Marketing research is essential when planning for your business. According to Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, “Market research has a variety of purposes and a variety of data collection methods might be used for each purpose. The particular data collection method that you use during your market research depends very much on the particular information that you are seeking to understand.”
Doing marketing research is a way to know who your competitors are, find out what’s sells in the marketplace, understand your customer preference, problems and needs, the buying pattern of your targeted market, and more. Doing market research is your compass on which way to go.
Data Gathering
Data gathered during market research makes the creative process of your marketing strategyeffective. These data will be thefoundation of your story for the product you are building. It will tell you if it will or how will it fityour target market. For your data to bereliable, it should be efficiently collected and must not be faked by anyone.
Creating A Focus Group
A focus group comprises of six to 10 people gathered together in a room. These people are not related and must not know each other. They are the ones who will give feedback regarding service, product, concept, or campaign. They are being led by a moderator in a discussion that lasts from 30 to 90 minutes. Thegoal is to gather as much helpful information to aid in market research. The participants have to answer questions prepared by the moderator. It is expected that thoughtful responses will be elicited from every member of the group.
Those who will form the group is selected based on demographics, purchase history, psychographics, or behavior.
Advantages Of Focus Group On Market Research
Marketing research utilizing focus group allows you to get information from your consumers and the data gathered is more accurate for it actually comes from your respondent’s own words.
This type of marketing research is designed to be more flexible, and the moderator can adjust it depending on the customer’s behavior and the knowledge of their product or brand.
“Group discussions are especially useful techniques for researching new products, testing new concepts or determining “what would happen if…” They work because of the interaction between the group members.” says Carol- Ann Morgan Ph.D.
This marketing research is run just as part of a series of discussion where participants vary, but the topic of interest remains the same. Creating several focus groups will help smoothen out any differences, especially when the moderator was not able to relax the participants, thus, he won’t open up to the group or one participant’s decision is skewed by the more domineering participant. Conducting several focus groups (3 or 4 different areas) make the research and data gathered more accurate and dependable.
The goal of the research is to know what the customer is thinking and feeling about a specific product or service as he is being influenced by and influencing other participants while they interact during data collection.
Why Do You Have To Do A Marketing Research?
“Marketing research for small business offers many benefits. For example, companies can find hidden niches, design customer experiences, build customer loyalty, identify new business opportunities, design promotional materials, select channels of distribution, find out which customers are profitable and which are not, determine what areas of the company’s website are generating the most revenue, and identify market trends that are likely to have the greatest impact on the business. Answers can be found for the important questions that all small businesses face, “says David Cadden Ph.D and Sandra L. Lueder Ph.D.
Understanding why customers buy or do not buy a certain product is an opportunity to get into your customer’s head. You will get to know what their problems are and have the chance to solve it for them. You’ll be surprised by how detailed the information they will provide you. This information will allow you to plan on how to develop your product or service that will make the customers buy from you.
The more accurate the data you gathered through marketing research by focus group the more you will know your customers, the higher the success rate for your business.
Knowing who your customers are, what do they want, what do they buy, and why they buy it can be achieved more accurately by the method of focus group marketing research. You can stay ahead of your competitors by knowing what consumers are thinking.