How to gain competitive advantage through market intelligence

In order to survive in today’s cut-throat business environment, all businesses need information to guide their decision making. As an entrepreneur or business manager you need fresh information everyday to aid your decision making. This information desperately needed by managers to make informed business decisions can only be supplied by professional market researchers. Because of this, the research sector plays a valuable role in the commercial, social and political world today.  In a world where technological superiority is gaining momentum, commercial success is dependent more than ever, not on technological superiority alone, but through understanding of customers’ behavior i.e. their needs and using this information to guide your decision making. Sometimes research needs are obvious. For instance if you are planning to launch a new product, you will need to know your target customers’ reactions to your proposed offer. Will they like it? Will they buy it? How much will they pay? How much will they buy? What will trigger their purchase? Launching a product without understanding your target customers’ reactions and basing it on your gut feel and opinion could prove to be disastrous and a sheer waste of time and resources. There is a misguided notion that market research is expensive and sheer waste of time and money, many businesses and managers have learnt the hard way as product launches and brand extensions have proven to be disastrous and a waste of resources without insights from the market. Apart from commissioning a market research survey, there are many ways you can use to gather vital market intelligence about your target customers.

The cheapest way is to use customer feedback forms. This is a sure way of getting feedback on what your customers think about your business. However, there are drawbacks associated with this method of data collection, most customers may not have time to fill and return the forms, and therefore, returns may not be robust enough to make concrete decisions. Feedback forms are very important even on websites, as this provides you with a platform where you will get direct feedback on what visitors to your website site think about your business. Feedback forms will help you to leverage valuable customer feedback to increase conversion rates, reduce customer attrition and to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. To get a free form up and running on your website, please visit: http://www.kampyle.com

Apart from Customer feedback forms, you can also use face to face interviews with your target customers. This can be done by administering a semi structured questionnaire to your target audience. This is the most effective way of data collection, as it ensures 100% strike rate. Face to face interviews usually cost some money, depending on the sample size, the amount is not much if you are focusing on one location only. Alternatively, if you have a robust contact list you can invite your target audience to participate in an online survey. This will not cost you a dime, but the survey will be limited to people with internet access. You can use a free platform to do online surveys by visiting: http://kwiksurveys.com.

To your success with data collection !!!