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What are the top market research challenges in 2022?

We all know that conducting market research in today’s landscape is nothing short of challenging — from the need to deliver deeper and more meaningful insights faster to developing strategic, always-on research functions.

In many ways, the pandemic amplified existing challenges while creating new ones: the role of the market researcher has evolved from just the deliverer of insight to the supporter of strategy, while organizations are gradually moving towards end-to-end research platforms to support every area of the business.

These are, of course, early days, and many organizations are still finding their footing — but those that are aware of and combating these challenges are those leading the charge.

In this blog, we analyze some of the top market research challenges from our 2022 Market Research Trends report, and provide tips and tricks on how to overcome them.

Challenge 1: Addressing market uncertainty

For market researchers, acting during times of uncertainty is nothing new. After all, much of their expertise lies in analyzing large amounts of disparate data to uncover conclusions and highlight opportunities. And it’s through this data, specifically experience data, that researchers can chart a course forward.

However, in times like these (with the pandemic and shift to digital), there’s a tendency to pause or cancel projects and initiatives — perhaps to recoup lost investments, protect employees or ensure the business can continue to run.

That said, there’s a compelling argument for organizations to weather the storm — to continue pushing through and put more faith into their research activities to understand how business and customer mindsets have shifted. By investing more time and resources into market research, organizations can get ahead of the competition and start to deliver experiences fit for the new world of work.

And most organizations have responded positively. Through our research, we discovered that while market uncertainty is one of the top challenges for market researchers — the vast majority of respondents (67%) are investing more in specialized market research technology to get a grasp of the post-COVID-19 world. As important, 77% see these technologies as critical to their organization’s success.

There’s more — these organizations are also investing heavily in product, brand and customer experience technology to close gaps across their activities. It’s through these tools that they can improve brand recognition and sentiment, customer engagement and satisfaction, and ultimately deliver more valuable products.

The reality is that uncertain times are highly dynamic. Needs, priorities, concerns and perceptions change frequently. But the only way to be successful in an ever-changing landscape is to adapt and understand the new state of play.

Challenge 2: Improving data quality and insights

For almost a third of our report’s respondents (31%), the most helpful innovation for addressing their business’ challenges in 2022 would be an automated data quality solution. Indeed, gathering and processing data, especially with a series of disconnected, disparate tools and a growing list of digital channels — often leads to inconclusive or low-quality insights.

But as well as lacking the right tools, some organizations lack the expertise and resources required to properly utilize the assets at their disposal. According to our report, 20% of respondents cite a lack of skills and training as one of the reasons their market research is being held back. Another variable affecting data quality.

Similarly, data from Forrester Consulting’s report (The State of Evidence-Based Experience Design) — commissioned by Qualtrics — highlights that limited use (by almost half of the respondents) of analytics tools and siloed processes poses major challenges to data-driven experience design and adoption.

Typically, data quality issues arise from these problems:

Therefore, to get the most value from market research in these instances, organizations must do the following things:

1. Develop and implement a repeatable, scalable and robust data gathering and collection process.

As business outcomes are built around new market research, ensuring you have a solid strategy and approach to using the data is absolutely critical. This means embedding consistency at every phase of your research project, carefully evaluating the methods you (or your market research agencies) use and asking yourself: “is there a better way of doing this?”

And in most cases, there is. You may have disconnected processes and knowledge gaps, or your approach to market research is outdated. The idea here is that you build a best-in-class research culture that’s supported by the technology you choose to use. If your strategy and approach are riddled with problems, your data will suffer the same.

At every opportunity, try to identify ways of doing things better and more efficiently to support your overall market research goals, whether that’s automating specific elements or outsourcing the data collection so you can focus on analysis. What’s key is that the process is repeatable, scalable and robust.

2. Acquire a solution that empowers everyone, across the organization, to carry out and analyze research

We’ve spoken previously about the benefits of platformification for the market research industry, but it bears repeating here. Considering the challenges facing market research projects, including the need to glean higher quality insights faster — platformification offers a solution.

By consolidating data, and combining qualitative and quantitative capabilities and datasets in a single platform, platformification enables organizations to connect the dots at every stage to surface more holistic insights efficiently. This is also incredibly important as less than half of organizations (45%) use qualitative and quantitative data to uncover new experiences.

Analytically, platformification means organizations can use modern technology to capture data from multiple sources and deliver richer insights, faster. For the expert market researcher, it enables them to use advanced statistical analysis tools to elevate findings and get significantly more from the same amount of data.

Finally, with the right choice of platform, it becomes possible for anyone in the organization to carry out data collection and research projects — all without training. It’s the natural evolution of market research, an approach that gives everyone the capabilities they need.

3. Clearly define research methods, analysis and use the right tools

Relying on a platform that offers all types of research, quantitative, qualitative and more, vastly increases your data collection and analysis capabilities while giving you the flexibility you need to carry out specific projects.

Furthermore, using the right tools and technology means that you can make sense of certain types of data, such as structured and unstructured data. For example, the ability to capture and analyze open-text responses across multiple channels to determine customer sentiment and engagement.

4. Establish collaboration across the enterprise

A core part of developing and deploying successful market research projects is collaboration across the entire enterprise. Having a singular platform helps — in that everyone is effectively working from the same location — but it’s also important to get buy-in and clearly articulate the purpose of the research in advance.

It’s also worth setting up regular meetings or sessions with teams before, during and after any market research project to understand progress, highlight opportunities or issues, and then identify ways of improving upon the process.

This kind of collaboration fosters not just good relationships with departments (enabling market researchers to become trusted advisors and strategists, rather than just analysts), it also builds a culture where market research is put at the heart of all campaigns.

Challenge 3: Getting leaders to invest

Conducting market research today is perhaps one of the most important things an organization can do. With the right data sources, market researchers get better insights, leaders can push business decisions and product developers can come up with solutions to business problems.

The challenge is getting leaders to continually invest. According to our report, 21% highlight communicating ROI and business impact as one of their top market research challenges. The same percentage highlights competing internal priorities as another.

At some organizations, market research is a means to an end — done to support new product initiatives or marketing campaigns. But the real value is in ongoing market research supported by an embedded research function.

The first step to getting leaders to invest is to clearly demonstrate, regularly, the impact of market research on business outcomes. For example, by using role-based dashboards, you can provide stakeholders and executives with high-level summaries of how market research projects have contributed to business outcomes.

As for ongoing product development, let’s say you carry out some product research, using conjoint analysis, to identify which product features customers value most. You can then compile this information for product teams and executives to see before making the necessary changes. You could also carry out market research to identify the ideal product pricing point before going to market — or do that same research to work out how to alter your product prices in the current market.

What about ongoing improvements? Well, you can apply market research to products in situ and run focus groups and surveys to uncover new customer preferences. You could even use listening tools on digital platforms to capture customer feedback and reviews and use that information to create new products or add features to existing ones. Then, communicate the results of these changes to teams, executives and stakeholders with ease.

Of course, all of the above requires the right platform — one that can listen, understand and act on market research data to empower you and your teams to create better experiences.

Discover the market research trends of 2022

At the heart of business success is market research, but overcoming the problems and capitalizing on the trends requires a well-thought strategy.

In our second annual study into the state of market research globally, we delve deeper than ever before to uncover the market research challenges and opportunities for organizations in 2022.

From the changing role of the market researcher to what you should be prioritizing, discover everything you need to know.

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Learn more about the 2022 market research trends and challenges

Qualtrics // Experience Management

Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the experience management category, is a cloud-native software platform that empowers organizations to deliver exceptional experiences and build deep relationships with their customers and employees.

With insights from Qualtrics, organizations can identify and resolve the greatest friction points in their business, retain and engage top talent, and bring the right products and services to market. Nearly 20,000 organizations around the world use Qualtrics’ advanced AI to listen, understand, and take action. Qualtrics uses its vast universe of experience data to form the largest database of human sentiment in the world. Qualtrics is co-headquartered in Provo, Utah and Seattle.

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Top Challenges Faced by Market Researchers and How to Solve Them

It’s been a challenging few years, to say the least. As we look ahead to the coming years, we wanted to uncover the biggest challenges currently facing market researchers. So we did what we do best: designed and conducted a study of 145 insights pros to learn more about the difficulties they’re facing – and then provide ways to address them. Here’s what we learned.

Watch the on-demand webinar here to see the full research report from our study.

Common difficulties

We all know that conducting research in today's landscape has been challenging. in many ways, the pandemic amplified the challenges we were already facing. top issues included:.

• Limited budget and staff
• Team is stretched too thin
• Hard to get both the numbers and stories needed to inform internal decision making
• Slow internal approval process for vendors
• Unrealistic timelines
• Changes in scope after starting a project  

Participants said the most problematic and common issues they faced included the need to:

• Conduct research faster to meet internal deadlines
• Offer simpler and less expensive ways to conduct iterative research
• Conduct quality research with limited resources
• Conduct more research with the same amount of resources

In other words, the top challenges revolved around the need to move faster while dealing with limited resources. These are the biggest challenges because insights pros are just that – pros – who want to do quality work. We all get that – we take pride in our work, and we know it takes more than an algorithm to come up with meaningful insights and recommendations for a team.

Key research study takeaways

We asked insights pros how they are dealing with these challenges today. their workarounds to time, budget and resource constraints are....

• Working more hours
• Using experience and qualitative insights to get to more actionable stories behind the data
• Seeking out new tools and partners to drive automation and efficiencies

How to address these challenges

In talking to leaders across the industry, we have seen firsthand that it is possible to get more from limited resources and budgets. it isn’t simply about working harder or faster, but about using technology to build flexibility into our methods so we can move faster while getting more targeted, relevant insights. i have two suggestions for any company that wants to take their insights to the next level., build research agility to deliver speed and efficiency. being able to do both qual iteration and quant validation is key. creating a build, test and learn cycle will speed up processes and deliver faster insights..

Use best practices to ensure quality. Here’s what we suggest:

• Find more targeted participants for your research: people who have demonstrated the specific behavior you want to talk to them about, or who have the knowledge you’re seeking in terms of user experience. Doing this will help ensure quality results and enable focused learning that ties to behavior.

• Use qual and quant together for better context in decision-making by the team. Making these two work together more seamlessly will allow you to create stories while still providing validation.
• Build on learning by re-engaging participants to ask follow-up questions. Newer qual + quant methods allow you to iterate on learning by inviting targeted participants to participate in qual follow-ups to drill deeper into the “whys” and improve as you build.
• Take a flexible approach, using automated research studies with customizable templates that don’t oversimplify for the sake of time/cost. The more you can tailor your questions, the higher likelihood that your team will get the results they need.

Four key ways insights technology can help you deliver

Timelines: Seek out insights technology providers that can offer highly targeted qual + quant recruiting within hours or days. They have automated study templates and reporting dashboards, so you can get instant reporting to drive faster decisions.

Quality: Look for tech solutions that can capture context and experiences rather than just attitudes. You also want the ability to recontact quantitative participants or have multiple touchpoints in your qualitative studies, so you can drill deeper into the whys and iterate on your learning.

Resources:  Seek out technology with reporting dashboards that include built-in sentiment and theme analysis in addition to charts and graphs. Also look for built-in comparisons, benchmarking and stat testing. When looking at your tech options, also consider on-demand services or assisted DIY capabilities. It’s a great alternative to full DIY, if you’re limited on time and need some help getting it all done. It’s also a doable, cost-effective alternative to working with full-service vendors.

Budgets: Working with a tech platform on a subscription basis can be a smart decision. Not only do you save more than traditional discounts with full-service vendors (sometimes 20% or more), but it can save your team time in dealing with bids and approvals on every project. And tech solutions that offer on-demand services can give you the benefits of full-service partners, without the cost.

Next steps to become more agile

So what should you do next if you want to be more agile? First, get leadership buy-in by demonstrating the potential benefits to your timelines and budgets. Next, start building agile skills in your team by experimenting with smaller research sprints. Find a technology partner that can help you – you need to feel comfortable with them and be able to collaborate. As you move forward, take time at the end of each agile study for a short retrospective. Look at your results: Did you get what you needed? Did you work too many hours? What went well? What was inefficient? How can you streamline going forward?

To learn more about agile methods and best practices , check out our new 3-part eBook series:  Ready, Aim, Fire: A Guide to Agile Insights for Consumer  Product Teams.

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Topics: Market Research , Strategic Best Practices , Quantitative Research , Online Communities , Agile

Monika Rogers

Monika Rogers is the CEO and Co-founder of Digsite. She has more than 20 years of marketing, innovation and market research experience, including positions at General Mills, Pillsbury and the A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

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What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry. The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

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14 Market Research Examples

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

Example #1: National bank’s A/B testing

You can learn what customers want by conducting experiments on real-life customer decisions using A/B testing. When you ensure your tests do not have any validity threats, the information you garner can offer very reliable insights into customer behavior.

Here’s an example from Flint McGlaughlin, CEO of MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute, and the creator of its  online marketing course .

A national bank was working with MECLABS to discover how to increase the number of sign-ups for new checking accounts.

Customers who were interested in checking accounts could click on an “Open in Minutes” link on the bank’s homepage.

Creative Sample #1: Anonymized bank homepage

After clicking on the homepage link, visitors were taken to a four-question checking account selector tool.

Creative Sample #2: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool

After filling out the selector tool, visitors were taken to a results page that included a suggested package (“Best Choice”) along with a secondary option (“Second Choice”). The results page had several calls to action (CTAs). Website visitors were able to select an account and begin pre-registration (“Open Now”) or find out more information about the account (“Learn More”), go back and change their answers (“Go back and change answers”), or manually browse other checking options (“Other Checking Options”).

Creative Sample #3: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool results page

After going through the experience, the MECLABS team hypothesized that the selector tool wasn’t really delivering on the expectation the customer had after clicking on the “Open in Minutes” CTA. They created two treatments (new versions) and tested them against the control experience.

In the first treatment, the checking selector tool was removed, and instead, customers were directly presented with three account options in tabs from which customers could select.

Creative Sample #4: Checking account landing page Treatment #1

The second treatment’s landing page focused on a single product and had only one CTA. The call-to-action was similar to the CTA customers clicked on the homepage to get to this page — “Open Now.”

Creative Sample #5: Checking account landing page Treatment #2

Both treatments increased account applications compared to the control landing page experience, with Treatment #2 generating 65% more applicants at a 98% level of confidence.

