?
• What would make you more satisfied with [product/service]?
• How likely are you to continue using [product/service]?

Bonus Tip: Compiling these questions into a market research template can streamline your efforts.

Market research can offer powerful insights, but it also has some limitations. One key limitation is the potential for bias. Researchers may unconsciously skew results based on their own preconceptions or desires, which can make your findings inaccurate.

• Depending on your market research methods, your findings may be outdated by the time you sit down to analyze and act on them. Some methods struggle to account for rapidly changing consumer preferences and behaviors.
• There’s also the risk of self-reported data (common in online surveys). Consumers might not always accurately convey their true feelings or intentions. They might provide answers they think researchers are looking for or misunderstand the question altogether.
• There’s also the potential to miss emerging or untapped markets . Researchers are digging deeper into what (or who) they already know. This means you might be leaving out a key part of the story without realizing it.

Still, the benefits of market research cannot be understated, especially when you supplement traditional market research methods with modern tools and technology.

Let’s put it all together and explore how to do market research step-by-step to help you leverage all its benefits.

Step 1: Define your objectives

You’ll get more from your market research when you hone in on a specific goal : What do you want to know, and how will this knowledge help your business?

This step will also help you define your target audience. You’ll need to ask the right people the right questions to collect the information you want. Understand the characteristics of the audience and what gives them authority to answer your questions.

Step 2: Select your market research methods

Choose one or more of the market research methods (interviews, surveys, focus groups, observations, and/or AI-driven tools) to fuel your research strategy.

Certain methods might work better than others for specific goals . For example, if you want basic feedback from customers about a product, a simple survey might suffice. If you want to hone in on serious pain points to develop a new product, a focus group or interview might work best.

You can also source secondary research , such as industry reports or analyses from large market research firms. These can help you gather preliminary information and inform your approach.

Step 3: Develop your research tools

Prior to working with participants, you’ll need to craft your survey or interview questions, interview guides, and other tools. These tools will help you capture the right information , weed out non-qualifying participants, and keep your information organized.

You should also have a system for recording responses to ensure data accuracy and privacy. Test your processes before speaking with participants so you can spot and fix inefficiencies or errors.

Step 4: Conduct the market research

With a system in place, you can start looking for candidates to contribute to your market research. This might include distributing surveys to current customers or recruiting participants who fit a specific profile, for example.

Set a time frame for conducting your research. You might collect responses over the course of a few days, weeks, or even months. If you’re using AI tools to gather data, choose a data range for your data to focus on the most relevant information.

Step 5: Analyze and apply your findings

Review your findings while looking for trends and patterns. AI tools can come in handy in this phase by analyzing large amounts of data on your behalf.

Compile your findings into an easy-to-read report and highlight key takeaways and next steps. Reports aren’t useful unless the reader can understand and act on them.

Tip: Learn more about trend forecasting , trend detection , and trendspotting .

Meltwater’s Radarly consumer intelligence suite helps you reap the benefits of market research on an ongoing basis. Using a combination of AI, data science, and market research expertise, Radarly scans multiple global data sources to learn what people are talking about, the actions they’re taking, and how they’re feeling about specific brands.

Our tools are created by market research experts and designed to help researchers uncover what they want to know (and what they don’t know they want to know). Get data-driven insights at scale with information that’s always relevant, always accurate, and always tailored to your organization’s needs.

Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below:

Continue Reading

What Are Consumer Insights? Meaning, Examples, Strategy

How Coca-Cola Collects Consumer Insights

Market Intelligence 101: What It Is & How To Use It

9 Top Consumer Insights Tools & Companies

Root out friction in every digital experience, super-charge conversion rates, and optimize digital self-service

Uncover insights from any interaction, deliver AI-powered agent coaching, and reduce cost to serve

Increase revenue and loyalty with real-time insights and recommendations delivered to teams on the ground

Know how your people feel and empower managers to improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention

Take action in the moments that matter most along the employee journey and drive bottom line growth

Whatever they’re are saying, wherever they’re saying it, know exactly what’s going on with your people

Get faster, richer insights with qual and quant tools that make powerful market research available to everyone

Run concept tests, pricing studies, prototyping + more with fast, powerful studies designed by UX research experts

Track your brand performance 24/7 and act quickly to respond to opportunities and challenges in your market

Explore the platform powering Experience Management

• Free Account
• For Digital
• For Customer Care
• For Human Resources
• For Researchers
• Financial Services
• All Industries

Popular Use Cases

• Customer Experience
• Employee Experience
• Employee Exit Interviews
• Net Promoter Score
• Voice of Customer
• Customer Success Hub
• Product Documentation
• Training & Certification
• XM Institute
• Popular Resources
• Customer Stories

Market Research

• Artificial Intelligence
• Partnerships
• Marketplace

The annual gathering of the experience leaders at the world’s iconic brands building breakthrough business results, live in Salt Lake City.

• English/AU & NZ
• Español/Europa
• Español/América Latina
• Português Brasileiro
• REQUEST DEMO
• Experience Management

Market research definition

Market research – in-house or outsourced, market research in the age of data, when to use market research.

• Types of market research 

Different types of primary research

How to do market research (primary data), how to do secondary market research, communicating your market research findings, choose the right platform for your market research, try qualtrics for free, the ultimate guide to market research: how to conduct it like a pro.

27 min read Wondering how to do market research? Or even where to start learning about it? Use our ultimate guide to understand the basics and discover how you can use market research to help your business.

Market research is the practice of gathering information about the needs and preferences of your target audience – potential consumers of your product.

When you understand how your target consumer feels and behaves, you can then take steps to meet their needs and mitigate the risk of an experience gap – where there is a shortfall between what a consumer expects you to deliver and what you actually deliver. Market research can also help you keep abreast of what your competitors are offering, which in turn will affect what your customers expect from you.

Market research connects with every aspect of a business – including brand , product , customer service , marketing and sales.

Market research generally focuses on understanding:

• The consumer (current customers, past customers, non-customers, influencers))
• The company (product or service design, promotion, pricing, placement, service, sales)
• The competitors (and how their market offerings interact in the market environment)
• The industry overall (whether it’s growing or moving in a certain direction)

Free eBook: 2024 market research trends report

Why is market research important?

A successful business relies on understanding what like, what they dislike, what they need and what messaging they will respond to. Businesses also need to understand their competition to identify opportunities to differentiate their products and services from other companies.

Today’s business leaders face an endless stream of decisions around target markets, pricing, promotion, distribution channels, and product features and benefits . They must account for all the factors involved, and there are market research studies and methodologies strategically designed to capture meaningful data to inform every choice. It can be a daunting task.

Market research allows companies to make data-driven decisions to drive growth and innovation.

What happens when you don’t do market research?

Without market research, business decisions are based at best on past consumer behavior, economic indicators, or at worst, on gut feel. Decisions are made in a bubble without thought to what the competition is doing. An important aim of market research is to remove subjective opinions when making business decisions. As a brand you are there to serve your customers, not personal preferences within the company. You are far more likely to be successful if you know the difference, and market research will help make sure your decisions are insight-driven.

Traditionally there have been specialist market researchers who are very good at what they do, and businesses have been reliant on their ability to do it. Market research specialists will always be an important part of the industry, as most brands are limited by their internal capacity, expertise and budgets and need to outsource at least some aspects of the work.

However, the market research external agency model has meant that brands struggled to keep up with the pace of change. Their customers would suffer because their needs were not being wholly met with point-in-time market research.

Businesses looking to conduct market research have to tackle many questions –

• Who are my consumers, and how should I segment and prioritize them?
• What are they looking for within my category?
• How much are they buying, and what are their purchase triggers, barriers, and buying habits?
• Will my marketing and communications efforts resonate?
• Is my brand healthy ?
• What product features matter most?
• Is my product or service ready for launch?
• Are my pricing and packaging plans optimized?

