Market research as a black box

Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy. Market Research is not an isolated discipline – like science or biology. It is a scientific process that marketers use to understand the market place. Market research helps marketers and business leaders to understand their customers, competitors, market dynamics, and other factors that positively or negative affect the business.

Market research information is like any other information; however, market research findings on their own do not really do anything to make a difference. It is the people who use the information who make the information useable. Given this scenario, this clearly shows that market research is a shot in the arm for people who need insights that can help them make decisions that will improve their business. Research provides the roadmap for any business strategy development. It is the voice of the consumer in the board room.

The above description gives a general picture about market research practice. In order to get a full appreciation of this you need to look at market research as a Black Box. Research is about asking questions and getting answers. Questions are your input into the black box. Once you ask a question, you will definitely get an answer. The answer you get is a direct function of the question you ask and your approach in finding the answer. This scenario gives the interviewer a challenge to ensure he/she gets useful answers that will be able to address the marketing problem.

The Question

The questioning should be guided by an understanding of how the information will be used. For instance a company may be planning to expand a product line in order to consolidate their portfolio or maybe they may be planning to launch a completely new product in the market. With adequate background information, a researcher will be guided accordingly during interpretation of the data. There are various questions usually asked in any market research survey. These include questions on general awareness, usage, frequency of purchase, usage and pricing. Depending on the complexity of the survey, other questions may be added to the survey to ensure all important information areas are covered. This is the most important part of any survey as it provides the researcher the opportunity to dig and delve deeper into the target respondent’s psyche and get answers to his marketing problems.

What’s Inside the Black Box?

Experienced marketers don’t rely on the black box to give them the desired answers. They get involved with the mechanics of the Black Box, so that they can get the best out of the whole system – i.e. from question to answer. This involvement helps them to formulate better questions which will help them get valuable output. When the questioning is precise and directed, the data derived from the black box will be decoded in order to come up with useful insights which will help in the transformation of the business.

It is important to note that there are four distinct steps within the Black Box of Market Research:

• Planning and set up

• Implementation

• Field Work

• Analysis

The above steps represent the process of market research from inception to delivery of the research output. Each step has distinct processes which need to be followed religiously in order to get the desired output. Each step is interdependent on the other.

Watch out for my next post ‘ Basics of getting information from customers’.

To your Success!!!!