Creative Sample #6: Results of bank experiment that used A/B testing

You’ll note the Level of Confidence in the results. With any research tactic or tool you use to learn about customers, you have to consider whether the information you’re getting really represents most customers, or if you’re just seeing outliers or random chance.

With a high Level of Confidence like this, it is more likely the results actually represent a true difference between the control and treatment landing pages and that the results aren’t just a random event.

The other factor to consider is — testing in and of itself will not produce results. You have to use testing as research to actually learn about the customer and then make changes to better serve the customer.

In the video How to Discover Exactly What the Customer Wants to See on the Next Click: 3 critical skills every marketer must master , McGlaughlin discussed this national bank experiment and explained how to use prioritization, identification and deduction to discover what your customers want.

This example was originally published in Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want .

Example #2: Consumer Reports’ market intelligence research from third-party sources

The first example covers A/B testing. But keep in mind, ill-informed A/B testing isn’t market research, it’s just hoping for insights from random guesses.

In other words, A/B testing in a vacuum does not provide valuable information about customers. What you are testing is crucial, and then A/B testing is a means to help better understand whether insights you have about the customer are either validated or refuted by actual customer behavior. So it’s important to start with some research into potential customers and competitors to inform your A/B tests.

For example, when MECLABS and MarketingExperiments (sister publisher to MarketingSherpa) worked with Consumer Reports on a public, crowdsourced A/B test, we provided a market intelligence report to our audience to help inform their test suggestions.

Every successful marketing test should confirm or deny an assumption about the customer. You need enough knowledge about the customer to create marketing messages you think will be effective.

For this public experiment to help marketers improve their split testing abilities, we had a real customer to work with — donors to Consumer Reports.

To help our audience better understand the customer, the MECLABS Marketing Intelligence team created the 26-page ConsumerReports Market Intelligence Research document (which you can see for yourself at that link).

This example was originally published in Calling All Writers and Marketers: Write the most effective copy for this Consumer Reports email and win a MarketingSherpa Summit package and Consumer Reports Value Proposition Test: What you can learn from a 29% drop in clickthrough .

Example #3: Virtual event company’s conversation

What if you don’t have the budget for A/B testing? Or any of the other tactics in this article?

Well, if you’re like most people you likely have some relationships with other human beings. A significant other, friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, customers, a nemesis (“Newman!”). While conducting market research by talking to these people has several validity threats, it at least helps you get out of your own head and identify some of your blind spots.

WebBabyShower.com’s lead magnet is a PDF download of a baby shower thank you card ‘swipe file’ plus some extras. “Women want to print it out and have it where they are writing cards, not have a laptop open constantly,” said Kurt Perschke, owner, WebBabyShower.com.

That is not a throwaway quote from Perschke. That is a brilliant insight, so I want to make sure we don’t overlook it. By better understanding customer behavior, you can better serve customers and increase results.

However, you are not your customer. So you must bridge the gap between you and them.

Often you hear marketers or business leaders review an ad or discuss a marketing campaign and say, “Well, I would never read that entire ad” or “I would not be interested in that promotion.” To which I say … who cares? Who cares what you would do? If you are not in the ideal customer set, sorry to dent your ego, but you really don’t matter. Only the customer does.

Perschke is one step ahead of many marketers and business leaders because he readily understands this. “Owning a business whose customers are 95% women has been a great education for me,” he said.

So I had to ask him, how did he get this insight into his customers’ behavior? Frankly, it didn’t take complex market research. He was just aware of this disconnect he had with the customer, and he was alert for ways to bridge the gap. “To be honest, I first saw that with my wife. Then we asked a few customers, and they confirmed it’s what they did also. Writing notes by hand is viewed as a ‘non-digital’ activity and reading from a laptop kinda spoils the mood apparently,” he said.

Back to WebBabyShower. “We've seen a [more than] 100% increase in email signups using this method, which was both inexpensive and evergreen,” Perschke said.

This example was originally published in Digital Marketing: Six specific examples of incentives that worked .

Example #4: Spiceworks Ziff Davis’ research-informed content marketing

Marketing research isn’t just to inform products and advertising messages. Market research can also give your brand a leg up in another highly competitive space – content marketing.

Don’t just jump in and create content expecting it to be successful just because it’s “free.” Conducting research beforehand can help you understand what your potential audience already receives and where they might need help but are currently being served.

When Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) published its annual State of IT report, it invested months in conducting primary market research, analyzing year-over-year trends, and finally producing the actual report.

“Before getting into the nuts and bolts of writing an asset, look at market shifts and gaps that complement your business and marketing objectives. Then, you can begin to plan, research, write, review and finalize an asset,” said Priscilla Meisel, Content Marketing Director, SWZD.

This example was originally published in Marketing Writing: 3 simple tips that can help any marketer improve results (even if you’re not a copywriter) .

Example #5: Business travel company’s guerilla research

There are many established, expensive tactics you can use to better understand customers.

But if you don’t have the budget for those tactics, and don’t know any potential customers, you might want to brainstorm creative ways you can get valuable information from the right customer target set.

Here’s an example from a former client of Mitch McCasland, Founding Partner and Director, Brand Inquiry Partners. The company sold a product related to frequent business flyers and was interested in finding out information on people who travel for a living. They needed consumer feedback right away.

“I suggested that they go out to the airport with a bunch of 20-dollar bills and wait outside a gate for passengers to come off their flight,” McCasland said. When people came off the flight, they were politely asked if they would answer a few questions in exchange for the incentive (the $20). By targeting the first people off the flight they had a high likelihood of reaching the first-class passengers.

This example was originally published in Guerrilla Market Research Expert Mitch McCasland Tells How You Can Conduct Quick (and Cheap) Research .

Example #6: Intel’s market research database

When conducting market research, it is crucial to organize your data in a way that allows you to easily and quickly report on it. This is especially important for qualitative studies where you are trying to do more than just quantify the data, but need to manage it so it is easier to analyze.

Anne McClard, Senior Researcher, Doxus worked with Shauna Pettit-Brown of Intel on a research project to understand the needs of mobile application developers throughout the world.

Intel needed to be able to analyze the data from several different angles, including segment and geography, a daunting task complicated by the number of interviews, interviewers, and world languages.

“The interviews were about an hour long, and pretty substantial,” McClard says. So, she needed to build a database to organize the transcripts in a way that made sense.

Different types of data are useful for different departments within a company; once your database is organized you can sort it by various threads.

The Intel study had three different internal sponsors. "When it came to doing the analysis, we ended up creating multiple versions of the presentation targeted to individual audiences," Pettit-Brown says.

The organized database enabled her to go back into the data set to answer questions specific to the interests of the three different groups.

This example was originally published in 4 Steps to Building a Qualitative Market Research Database That Works Better .

Example #7: National security survey’s priming

When conducting market research surveys, the way you word your questions can affect customers’ response. Even the way you word previous questions can put customers in a certain mindset that will skew their answers.

For example, when people were asked if they thought the U.S. government should spend money on an anti-missile shield, the results appeared fairly conclusive. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed thought the country should and only six percent were unsure, according to Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls .

But when pollsters added the option, "...or are you unsure?" the level of uncertainty leaped from six percent to 33 percent. When they asked whether respondents would be upset if the government took the opposite course of action from their selection, 59 percent either didn’t have an opinion or didn’t mind if the government did something differently.

This is an example of how the way you word questions can change a survey’s results. You want survey answers to reflect customer’s actual sentiments that are as free of your company’s previously held biases as possible.

This example was originally published in Are Surveys Misleading? 7 Questions for Better Market Research .

Example #8: Visa USA’s approach to getting an accurate answer

As mentioned in the previous example, the way you ask customers questions can skew their responses with your own biases.

However, the way you ask questions to potential customers can also illuminate your understanding of them. Which is why companies field surveys to begin with.

“One thing you learn over time is how to structure questions so you have a greater likelihood of getting an accurate answer. For example, when we want to find out if people are paying off their bills, we'll ask them to think about the card they use most often. We then ask what the balance was on their last bill after they paid it,” said Michael Marx, VP Research Services, Visa USA.

This example was originally published in Tips from Visa USA's Market Research Expert Michael Marx .

Example #9: Hallmark’s private members-only community

Online communities are a way to interact with and learn from customers. Hallmark created a private members-only community called Idea Exchange (an idea you could replicate with a Facebook or LinkedIn Group).

The community helped the greeting cards company learn the customer’s language.

“Communities…let consumers describe issues in their own terms,” explained Tom Brailsford, Manager of Advancing Capabilities, Hallmark Cards. “Lots of times companies use jargon internally.”

At Hallmark they used to talk internally about “channels” of distribution. But consumers talk about stores, not channels. It is much clearer to ask consumers about the stores they shop in than what channels they shop.

For example, Brailsford clarified, “We say we want to nurture, inspire, and lift one’s spirits. We use those terms, and the communities have defined those terms for us. So we have learned how those things play out in their lives. It gives us a much richer vocabulary to talk about these things.”

This example was originally published in Third Year Results from Hallmark's Online Market Research Experiment .

Example #10: L'Oréal’s social media listening

If you don’t want the long-term responsibility that comes with creating an online community, you can use social media listening to understand how customers talking about your products and industry in their own language.

In 2019, L'Oréal felt the need to upgrade one of its top makeup products – L'Oréal Paris Alliance Perfect foundation. Both the formula and the product communication were outdated – multiple ingredients had emerged on the market along with competitive products made from those ingredients.

These new ingredients and products were overwhelming consumers. After implementing new formulas, the competitor brands would advertise their ingredients as the best on the market, providing almost magical results.

So the team at L'Oréal decided to research their consumers’ expectations instead of simply crafting a new formula on their own. The idea was to understand not only which active ingredients are credible among the audience, but also which particular words they use while speaking about foundations in general.

The marketing team decided to combine two research methods: social media listening and traditional questionnaires.

“For the most part, we conduct social media listening research when we need to find out what our customers say about our brand/product/topic and which words they use to do it. We do conduct traditional research as well and ask questions directly. These surveys are different because we provide a variety of readymade answers that respondents choose from. Thus, we limit them in terms of statements and their wording,” says Marina Tarandiuk, marketing research specialist, L'Oréal Ukraine.

“The key value of social media listening (SML) for us is the opportunity to collect people’s opinions that are as ‘natural’ as possible. When someone leaves a review online, they are in a comfortable environment, they use their ‘own’ language to express themselves, there is no interviewer standing next to them and potentially causing shame for their answer. The analytics of ‘natural’ and honest opinions of our customers enables us to implement the results in our communication and use the same language as them,” Tarandiuk said.

The team worked with a social media listening tool vendor to identify the most popular, in-demand ingredients discussed online and detect the most commonly used words and phrases to create a “consumer glossary.”

Questionnaires had to confirm all the hypotheses and insights found while monitoring social media. This part was performed in-house with the dedicated team. They created custom questionnaires aiming to narrow down all the data to a maximum of three variants that could become the base for the whole product line.

“One of our recent studies had a goal to find out which words our clients used to describe positive and negative qualities of [the] foundation. Due to a change in [the] product’s formula, we also decided to change its communication. Based on the opinions of our customers, we can consolidate the existing positive ideas that our clients have about the product,” Tarandiuk said.

To find the related mentions, the team monitored not only the products made by L'Oréal but also the overall category. “The search query contained both brand names and general words like foundation, texture, smell, skin, pores, etc. The problem was that this approach ended up collecting thousands of mentions, not all of which were relevant to the topic,” said Elena Teselko, content marketing manager, YouScan (L'Oréal’s social media listening tool).

So the team used artificial intelligence-based tagging that divided mentions according to the category, features, or product type.

This approach helped the team discover that customers valued such foundation features as not clogging pores, a light texture, and not spreading. Meanwhile, the most discussed and appreciated cosmetics component was hyaluronic acid.

These exact phrases, found with the help of social media monitoring, were later used for marketing communication.

Creative Sample #7: Marketing communicating for personal care company with messaging based on discoveries from market research

“Doing research and detecting audience’s interests BEFORE starting a campaign is an approach that dramatically lowers any risks and increases chances that the campaign would be appreciated by customers,” Teselko said.

This example was originally published in B2C Branding: 3 quick case studies of enhancing the brand with a better customer experience .

Example #11: Levi’s ethnographic research

In a focus group or survey, you are asking customers to explain something they may not even truly understand. Could be why they bought a product. Or what they think of your competitor.

Ethnographic research is a type of anthropology in which you go into customers’ homes or places of business and observe their actual behavior, behavior they may not understand well enough to explain to you.

While cost prohibitive to many brands, and simply unfeasible for others, it can elicit new insights into your customers.

Michael Perman, Senior Director Cultural Insights, Levi Strauss & Co. uses both quantitative and qualitative research on a broad spectrum, but when it comes to gathering consumer insight, he focuses on in-depth ethnographic research provided by partners who specialize in getting deep into the “nooks and crannies of consumer life in America and around the world.” For example, his team spends time in consumers’ homes and in their closets. They shop with consumers, looking for the reality of a consumer’s life and identifying themes that will enable designers and merchandisers to better understand and anticipate consumer needs.

Perman then puts together multi-sensory presentations that illustrate the findings of research. For example, “we might recreate a teenager’s bedroom and show what a teenage girl might have on her dresser.”

This example was originally published in How to Get Your Company to Pay Attention to Market Research Results: Tips from Levi Strauss .

Example #12: eBags’ ethnographic research

Ethnographic research isn’t confined to a physical goods brand like Levi’s. Digital brands can engage in this form of anthropology as well.

While usability testing in a lab is useful, it does miss some of the real-world environmental factors that play a part in the success of a website. Usability testing alone didn’t create a clear enough picture for Gregory Casey, User Experience Designer and Architect, eBags.

“After we had designed our mobile and tablet experience, I wanted to run some contextual user research, which basically meant seeing how people used it in the wild, seeing how people are using it in their homes. So that’s exactly what I did,” Gregory said.

He found consumers willing to open their home to him and be tested in their normal environment. This meant factors like the television, phone calls and other family members played a part in how they experienced the eBags mobile site.

“During these interview sessions, a lot of times we were interrupted by, say, a child coming over and the mother having to do something for the kid … The experience isn’t sovereign. It’s not something where they just sit down, work through a particular user flow and complete their interaction,” Gregory said.

By watching users work through the site as they would in their everyday life, Gregory got to see what parts of the site they actually use.

This example was originally published in Mobile Marketing: 4 takeaways on how to improve your mobile shopping experience beyond just responsive design .