They all need to be answered, but many businesses have found the process of data collection daunting, time-consuming and expensive. The hardest battle is often knowing where to begin and short-term demands have often taken priority over longer-term projects that require patience to offer return on investment.

Today however, the industry is making huge strides, driven by quickening product cycles, tighter competition and business imperatives around more data-driven decision making. With the emergence of simple, easy to use tools , some degree of in-house market research is now seen as essential, with fewer excuses not to use data to inform your decisions. With greater accessibility to such software, everyone can be an expert regardless of level or experience.

How is this possible?

The art of research hasn’t gone away. It is still a complex job and the volume of data that needs to be analyzed is huge. However with the right tools and support, sophisticated research can look very simple – allowing you to focus on taking action on what matters.

If you’re not yet using technology to augment your in-house market research, now is the time to start.

The most successful brands rely on multiple sources of data to inform their strategy and decision making, from their marketing segmentation to the product features they develop to comments on social media. In fact, there’s tools out there that use machine learning and AI to automate the tracking of what’s people are saying about your brand across all sites.

The emergence of newer and more sophisticated tools and platforms gives brands access to more data sources than ever and how the data is analyzed and used to make decisions. This also increases the speed at which they operate, with minimal lead time allowing brands to be responsive to business conditions and take an agile approach to improvements and opportunities.

Expert partners have an important role in getting the best data, particularly giving access to additional market research know-how, helping you find respondents , fielding surveys and reporting on results.

How do you measure success?

Business activities are usually measured on how well they deliver return on investment (ROI). Since market research doesn’t generate any revenue directly, its success has to be measured by looking at the positive outcomes it drives – happier customers, a healthier brand, and so on.

When changes to your products or your marketing strategy are made as a result of your market research findings, you can compare on a before-and-after basis to see if the knowledge you acted on has delivered value.

Regardless of the function you work within, understanding the consumer is the goal of any market research. To do this, we have to understand what their needs are in order to effectively meet them. If we do that, we are more likely to drive customer satisfaction , and in turn, increase customer retention .

Several metrics and KPIs are used to gauge the success of decisions made from market research results, including

• Brand awareness within the target market
• Share of wallet
• CSAT (customer satisfaction)
• NPS (Net Promoter Score)

You can use market research for almost anything related to your current customers, potential customer base or target market. If you want to find something out from your target audience, it’s likely market research is the answer.

Here are a few of the most common uses:

Buyer segmentation and profiling

Segmentation is a popular technique that separates your target market according to key characteristics, such as behavior, demographic information and social attitudes. Segmentation allows you to create relevant content for your different segments, ideally helping you to better connect with all of them.

Buyer personas are profiles of fictional customers – with real attributes. Buyer personas help you develop products and communications that are right for your different audiences, and can also guide your decision-making process. Buyer personas capture the key characteristics of your customer segments, along with meaningful insights about what they want or need from you. They provide a powerful reminder of consumer attitudes when developing a product or service, a marketing campaign or a new brand direction.

By understanding your buyers and potential customers, including their motivations, needs, and pain points, you can optimize everything from your marketing communications to your products to make sure the right people get the relevant content, at the right time, and via the right channel .

Attitudes and Usage surveys

Attitude & Usage research helps you to grow your brand by providing a detailed understanding of consumers. It helps you understand how consumers use certain products and why, what their needs are, what their preferences are, and what their pain points are. It helps you to find gaps in the market, anticipate future category needs, identify barriers to entry and build accurate go-to-market strategies and business plans.

Marketing strategy

Effective market research is a crucial tool for developing an effective marketing strategy – a company’s plan for how they will promote their products.

It helps marketers look like rock stars by helping them understand the target market to avoid mistakes, stay on message, and predict customer needs . It’s marketing’s job to leverage relevant data to reach the best possible solution  based on the research available. Then, they can implement the solution, modify the solution, and successfully deliver that solution to the market.

Product development

You can conduct market research into how a select group of consumers use and perceive your product – from how they use it through to what they like and dislike about it. Evaluating your strengths and weaknesses early on allows you to focus resources on ideas with the most potential and to gear your product or service design to a specific market.

Chobani’s yogurt pouches are a product optimized through great market research . Using product concept testing – a form of market research – Chobani identified that packaging could negatively impact consumer purchase decisions. The brand made a subtle change, ensuring the item satisfied the needs of consumers. This ability to constantly refine its products for customer needs and preferences has helped Chobani become Australia’s #1 yogurt brand and increase market share.

Pricing decisions

Market research provides businesses with insights to guide pricing decisions too. One of the most powerful tools available to market researchers is conjoint analysis, a form of market research study that uses choice modeling to help brands identify the perfect set of features and price for customers. Another useful tool is the Gabor-Granger method, which helps you identify the highest price consumers are willing to pay for a given product or service.

Brand tracking studies

A company’s brand is one of its most important assets. But unlike other metrics like product sales, it’s not a tangible measure you can simply pull from your system. Regular market research that tracks consumer perceptions of your brand allows you to monitor and optimize your brand strategy in real time, then respond to consumer feedback to help maintain or build your brand with your target customers.

Advertising and communications testing

Advertising campaigns can be expensive, and without pre-testing, they carry risk of falling flat with your target audience. By testing your campaigns, whether it’s the message or the creative, you can understand how consumers respond to your communications before you deploy them so you can make changes in response to consumer feedback before you go live.

Finder, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing online comparison websites, is an example of a brand using market research to inject some analytical rigor into the business. Fueled by great market research, the business lifted brand awareness by 23 percent, boosted NPS by 8 points, and scored record profits – all within 10 weeks.

Competitive analysis

Another key part of developing the right product and communications is understanding your main competitors and how consumers perceive them. You may have looked at their websites and tried out their product or service, but unless you know how consumers perceive them, you won’t have an accurate view of where you stack up in comparison. Understanding their position in the market allows you to identify the strengths you can exploit, as well as any weaknesses you can address to help you compete better.

Customer Story

See How Yamaha Does Product Research

Types of market research

Although there are many types market research, all methods can be sorted into one of two categories: primary and secondary.

Primary research

Primary research is market research data that you collect yourself. This is raw data collected through a range of different means – surveys , focus groups,  , observation and interviews being among the most popular.

Primary information is fresh, unused data, giving you a perspective that is current or perhaps extra confidence when confirming hypotheses you already had. It can also be very targeted to your exact needs. Primary information can be extremely valuable. Tools for collecting primary information are increasingly sophisticated and the market is growing rapidly.

Historically, conducting market research in-house has been a daunting concept for brands because they don’t quite know where to begin, or how to handle vast volumes of data. Now, the emergence of technology has meant that brands have access to simple, easy to use tools to help with exactly that problem. As a result, brands are more confident about their own projects and data with the added benefit of seeing the insights emerge in real-time.

Secondary research

Secondary research is the use of data that has already been collected, analyzed and published – typically it’s data you don’t own and that hasn’t been conducted with your business specifically in mind, although there are forms of internal secondary data like old reports or figures from past financial years that come from within your business. Secondary research can be used to support the use of primary research.

Secondary research can be beneficial to small businesses because it is sometimes easier to obtain, often through research companies. Although the rise of primary research tools are challenging this trend by allowing businesses to conduct their own market research more cheaply, secondary research is often a cheaper alternative for businesses who need to spend money carefully. Some forms of secondary research have been described as ‘lean market research’ because they are fast and pragmatic, building on what’s already there.

Because it’s not specific to your business, secondary research may be less relevant, and you’ll need to be careful to make sure it applies to your exact research question. It may also not be owned, which means your competitors and other parties also have access to it.

