1.2.2 market research

• What’s the purpose of market research?

  Identify gaps in the market,

  identify and understand competitors,

  identify and understand customer needs,

  Understand trends in the market,

  To inform business decisions,

  To reduce risk
• What’s primary research?

  Collecting information that didn’t exist before, first-hand contact with customers
• What are examples of primary research?

  Focus groups

  Surveys

  Questionnaires

  Observations
• What is a survey?

  A survey asks questions to get opinions and learn about customers’ experiences with a product or service
• What is a questionnaire?

  A set of questions to find out customers‘ opinions, it can be made of open or closed questions.

  Open questions - aim to get detailed opinions and allow customers to respond in their own works

  Closed questions- do not allow respondents to give their reasons for responses
• What’s a focus group?

  A group interview to give opinions on a product or service - helps a business on how to improve the product or service before it‘s released
• What are advantages of primary research?


  Specific to the business

  More accurate

  Up to date

  can be qualitative or quantitative data

  direct customer contact

  Provides detailed information
• What are disadvantages of primary research?

  Time-consuming, expensive, sometimes difficult to collect
• What’s secondary research?

  The process of gathering existing data that already exists
• What are examples of secondary research?

  Internet research, market reports, government reports
• What is internet research?

  Data taken from competitors’ website, newspaper articles and social media - provides an overview of the industry
• What’s market reports?

  Industry specific, give information about an industry as a whole
• What’s government reports?

  General information, not usually industry specific but can be useful for a business
• What are advantages of secondary research?


  Quick and easy to gather,

  Can provide industry-specific information,

  Easy to analyse,

  less time consuming,

  quantitative data
• What are disadvantages of secondary research?

  Not specific to the business,

  Could be out of date,

  May be biased or inaccurate,

  More general
• What’s qualitative data?

  Information about people’s opinion, judgments and attitudes
• What’s quantitative data?

  Numerical data, that can be statistically analysed
• Why is market research important?

  Reliable market research is essential, to base business decisions on - if they’re unreliable it can be costly for a business
• What are advantages of reliable market research data?

  The business can make more informed decisions, reduces risk, means less money is wasted, gives the business higher chance of success
• What are disadvantages of unreliable market research data?

  The business making unwise decision, ultimately cost the business money, business could fail, could bring out products that don’t sell
• What are benefits of gathering research from social media?

  Cheaper, saves time of putting information together, allows the business to spot the latest trends