Example #13: John Deere’s shift from product-centric market research to consumer-centric research

One of the major benefits of market research is to overcome company blind spots. However, if you start with your blind spots – i.e., a product focus – you will blunt the effectiveness of your market research.

In the past, “they’d say, Here’s the product, find out how people feel about it,” explained David van Nostrand, Manager, John Deere's Global Market Research. “A lot of companies do that.” Instead, they should be saying, “Let's start with the customers: what do they want, what do they need?”

The solution? A new in-house program called “Category Experts” brings the product-group employees over as full team members working on specific research projects with van Nostrand’s team.

These staffers handle items that don’t require a research background: scheduling, meetings, logistics, communication and vendor management. The actual task they handle is less important than the fact that they serve as human cross-pollinators, bringing consumer-centric sensibility back to their product- focused groups.

For example, if van Nostrand’s team is doing research about a vehicle, they bring in staffers from the Vehicles product groups. “The information about vehicle consumers needs to be out there in the vehicle marketing groups, not locked in here in the heads of the researchers.”

This example was originally published in How John Deere Increased Mass Consumer Market Share by Revamping its Market Research Tactics .

Example #14: LeapFrog’s market research involvement throughout product development (not just at the beginning and the end)

Market research is sometimes thought of as a practice that can either inform the development of a product, or research consumer attitudes about developed products. But what about the middle?

Once the creative people begin working on product designs, the LeapFrog research department stays involved.

They have a lab onsite where they bring moms and kids from the San Francisco Bay area to test preliminary versions of the products. “We do a lot of hands-on, informal qualitative work with kids,” said Craig Spitzer, VP Marketing Research, LeapFrog. “Can they do what they need to do to work the product? Do they go from step A to B to C, or do they go from A to C to B?”

When designing the LeapPad Learning System, for example, the prototype went through the lab “a dozen times or so,” he says.

A key challenge for the research department is keeping and building the list of thousands of families who have agreed to be on call for testing. “We've done everything from recruiting on the Internet to putting out fliers in local schools, working through employees whose kids are in schools, and milking every connection we have,” Spitzer says.

Kids who test products at the lab are compensated with a free, existing product rather than a promise of the getting the product they're testing when it is released in the future.

This example was originally published in How LeapFrog Uses Marketing Research to Launch New Products .

Related resources

The Marketer’s Blind Spot: 3 ways to overcome the marketer’s greatest obstacle to effective messaging

Get Your Free Test Discovery Tool to Help Log all the Results and Discoveries from Your Company’s Marketing Tests

Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want

Online Marketing Tests: How do you know you’re really learning anything?

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9 Highly Successful Market Research Examples

In the battle of instinct vs insight, there’s  clear evidence that data-driven decision-making pays off. 

A  McKinsey study into the impact of market research found that organizations using data to make decisions are more likely to be profitable, and can more effectively retain and acquire customers vs those who fail to use this approach.

I’ve curated nine of the best market research examples to help you find innovative ways to fuel growth , adapt, and impact change when and where it’s most needed. This post guides you through the problems faced along with the processes and tools used so you can replicate actions and outcomes in your business.

Market Research Example #1 – Understand the competitive landscape

In any business of any size, having in-depth insights into competitors’ audiences, campaigns, keywords, ( and more ) allows you to shape or refine your own plans for success. You can cut through the noise, see what’s working, and uncover opportunities for growth.

Since 2013, Wonderbly’s business has grown exponentially and now sells personalized books to over six million customers worldwide. In order to validate its go-to-market strategy, it needed granular insights into competitors and market trends.

Here’s how it played out.

1. Competitive insights

Challenge: Low visibility into a key competitor’s activity

Action: By analyzing competitor audience demographics that showed both gender and age distribution of its rival’s audience, Wonderbly saw its competition was better at attracting a younger audience.

Impact: Through the development of a new audience profile and key changes to future campaign strategies, it was able to grow the business and attract new customers.

This snapshot shows competitors’ website demographics side-by-side. While it was attracting a larger female audience of 62% vs. 56%, they saw their rivals were better at appealing to a male audience, with a respective split of 43% vs. 37%. In age distribution, its share in the 18-24 bracket was just 12% vs. 19%. Showing a clear opportunity to do more to reach that younger audience.

2. Keyword seasonality

Challenge: Lack of data to enter new markets

Action: Using seasonal trends keywords that showed where competitors were winning traffic from paid ad channels, Wonderbly discovered an emerging category (weddings and anniversaries) that was not addressed with its own offering.

Impact: By demonstrating competitors’ success and subsequent consumer interest, a new product line was developed. It went on to achieve a 69% revenue increase in books purchased by a more mature audience.

Keyword seasonality screenshot shows traffic leaders for specific keyword sets, their seasonality, traffic share , volume, and CPC data. This shows where competitors are using paid ads to win traffic share.

3. Audience data

Challenge: Limited view of audience browsing behavior

Action: By looking into audience data that showed which sites its visitors were cross-browsing, Wonderbly was able to determine audience loyalty vs. that of its rivals.

Impact: The information was used to forge new content-focused partnerships in the UK, US, and Canada with several organizations and drove more traffic to its own site as a result.

Audience overlap screenshot shows which sites its customers are browsing, how loyal they are, and presented new information about a referral partnership.

See the full story behind Wonderly’s success here.

Market Research Example #2 – Market Intelligence

Most business leaders and marketers have a solid understanding of their market. But if you want to stay ahead of the game, you need to reach deep inside a market, and often. Dynamic market intel enables you to do this and achieve sustainable growth by spotting emerging opportunities as they happen.

Red Arbor is the third-largest job board website in the world. Market Intelligence is an integral part of its business; with granular data across multiple markets, it knows the how and why behind individual brands’ performance.

Challenge: Difficult to see what’s happening across websites, apps, and digital entities in relevant markets.

Action: By using competitive and market intelligence tools, Red Arbor could see market movements and shifts in rival traffic share in all relevant markets as they occurred.

Impact: Key data can be constantly monitored to provide intel around emerging competitors and enables Red Arbor brands to quickly close the gap on respective market leaders. Based on these insights, it helps brands become the ultimate competitor and retain their positions as market leaders.

Read the full article about Red Arbur’s successful market research example here.

Market Research Example #3 – Entering new markets

Diversification is key to survival. For both product and service-based businesses, entering a new market can, without question, yield huge rewards. But before investing time and effort, the crucial work of fleshing out the opportunity in its entirety is key.

Airbnb is a household name, and a huge part of its success has been breaking into new markets. Each market has unique factors, risks, and opportunities. When this global powerhouse wanted to enter the Israeli market, it needed to get a clear handle on both local and international leaders, along with emerging players; all of whom had deployed aggressive marketing efforts.

Let’s look at how it went on to achieve success in a bustling new market.

Challenge: Analyze a new, highly competitive market and get clear insights into its rivals’ traffic sources to enable them to build an effective marketing strategy.

Action: Airbnb already knew who the leaders and most active local competitors were, but to enter with confidence, it wanted to see its respective rivals’ growth strategies. Using detailed website analytics , it was able to see its top competitors were all focussed on four core marketing activities.

• Building partnerships with niche sites
• AdWords, display, and search campaigns
• Local social network ads via organic and paid campaigns
• Running local digital news publisher’s ads

The snapshot shows at a glance who the top industry players are, with booking.com attracting 1.4 million unique visitors in the period with a yearly change of 57% vs. Airbnb’s unique visitors of 249k and a traffic increase of 42%. Two key players are losing traffic, with a 42%+ reduction in traffic share. It also identifies five emerging players in the market with significant growth of over 3000%.

Airbnb chose to focus its resources on social marketing, display and search ads, and partnerships. Its findings revealed specific keywords, social sites, and referrals that enabled it to enter a new market in a position of strength.

Impact: It entered a new market with a 360-degree view of what marketing channels and tactics to use.

Stop Guessing, Start Analyzing

Get actionable insights for market research here

Market Research Example #4 – Business benchmarking & competitive landscaping

Benchmarking in business is a great way to see how well you’re doing. But it’s so much more than just this – it lets you discover, understand, improve, grow, and set goals. If there’s one crucial thing I want you to know about successful market research examples, it’s the importance of doing benchmarking­ – often and well.

Croud is a global digital marketing partner to some of the world’s greatest brands. It develops and iterates marketing strategies on a daily basis..

Want to find out how it consistently shapes successful growth strategies? Read on.

Challenge: Brand and category-level traffic analysis across different markets are limited.

Action: Using detailed site-level traffic data and competitor app engagement metrics, Cloud could quickly understand what sites people visit, traffic share, growth of a sector over time, and how a client’s own growth compares with its rivals.

Impact: The impact of market research intelligence on Croud’s business is multifaceted. It can serve clients’ fresh data insights that shape marketing channels and revenue opportunities. This, in turn, builds trust, loyalty, and revenue:

• A global lingerie client was able to fine-tune localized marketing strategies and adjust media mixes to reflect category benchmarks. Ad copy was ‘tweaked,’ and new audiences were uncovered.
• A video-on-demand client was alerted to emerging players entering the market, as well as what tactics were being used to obtain traffic.
• A homecare retail client has been able to see the successful ad channels of its clients and adjust the marketing mix accordingly.

Read the full market research success story from Croud here.

Market Research Example #5 – New product development

When organizations develop plans for a new product or service, it requires insight, investment, and often a little intuition. Dynamic market intel can help you reveal shifts in consumer trends or behaviors before your rivals.

As a business in the travel sector, the pandemic hit Staysure harder than most – in fact the travel sector experienced losses of around 70% year on year. Market demands became an anomaly, and many rivals were forced to close their doors. To survive one of the toughest periods a business could ever face, Staysure needed to pivot, adapt, and go in a new direction.

Here’s how it turned things around.

Challenge: Survive the global pandemic and pivot its digital marketing strategy to meet the demand for new products in a shifting industry.

Action: Using Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence, Staysure analyzed competitors’ marketing tactics in real-time. This continuous monitoring enabled it to know when post-lockdown recoveries were occurring in real-time and allowed it to spot emerging trends , one of which was identified as an opportunity to bring a new product to market to address a shift in consumer demand.

Impact: Armed with this intel, it was able to develop a new insurance product that protected consumers against cancellations, medical expenses, and repatriation.

See more about how Staysure identified a new product opportunity for its business during one of the most challenging of times.

Market Research Example #6 – Shape stronger strategies

Making key business decisions about the future is tough at the best of times. Add in a global pandemic, the possible end of globalization as we know it, and who knows what other variables – business leaders have never (likely) known a time like it. Creating future-proof strategies is a must for any organization, and with the current climate, it’s harder than ever. A data-informed approach is the only logical route to take at any time, but none more so than now.

eToro is a market-leading social investing platform with a presence in over 100 countries and more than 27 million registered users. Each region operates within a different set of regulations and caters to unique market demands. To support eToro’s international expansion, the most up-to-date and accurate intel is needed to spearhead successful customer acquisition efforts across the globe.

Challenge: Finding reliable, competitive intelligence across international markets in a timely fashion

Action: The dedicated media buying at eToro used Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence to monitor competitor campaigns and evaluate potential media outlets, partnerships, and ad networks. Using deeper insights into website traffic, trends, and competitors’ campaigns, it could evaluate trends periodically, at both a regional and national level, to discover new traffic sources, evaluate and optimize existing media partnerships, and conduct keyword research each month.

Impact: The improved access to granular data insights has helped eToro negotiate with its publishers. As a result of being able to clearly see ad placement and creative campaign performance, it has improved ROI and increased its ability to out-trade rivals and gain market share .

Read more about how the team at eToro used digital insights to save time and make smarter decisions.

Market Research Example #7 – Identify the target audience

Every successful market research example I’ve ever seen starts and ends with the customer. Buyer personas shape product, price, and placement – and the development of these personas are relevant to all organizations. Being able to clearly identify a target audience in any market is crucial. Market dynamics mean a target audience is susceptible to change, so even established businesses need to keep watch.

Simplr is a customer support solution for growing brands, delivering staffing solutions via remote specialists and AI. As with any service-based business, being able to find and attract the right audience is crucial for growth and sustainability. It used market research to find and qualify high-caliber prospects and secure a more effective sales process.

Challenge: Targeting the right customers at the right time

Action: Simplr was able to get a detailed view of which new brands were growing the fastest by using digital performance data. This gave its sales team the ability to identify, qualify and prioritize potential companies based on solution fit and increasing need. Using a range of reports that show monthly traffic changes and traffic spikes in a custom sector, it saw high-growth sites with an expanding customer base and with this, an increased need for support services like Simplr.

Impact: Market sizing is now more dynamic and well-informed than ever before. Sales efficiency has increased, lead quality has improved, and sales performance is more effective as outreach is done in a more timely manner. Now, Simplr can identify and reach out to prospects during peak growth periods, and it’s seeing better conversions as a result.

Read more about how Simplr used successful market research to close more deals and improve pipeline efficiency here.

Market Research Example #8 – Find out what marketing channels deliver ROI

In good times and bad, it’s important to optmize marketing spend to ensure you invest time, efforts, and money in channels that deliver. A great example of market research in action is to apply research efforts and take the time to know which channels work, and where rival’s are winning and losing in your space.

Anything is Possible (AIP)  is a data-driven, communications strategy, media planning & buying company that covers all digital and offline media. Needless to say, it’s a business that depends on reliable, insightful, timely data to impact its clients and their goals.

Challenge: During COVID, a key client (the Institute of Cancer Research) faced declining donations. To survive, it needed to find new ways to find and convert audiences to donate.

Action: AIP utilized Similarweb’s Digital Research Intelligence to do a basic competitive analysis on key rivals of its client. This identified which channels were optimal, and where the most referrals on rival sites were originating from. It shows that premium publisher sites, such as The Guardian were sending significant traffic to competitor sites. With this information, it was able to develop a paid-ads campaign that displayed advertising on targetted guardian.com pages.

Impact: The campaign was a huge success, exceeding previous campaign conversion rates by 817%. Read more about how AIP used Similarweb to understand the right marketing channels to use.

Market Research Example #9 – Trendspotting to find growth opportunities

During the pandemic, many companies in the hospitality sector were forced to close their doors. It was a case of fight or flight, and there were clear winners and losers. Having the ability to spot industry trends and adapt fast was key to the survival of many firms. In this market research example, we explore how one consulting firm was able to help its customers pivot and thrive during turbulent times.

Wiideman Consulting Group provides multi-location brands with SEO research, audits, and strategy services.