Primary or secondary research – which to choose?

Both primary and secondary research have their advantages, but they are often best used when paired together, giving you the confidence to act knowing that the hypothesis you have is robust.

Secondary research is sometimes preferred because there is a misunderstanding of the feasibility of primary research. Thanks to advances in technology, brands have far greater accessibility to primary research, but this isn’t always known.

If you’ve decided to gather your own primary information, there are many different data collection methods that you may consider. For example:

• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Observation

Think carefully about what you’re trying to accomplish before picking the data collection method(s) you’re going to use. Each one has its pros and cons. Asking someone a simple, multiple-choice survey question will generate a different type of data than you might obtain with an in-depth interview. Determine if your primary research is exploratory or specific, and if you’ll need qualitative research, quantitative research, or both.

Qualitative vs quantitative

Another way of categorizing different types of market research is according to whether they are qualitative or quantitative.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is the collection of data that is non-numerical in nature. It summarizes and infers, rather than pin-points an exact truth. It is exploratory and can lead to the generation of a hypothesis.

Market research techniques that would gather qualitative data include:

• Interviews (face to face / telephone)
• Open-ended survey questions

Researchers use these types of market research technique because they can add more depth to the data. So for example, in focus groups or interviews, rather than being limited to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for a certain question, you can start to understand why someone might feel a certain way.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research is the collection of data that is numerical in nature. It is much more black and white in comparison to qualitative data, although you need to make sure there is a representative sample if you want the results to be reflective of reality.

Quantitative researchers often start with a hypothesis and then collect data which can be used to determine whether empirical evidence to support that hypothesis exists.

Quantitative research methods include:

• Questionnaires
• Review scores

Exploratory and specific research

Exploratory research is the approach to take if you don’t know what you don’t know. It can give you broad insights about your customers, product, brand, and market. If you want to answer a specific question, then you’ll be conducting specific research.

• Exploratory . This research is general and open-ended, and typically involves lengthy interviews with an individual or small focus group.
• Specific . This research is often used to solve a problem identified in exploratory research. It involves more structured, formal interviews.

Exploratory primary research is generally conducted by collecting qualitative data. Specific research usually finds its insights through quantitative data.

Primary research can be qualitative or quantitative, large-scale or focused and specific. You’ll carry it out using methods like surveys – which can be used for both qualitative and quantitative studies – focus groups, observation of consumer behavior, interviews, or online tools.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

Research topics could include:

• Product features
• Product or service launch
• Understanding a new target audience (or updating an existing audience)
• Brand identity
• Marketing campaign concepts
• Customer experience

Step 2: Draft a research hypothesis

A hypothesis is the assumption you’re starting out with. Since you can disprove a negative much more easily than prove a positive, a hypothesis is a negative statement such as ‘price has no effect on brand perception’.

Step 3: Determine which research methods are most effective

Your choice of methods depends on budget, time constraints, and the type of question you’re trying to answer. You could combine surveys, interviews and focus groups to get a mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

Step 4: Determine how you will collect and analyze your data.

Primary research can generate a huge amount of data, and when the goal is to uncover actionable insight, it can be difficult to know where to begin or what to pay attention to.

The rise in brands taking their market research and data analysis in-house has coincided with the rise of technology simplifying the process. These tools pull through large volumes of data and outline significant information that will help you make the most important decisions.

Step 5: Conduct your research!

This is how you can run your research using Qualtrics CoreXM

• Pre-launch – Here you want to ensure that the survey/ other research methods conform to the project specifications (what you want to achieve/research)
• Soft launch – Collect a small fraction of the total data before you fully launch. This means you can check that everything is working as it should and you can correct any data quality issues.
• Full launch – You’ve done the hard work to get to this point. If you’re using a tool, you can sit back and relax, or if you get curious you can check on the data in your account.
• Review – review your data for any issues or low-quality responses. You may need to remove this in order not to impact the analysis of the data.

A helping hand

If you are missing the skills, capacity or inclination to manage your research internally, Qualtrics Research Services can help. From design, to writing the survey based on your needs, to help with survey programming, to handling the reporting, Research Services acts as an extension of the team and can help wherever necessary.

Secondary market research can be taken from a variety of places. Some data is completely free to access – other information could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are three broad categories of secondary research sources:

• Public sources – these sources are accessible to anyone who asks for them. They include census data, market statistics, library catalogs, university libraries and more. Other organizations may also put out free data from time to time with the goal of advancing a cause, or catching people’s attention.
• Internal sources – sometimes the most valuable sources of data already exist somewhere within your organization. Internal sources can be preferable for secondary research on account of their price (free) and unique findings. Since internal sources are not accessible by competitors, using them can provide a distinct competitive advantage.
• Commercial sources – if you have money for it, the easiest way to acquire secondary market research is to simply buy it from private companies. Many organizations exist for the sole purpose of doing market research and can provide reliable, in-depth, industry-specific reports.

No matter where your research is coming from, it is important to ensure that the source is reputable and reliable so you can be confident in the conclusions you draw from it.

How do you know if a source is reliable?

Use established and well-known research publishers, such as the XM Institute , Forrester and McKinsey . Government websites also publish research and this is free of charge. By taking the information directly from the source (rather than a third party) you are minimizing the risk of the data being misinterpreted and the message or insights being acted on out of context.

How to apply secondary research

The purpose and application of secondary research will vary depending on your circumstances. Often, secondary research is used to support primary research and therefore give you greater confidence in your conclusions. However, there may be circumstances that prevent this – such as the timeframe and budget of the project.

Keep an open mind when collecting all the relevant research so that there isn’t any collection bias. Then begin analyzing the conclusions formed to see if any trends start to appear. This will help you to draw a consensus from the secondary research overall.

Market research success is defined by the impact it has on your business’s success. Make sure it’s not discarded or ignored by communicating your findings effectively. Here are some tips on how to do it.

• Less is more – Preface your market research report with executive summaries that highlight your key discoveries and their implications
• Lead with the basic information – Share the top 4-5 recommendations in bullet-point form, rather than requiring your readers to go through pages of analysis and data
• Model the impact – Provide examples and model the impact of any changes you put in place based on your findings
• Show, don’t tell – Add illustrative examples that relate directly to the research findings and emphasize specific points
• Speed is of the essence – Make data available in real-time so it can be rapidly incorporated into strategies and acted upon to maximize value
• Work with experts – Make sure you’ve access to a dedicated team of experts ready to help you design and launch successful projects

Trusted by 8,500 brands for everything from product testing to competitor analysis, Our Strategic Research software is the world’s most powerful and flexible research platform . With over 100 question types and advanced logic, you can build out your surveys and see real-time data you can share across the organization. Plus, you’ll be able to turn data into insights with iQ, our predictive intelligence engine that runs complicated analysis at the click of a button.

Related resources

Market intelligence 10 min read, marketing insights 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, qualitative vs quantitative research 13 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, primary vs secondary research 14 min read, request demo.

Ready to learn more about Qualtrics?

• Business Essentials
• Leadership & Management
• Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• *New* Digital Transformation
• Finance & Accounting
• Business in Society
• For Organizations
• Support Portal
• Media Coverage
• Founding Donors
• Leadership Team

• Harvard Business School →
• HBS Online →
• Business Insights →

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

• Career Development
• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Earning Your MBA
• Negotiation
• News & Events
• Productivity
• Staff Spotlight
• Student Profiles
• Work-Life Balance
• Alternative Investments
• Business Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Climate Change
• Design Thinking and Innovation
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Disruptive Strategy
• Economics for Managers
• Entrepreneurship Essentials
• Financial Accounting
• Global Business
• Launching Tech Ventures
• Leadership Principles
• Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
• Leading with Finance
• Management Essentials
• Negotiation Mastery
• Organizational Leadership
• Power and Influence for Positive Impact
• Strategy Execution
• Sustainable Business Strategy
• Sustainable Investing
• Winning with Digital Platforms

7 Data Collection Methods in Business Analytics

• 02 Dec 2021

Data is being generated at an ever-increasing pace. According to Statista , the total volume of data was 64.2 zettabytes in 2020; it’s predicted to reach 181 zettabytes by 2025. This abundance of data can be overwhelming if you aren’t sure where to start.

