What is market research?
Market research is a part of marketing research and deals with the empirical collection, analysis and scientific processing of market-relevant data as well as possibilities of influencing the market for relevant sales markets of companies in order to be able to make marketing decisions. Market research also provides important information for other areas of the company. Controlling, sales, procurement, personnel deployment and business intelligence in particular benefit from the data collected by market research.
What information does market research provide?
Market research provides insights into trends and market changes and an assessment of whether these can be classified as opportunities or risks for the company. In the case of new product launches or relaunches, prior evaluation shows how high the risk of a "flop" is and thus minimizes decision-making risks. Market research also provides objective data and facts for strategy development in all relevant areas of the company.
Specifically, findings can be drawn on these topics:
- How is the market or customer behavior and their needs developing?
- What about customer satisfaction?
- Which customer segments are relevant?
- What is the motivation to buy? What is the effect of the advertising media used?
- What is your own market position compared to the competition? How is the competition developing?
What market research tools are available?
In addition to the evaluation of available data, e.g. balance sheets, statistics, etc. (= secondary market research), primary market research is understood as direct field research. This means that the research objects are examined directly.
Research objects can be
- Internal market: Employees
- Sales market: Customers
- Procurement market: Suppliers
- Competitive market: Competitors
Methods are
- Surveys (telephone interview, group discussion, telephone surveys, ...)
- observations
- experiments,
whereby these can be qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative means that the research subjects are interviewed individually, e.g. by telephone. The sample size is usually small. In quantitative surveys, considerably more samples are taken, which is made possible by standardizing a questionnaire.
Further information:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marktforschung
https://wirtschaftslexikon.gabler.de/definition/marktforschung-39843
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