Challenge: During the pandemic, food chains had to pivot from offering dining-in services to takeout and delivery services. With IHOP and Applebee’s as key clients of its firm, it needed to develop robust strategies quickly to help its clients survive. With consumers performing non-banded searches to find food delivery and take-out services, these traditional dine-in venues have no visibility online and were at risk of not being found by people looking to order alternative dining solutions while dine-in restaurants were closed.

  Action: Using Similarweb, it identified the right keyword opportunities, industry trends, and delivery service provider insights. This enabled it to develop a strategy that focused on increasing visibility in the locations where the business could provide takeaway and delivery services. With this data, it was able to help reposition brands within the search engine results pages and optimize content to generate leads and sales.

Doing this market research enabled it to make three key changes.

• Optimize the Google My Business profile to emphasize new service options for lunch, evening, and family meals.
• Design and deploy optimized content with new delivery and takeout subpages for each location.
• Addition of the ‘start order’ button as a floating call-to-action across all localized pages.

Impact: Driven by Similarweb insights, these tactics delivered favorable results for both of its clients in the hospitality sector.

• Organic traffic for both brands improved by 63% & 37%
• Revenues increased by 167% & 70% yoy

Ultimately, this market research enabled its clients to adapt to a changing market, and thrive when many others were forced to cease trading.

You can view the full write-up here to hear more about this success story.

Market research isn’t a one-and-done activity – rather, it’s a highly-habitual process and a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. Due to fast-changing market dynamics, business leaders and strategists need market insights on the fly to respond and react to shifts in consumer behavior while staying focused on growth.

I’ve shared with you nine market research examples demonstrating how companies around the globe have successfully used market analysis to strategize, adapt, and grow. Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence impacted each of these examples, helping take the guesswork out of market research; so you can confidently make informed strategic decisions to grow your business.

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Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

Updated: 02/21/24

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

• Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
• Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

Free Market Research Kit

• SWOT Analysis Template
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
• Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
• Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
• Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

• Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
• Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

• Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
• Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
• Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
• Focus Groups
• Product/ Service Use Research
• Observation-Based Research
• Buyer Persona Research
• Market Segmentation Research
• Pricing Research
• Competitive Analysis Research
• Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
• Brand Awareness Research
• Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

• Define your buyer persona.
• Identify a persona group to engage.
• Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
• List your primary competitors.
• Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

• Books & Reports
• Product-led Growth
• Pricing & Positioning

5 Market Research Challenges (And How to Solve Them)

Tien-Anh Nguyen

December 31, 2013

Conducting buyer insights research can be overwhelming. From planning to the actual studies, there are a lot of responsibilities and hurdles to manage. Here are a few of the most common market research challenges that companies face, as well as some of the simplest solutions to get everyone up and running.

Few initiatives will provide your company with as many in-depth insights into your customers as effective buyer insights research. By asking your customers and prospective buyers the right questions you’ll further your understanding of:

• The distinct buying roles that exist in your buyer’s organization
• The different stages in the customer buying process
• The features that matter most to buyers’ business goals
• How your buyer views your product and your competitors’

While it provides a wealth of information, market research also comes with its share of challenges: generating support from stakeholders, difficulty contacting prospects, and unforgiving time constraints. Before you give up, we’d like to stress that the benefits of buyer insights certainly outweigh the challenges. Here are five of the most common market research challenges and the simply solutions to each.

The 5 Market Research Challenges (And Their Solutions)

Photo by : Michael Lokner 

Chief Business Officer at UserTesting

Tien Anh joined UserTesting in 2015 after extensive financial and strategic experiences at OpenView, where he was an investor and advisor to a global portfolio of fast-growing enterprise SaaS companies. Until 2021, he led the Finance, IT, and Business Intelligence team as CFO of UserTesting. He currently leads initiatives for long term growth investments as Chief Business Officer at UserTesting.

What’s in store for B2B marketing in 2024. Marketing expert Jon Miller shares his eight game changing predictions here.

ABM, or account-based marketing, is a powerful strategy to push relevant leads further down the funnel towards purchase. But for many companies, it’s often led by sales’ own criteria, rather than driven by powerful marketing data. Here’s how to do ABM the right way.

Ready to use paid advertising to grow your B2B startup’s customer base? Here’s an in depth guide to get you started.

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What Is Market Research?

• How It Works
• Primary vs. Secondary
• How to Conduct Research

The Bottom Line

• Marketing Essentials

How to Do Market Research, Types, and Example

Joules Garcia / Investopedia

Market research examines consumer behavior and trends in the economy to help a business develop and fine-tune its business idea and strategy. It helps a business understand its target market by gathering and analyzing data.

Market research is the process of evaluating the viability of a new service or product through research conducted directly with potential customers. It allows a company to define its target market and get opinions and other feedback from consumers about their interest in a product or service.

Research may be conducted in-house or by a third party that specializes in market research. It can be done through surveys and focus groups, among other ways. Test subjects are usually compensated with product samples or a small stipend for their time.

Key Takeaways

• Companies conduct market research before introducing new products to determine their appeal to potential customers.
• Tools include focus groups, telephone interviews, and questionnaires.
• The results of market research inform the final design of the product and determine how it will be positioned in the marketplace.
• Market research usually combines primary information, gathered directly from consumers, and secondary information, which is data available from external sources.

Market Research

How market research works.

Market research is used to determine the viability of a new product or service. The results may be used to revise the product design and fine-tune the strategy for introducing it to the public. This can include information gathered for the purpose of determining market segmentation . It also informs product differentiation , which is used to tailor advertising.

A business engages in various tasks to complete the market research process. It gathers information based on the market sector being targeted by the product. This information is then analyzed and relevant data points are interpreted to draw conclusions about how the product may be optimally designed and marketed to the market segment for which it is intended.

It is a critical component in the research and development (R&D) phase of a new product or service introduction. Market research can be conducted in many different ways, including surveys, product testing, interviews, and focus groups.

Market research is a critical tool that companies use to understand what consumers want, develop products that those consumers will use, and maintain a competitive advantage over other companies in their industry.

Primary Market Research vs. Secondary Market Research

Market research usually consists of a combination of:

• Primary research, gathered by the company or by an outside company that it hires
• Secondary research, which draws on external sources of data

Primary Market Research

Primary research generally falls into two categories: exploratory and specific research.

• Exploratory research is less structured and functions via open-ended questions. The questions may be posed in a focus group setting, telephone interviews, or questionnaires. It results in questions or issues that the company needs to address about a product that it has under development.
• Specific research delves more deeply into the problems or issues identified in exploratory research.

Secondary Market Research

All market research is informed by the findings of other researchers about the needs and wants of consumers. Today, much of this research can be found online.

Secondary research can include population information from government census data , trade association research reports , polling results, and research from other businesses operating in the same market sector.

History of Market Research

Formal market research began in Germany during the 1920s. In the United States, it soon took off with the advent of the Golden Age of Radio.

Companies that created advertisements for this new entertainment medium began to look at the demographics of the audiences who listened to each of the radio plays, music programs, and comedy skits that were presented.

They had once tried to reach the widest possible audience by placing their messages on billboards or in the most popular magazines. With radio programming, they had the chance to target rural or urban consumers, teenagers or families, and judge the results by the sales numbers that followed.

Types of Market Research

Face-to-face interviews.

From their earliest days, market research companies would interview people on the street about the newspapers and magazines that they read regularly and ask whether they recalled any of the ads or brands that were published in them. Data collected from these interviews were compared to the circulation of the publication to determine the effectiveness of those ads.

Market research and surveys were adapted from these early techniques.

To get a strong understanding of your market, it’s essential to understand demand, market size, economic indicators, location, market saturation, and pricing.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a small number of representative consumers chosen to try a product or watch an advertisement.

Afterward, the group is asked for feedback on their perceptions of the product, the company’s brand, or competing products. The company then takes that information and makes decisions about what to do with the product or service, whether that's releasing it, making changes, or abandoning it altogether.

Phone Research

The man-on-the-street interview technique soon gave way to the telephone interview. A telephone interviewer could collect information in a more efficient and cost-effective fashion.

Telephone research was a preferred tactic of market researchers for many years. It has become much more difficult in recent years as landline phone service dwindles and is replaced by less accessible mobile phones.

Survey Research

As an alternative to focus groups, surveys represent a cost-effective way to determine consumer attitudes without having to interview anyone in person. Consumers are sent surveys in the mail, usually with a coupon or voucher to incentivize participation. These surveys help determine how consumers feel about the product, brand, and price point.

Online Market Research

With people spending more time online, market research activities have shifted online as well. Data collection still uses a survey-style form. But instead of companies actively seeking participants by finding them on the street or cold calling them on the phone, people can choose to sign up, take surveys, and offer opinions when they have time.

This makes the process far less intrusive and less rushed, since people can participate on their own time and of their own volition.

How to Conduct Market Research

The first step to effective market research is to determine the goals of the study. Each study should seek to answer a clear, well-defined problem. For example, a company might seek to identify consumer preferences, brand recognition, or the comparative effectiveness of different types of ad campaigns.

After that, the next step is to determine who will be included in the research. Market research is an expensive process, and a company cannot waste resources collecting unnecessary data. The firm should decide in advance which types of consumers will be included in the research, and how the data will be collected. They should also account for the probability of statistical errors or sampling bias .

The next step is to collect the data and analyze the results. If the two previous steps have been completed accurately, this should be straightforward. The researchers will collect the results of their study, keeping track of the ages, gender, and other relevant data of each respondent. This is then analyzed in a marketing report that explains the results of their research.

The last step is for company executives to use their market research to make business decisions. Depending on the results of their research, they may choose to target a different group of consumers, or they may change their price point or some product features.

The results of these changes may eventually be measured in further market research, and the process will begin all over again.

Benefits of Market Research

Market research is essential for developing brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Since it is unlikely for a product to appeal equally to every consumer, a strong market research program can help identify the key demographics and market segments that are most likely to use a given product.

Market research is also important for developing a company’s advertising efforts. For example, if a company’s market research determines that its consumers are more likely to use Facebook than X (formerly Twitter), it can then target its advertisements to one platform instead of another. Or, if they determine that their target market is value-sensitive rather than price-sensitive, they can work on improving the product rather than reducing their prices.

Market research only works when subjects are honest and open to participating.

Example of Market Research

Many companies use market research to test new products or get information from consumers about what kinds of products or services they need and don’t currently have.

For example, a company that’s considering starting a business might conduct market research to test the viability of its product or service. If the market research confirms consumer interest, the business can proceed confidently with its business plan . If not, the company can use the results of the market research to make adjustments to the product to bring it in line with customer desires.

What Are the Main Types of Market Research?

The main types of market research are primary research and secondary research. Primary research includes focus groups, polls, and surveys. Secondary research includes academic articles, infographics, and white papers.

Qualitative research gives insights into how customers feel and think. Quantitative research uses data and statistics such as website views, social media engagement, and subscriber numbers.

What Is Online Market Research?

Online market research uses the same strategies and techniques as traditional primary and secondary market research, but it is conducted on the Internet. Potential customers may be asked to participate in a survey or give feedback on a product. The responses may help the researchers create a profile of the likely customer for a new product.

What Are Paid Market Research Surveys?

Paid market research involves rewarding individuals who agree to participate in a study. They may be offered a small payment for their time or a discount coupon in return for filling out a questionnaire or participating in a focus group.

What Is a Market Study?

A market study is an analysis of consumer demand for a product or service. It looks at all of the factors that influence demand for a product or service. These include the product’s price, location, competition, and substitutes as well as general economic factors that could influence the new product’s adoption, for better or worse.

Market research is a key component of a company’s research and development (R&D) stage. It helps companies understand in advance the viability of a new product that they have in development and to see how it might perform in the real world.

Britannica Money. “ Market Research .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Market Research and Competitive Analysis .”

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Market research: Everything you need to know

Last updated

5 February 2023

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Market research is key to developing any product or service to ensure you’re creating something that people actually want to use. This can save your company time and money while ensuring a customer-centric reputation from day one.

This guide looks at the ins and outs of market research from past and present. Keep reading to discover the power of market research and everything you need to know. 

• What is market research?

Market research is how businesses explore, learn, and gather information about a market or a specific market segment. You gather the research data in different ways, depending on your primary purpose. Reasons to undertake market research include wanting to:

Uncover potential buyer needs or market trends

Test how attractive new product ideas may be before you develop them

Learn buyer opinions about existing products and services compared to your competitors 

• When to use market research

To differentiate your brand from your competitors, you need the right data. Market research makes it easier to create a brand, product, or service that appeals to current and potential buyers.

You and your team must decide how valuable a business idea or a new or modified product may be before integrating it into your overall business plan. The data you collect gives you the basis for those decisions.

Market research is a critical part of strategic business planning. It tests ideas, enables effective resource allocation, and tightens your relationship with your current and future customer base.

You decide which methods to use based on the data you want to collect, why you want to collect it, and how you'll make the best use of it.

• Why do market research?

Effective market research gives you enough valuable data to make the right decisions. You want to minimize risk and optimize your marketing to maximize revenue and hit targets. Those decisions mainly revolve around how you can:

Build or improve on your brand identity

Attract more new buyers

Increase sales to existing buyers using upsell, cross-sell, and down-sell strategies

Improve your marketing impact to build better sales relationships 

Maintain or expand your market share

Catch, overtake, or stay ahead of your competitors

Decide the best ways to communicate with your target markets

Identify any product, service, or performance issues and how you may correct them

When you use accurate and comprehensive market research data, you can successfully enter a new market or grow your turnover in an existing one.

• How often should you do market research?

You should do market research frequently. That way, you will know you're still meeting buyer needs as they change before current sales levels potentially fall off. You can successfully introduce new or modified products and services by consulting your market to meet additional or changing needs and wants.

• Outcomes of good market research

Customer motivations change. People often buy a product or service to solve a problem, achieve a goal, satisfy a desire, or support an aspiration.

Motivations may be at the forefront of a buyer's mind: 'I am hungry, so I will buy something to eat.' 

Or they may be more subtle: 'I need new footwear, and I also want to look cool.' Researchers call this achieving or displaying approved cultural status.

When you know which motivations result in different groups of people buying savory or sweet food to satisfy that immediate hunger need, you can deliver focused advertising messages and make the greatest impact. 

What 'cool' means to Gen Z or Millennial buyers is often different, so knowing how to differentiate your marketing will deliver a high impact. Making the right advertising decisions can create and grow demand, which you’ll meet to meet.

To take a different example, let’s look at middle managers who aspire to the C-Suite. They’re likely to choose an office product or system which will solve the current processing problem, improve efficiencies, and maximize productivity. However, they’ll also select a product that makes them look innovative and budget-minded in the eyes of their colleagues and superiors. 