So, how do you ensure the data you use is relevant and important to the business problems you aim to solve? After all, a data-driven decision is only as strong as the data it’s based on. One way is to collect data yourself.

Here’s a breakdown of data types, why data collection is important, what to know before you begin collecting, and seven data collection methods to leverage.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Data Collection?

Data collection is the methodological process of gathering information about a specific subject. It’s crucial to ensure your data is complete during the collection phase and that it’s collected legally and ethically . If not, your analysis won’t be accurate and could have far-reaching consequences.

In general, there are three types of consumer data:

• First-party data , which is collected directly from users by your organization
• Second-party data , which is data shared by another organization about its customers (or its first-party data)
• Third-party data , which is data that’s been aggregated and rented or sold by organizations that don’t have a connection to your company or users

Although there are use cases for second- and third-party data, first-party data (data you’ve collected yourself) is more valuable because you receive information about how your audience behaves, thinks, and feels—all from a trusted source.

Data can be qualitative (meaning contextual in nature) or quantitative (meaning numeric in nature). Many data collection methods apply to either type, but some are better suited to one over the other.

In the data life cycle , data collection is the second step. After data is generated, it must be collected to be of use to your team. After that, it can be processed, stored, managed, analyzed, and visualized to aid in your organization’s decision-making.

Before collecting data, there are several factors you need to define:

• The question you aim to answer
• The data subject(s) you need to collect data from
• The collection timeframe
• The data collection method(s) best suited to your needs

The data collection method you select should be based on the question you want to answer, the type of data you need, your timeframe, and your company’s budget.

The Importance of Data Collection

Collecting data is an integral part of a business’s success; it can enable you to ensure the data’s accuracy, completeness, and relevance to your organization and the issue at hand. The information gathered allows organizations to analyze past strategies and stay informed on what needs to change.

The insights gleaned from data can make you hyperaware of your organization’s efforts and give you actionable steps to improve various strategies—from altering marketing strategies to assessing customer complaints.

Basing decisions on inaccurate data can have far-reaching negative consequences, so it’s important to be able to trust your own data collection procedures and abilities. By ensuring accurate data collection, business professionals can feel secure in their business decisions.

Explore the options in the next section to see which data collection method is the best fit for your company.

7 Data Collection Methods Used in Business Analytics

Surveys are physical or digital questionnaires that gather both qualitative and quantitative data from subjects. One situation in which you might conduct a survey is gathering attendee feedback after an event. This can provide a sense of what attendees enjoyed, what they wish was different, and areas in which you can improve or save money during your next event for a similar audience.

While physical copies of surveys can be sent out to participants, online surveys present the opportunity for distribution at scale. They can also be inexpensive; running a survey can cost nothing if you use a free tool. If you wish to target a specific group of people, partnering with a market research firm to get the survey in front of that demographic may be worth the money.

Something to watch out for when crafting and running surveys is the effect of bias, including:

• Collection bias : It can be easy to accidentally write survey questions with a biased lean. Watch out for this when creating questions to ensure your subjects answer honestly and aren’t swayed by your wording.
• Subject bias : Because your subjects know their responses will be read by you, their answers may be biased toward what seems socially acceptable. For this reason, consider pairing survey data with behavioral data from other collection methods to get the full picture.

Related: 3 Examples of Bad Survey Questions & How to Fix Them

2. Transactional Tracking

Each time your customers make a purchase, tracking that data can allow you to make decisions about targeted marketing efforts and understand your customer base better.

Often, e-commerce and point-of-sale platforms allow you to store data as soon as it’s generated, making this a seamless data collection method that can pay off in the form of customer insights.

3. Interviews and Focus Groups

Interviews and focus groups consist of talking to subjects face-to-face about a specific topic or issue. Interviews tend to be one-on-one, and focus groups are typically made up of several people. You can use both to gather qualitative and quantitative data.

Through interviews and focus groups, you can gather feedback from people in your target audience about new product features. Seeing them interact with your product in real-time and recording their reactions and responses to questions can provide valuable data about which product features to pursue.

As is the case with surveys, these collection methods allow you to ask subjects anything you want about their opinions, motivations, and feelings regarding your product or brand. It also introduces the potential for bias. Aim to craft questions that don’t lead them in one particular direction.

One downside of interviewing and conducting focus groups is they can be time-consuming and expensive. If you plan to conduct them yourself, it can be a lengthy process. To avoid this, you can hire a market research facilitator to organize and conduct interviews on your behalf.

4. Observation

Observing people interacting with your website or product can be useful for data collection because of the candor it offers. If your user experience is confusing or difficult, you can witness it in real-time.

Yet, setting up observation sessions can be difficult. You can use a third-party tool to record users’ journeys through your site or observe a user’s interaction with a beta version of your site or product.

While less accessible than other data collection methods, observations enable you to see firsthand how users interact with your product or site. You can leverage the qualitative and quantitative data gleaned from this to make improvements and double down on points of success.

5. Online Tracking

To gather behavioral data, you can implement pixels and cookies. These are both tools that track users’ online behavior across websites and provide insight into what content they’re interested in and typically engage with.

You can also track users’ behavior on your company’s website, including which parts are of the highest interest, whether users are confused when using it, and how long they spend on product pages. This can enable you to improve the website’s design and help users navigate to their destination.

Inserting a pixel is often free and relatively easy to set up. Implementing cookies may come with a fee but could be worth it for the quality of data you’ll receive. Once pixels and cookies are set, they gather data on their own and don’t need much maintenance, if any.

It’s important to note: Tracking online behavior can have legal and ethical privacy implications. Before tracking users’ online behavior, ensure you’re in compliance with local and industry data privacy standards .

Online forms are beneficial for gathering qualitative data about users, specifically demographic data or contact information. They’re relatively inexpensive and simple to set up, and you can use them to gate content or registrations, such as webinars and email newsletters.

You can then use this data to contact people who may be interested in your product, build out demographic profiles of existing customers, and in remarketing efforts, such as email workflows and content recommendations.

Related: What Is Marketing Analytics?

7. Social Media Monitoring

Monitoring your company’s social media channels for follower engagement is an accessible way to track data about your audience’s interests and motivations. Many social media platforms have analytics built in, but there are also third-party social platforms that give more detailed, organized insights pulled from multiple channels.

You can use data collected from social media to determine which issues are most important to your followers. For instance, you may notice that the number of engagements dramatically increases when your company posts about its sustainability efforts.

Building Your Data Capabilities

Understanding the variety of data collection methods available can help you decide which is best for your timeline, budget, and the question you’re aiming to answer. When stored together and combined, multiple data types collected through different methods can give an informed picture of your subjects and help you make better business decisions.

Do you want to become a data-driven professional? Explore our eight-week Business Analytics course and our three-course Credential of Readiness (CORe) program to deepen your analytical skills and apply them to real-world business problems. Not sure which course is right for you? Download our free flowchart .

This post was updated on October 17, 2022. It was originally published on December 2, 2021.

About the Author

• Collections
• Research Help
• Teaching & Learning
• Library Home

MKTG 325: Marketing Research

• Getting Started
• Discover Organizational Information
• Discover Market Research
• Discover Industry Information
• Discover Scholarship and Articles
• Discover Research Methods
• Organize Your Research

Research Methods

Research project resources.