A high-tech crash is devastating. Office equipment that provides full technology backup and integrates with the corporate network, the cloud, and all mobile devices while delivering high-quality presentation materials should be an attractive product. Researching these broader issues will separate you from competitors who only research at an office-operational level. 

Your sales presentations will need to do two things:

Focus on the basic features, advantages, and benefits of your product

Raise the buyer's thinking about the career implications of buying from you

When you know and understand which motivators encourage buying decisions and which of those are more important than others, you can:

Make or modify products and services that you know will appeal to your target markets

Advertise, market, and sell more effectively

This is how you rise above and separate your company, products, and services from your competitors.

Motivations change, so market research keeps you in the loop

Another reason for doing market research is that motivations change. They change with age and broader fashion and lifestyle trends in the B2C universe, while business trends influence motivations in the B2B universe.

It's critical to know how your chosen market segments perceive your brand and offerings as their key motivations evolve. Market research gives you practical answers about your product or service while learning how your target market feels about them. Now we've looked at the what and the why, let's move on to the how.

• What are the main types of market research?

There are three main types of market research. In addition, it helps to know four terms before we look at the research methods.

Exploratory and specific market research

Exploratory market research is about asking questions to learn something new. If a business idea leads to a potential new offering, exploratory research will help you determine whether there is a market for it and how big that may be.

Specific market research would follow the exploratory phase. It deep dives into specific issues, problems, and possible solutions the exploratory phase exposed. Or you could use it to learn more about your current offerings in your existing markets.

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Primary research is what you, your team, or market research consultants do. You go straight to your target group and get the information you want. The information may be exploratory or specific.

Secondary research is about collecting what's already out there. It could be census data, academic research publications, survey results from government agencies, your trade association, and even your competitors. Facebook and other online sites mine vast amounts of data about their members and make it available for very target-specific marketing campaigns.

Now, let's look at the three main types of research.

What is online market research?

When you do market research on the internet, you're doing online market research. You can do both qualitative and quantitative studies and a secondary web search for published data that you want.

Qualitative research may include videos of current buyers using your products, one-on-one interviews, and group discussions. You will see how they use your products and how they and others respond to using them.

Quantitative research gathers data from surveys, questionnaires, and polls. Online research means participants can opt in, rather than your team cold-calling or mailing the survey. They can also take it at a time that suits them, making them more likely to be focused and thoughtful.

What you learn tells you about purchasing behavior and the user's perspective of advantages and shortcomings. Depending on the survey you create, results might tell you things like: 

What buyers have bought previously

Why they bought those items

How they assess your product

How your product compares to your competitors' products

What they will base future purchase decisions on.

Some benefits of online market research

Detailed and wide-ranging online research tends to be cheaper than other methods. Data collection is:

Recorded directly, rather than collecting it from separate groups or surveyors

Less likely to have inputting errors

Quicker to do an in-depth analysis of the raw results and complete them faster

Quicker to do reruns to provide nuanced opinion data

Easier for survey management to oversee and complete the reports

Faster to get the reports out to interested parties

What are paid market research surveys?

You pay people to attend an online session, ask prepared questions, and record the answers. You ask the same questions to each survey participant about the product or brand in question. After the session, you review and summarize all the answers to provide common opinions for your analysis.

When the group members can handle and use a product, they can more easily comment on it and compare it with other products from your company or competitors. Sometimes, you may wish to do the survey in real time. This could occur at a supermarket where the participant responds to the product merchandising of you and your competitors.

Choose your paid participants carefully. You want them to display your ideal niche market personas' approaches, attitudes, beliefs, and emotional responses.

What is a market study?

Market studies are extensive and best before developing a major innovation. You want to ensure the whole market finds the innovation appealing and affordable over a long time rather than just a small segment. Your study will investigate market dynamics and what motivates or demotivates purchase decisions. The study will include the following:

The size of the potential market in terms of potential buyers

Purchase histories of similar products or products that served a similar purpose

Likely purchase frequency of the primary and secondary products

Likely price ranges the target market will find acceptable

Competitor market share

Competitor advantages and shortcomings as perceived by your target market

Needs and wants not currently being met by products comparable to your new product

Let’s imagine you’re launching a new vacuum cleaner. You can identify a broader market by looking into purchase histories of similar products. Brooms did the job vacuum cleaners do today. 

Identifying the purchase frequency of primary and secondary products is also wise. If you sell heavy-duty vacuum cleaners, you’ll know they’re not easy to carry around. So how likely is your customer to also buy a lightweight vac for minor or quick cleaning? They may even add a hand-held vac to their cleaning arsenal to remove pet hairs and easily clean the drapes and blinds. 

• The history of market research

Before we discuss the specific steps to plan and execute successful market research, let's look at the history of this fascinating subject.

One of the earliest market research studies happened in 1914. Charles Parlin of Curtis Publishing Company said that automobile manufacturers could no longer sell what they decided, but what their customers wanted. 

His boss, Mr. Curtis, asked him to visit hundreds of dealerships to see where the rubber actually met the road. Parlin gave 2,500 sheets of research to his boss, so they could decide which advertisements worked best. Running better ads meant more advertising revenue, meaning wider magazine distribution. This also helped Mr. Curtis charge higher advertising fees.

Market research became something of a science in the 1920s. Rather than a local retailer or manufacturer speaking with local customers to see what they did and didn’t want, the Roaring Twenties’ mass product advertising and nationwide distribution demanded a more powerful approach. 

Automobiles encouraged the growth of city suburbs, while increased electricity supply meant companies could sell appliances. Commercial radio channels, telephone communication, and going to the movies reduced the feeling of rural and small-town isolation. Suddenly, everyone wanted what was once only available to a few. Manufacturing and innovation took off.

Making it, advertising it, and shipping it did not guarantee sales. Getting people to want it meant effective advertising. Making adverts that worked resulted in Daniel Starch coming up with a theory in 1920: People had to see and read attractive yet believable ads to act on them.

Starch and his team stopped as many people in the street as possible. They showed them an ad and asked if they remembered seeing it. If they had seen it, Starch asked which magazine they saw the ad in, what they thought of it, and whether they acted on it.

They collated the data to compare which magazine ads had the greatest effect on buying decisions.

George Gallup developed the research not by showing people ads but by asking: 

If they could remember which ads they'd seen

What they thought of them

What they did about it

His team eventually did face-to-face and telephone surveys.

Radio stations began to use Gallup's methods, asking people what they remembered hearing. They aimed to encourage manufacturers and retailers to run certain ads to appeal to their listeners.

In the 1930s, Robert Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld of Columbia University began focus groups to understand buyers, their preferences, objections, and motivations. This research uncovered mismatches between what people said and what they did.

They learned that a dominating group member could say something about their own experience or behavior and ask the group if others had noticed the same. Other group members sometimes agreed because the dominant member was persuasive, not because it was true for them. Many just went along with it, proving how much group dynamics matter. 

After World War II, market research became more concerned with understanding what made certain people respond to certain types of ad messages from a personal point of view.

Ernest Dichter used Freudian psychology to develop motivational research. While he went a little overboard on Freudian interpretation (people use soap to cleanse themselves of sin), he got his message out to advertisers. He surmised that if you figure out the personality of your product, you will know how to market it to people who exhibit the same personality traits.

Before we smacked gender roles on the head, Dichter would have linked an efficient, house-proud housewife to an effective vacuum cleaner. She needed a product that gave her home a permanent clean appearance. Her husband would love coming home to a shiny house, and her lady friends would be in awe. It's not just about vacs being better than brooms.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, computers and telephones enabled quantitative methods to be the focus of market researchers. Telephone surveys began to replace face-to-face interviews. John Howard said qualitative and quantitative research should work side-by-side. 

Researchers used psychology, sociology, and management science techniques to study buyer motivations and how their emotions impacted owning and consuming certain products and services. Focus groups became the order of the day once again.

Psychologists like Allan Pease, who pioneered studies in body language, began to develop the theory of buyer personas. He said that how companies advertise and sell to people is just as important as the psychological, social, and emotional principles researchers had previously developed.

In the 1970s and 80s, Neil Rackham further determined how critical it is to understand how senior execs make major purchase decisions. Researching your market from their point of view is critical. While you may have ascertained a need for the product, further market research must understand how C-Suite execs go through the purchase decision-making process.

That brings us up to date. Market research has developed into a sophisticated scientific process. When you research effectively, you’ll get the data you need to build your business.

• The steps for conducting market research

Researchers use different models, but we’ve included all the steps, so you won't miss anything.

As with all projects, actions fall into four categories: Planning, execution, assessment, and implementation.

1. Planning

Identify the need for a particular market research project

Review what you have done so far and already know to ensure your research will be direct, broad, and deep enough to deliver your intended results

Decide on the purpose and desired outcomes of your study

Determine your research objectives

Choose your research team and methodology

2. Execution

Create the research project methodology and process  (qualitative, quantitative, primary, or secondary) to deliver on the objectives 

Determine your research methods (i.e., online surveys, focus groups)

Create your data collection forms, questionnaires, etc.

Select your research targets (past, present, potential customers, or specific customer segments if you know them) 

Decide on the number of people you will contact, plus where and how to contact them. For your research to be reliable, the number must be large enough to be a good cross-section of your target market.

Collect the data

3. Assessment

Analyze the data

Decide on any follow-ups to collect more data or to refine your understanding of what you have already collected

Decide if further analysis of the data will deliver relevant and valuable nuanced opinions

Review the results

Write the report

Present the research findings and recommendations to appropriate stakeholders

4. Implementation

Based on the research results and recommendations, determine what impactful actions to execute to deliver your intended business results.

• How to get started

Your first step is to review what you have in your hand and decide who to share it with. When you and your team are clear about all the aspects of market research we've shared, you can decide which ideas, market segments, and products or services you should be researching. 

Get started today

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Written by Mary Kate Miller | June 1, 2021

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Market research is a cornerstone of all successful, strategic businesses. It can also be daunting for entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup or start a side hustle . What is market research, anyway? And how do you…do it?

We’ll walk you through absolutely everything you need to know about the market research process so that by the end of this guide, you’ll be an expert in market research too. And what’s more important: you’ll have actionable steps you can take to start collecting your own market research.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the organized process of gathering information about your target customers and market. Market research can help you better understand customer behavior and competitor strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide insight for the best strategies in launching new businesses and products. There are different ways to approach market research, including primary and secondary research and qualitative and quantitative research. The strongest approaches will include a combination of all four.

“Virtually every business can benefit from conducting some market research,” says Niles Koenigsberg of Real FiG Advertising + Marketing . “Market research can help you piece together your [business’s] strengths and weaknesses, along with your prospective opportunities, so that you can understand where your unique differentiators may lie.” Well-honed market research will help your brand stand out from the competition and help you see what you need to do to lead the market. It can also do so much more.

The Purposes of Market Research

Why do market research? It can help you…

• Pinpoint your target market, create buyer personas, and develop a more holistic understanding of your customer base and market.
• Understand current market conditions to evaluate risks and anticipate how your product or service will perform.
• Validate a concept prior to launch.
• Identify gaps in the market that your competitors have created or overlooked.
• Solve problems that have been left unresolved by the existing product/brand offerings.
• Identify opportunities and solutions for new products or services.
• Develop killer marketing strategies .

What Are the Benefits of Market Research?

Strong market research can help your business in many ways. It can…

• Strengthen your market position.
• Help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.
• Help you identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Minimize risk.
• Center your customers’ experience from the get-go.
• Help you create a dynamic strategy based on market conditions and customer needs/demands.

What Are the Basic Methods of Market Research?

The basic methods of market research include surveys, personal interviews, customer observation, and the review of secondary research. In addition to these basic methods, a forward-thinking market research approach incorporates data from the digital landscape like social media analysis, SEO research, gathering feedback via forums, and more. Throughout this guide, we will cover each of the methods commonly used in market research to give you a comprehensive overview.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Primary and secondary are the two main types of market research you can do. The latter relies on research conducted by others. Primary research, on the other hand, refers to the fact-finding efforts you conduct on your own.

This approach is limited, however. It’s likely that the research objectives of these secondary data points differ from your own, and it can be difficult to confirm the veracity of their findings.

Primary Market Research

Primary research is more labor intensive, but it generally yields data that is exponentially more actionable. It can be conducted through interviews, surveys, online research, and your own data collection. Every new business should engage in primary market research prior to launch. It will help you validate that your idea has traction, and it will give you the information you need to help minimize financial risk.

You can hire an agency to conduct this research on your behalf. This brings the benefit of expertise, as you’ll likely work with a market research analyst. The downside is that hiring an agency can be expensive—too expensive for many burgeoning entrepreneurs. That brings us to the second approach. You can also do the market research yourself, which substantially reduces the financial burden of starting a new business .

Secondary Market Research

Secondary research includes resources like government databases and industry-specific data and publications. It can be beneficial to start your market research with secondary sources because it’s widely available and often free-to-access. This information will help you gain a broad overview of the market conditions for your new business.

Identify Your Goals and Your Audience

Before you begin conducting interviews or sending out surveys, you need to set your market research goals. At the end of your market research process, you want to have a clear idea of who your target market is—including demographic information like age, gender, and where they live—but you also want to start with a rough idea of who your audience might be and what you’re trying to achieve with market research.

You can pinpoint your objectives by asking yourself a series of guiding questions:

• What are you hoping to discover through your research?
• Who are you hoping to serve better because of your findings?
• What do you think your market is?
• Who are your competitors?
• Are you testing the reception of a new product category or do you want to see if your product or service solves the problem left by a current gap in the market?
• Are you just…testing the waters to get a sense of how people would react to a new brand?

Once you’ve narrowed down the “what” of your market research goals, you’re ready to move onto how you can best achieve them. Think of it like algebra. Many math problems start with “solve for x.” Once you know what you’re looking for, you can get to work trying to find it. It’s a heck of a lot easier to solve a problem when you know you’re looking for “x” than if you were to say “I’m gonna throw some numbers out there and see if I find a variable.”

How to Do Market Research

This guide outlines every component of a comprehensive market research effort. Take into consideration the goals you have established for your market research, as they will influence which of these elements you’ll want to include in your market research strategy.

Secondary Data

Secondary data allows you to utilize pre-existing data to garner a sense of market conditions and opportunities. You can rely on published market studies, white papers, and public competitive information to start your market research journey.

Secondary data, while useful, is limited and cannot substitute your own primary data. It’s best used for quantitative data that can provide background to your more specific inquiries.

Find Your Customers Online

Once you’ve identified your target market, you can use online gathering spaces and forums to gain insights and give yourself a competitive advantage. Rebecca McCusker of The Creative Content Shop recommends internet recon as a vital tool for gaining a sense of customer needs and sentiment. “Read their posts and comments on forums, YouTube video comments, Facebook group [comments], and even Amazon/Goodreads book comments to get in their heads and see what people are saying.”

If you’re interested in engaging with your target demographic online, there are some general rules you should follow. First, secure the consent of any group moderators to ensure that you are acting within the group guidelines. Failure to do so could result in your eviction from the group.

Not all comments have the same research value. “Focus on the comments and posts with the most comments and highest engagement,” says McCusker. These high-engagement posts can give you a sense of what is already connecting and gaining traction within the group.

Social media can also be a great avenue for finding interview subjects. “LinkedIn is very useful if your [target customer] has a very specific job or works in a very specific industry or sector. It’s amazing the amount of people that will be willing to help,” explains Miguel González, a marketing executive at Dealers League . “My advice here is BE BRAVE, go to LinkedIn, or even to people you know and ask them, do quick interviews and ask real people that belong to that market and segment and get your buyer persona information first hand.”

Market research interviews can provide direct feedback on your brand, product, or service and give you a better understanding of consumer pain points and interests.

When organizing your market research interviews, you want to pay special attention to the sample group you’re selecting, as it will directly impact the information you receive. According to Tanya Zhang, the co-founder of Nimble Made , you want to first determine whether you want to choose a representative sample—for example, interviewing people who match each of the buyer persona/customer profiles you’ve developed—or a random sample.

“A sampling of your usual persona styles, for example, can validate details that you’ve already established about your product, while a random sampling may [help you] discover a new way people may use your product,” Zhang says.

Market Surveys

Market surveys solicit customer inclinations regarding your potential product or service through a series of open-ended questions. This direct outreach to your target audience can provide information on your customers’ preferences, attitudes, buying potential, and more.

Every expert we asked voiced unanimous support for market surveys as a powerful tool for market research. With the advent of various survey tools with accessible pricing—or free use—it’s never been easier to assemble, disseminate, and gather market surveys. While it should also be noted that surveys shouldn’t replace customer interviews , they can be used to supplement customer interviews to give you feedback from a broader audience.

Who to Include in Market Surveys

• Current customers
• Past customers
• Your existing audience (such as social media/newsletter audiences)

Example Questions to Include in Market Surveys

While the exact questions will vary for each business, here are some common, helpful questions that you may want to consider for your market survey. Demographic Questions: the questions that help you understand, demographically, who your target customers are:

• “What is your age?”
• “Where do you live?”
• “What is your gender identity?”
• “What is your household income?”
• “What is your household size?”
• “What do you do for a living?”
• “What is your highest level of education?”

Product-Based Questions: Whether you’re seeking feedback for an existing brand or an entirely new one, these questions will help you get a sense of how people feel about your business, product, or service:

• “How well does/would our product/service meet your needs?”
• “How does our product/service compare to similar products/services that you use?”
• “How long have you been a customer?” or “What is the likelihood that you would be a customer of our brand?

Personal/Informative Questions: the deeper questions that help you understand how your audience thinks and what they care about.

• “What are your biggest challenges?”
• “What’s most important to you?”
• “What do you do for fun (hobbies, interests, activities)?”
• “Where do you seek new information when researching a new product?”
• “How do you like to make purchases?”
• “What is your preferred method for interacting with a brand?”

Survey Tools

Online survey tools make it easy to distribute surveys and collect responses. The best part is that there are many free tools available. If you’re making your own online survey, you may want to consider SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, or Zoho Survey.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis is a breakdown of how your business stacks up against the competition. There are many different ways to conduct this analysis. One of the most popular methods is a SWOT analysis, which stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” This type of analysis is helpful because it gives you a more robust understanding of why a customer might choose a competitor over your business. Seeing how you stack up against the competition can give you the direction you need to carve out your place as a market leader.

Social Media Analysis

Social media has fundamentally changed the market research landscape, making it easier than ever to engage with a wide swath of consumers. Follow your current or potential competitors on social media to see what they’re posting and how their audience is engaging with it. Social media can also give you a lower cost opportunity for testing different messaging and brand positioning.

SEO Analysis and Opportunities

SEO analysis can help you identify the digital competition for getting the word out about your brand, product, or service. You won’t want to overlook this valuable information. Search listening tools offer a novel approach to understanding the market and generating the content strategy that will drive business. Tools like Google Trends and Awario can streamline this process.

Ready to Kick Your Business Into High Gear?

Now that you’ve completed the guide to market research you know you’re ready to put on your researcher hat to give your business the best start. Still not sure how actually… launch the thing? Our free mini-course can run you through the essentials for starting your side hustle .

About Mary Kate Miller

Mary Kate Miller writes about small business, real estate, and finance. In addition to writing for Foundr, her work has been published by The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more. She lives in Chicago.

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How To Present Your Market Research Results And Reports In An Efficient Way

Table of Contents

1) What Is A Market Research Report?

2) Market Research Reports Examples

3) Why Do You Need Market Research Reports

4) How To Make A Market Research Report?

5) Types Of Market Research Reports

6) Challenges & Mistakes Market Research Reports

Market research analyses are the go-to solution for many professionals, and for good reason: they save time, offer fresh insights, and provide clarity on your business. In turn, market research reports will help you to refine and polish your strategy. Plus, a well-crafted report will give your work more credibility while adding weight to any marketing recommendations you offer a client or executive.

But, while this is the case, today’s business world still lacks a way to present market-based research results efficiently. The static, antiquated nature of PowerPoint makes it a bad choice for presenting research discoveries, yet it is still widely used to present results. 

Fortunately, things are moving in the right direction. There are online data visualization tools that make it easy and fast to build powerful market research dashboards. They come in handy to manage the outcomes, but also the most important aspect of any analysis: the presentation of said outcomes, without which it becomes hard to make accurate, sound decisions. 

Here, we consider the benefits of conducting research analyses while looking at how to write and present market research reports, exploring their value, and, ultimately, getting the very most from your research results by using professional market research software .

Let’s get started.

What Is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is an online reporting tool used to analyze the public perception or viability of a company, product, or service. These reports contain valuable and digestible information like customer survey responses and social, economic, and geographical insights.

On a typical market research results example, you can interact with valuable trends and gain insight into consumer behavior and visualizations that will empower you to conduct effective competitor analysis. Rather than adding streams of tenuous data to a static spreadsheet, a full market research report template brings the outcomes of market-driven research to life, giving users a data analysis tool to create actionable strategies from a range of consumer-driven insights.

With digital market analysis reports, you can make your business more intelligent more efficient, and, ultimately, meet the needs of your target audience head-on. This, in turn, will accelerate your commercial success significantly.

Your Chance: Want to test a market research reporting software? Explore our 14-day free trial & benefit from interactive research reports!

How To Present Your Results: 4 Essential Market Research Report Templates

When it comes to sharing rafts of invaluable information, research dashboards are invaluable.

Any market analysis report example worth its salt will allow everyone to get a firm grip on their results and discoveries on a single page with ease. These dynamic online dashboards also boast interactive features that empower the user to drill down deep into specific pockets of information while changing demographic parameters, including gender, age, and region, filtering the results swiftly to focus on the most relevant insights for the task at hand.

These four market research report examples are different but equally essential and cover key elements required for market survey report success. You can also modify each and use it as a client dashboard .

While there are numerous types of dashboards that you can choose from to adjust and optimize your results, we have selected the top 3 that will tell you more about the story behind them. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Market Research Report: Brand Analysis

Our first example shares the results of a brand study. To do so, a survey has been performed on a sample of 1333 people, information that we can see in detail on the left side of the board, summarizing the gender, age groups, and geolocation.

**click to enlarge**

At the dashboard's center, we can see the market-driven research discoveries concerning first brand awareness with and without help, as well as themes and celebrity suggestions, to know which image the audience associates with the brand.

Such dashboards are extremely convenient to share the most important information in a snapshot. Besides being interactive (but it cannot be seen on an image), it is even easier to filter the results according to certain criteria without producing dozens of PowerPoint slides. For instance, I could easily filter the report by choosing only the female answers, only the people aged between 25 and 34, or only the 25-34 males if that is my target audience.

Primary KPIs:

a) Unaided Brand Awareness

The first market research KPI in this most powerful report example comes in the form of unaided brand awareness. Presented in a logical line-style chart, this particular market study report sample KPI is invaluable, as it will give you a clear-cut insight into how people affiliate your brand within their niche.

As you can see from our example, based on a specific survey question, you can see how your brand stacks up against your competitors regarding awareness. Based on these outcomes, you can formulate strategies to help you stand out more in your sector and, ultimately, expand your audience.

b) Aided Brand Awareness

This market survey report sample KPI focuses on aided brand awareness. A visualization that offers a great deal of insight into which brands come to mind in certain niches or categories, here, you will find out which campaigns and messaging your target consumers are paying attention to and engaging with.

By gaining access to this level of insight, you can conduct effective competitor research and gain valuable inspiration for your products, promotional campaigns, and marketing messages.

c) Brand image

When it comes to research reporting, understanding how others perceive your brand is one of the most golden pieces of information you could acquire. If you know how people feel about your brand image, you can take informed and very specific actions that will enhance the way people view and interact with your business.

By asking a focused question, this visual of KPIs will give you a definitive idea of whether respondents agree, disagree, or are undecided on particular descriptions or perceptions related to your brand image. If you’re looking to present yourself and your message in a certain way (reliable, charming, spirited, etc.), you can see how you stack up against the competition and find out if you need to tweak your imagery or tone of voice - invaluable information for any modern business.

d) Celebrity analysis

This indicator is a powerful part of our research KPI dashboard on top, as it will give you a direct insight into the celebrities, influencers, or public figures that your most valued consumers consider when thinking about (or interacting with) your brand.

Displayed in a digestible bar chart-style format, this useful metric will not only give you a solid idea of how your brand messaging is perceived by consumers (depending on the type of celebrity they associate with your brand) but also guide you on which celebrities or influencers you should contact.

By working with the right influencers in your niche, you will boost the impact and reach of your marketing campaigns significantly, improving your commercial awareness in the process. And this is the KPI that will make it happen.

2. Market Research Results On Customer Satisfaction

Here, we have some of the most important data a company should care about: their already-existing customers and their perception of their relationship with the brand. It is crucial when we know that it is five times more expensive to acquire a new consumer than to retain one.

This is why tracking metrics like the customer effort score or the net promoter score (how likely consumers are to recommend your products and services) is essential, especially over time. You need to improve these scores to have happy customers who will always have a much bigger impact on their friends and relatives than any of your amazing ad campaigns. Looking at other satisfaction indicators like the quality, pricing, and design, or the service they received is also a best practice: you want a global view of your performance regarding customer satisfaction metrics .

Such research results reports are a great tool for managers who do not have much time and hence need to use them effectively. Thanks to these dashboards, they can control data for long-running projects anytime.

Primary KPIs :

a) Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Another pivotal part of any informative research presentation is your NPS score, which will tell you how likely a customer is to recommend your brand to their peers.

Centered on overall customer satisfaction, your NPS Score can cover the functions and output of many departments, including marketing, sales, and customer service, but also serve as a building block for a call center dashboard . When you’re considering how to present your research effectively, this balanced KPI offers a masterclass. It’s logical, it has a cohesive color scheme, and it offers access to vital information at a swift glance. With an NPS Score, customers are split into three categories: promoters (those scoring your service 9 or 10), passives (those scoring your service 7 or 8), and detractors (those scoring your service 0 to 6). The aim of the game is to gain more promoters. By gaining an accurate snapshot of your NPS Score, you can create intelligent strategies that will boost your results over time.

b) Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The next in our examples of market research reports KPIs comes in the form of the CSAT. The vast majority of consumers that have a bad experience will not return. Honing in on your CSAT is essential if you want to keep your audience happy and encourage long-term consumer loyalty.

This magnificent, full report KPI will show how satisfied customers are with specific elements of your products or services. Getting to grips with these scores will allow you to pinpoint very specific issues while capitalizing on your existing strengths. As a result, you can take measures to improve your CSAT score while sharing positive testimonials on your social media platforms and website to build trust.

c) Customer Effort Score (CES)

When it comes to presenting research findings, keeping track of your CES Score is essential. The CES Score KPI will give you instant access to information on how easy or difficult your audience can interact with or discover your company based on a simple scale of one to ten.

By getting a clear-cut gauge of how your customers find engagement with your brand, you can iron out any weaknesses in your user experience (UX) offerings while spotting any friction, bottlenecks, or misleading messaging. In doing so, you can boost your CES score, satisfy your audience, and boost your bottom line.

3. Market Research Results On Product Innovation

This final market-driven research example report focuses on the product itself and its innovation. It is a useful report for future product development and market potential, as well as pricing decisions.

Using the same sample of surveyed people as for the first market-focused analytical report , they answer questions about their potential usage and purchase of the said product. It is good primary feedback on how the market would receive the new product you would launch. Then comes the willingness to pay, which helps set a price range that will not be too cheap to be trusted nor too expensive for what it is. That will be the main information for your pricing strategy.

a) Usage Intention

The first of our product innovation KPI-based examples comes in the form of usage intention. When you’re considering how to write a market research report, including metrics centered on consumer intent is critical.

This simple yet effective visualization will allow you to understand not only how users see your product but also whether they prefer previous models or competitor versions . While you shouldn’t base all of your product-based research on this KPI, it is very valuable, and you should use it to your advantage frequently.

b) Purchase Intention

Another aspect to consider when looking at how to present market research data is your audience’s willingness or motivation to purchase your product. Offering percentage-based information, this effective KPI provides a wealth of at-a-glance information to help you make accurate forecasts centered on your product and service offerings.

Analyzing this information regularly will give you the confidence and direction to develop strategies that will steer you to a more prosperous future, meeting the ever-changing needs of your audience on an ongoing basis.

c) Willingness To Pay (WPS)

Our final market research example KPI is based on how willing customers are to pay for a particular service or product based on a specific set of parameters. This dynamic visualization, represented in an easy-to-follow pie chart, will allow you to realign the value of your product (USPs, functions, etc.) while setting price points that are most likely to result in conversions. This is a market research presentation template that every modern organization should use to its advantage.