The library offers databases that will allow you to develop soft skills in developing research methods, creating and designing research projects, and tools that allow for data analysis and visualizations.

• Sage Research Methods This link opens in a new window esearchers can explore methods concepts to help them design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct their research, and write up their findings.
• O'Reilly Online Learning Platform This link opens in a new window Provides unlimited access to books, videos, and training from 200+ publishers in computer programming, tech, business, design, and other fields. Learn through live online courses, complete videos of O'Reilly conferences, case studies, learning paths, interactive tutorials, and more.
• DMPTool This link opens in a new window The DMPTool is a free, open-source, online application that helps researchers create data management plans. These plans, or DMPs, are now required by many funding agencies as part of the proposal submission process. The DMPTool provides a click-through wizard for creating a DMP that complies with funder requirements. It also has direct links to funder websites, help text for answering questions, and resources for best practices surrounding data management.

Research Methods Publications

Several journals and other publications investigate the systematic and rigorous approaches used to collect, analyze, and interpret data for studies.

Marketing Plans

Learn to develop marketing plans with these resources.

• SBA: Create a Marketing Plan This site provides numerous links related to creating a marketing plan.
• MPlans This site contains links to articles that describe the planning process for creating a marketing plan and that give tips for writing effective plans.
• Library Workshops

WVU Libraries offer a wide variety of open workshops designed to assist you in developing your skills in citation management, research strategies, data analysis and management, scholarship and publishing, classroom resources, and discipline/subject-specific resources. These workshops are free and open to registered WVU students, faculty and staff.

• << Previous: Discover Scholarship and Articles
• Next: Organize Your Research >>
• Last Updated: Mar 19, 2024 11:10 AM
• URL: https://libguides.wvu.edu/mktg325

Forecasting Production of Potato for a Sustainable Future: Global Market Analysis

• Published: 21 March 2024

Cite this article

• Pradeep Mishra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4430-886X 1 ,
• Amel Ali Alhussan 2 ,
• Doaa Sami Khafaga 2 ,
• Priyanka Lal 3 ,
• Soumik Ray 4 ,
• Mostafa Abotaleb 5 ,
• Khder Alakkari 6 ,
• Marwa M. Eid 7 &
• El-Sayed M. El-kenawy 8  

This study goes into the essential challenge of estimating potato output in order to ensure sustainable agricultural practices while also providing vital insights into global market patterns. The potato production data series compares the accuracy of two popular forecasting models, ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) and ETS (Error-Trend-Seasonality), in predicting potato production. The study assesses the efficacy of these models with a particular focus on their relevance to the agricultural markets of India, China, and the USA, three major potato-producing countries. This research builds ARIMA and ETS models and thoroughly assesses their forecasting performance using historical production data series from these important nations. The results show that the ETS model, especially when considering the chosen countries, consistently performs better in predicting potato production for the testing data set than the ARIMA model. According to the models, China and India will keep contributing more to the potato market, solidifying their positions as key players. It is anticipated that the US economy will plateau and stabilize. For the anticipated year 2027, the expected potato output for China, India, and the USA is 100,417, 61,882, and 18,229 thousand tonnes, respectively. Nonetheless, the increasing diversity of confidence intervals in extended forecasts illustrates the intricacy of agricultural productivity and the numerous factors that could impact outcomes. We believe that this research significantly advances sustainable farming methods by offering a thorough analysis of worldwide potato production projections. It also improves our comprehension of the dynamics of the potato market, providing insightful information that can guide decision-making at different levels. In the conclusions, we stated that the studies not only have consequences for the potato sector, but they also highlight how crucial it is to use cutting-edge forecasting methods in order to promote sustainable food production and guarantee future food security.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Data Availability

On reasonable request, the corresponding author will provide data supporting the study’s results. The raw data cannot be made public for reasons of confidentiality and privacy. However, researchers who satisfy the requirements for access to confidential data can be given access to aggregated and anonymized data as well as the statistical analysis codes. To request access to the data, interested researchers.

Hossain MM, Abdulla F (2016) Forecasting potato production in Bangladesh by ARIMA model. J Adv Stat 1(4):191–198

Article   Google Scholar  

Mishra P, Mohammad A, Al G (2023c) Forecasting potato production in major south Asian countries: a comparative study of machine learning. Potato Res. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11540-023-09683-z

Mishra P, Yonar A, Yonar H, Kumari B, Abotaleb M, Das SS, Patil SG (2021a) State of the art in total pulse production in major states of India using ARIMA techniques. Current Research in Food Science. 1(4):800–806

Mishra P, Al Khatib AMG, Lal P, Anwar A, Nganvongpanit K, Abotaleb M, ... Punyapornwithaya V (2023b) An overview of pulses production in India: retrospect and prospects of the future food with an application of hybrid models. Natl Acad Sci Lett 1–8.‏ https://doi.org/10.1007/s40009-023-01267-2

Novkovic N, Mutavdzic B, Ilin Z, Ivanisevic D (2015) Potato production forecasting. AgroZanje - Agro-Knowledge J 14(1/4):345–355

Google Scholar  

Rahman MM, Islam MA, Mahboob MG, Mohammad NS, Ahmed I (2022) Forecasting of potato production in Bangladesh using ARIMA and mixed model approach. Scholars J Agric Vet Sci. https://doi.org/10.36347/sjavs.2022.v09i10.001

Ray S, Lama A, Mishra P, Das SS, Gurung B (2023) An ARIMA-LSTM model for predicting volatile agricultural price series with random forest technique. Appl Soft Comput 149:110939. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2023.110939

Sahu PK, Das M, Sarkar B et al (2024) Potato production in India: a critical appraisal on sustainability, forecasting, price and export behaviour. Potato Res. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11540-023-09682-0

Singh DP, Deo S (2015) Structural time series model for forecasting potato production. AryaBhatta J Math Inform 7(2):329–332

Wang Z-J, Liu H, Zeng F-K, Yang Y-C, Dan Xu, Zhao Y-C, Liu X-F, Kaur L, Liu G, Singh J (2023) Potato processing industry in China: current scenario, future trends and global impact. Potato Res 66(2):543–562

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Yadav S, Mohammad A, Al G (2024) Decoding potato power: a global forecast of production with machine learning and state - of - the - art techniques. Potato Res. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11540-024-09705-4

Zaheer K, Akhtar MH (2016) Potato production, usage, and nutrition—a review. Crit Rev Food SciNutr 56(5):711–721

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Download references

Acknowledgements

Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project number (PNURSP2024R 308), Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

College of Agriculture, Jawaharlal Nehru KrishiVishwa Vidyalaya (JNKVV), Rewa, 486001, India

Pradeep Mishra

Department of Computer Sciences, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, P.O. Box 84428, 11671, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Amel Ali Alhussan & Doaa Sami Khafaga

Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India

Priyanka Lal

Centurion University of Technology and Management, Paralakhemundi, Odisha, India

Department of System Programming, South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia

Mostafa Abotaleb

Faculty of Economics, Statistics and Programming, Tishreen University, Tartous, Syria

Khder Alakkari

Department of Artificial Intelligence, Delta Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology, Mansoura, 35111, Egypt

Marwa M. Eid

Department of Communications and Electronics, Delta Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology, Mansoura, 35111, Egypt

El-Sayed M. El-kenawy

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pradeep Mishra .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Not applicable.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Mishra, P., Alhussan, A.A., Khafaga, D.S. et al. Forecasting Production of Potato for a Sustainable Future: Global Market Analysis. Potato Res. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11540-024-09717-0

Download citation

Received : 17 February 2024

Accepted : 06 March 2024

Published : 21 March 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11540-024-09717-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Forecasting
• Sustainable agriculture
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Integrations
• Learning Center

MoSCoW Prioritization

What is moscow prioritization.

MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements. 

  The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the “W” in MoSCoW to mean “wish.”

What is the History of the MoSCoW Method?

Software development expert Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle. He designed the framework to help his team prioritize tasks during development work on product releases.

You can find a detailed account of using MoSCoW prioritization in the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) handbook . But because MoSCoW can prioritize tasks within any time-boxed project, teams have adapted the method for a broad range of uses.

How Does MoSCoW Prioritization Work?

Before running a MoSCoW analysis, a few things need to happen. First, key stakeholders and the product team need to get aligned on objectives and prioritization factors. Then, all participants must agree on which initiatives to prioritize.

At this point, your team should also discuss how they will settle any disagreements in prioritization. If you can establish how to resolve disputes before they come up, you can help prevent those disagreements from holding up progress.

Finally, you’ll also want to reach a consensus on what percentage of resources you’d like to allocate to each category.

With the groundwork complete, you may begin determining which category is most appropriate for each initiative. But, first, let’s further break down each category in the MoSCoW method.

Start prioritizing your roadmap

Moscow prioritization categories.

1. Must-have initiatives

As the name suggests, this category consists of initiatives that are “musts” for your team. They represent non-negotiable needs for the project, product, or release in question. For example, if you’re releasing a healthcare application, a must-have initiative may be security functionalities that help maintain compliance.

The “must-have” category requires the team to complete a mandatory task. If you’re unsure about whether something belongs in this category, ask yourself the following.

If the product won’t work without an initiative, or the release becomes useless without it, the initiative is most likely a “must-have.”

2. Should-have initiatives

Should-have initiatives are just a step below must-haves. They are essential to the product, project, or release, but they are not vital. If left out, the product or project still functions. However, the initiatives may add significant value.

“Should-have” initiatives are different from “must-have” initiatives in that they can get scheduled for a future release without impacting the current one. For example, performance improvements, minor bug fixes, or new functionality may be “should-have” initiatives. Without them, the product still works.

3. Could-have initiatives

Another way of describing “could-have” initiatives is nice-to-haves. “Could-have” initiatives are not necessary to the core function of the product. However, compared with “should-have” initiatives, they have a much smaller impact on the outcome if left out.

So, initiatives placed in the “could-have” category are often the first to be deprioritized if a project in the “should-have” or “must-have” category ends up larger than expected.

4. Will not have (this time)

One benefit of the MoSCoW method is that it places several initiatives in the “will-not-have” category. The category can manage expectations about what the team will not include in a specific release (or another timeframe you’re prioritizing).

Placing initiatives in the “will-not-have” category is one way to help prevent scope creep . If initiatives are in this category, the team knows they are not a priority for this specific time frame. 

Some initiatives in the “will-not-have” group will be prioritized in the future, while others are not likely to happen. Some teams decide to differentiate between those by creating a subcategory within this group.

How Can Development Teams Use MoSCoW?

  Although Dai Clegg developed the approach to help prioritize tasks around his team’s limited time, the MoSCoW method also works when a development team faces limitations other than time. For example: 

Prioritize based on budgetary constraints.

What if a development team’s limiting factor is not a deadline but a tight budget imposed by the company? Working with the product managers, the team can use MoSCoW first to decide on the initiatives that represent must-haves and the should-haves. Then, using the development department’s budget as the guide, the team can figure out which items they can complete. 

Prioritize based on the team’s skillsets.

A cross-functional product team might also find itself constrained by the experience and expertise of its developers. If the product roadmap calls for functionality the team does not have the skills to build, this limiting factor will play into scoring those items in their MoSCoW analysis.

Prioritize based on competing needs at the company.

Cross-functional teams can also find themselves constrained by other company priorities. The team wants to make progress on a new product release, but the executive staff has created tight deadlines for further releases in the same timeframe. In this case, the team can use MoSCoW to determine which aspects of their desired release represent must-haves and temporarily backlog everything else.

What Are the Drawbacks of MoSCoW Prioritization?

  Although many product and development teams have prioritized MoSCoW, the approach has potential pitfalls. Here are a few examples.

1. An inconsistent scoring process can lead to tasks placed in the wrong categories.

  One common criticism against MoSCoW is that it does not include an objective methodology for ranking initiatives against each other. Your team will need to bring this methodology to your analysis. The MoSCoW approach works only to ensure that your team applies a consistent scoring system for all initiatives.

Pro tip: One proven method is weighted scoring, where your team measures each initiative on your backlog against a standard set of cost and benefit criteria. You can use the weighted scoring approach in ProductPlan’s roadmap app .

2. Not including all relevant stakeholders can lead to items placed in the wrong categories.

To know which of your team’s initiatives represent must-haves for your product and which are merely should-haves, you will need as much context as possible.

For example, you might need someone from your sales team to let you know how important (or unimportant) prospective buyers view a proposed new feature.

One pitfall of the MoSCoW method is that you could make poor decisions about where to slot each initiative unless your team receives input from all relevant stakeholders. 

3. Team bias for (or against) initiatives can undermine MoSCoW’s effectiveness.

Because MoSCoW does not include an objective scoring method, your team members can fall victim to their own opinions about certain initiatives. 

One risk of using MoSCoW prioritization is that a team can mistakenly think MoSCoW itself represents an objective way of measuring the items on their list. They discuss an initiative, agree that it is a “should have,” and move on to the next.

But your team will also need an objective and consistent framework for ranking all initiatives. That is the only way to minimize your team’s biases in favor of items or against them.

When Do You Use the MoSCoW Method for Prioritization?

MoSCoW prioritization is effective for teams that want to include representatives from the whole organization in their process. You can capture a broader perspective by involving participants from various functional departments.

Another reason you may want to use MoSCoW prioritization is it allows your team to determine how much effort goes into each category. Therefore, you can ensure you’re delivering a good variety of initiatives in each release.

What Are Best Practices for Using MoSCoW Prioritization?

If you’re considering giving MoSCoW prioritization a try, here are a few steps to keep in mind. Incorporating these into your process will help your team gain more value from the MoSCoW method.

1. Choose an objective ranking or scoring system.

Remember, MoSCoW helps your team group items into the appropriate buckets—from must-have items down to your longer-term wish list. But MoSCoW itself doesn’t help you determine which item belongs in which category.

You will need a separate ranking methodology. You can choose from many, such as:

• Weighted scoring
• Value vs. complexity
• Buy-a-feature
• Opportunity scoring

For help finding the best scoring methodology for your team, check out ProductPlan’s article: 7 strategies to choose the best features for your product .

2. Seek input from all key stakeholders.

To make sure you’re placing each initiative into the right bucket—must-have, should-have, could-have, or won’t-have—your team needs context. 

At the beginning of your MoSCoW method, your team should consider which stakeholders can provide valuable context and insights. Sales? Customer success? The executive staff? Product managers in another area of your business? Include them in your initiative scoring process if you think they can help you see opportunities or threats your team might miss. 

3. Share your MoSCoW process across your organization.

MoSCoW gives your team a tangible way to show your organization prioritizing initiatives for your products or projects. 

The method can help you build company-wide consensus for your work, or at least help you show stakeholders why you made the decisions you did.

Communicating your team’s prioritization strategy also helps you set expectations across the business. When they see your methodology for choosing one initiative over another, stakeholders in other departments will understand that your team has thought through and weighed all decisions you’ve made. 

If any stakeholders have an issue with one of your decisions, they will understand that they can’t simply complain—they’ll need to present you with evidence to alter your course of action.  

Related Terms

2×2 prioritization matrix / Eisenhower matrix / DACI decision-making framework / ICE scoring model / RICE scoring model

Prioritizing your roadmap using our guide

Try productplan free for 14 days, share on mastodon.

• Your Project
• MoSCoW Method

What is the MoSCoW Method?

The MoSCoW Method is a prioritization tool that helps professionals in managing their time and effort .

To do so, it proposes to classify the importance of the different characteristics of a product (or a Project) according to their importance .

Its name is an acronym of the 4 Prioritization Categories proposed (adding two “o”):

• M ust Have .
• S hould Have .
• C ould Have .
• W on’t Have .

Four Prioritization Categories

Must Have : Essential Requirements that the product or project must have.

• Critical Features without replacement.

Should Have : Important desired Requirements for the product or project.

• They can be substituted if necessary.

Could Have : Improvements to the product or project.

• There are different alternatives.

Won’t have : Characteristics agreed not to be adopted .

• No one will waste time implementing them.

Let’s see the first example:

MoSCoW Method example

Imagine that you have been hired to create a Website for a Law firm.

They want a professional Site where people can Register and, once inside, track their court cases .

Since you want to deliver the best possible Site on time, you decide to follow the MoSCoW method .

How does it look like?

Must Have :

• Solid programming without any bugs.
• A Solid Register System.
• A Safe and Reliable personal directory.

Should Have :

• A Fast Site.
• An outstanding Design.
• Notifications sent by e-mail.

Could Have :

• Custom menus.
• Suggestions.
• A Blog section with latest news.

Won’t Have :

• Paid content.
• A Public Members section.

As we usually say, this Method may seem obvious.

Then… Why is it important?

Why is the MoSCoW Method important?

Many of professionals end up wasting time , effort and resources on useless task s that are ultimately not essential at all.

Surely you have experienced this situation working in a Team:

• Everyone spends hours modifying a minor feature and, ultimately, the important thing is missing .

That is why this Method is so important:

• Because it concentrates your efforts and forces you to think about what is really important .

As you can imagine, this Tool can be employed in practically all kinds of situations.

But when do we especially recommend it?

When should you use the MoSCoW Method?

We highly recommend to use the MoSCoW Method:

• To put order and prioritization.
• To avoid wasting time with non-essential touch-ups.
• In order to meet the Essential Requirements.
• When the product can have very different characteristics.

Now, let’s see more examples:

MoSCoW Method examples

We have chosen different real examples where the MoSCoW Method can be of great help for the development of certain products.

Let’s begin:

A Wallet - MoSCoW Method example

Let’s imagine that you are developing a wallet .

As you know, wallets are very modular products.

They can have:

• Several or few departments for cards.
• Coin purse… or not.
• 1 or 2 bill slots.

There is not a canonical wallet (one that is the benchmark for all the others).

• That is why you decided to use the MoSCoW Method to develop it.

After some thoughts, you decide that your wallet:

• 2 bill slots.
• 8 compartments for credit cards.
• High resistance materials and sewing.
• Leather as its main material.
• A translucid Credit card compartment.
• A transverse horizontal compartment.
• A striking color on the inside of the bill slots.
• Completely black exterior color.
• One translucid compartment for small photos.
• A Coin purse.
• A Passport compartment.

Making a Cake - MoSCoW Method example

In this example, we’ll imagine that you are preparing a wedding Cake .

• You have a very rigid deadline (the wedding day, of course).

In addition, as you also know, Cakes can have lots of variations.

• We could say they are very modular .

That is why you decide to use the MoSCoW Method.

How does it look?

Well, your Cake:

• White coating.
• Two sugar figurines on top.
• 6 layers of sponge cake inside.
• Belgian chocolate between the layers.
• Decorations on the edges
• Sugar flowers.
• Chocolate balls.
• Scattered sugar pearls.
• Multicolor layers.
• An excessive amount of decoration.
• Fruit flavor.

Designing a Poster - MoSCoW Method example

You are now an artist hired to Design a poster for a Rock concert.

Obviously, this is a Design job with infinite variations possible.

• Also, you have a close deadline to finish it.

No need to mention that you will use the MoSCoW Method.

Finally, the Poster:

• The name of the Main rock band, very prominent.
• Images and colors that best suit their style.
• A typeface that best suits the musical style.
• An illustration related to Rock in the middle.
• The name of the rest of the bands that will play.
• Where and when it will take place.
• Where you can buy the tickets.
• Nearby metro and bus stations.
• The name of the city.
• The maximum capacity of the stadium
• At what time each band will play.

Summarizing

The MoSCoW Method is a prioritization tool that helps professionals in managing their time and effort.

It proposes to classify the importance of the different characteristics of a product in 4 Categories :

• M ust Have.
• S hould Have.
• C ould Have.
• W on’t Have.

Although this Method can be used in all kinds of situations, we highly recommend to use it:

• When working in a team .
• In Design tasks .
• When there is a close deadline .
• With modular products or projects .
• Economies of Scale
• Business Plan for Beginners
• Business Plan Basics
• How to write a Business Plan
• Cash Flow Calculation
• Raising Funds for a Business
• 4 C’s of Credit
• Business Plan Templates
• Customer Insight
• Customer Experience
• Customer Pain Points
• 4C Marketing Model
• RATER Model
• Augmented Product
• Product Mix
• Unique Selling Proposition
• DAGMAR Model
• Marketing Storytelling
• Content Marketing
• Psychographics
• Barnum Effect
• Market Segmentation
• Market Research & Big Data
• Marketing to Generation Z
• 4P Marketing Mix
• 7P Marketing Mix
• Sales Funnel
• Loyalty Ladder
• RACE Planning
• Push and Pull Marketing
• Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Templates
• Starting your own business
• From Startup to a Business
• Entrepreneur FAQs
• Start your Business Idea
• Entrepreneur Golden Rules
• Innovate or Imitate?
• Design Thinking
• SCAMPER Model
• AAR Process
• Work From Home
• Growth strategies for Startups
• VMOST Analysis
• 3P Framework
• SOAR Analysis
• TELOS Analysis
• 5 C’s of Entrepreneurship
• Crowdfunding
• BATNA & ZOPA Negotiation
• Entrepreneur with no Money
• Entrepreneurship Templates
• Strategy vs Tactics
• Mission and Vision
• Business Values
• Value Chain
• Scenario Planning
• Porter 6 Forces
• Bowman’s Strategy Clock
• GE-McKinsey Matrix
• Delta Model
• PEST Analysis
• PESTEL Analysis
• SWOT Analysis
• VRIO Framework
• Strategy Canvas
• Competitive Advantages
• Porter’s Four Corners
• 5 Ps of Strategy
• Porter’s Generic Strategies
• Porter’s Diamond Model
• Wardley Map
• Core Competencies
• Resource Based View
• Bridges Transition Model
• CAGE Distance Framework
• McKinsey’s 3 Horizons
• Vertical Integration
• Horizontal Integration
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Red Ocean Strategy
• Porter 5 Forces
• Ansoff Matrix
• McKinsey 7S Framework
• CATWOE Analysis
• Strategy Pyramid
• Bain’s RAPID Framework
• Balanced Scorecard
• Resources and Capabilities
• Strategy of Apple
• Strategy of Amazon
• Strategy of Starbucks
• Strategy Templates
• Communicate Effectively
• COIN Conversation Model
• SCARF Model
• SBI Feedback Model
• CEDAR Feedback Model
• How to behave at a meeting
• Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• 5E Learning Model
• 9-Box Performance Grid
• SEEDS Bias Model
• Halo Effect
• Pygmalion Rosenthal Effect
• Dunning-Kruger Effect
• How to be an Entrepreneur
• How to be a Leader
• Mintzberg Managerial Roles
• Cog’s Ladder
• The Peter Principle
• How to Negotiate
• Teamwork Skills and Profiles
• Gantt Chart
• RACI Matrix
• Eisenhower Matrix
• FMEA Process
• Problem Solving
• Ishikawa Fishbone diagram
• 5 Whys Method
• 8 Disciplines Method
• ADDIE Model
• ORAPAPA Method
• Cynefin Framework
• Just In Time
• SMART Goals
• KISS Principle
• Birkinshaw’s 4 Dimensions
• Parkinson’s Law
• OGSM Framework
• OKR Methodology
• APQP Framework
• Theory of Constraints
• Success through Organization
• ADKAR Model
• Lewin’s Change Model
• Kotter’s 8-Step Model
• The Greiner Curve
• GAP Analysis
• Planning Templates
• Mean, Median and Mode
• Define your Data
• Pareto Principle 80/20 Rule
• Decision Matrix
• Decision Tree
• TARA Framework
• Root Cause Analysis
• Simplex Process
• Forecasting Methods
• Product Life Cycle
• How to use Google Trends
• Correlation vs Causation

© 2024 - Consuunt .