4. Market Research Report On Customer Demographics 

This particular example of market research report, generated with a modern dashboard creator , is a powerful tool, as it displays a cohesive mix of key demographic information in one intuitive space.

By breaking down these deep pockets of consumer-centric information, you can gain the power to develop more impactful customer communications while personalizing every aspect of your target audience’s journey across every channel or touchpoint. As a result, you can transform theoretical insights into actionable strategies that will result in significant commercial growth. 

Every section of this responsive marketing research report works in unison to build a profile of your core audience in a way that will guide your company’s consumer-facing strategies with confidence. With in-depth visuals based on gender, education level, and tech adoption, you have everything you need to speak directly to your audience at your fingertips.

Let’s look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) of this invaluable market research report example in more detail.

a) Customer By Gender

This KPI is highly visual and offers a clear-cut representation of your company’s gender share over time. By gaining access to this vital information, you can deliver a more personalized experience to specific audience segments while ensuring your messaging is fair, engaging, and inclusive.

b) Customers by education level

The next market analysis report template is a KPI that provides a logical breakdown of your customers’ level of education. By using this as a demographic marker, you can refine your products to suit the needs of your audience while crafting your content in a way that truly resonates with different customer groups.

c) Customers by technology adoption

Particularly valuable if you’re a company that sells tech goods or services, this linear KPI will show you where your customers are in terms of technological know-how or usage. By getting to grips with this information over time, you can develop your products or services in a way that offers direct value to your consumers while making your launches or promotions as successful as possible.

d) Customer age groups

By understanding your customers’ age distribution in detail, you can gain a deep understanding of their preferences. And that’s exactly what this market research report sample KPI does. Presented in a bar chart format, this KPI will give you a full breakdown of your customers’ age ranges, allowing you to build detailed buyer personas and segment your audience effectively.

Why Do You Need Market Research Reports?

As the adage goes, “Look before you leap“ – which is exactly what a research report is here for. As the headlights of a car, they will show you the pitfalls and fast lanes on your road to success: likes and dislikes of a specific market segment in a certain geographical area, their expectations, and readiness. Among other things, a research report will let you:

• Get a holistic view of the market : learn more about the target market and understand the various factors involved in the buying decisions. A broader view of the market lets you benchmark other companies you do not focus on. This, in turn, will empower you to gather the industry data that counts most. This brings us to our next point.
• Curate industry information with momentum: Whether you’re looking to rebrand, improve on an existing service, or launch a new product, time is of the essence. By working with the best market research reports created with modern BI reporting tools , you can visualize your discoveries and data, formatting them in a way that not only unearths hidden insights but also tells a story - a narrative that will gain a deeper level of understanding into your niche or industry. The features and functionality of a market analysis report will help you grasp the information that is most valuable to your organization, pushing you ahead of the pack in the process.
• Validate internal research: Doing the internal analysis is one thing, but double-checking with a third party also greatly helps avoid getting blinded by your own data.
• Use actionable data and make informed decisions: Once you understand consumer behavior as well as the market, your competitors, and the issues that will affect the industry in the future, you are better armed to position your brand. Combining all of it with the quantitative data collected will allow you to more successful product development. To learn more about different methods, we suggest you read our guide on data analysis techniques .
• Strategic planning: When you want to map out big-picture organizational goals, launch a new product development, plan a geographic market expansion, or even a merger and acquisition – all of this strategic thinking needs solid foundations to fulfill the variety of challenges that come along.
• Consistency across the board: Collecting, presenting, and analyzing your results in a way that’s smarter, more interactive, and more cohesive will ensure your customer communications, marketing campaigns, user journey, and offerings meet your audience’s needs consistently across the board. The result? Faster growth, increased customer loyalty, and more profit.
• Better communication: The right market research analysis template (or templates) will empower everyone in the company with access to valuable information - the kind that is relevant and comprehensible. When everyone is moving to the beat of the same drum, they will collaborate more effectively and, ultimately, push the venture forward thanks to powerful online data analysis techniques.
• Centralization: Building on the last point, using a powerful market research report template in the form of a business intelligence dashboard will make presenting your findings to external stakeholders and clients far more effective, as you can showcase a wealth of metrics, information, insights, and invaluable feedback from one centralized, highly visual interactive screen. 
• Brand reputation: In the digital age, brand reputation is everything. By making vital improvements in all of the key areas above, you will meet your customers’ needs head-on with consistency while finding innovative ways to stand out from your competitors. These are the key ingredients of long-term success.

How To Present Market Research Analysis Results?

Here we look at how you should present your research reports, considering the steps it takes to connect with the outcomes you need to succeed:

• Collect your data 

As with any reporting process, you first and foremost need to collect the data you’ll use to conduct your studies. Businesses conduct research studies to analyze their brand awareness, identity, and influence in the market. For product development and pricing decisions, among many others. That said, there are many ways to collect information for a market research report. Among some of the most popular ones, we find: 

• Surveys: Probably the most common way to collect research data, surveys can come in the form of open or closed questions that can be answered anonymously. They are the cheapest and fastest way to collect insights about your customers and business. 
• Interviews : These are face-to-face discussions that allow the researcher to analyze responses as well as the body language of the interviewees. This method is often used to define buyer personas by analyzing the subject's budget, job title, lifestyle, wants, and needs, among other things. 
• Focus groups : This method involves a group of people discussing a topic with a mediator. It is often used to evaluate a new product or new feature or to answer a specific question that the researcher might have. 
• Observation-based research : In this type of research, the researcher or business sits back and watches customers interact with the product without any instructions or help. It allows us to identify pain points as well as strong features. 
• Market segmentation : This study allows you to identify and analyze potential market segments to target. Businesses use it to expand into new markets and audiences. 

These are just a few of the many ways in which you can gather your information. The important point is to keep the research objective as straightforward as possible. Supporting yourself with professional BI solutions to clean, manage, and present your insights is probably the smartest choice.

2. Hone in on your research:

When looking at how to source consumer research in a presentation, you should focus on two areas: primary and secondary research. Primary research comes from your internal data, monitoring existing organizational practices, the effectiveness of sales, and the tools used for communication, for instance. Primary research also assesses market competition by evaluating the company plans of the competitors. Secondary research focuses on existing data collected by a third party, information used to perform benchmarking and market analysis. Such metrics help in deciding which market segments are the ones the company should focus its efforts on or where the brand is standing in the minds of consumers. Before you start the reporting process, you should set your goals, segmenting your research into primary and secondary segments to get to grips with the kind of information you need to work with to achieve effective results.

3. Segment your customers:

To give your market research efforts more context, you should segment your customers into different groups according to the preferences outlined in the survey or feedback results or by examining behavioral or demographic data.

If you segment your customers, you can tailor your market research and analysis reports to display only the information, charts, or graphics that will provide actionable insights into their wants, needs, or industry-based pain points. 

• Identify your stakeholders:

Once you’ve drilled down into your results and segmented your consumer groups, it’s important to consider the key stakeholders within the organization that will benefit from your information the most. 

By looking at both internal and external stakeholders, you will give your results a path to effective presentation, gaining the tools to understand which areas of feedback or data are most valuable, as well as most redundant. As a consequence, you will ensure your results are concise and meet the exact information needs of every stakeholder involved in the process.

• Set your KPIs:

First, remember that your reports should be concise and accurate - straight to the point without omitting any essential information. Work to ensure your insights are clean and organized, with participants grouped into relevant categories (demographics, profession, industry, education, etc.). Once you’ve organized your research, set your goals, and cleaned your data, you should set your KPIs to ensure your report is populated with the right visualizations to get the job done. Explore our full library of interactive KPI examples for inspiration.

• Include competitor’s analysis 

Whether you are doing product innovation research, customer demographics, pricing, or any other, including some level of insights about competitors in your reports is always recommended as it can help your business or client better understand where they stand in the market. That being said, competitor analysis is not as easy as picking a list of companies in the same industry and listing them. Your main competitor can be just a company's division in an entirely different industry. For example, Apple Music competes with Spotify even though Apple is a technology company. Therefore, it is important to carefully analyze competitors from a general but detailed level. 

Providing this kind of information in your reports can also help you find areas that competitors are not exploiting or that are weaker and use them to your advantage to become a market leader. 

• Produce your summary:

To complement your previous efforts, writing an executive summary of one or two pages that will explain the general idea of the report is advisable. Then come the usual body parts:

• An introduction providing background information, target audience, and objectives;
• The qualitative research describes the participants in the research and why they are relevant to the business;
• The survey research outlines the questions asked and answered;
• A summary of the insights and metrics used to draw the conclusions, the research methods chosen, and why;
• A presentation of the findings based on your research and an in-depth explanation of these conclusions.
• Use a mix of visualizations:

When presenting your results and discoveries, you should aim to use a balanced mix of text, graphs, charts, and interactive visualizations.

Using your summary as a guide, you should decide which type of visualization will present each specific piece of market research data most effectively (often, the easier to understand and more accessible, the better).

Doing so will allow you to create a story that will put your research information into a living, breathing context, providing a level of insight you need to transform industry, competitor, or consumer info or feedback into actionable strategies and initiatives.

• Be careful not to mislead 

Expanding on the point above, using a mix of visuals can prove highly valuable in presenting your results in an engaging and understandable way. That being said, when not used correctly, graphs and charts can also become misleading. This is a popular practice in the media, news, and politics, where designers tweak the visuals to manipulate the masses into believing a certain conclusion. This is a very unethical practice that can also happen by mistake when you don’t pick the right chart or are not using it in the correct way. Therefore, it is important to outline the message you are trying to convey and pick the chart type that will best suit those needs. 

Additionally, you should also be careful with the data you choose to display, as it can also become misleading. This can happen if you, for example, cherry-pick data, which means only showing insights that prove a conclusion instead of the bigger picture. Or confusing correlation with causation, which means assuming that because two events happened simultaneously, one caused the other. 

Being aware of these practices is of utmost importance as objectivity is crucial when it comes to dealing with data analytics, especially if you are presenting results to clients. Our guides on misleading statistics and misleading data visualizations can help you learn more about this important topic. 

• Use professional dashboards:

To optimize your market research discoveries, you must work with a dynamic business dashboard . Not only are modern dashboards presentable and customizable, but they will offer you past, predictive, and real-time insights that are accurate, interactive, and yield long-lasting results.

All market research reports companies or businesses gathering industry or consumer-based information will benefit from professional dashboards, as they offer a highly powerful means of presenting your data in a way everyone can understand. And when that happens, everyone wins.

Did you know? The interactive nature of modern dashboards like datapine also offers the ability to quickly filter specific pockets of information with ease, offering swift access to invaluable insights.

• Prioritize interactivity 

The times when reports were static are long gone. Today, to extract the maximum value out of your research data, you need to be able to explore the information and answer any critical questions that arise during the presentation of results. To do so, modern reporting tools provide multiple interactivity features to help you bring your research results to life. 

For instance, a drill-down filter lets you go into lower levels of hierarchical data without generating another graph. For example, imagine you surveyed customers from 10 different countries. In your report, you have a chart displaying the number of customers by country, but you want to analyze a specific country in detail. A drill down filter would enable you to click on a specific country and display data by city on that same chart. Even better, a global filter would allow you to filter the entire report to show only results for that specific country. 

Through the use of interactive filters, such as the one we just mentioned, you’ll not only make the presentation of results more efficient and profound, but you’ll also avoid generating pages-long reports to display static results. All your information will be displayed in a single interactive page that can be filtered and explored upon need.  

• Customize the reports 

This is a tip that is valuable for any kind of research report, especially when it comes to agencies that are reporting to external clients. Customizing the report to match your client’s colors, logo, font, and overall branding will help them grasp the data better, thanks to a familiar environment. This is an invaluable tip as often your audience will not feel comfortable dealing with data and might find it hard to understand or intimidating. Therefore, providing a familiar look that is also interactive and easier to understand will keep them engaged and collaborative throughout the process. 

Plus, customizing the overall appearance of the report will also make your agency look more professional, adding extra value to your service. 

• Know your design essentials 

When you’re presenting your market research reports sample to internal or external stakeholders, having a firm grasp on fundamental design principles will make your metrics and insights far more persuasive and compelling.

By arranging your metrics in a balanced and logical format, you can guide users toward key pockets of information exactly when needed. In turn, this will improve decision-making and navigation, making your reports as impactful as possible.

For essential tips, read our 23 dashboard design principles & best practices to enhance your analytics process.

• Think of security and privacy 

Cyberattacks are increasing at a concerning pace, making security a huge priority for organizations of all sizes today. The costs of having your sensitive information leaked are not only financial but also reputational, as customers might not trust you again if their data ends up in the wrong hands. Given that market research analysis is often performed by agencies that handle data from clients, security and privacy should be a top priority.  

To ensure the required security and privacy, it is necessary to invest in the right tools to present your research results. For instance, tools such as datapine offer enterprise-level security protocols that ensure your information is encrypted and protected at all times. Plus, the tool also offers additional security features, such as being able to share your reports through a password-protected URL or to set viewer rights to ensure only the right people can access and manipulate the data. 

• Keep on improving & evolving

Each time you gather or gain new marketing research reports or market research analysis report intel, you should aim to refine your existing dashboards to reflect the ever-changing landscape around you.

If you update your reports and dashboards according to the new research you conduct and new insights you connect with, you will squeeze maximum value from your metrics, enjoying consistent development in the process.

Types of Market Research Reports: Primary & Secondary Research

With so many market research examples and such little time, knowing how to best present your insights under pressure can prove tricky.

To squeeze every last drop of value from your market research efforts and empower everyone with access to the right information, you should arrange your information into two main groups: primary research and secondary research.

A. Primary research

Primary research is based on acquiring direct or first-hand information related to your industry or sector and the customers linked to it.

Exploratory primary research is an initial form of information collection where your team might set out to identify potential issues, opportunities, and pain points related to your business or industry. This type of research is usually carried out in the form of general surveys or open-ended consumer Q&As, which nowadays are often performed online rather than offline . 

Specific primary research is definitive, with information gathered based on the issues, information, opportunities, or pain points your business has already uncovered. When doing this kind of research, you can drill down into a specific segment of your customers and seek answers to the opportunities, issues, or pain points in question.

When you’re conducting primary research to feed into your market research reporting efforts, it’s important to find reliable information sources. The most effective primary research sources include:

• Consumer-based statistical data
• Social media content
• Polls and Q&A
• Trend-based insights
• Competitor research
• First-hand interviews

B. Secondary research

Secondary research refers to every strand of relevant data or public records you have to gain a deeper insight into your market and target consumers. These sources include trend reports, market stats, industry-centric content, and sales insights you have at your disposal.  Secondary research is an effective way of gathering valuable intelligence about your competitors. 