We're not around right now. But you can send us an email and we'll get back to you, asap.

Log in with your credentials

Forgot your details.

Industries Overview

Latest articles, digital retailers want to use ai to get hyperpersonal in 2024, why beyond is bringing retail brands back from the dead, disney+ and hulu ctv ad inventory will be available via google and the trade desk, retail’s share of the sell side of digital advertising is approaching its share of the buy side, why multiple community banks in one southern city want to convert to stock-owned bank corporations, amazon poaches mrbeast to generate a hit for prime video, apple’s vision pro, ai and gen alpha: 3 sxsw takeaways, genai’s current uses are many, but not yet what most expected, how cookie deprecation effects targeting and identity on ip addresses, retail media, and media mix modeling, worldwide ecommerce sales to break $6 trillion, make up a fifth of total retail sales, about emarketer, us healthcare industry in 2023: analysis of the health sector, healthcare trends, & future of digital health.

Powerful data and analysis on nearly every digital topic

Want more research .

Sign up for the EMARKETER Daily Newsletter

• The US healthcare industry is massive, with healthcare spending accounting for over 18.3% of US GDP in 2021.
• We break down the industry’s various sectors and recent trends hoping to reduce costs while improving care.
• Do you work in the healthcare industry? Get business insights on the latest tech innovations, market trends, and your competitors with data-driven research.

The US healthcare industry is massive, and is continuing to grow as the population swells. Many different types of companies and healthcare institutions work together to provide patient satisfaction and a better quality of care—but sometimes it comes at a large cost. 

Could new digital health startups help reduce costs while improving health care services? Insider Intelligence examines the healthcare industry, its latest trends, and what the future has in store.

US Healthcare Industry Size & Spending

The global healthcare market will reach $665.37 billion by 2028, according to Verified Market Research. US national healthcare expenditure reached $4.3 trillion in 2021, or $12,914 per person, and is estimated to reach $6.2 trillion by 2028, per the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

US healthcare is more expensive than most countries. According to the Commonwealth Fund, the US spent nearly 16.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare in 2019. Germany was the second-highest ranking country, spending 11.7%, followed by Switzerland, spending 11.3%.

Deloitte estimates that, if the current trajectory continues, health spending will triple to nearly $12 trillion by 2040, or 26% of the GDP. The consulting firm also suggests that this growth is largely driven by inequities in the US healthcare system. Unnecessary healthcare spending that stems from structural inequities and biases, specifically related to race, gender, and socioeconomic status, currently costs the country $320 billion.

Another driver of these high costs is healthcare companies’ adoption of emerging health-focused technology. US healthcare providers and facilities spent $17.9 billion on cloud-based technologies in 2022—a figure that is expected to jump to $29.15 billion in 2026.

To offset costs, healthcare providers are leveraging the increase in consumers who want to play a more active role in monitoring their own health by encouraging tech that promotes vital tracking, early detection, and prevention of disease. Specifically, remote patient monitoring (RPM) tools, which enable a continuous stream of real-time health data between patients and their doctors, will account for much of this savings.

In 2023, the RPM space in 2023 will be rife with players, from providers to retailers. In fact, some 57% of provider organizations already use RPM to monitor patients’ vital signs at home, according to a January 2022 survey conducted by Sage Growth Partners on behalf of Rhythm. And, by 2024, over 75% of US medical practices will be leveraging the technology.

Like what you’re reading? Click here to learn more about Insider Intelligence’s leading Health research.

US Healthcare Sectors

Healthcare involves many parties working together. From healthcare staffing and administration to providers and patient care, the market is buoyed by a variety of different workers and technologies. Some healthcare sectors include:

• Health insurance
• Healthcare marketing
• Pharmaceuticals
• Healthcare tech 
• Health administration

US Healthcare Industry Trends

House calls are making a comeback—in a way. Insurers and retailers are now buying home health companies to expand into in-home care. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) and at-home diagnostic tests are helping to boost these efforts. Up to $265 billion in care services for traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage (MA) beneficiaries could migrate from traditional facilities to the home by 2025, per McKinsey & Company. Expect more big brands to move in.

Retailers and Insurers

Providing in-home care can reduce costs related to emergency room visits, decrease hospital readmissions, and even speed recovery time. Over the past year, big companies—including retailers like Amazon—have spent billions to stake a claim in the home healthcare market.

Baby boomers looking to “age in place” will be prime candidates for in-home healthcare. By 2030, all of the nearly 70 million boomers (now 58 to 76 years old) will be 65 or older, with the oldest close to 85. Most will be using some form of Medicare for their health coverage.

Demand for convenience and distanced care continues, and RPM adoption will only increase post-pandemic. We estimate there will be 70.6 million RPM users in the US by 2025, up 56.5% from 2022. In three years, more than one-quarter of the US population will be regularly using a device that remotely tracks or collects their well-being or medical data for their doctors to assess.

At-Home Tests  

The do-it-yourself healthcare market is booming. While sales of COVID-19 tests are waning, manufacturers and providers are rolling out other types of at-home tests, including those for sexually transmitted diseases—now considered an “out-of-control” situation in the US.

The global home diagnostics market was estimated at $5.42 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $8.15 billion by 2030,  according to Precedence Research.

Mental Health Coverage  

Mental health benefits are now a priority for both employees and employers. Offering virtual mental health care programs helps to mitigate employee “burnout” and keep costs low.

Rising prescription drug costs and treating chronic health conditions, however, are adding pressure on employers every year. At the same time, inflation has led 13% of adults to  cut healthcare costs completely , per an August 2022 First Insight report.

Want more marketing insights?

Sign up for EMARKETER Daily, our free newsletter.

By clicking “Sign Up”, you agree to receive emails from EMARKETER (e.g. FYIs, partner content, webinars, and other offers) and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . You can opt-out at any time.

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter!

Editor's Picks

The technology, devices, and benefits of remote patient monitoring in the healthcare industry

Industries →, advertising & marketing.

• Social Media
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Browse All →
• Value-Based Care
• Digital Therapeutics
• Online Pharmacy

Ecommerce & Retail

• Ecommerce Sales
• Retail Sales
• Social Commerce
• Connected Devices
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Financial Services

• Wealth Management

More Industries

• Real Estate
• Customer Experience
• Small Business (SMB)

Geographies

• Asia-Pacific
• Central & Eastern Europe
• Latin America
• Middle East & Africa
• North America
• Western Europe
• Data Partnerships

Media Services

• Advertising & Sponsorship Opportunities

Free Content

• Newsletters

Contact Us →

Worldwide hq.

One Liberty Plaza 9th Floor New York, NY 10006 1-800-405-0844

Sales Inquiries

1-800-405-0844 [email protected]