You can gather very precise, insightful secondary market research insights from:

• Public records and resources like Census data, governmental reports, or labor stats
• Commercial resources like Gartner, Statista, or Forrester
• Articles, documentaries, and interview transcripts

Another essential branch of both primary and secondary research is internal intelligence. When it comes to efficient market research reporting examples that will benefit your organization, looking inward is a powerful move. 

Existing sales, demographic, or marketing performance insights will lead you to valuable conclusions. Curating internal information will ensure your market research discoveries are well-rounded while helping you connect with the information that will ultimately give you a panoramic view of your target market. 

By understanding both types of research and how they can offer value to your business, you can carefully choose the right informational sources, gather a wide range of intelligence related to your specific niche, and, ultimately, choose the right market research report sample for your specific needs.

If you tailor your market research report format to the type of research you conduct, you will present your visualizations in a way that provides the right people with the right insights, rather than throwing bundles of facts and figures on the wall, hoping that some of them stick.

Taking ample time to explore a range of primary and secondary sources will give your discoveries genuine context. By doing so, you will have a wealth of actionable consumer and competitor insights at your disposal at every stage of your organization’s development (a priceless weapon in an increasingly competitive digital age). 

Dynamic market research is the cornerstone of business development, and a dashboard builder is the vessel that brings these all-important insights to life. Once you get into that mindset, you will ensure that your research results always deliver maximum value.

Common Challenges & Mistakes Of Market Research Reporting & Analysis

We’ve explored different types of market research analysis examples and considered how to conduct effective research. Now, it’s time to look at the key mistakes of market research reporting.  Let’s start with the mistakes.

The mistakes

One of the biggest mistakes that stunt the success of a company’s market research efforts is strategy. Without taking the time to gather an adequate mix of insights from various sources and define your key aims or goals, your processes will become disjointed. You will also suffer from a severe lack of organizational vision.

For your market research-centric strategy to work, everyone within the company must be on the same page. Your core aims and objectives must align throughout the business, and everyone must be clear on their specific role. If you try to craft a collaborative strategy and decide on your informational sources from the very start of your journey, your strategy will deliver true growth and intelligence.

• Measurement

Another classic market research mistake is measurement – or, more accurately, a lack of precise measurement. When embarking on market intelligence gathering processes, many companies fail to select the right KPIs and set the correct benchmarks for the task at hand. Without clearly defined goals, many organizations end up with a market analysis report format that offers little or no value in terms of decision-making or market insights.

To drive growth with your market research efforts, you must set clearly defined KPIs that align with your specific goals, aims, and desired outcomes.

• Competition

A common mistake among many new or scaling companies is failing to explore and examine the competition. This will leave you with gaping informational blindspots. To truly benefit from market research, you must gather valuable nuggets of information from every key source available. Rather than solely looking at your consumers and the wider market (which is incredibly important), you should take the time to see what approach your direct competitors have adopted while getting to grips with the content and communications.

One of the most effective ways of doing so (and avoiding such a monumental market research mistake) is by signing up for your competitors’ mailing lists, downloading their apps, and examining their social media content. This will give you inspiration for your own efforts while allowing you to exploit any gaps in the market that your competitors are failing to fill.

The challenges

• Informational quality

We may have an almost infinite wealth of informational insights at our fingertips, but when it comes to market research, knowing which information to trust can prove an uphill struggle.

When working with metrics, many companies risk connecting with inaccurate insights or leading to a fruitless informational rabbit hole, wasting valuable time and resources in the process. To avoid such a mishap, working with a trusted modern market research and analysis sample is the only way forward.

• Senior buy-in

Another pressing market research challenge that stunts organizational growth is the simple case of senior buy-in. While almost every senior decision-maker knows that market research is an essential component of a successful commercial strategy, many are reluctant to invest an ample amount of time or money in the pursuit.

The best way to overcome such a challenge is by building a case that defines exactly how your market research strategies will offer a healthy ROI to every key aspect of the organization, from marketing and sales to customer experience (CX) and beyond.

• Response rates

Low interview, focus group, or poll response rates can have a serious impact on the success and value of your market research strategy. Even with adequate senior buy-in, you can’t always guarantee that you will get enough responses from early-round interviews or poll requests. If you don’t, your market research discoveries run the risk of being shallow or offering little in the way of actionable insight.

To overcome this common challenge, you can improve the incentive you offer your market research prospects while networking across various platforms to discover new contact opportunities. Changing the tone of voice of your ads or emails will also help boost your consumer or client response rates.

Bringing Your Reports a Step Further

Even if it is still widespread for market-style research results presentation, using PowerPoint at this stage is a hassle and presents many downsides and complications. When busy managers or short-on-time top executives grab a report, they want a quick overview that gives them an idea of the results and the big picture that addresses the objectives: they need a dashboard. This can be applied to all areas of a business that need fast and interactive data visualizations to support their decision-making.

We all know that a picture conveys more information than simple text or figures, so managing to bring it all together on an actionable dashboard will convey your message more efficiently. Besides, market research dashboards have the incredible advantage of always being up-to-date since they work with real-time insights: the synchronization/updating nightmare of dozens of PowerPoint slides doesn’t exist for you anymore. This is particularly helpful for tracking studies performed over time that recurrently need their data to be updated with more recent ones.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies must identify and grab new opportunities as they arise while staying away from threats and adapting quickly. In order to always be a step further and make the right decisions, it is critical to perform market research studies to get the information needed and make important decisions with confidence.

We’ve asked the question, “What is a market research report?”, and examined the dynamics of a modern market research report example, and one thing’s for sure: a visual market research report is the best way to understand your customer and thus increase their satisfaction by meeting their expectations head-on. 

From looking at a sample of a market research report, it’s also clear that modern dashboards help you see what is influencing your business with clarity, understand where your brand is situated in the market, and gauge the temperature of your niche or industry before a product or service launch. Once all the studies are done, you must present them efficiently to ensure everyone in the business can make the right decisions that result in real progress. Market research reports are your key allies in the matter.

To start presenting your results with efficient, interactive, dynamic research reports and win on tomorrow’s commercial battlefield, try our dashboard reporting software and test every feature with our 14-day free trial !

Types of market research: Methods and examples

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Here at GWI we publish a steady stream of blogs, reports, and other resources that dig deep into specific market research topics.

But what about the folks who’d appreciate a more general overview of market research that explains the big picture? Don’t they deserve some love too?

Of course they do. That’s why we’ve created this overview guide focusing on types of market research and examples. With so many market research companies to choose from, having a solid general understanding of how this sector works is essential for any brand or business that wants to pick the right market research partner.

So with that in mind, let’s start at the very beginning and get clear on…

Market research definition

At the risk of stating the slightly obvious, market research is the gathering and analyzing of data on consumers, competitors, distributors, and markets. As such it’s not quite the same as consumer research , but there’s significant overlap.

Market research matters because it can help you take the guesswork out of getting through to audiences. By studying consumers and gathering information on their likes, dislikes, and so on, brands can make evidence-based decisions instead of relying on instinct or experience. 

What is market research?

Market research is the organized gathering of information about target markets and consumers’ needs and preferences. It’s an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness.

If a business wants to know – really know – what sort of products or services consumers want to buy, along with where, when, and how those products and services should be marketed, it just makes sense to ask the prospective audience. 

Without the certainty that market research brings, a business is basically hoping for the best. And while we salute their optimism, that’s not exactly a reliable strategy for success.

What are the types of market research?

Primary research .

Primary research is a type of market research you either conduct yourself or hire someone to do on your behalf.

A classic example of primary research involves going directly to a source – typically customers or prospective customers in your target market – to ask questions and gather information about a product or service. Interviewing methods include in-person, online surveys, phone calls, and focus groups.

The big advantage of primary research is that it’s directly focused on your objectives, so the outcome will be conclusive, detailed insights – particularly into customer views – making it the gold standard.

The disadvantages are it can be time-consuming and potentially costly, plus there’s a risk of survey bias creeping in, in the sense that research samples may not be representative of the wider group.

Secondary research 

Primary market research means you collect the data your business needs, whereas the types of market research known as secondary market research use information that’s already been gathered for other purposes but can still be valuable. Examples include published market studies, white papers, analyst reports, customer emails, and customer surveys/feedback.

For many small businesses with limited budgets, secondary market research is their first choice because it’s easier to acquire and far more affordable than primary research.

Secondary research can still answer specific business questions, but with limitations. The data collected from that audience may not match your targeted audience exactly, resulting in skewed outcomes. 

A big benefit of secondary market research is helping lay the groundwork and get you ready to carry out primary market research by making sure you’re focused on what matters most.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is one of the two fundamental types of market research. Qualitative research is about people and their opinions. Typically conducted by asking questions either one-on-one or in groups, qualitative research can help you define problems and learn about customers’ opinions, values, and beliefs.

Classic examples of qualitative research are long-answer questions like “Why do you think this product is better than competitive products? Why do you think it’s not?”, or “How would you improve this new service to make it more appealing?”

Because qualitative research generally involves smaller sample sizes than its close cousin quantitative research, it gives you an anecdotal overview of your subject, rather than highly detailed information that can help predict future performance.

Qualitative research is particularly useful if you’re developing a new product, service, website or ad campaign and want to get some feedback before you commit a large budget to it.

Quantitative research

If qualitative research is all about opinions, quantitative research is all about numbers, using math to uncover insights about your audience. 

Typical quantitative research questions are things like, “What’s the market size for this product?” or “How long are visitors staying on this website?”. Clearly the answers to both will be numerical.

Quantitative research usually involves questionnaires. Respondents are asked to complete the survey, which marketers use to understand consumer needs, and create strategies and marketing plans.

Importantly, because quantitative research is math-based, it’s statistically valid, which means you’re in a good position to use it to predict the future direction of your business.

Consumer research 

As its name implies, consumer research gathers information about consumers’ lifestyles, behaviors, needs and preferences, usually in relation to a particular product or service. It can include both quantitative and qualitative studies.

Examples of consumer research in action include finding ways to improve consumer perception of a product, or creating buyer personas and market segments, which help you successfully market your product to different types of customers.

Understanding consumer trends , driven by consumer research, helps businesses understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles. The result helps brands improve their products and services by making them more customer-centric, increasing customer satisfaction, and boosting bottom line in the process.

Product research 

Product research gives a new product (or indeed service, we don’t judge) its best chance of success, or helps an existing product improve or increase market share.

It’s common sense: by finding out what consumers want and adjusting your offering accordingly, you gain a competitive edge. It can be the difference between a product being a roaring success or an abject failure.

Examples of product research include finding ways to develop goods with a higher value, or identifying exactly where innovation effort should be focused. 

Product research goes hand-in-hand with other strands of market research, helping you make informed decisions about what consumers want, and what you can offer them.

Brand research  

Brand research is the process of gathering feedback from your current, prospective, and even past customers to understand how your brand is perceived by the market.

It covers things like brand awareness, brand perceptions, customer advocacy, advertising effectiveness, purchase channels, audience profiling, and whether or not the brand is a top consideration for consumers.

The result helps take the guesswork out of your messaging and brand strategy. Like all types of market research, it gives marketing leaders the data they need to make better choices based on fact rather than opinion or intuition.

Market research methods 

So far we’ve reviewed various different types of market research, now let’s look at market research methods, in other words the practical ways you can uncover those all-important insights.

Consumer research platform 

A consumer research platform like GWI is a smart way to find on-demand market research insights in seconds.

In a world of fluid markets and changing attitudes, a detailed understanding of your consumers, developed using the right research platform, enables you to stop guessing and start knowing.

As well as providing certainty, consumer research platforms massively accelerate speed to insight. Got a question? Just jump on your consumer research platform and find the answer – job done.

The ability to mine data for answers like this is empowering – suddenly you’re in the driving seat with a world of possibilities ahead of you. Compared to the most obvious alternative – commissioning third party research that could take weeks to arrive – the right consumer research platform is basically a magic wand.

Admittedly we’re biased, but GWI delivers all this and more. Take our platform for a quick spin and see for yourself.

And the downside of using a consumer research platform? Well, no data set, however fresh or thorough, can answer every question. If you need really niche insights then your best bet is custom market research , where you can ask any question you like, tailored to your exact needs.

Face-to-face interviews 

Despite the rise in popularity of online surveys , face-to-face survey interviewing – using mobile devices or even the classic paper survey – is still a popular data collection method.

In terms of advantages, face-to-face interviews help with accurate screening, in the sense the interviewee can’t easily give misleading answers about, say, their age. The interviewer can also make a note of emotions and non-verbal cues. 

On the other hand, face-to-face interviews can be costly, while the quality of data you get back often depends on the ability of the interviewer. Also, the size of the sample is limited to the size of your interviewing staff, the area in which the interviews are conducted, and the number of qualified respondents within that area.

Social listening 

Social listening is a powerful solution for brands who want to keep an ear to the ground, gathering unfiltered thoughts and opinions from consumers who are posting on social media. 

Many social listening tools store data for up to a couple of years, great for trend analysis that needs to compare current and past conversations.

Social listening isn’t limited to text. Images, videos, and emojis often help us better understand what consumers are thinking, saying, and doing better than more traditional research methods. 

Perhaps the biggest downside is there are no guarantees with social listening, and you never know what you will (or won’t) find. It can also be tricky to gauge sentiment accurately if the language used is open to misinterpretation, for example if a social media user describes something as “sick”.

There’s also a potential problem around what people say vs. what they actually do. Tweeting about the gym is a good deal easier than actually going. The wider problem – and this may shock you – is that not every single thing people write on social media is necessarily true, which means social listening can easily deliver unreliable results.

Public domain data 

Public domain data comes from think tanks and government statistics or research centers like the UK’s National Office for Statistics or the United States Census Bureau and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences. Other sources are things like research journals, news media, and academic material.

Its advantages for market research are it’s cheap (or even free), quick to access, and easily available. Public domain datasets can be huge, so potentially very rich.

On the flip side, the data can be out of date, it certainly isn’t exclusive to you, and the collection methodology can leave much to be desired. But used carefully, public domain data can be a useful source of secondary market research.

Telephone interviews 

You know the drill – you get a call from a researcher who asks you questions about a particular topic and wants to hear your opinions. Some even pay or offer other rewards for your time.

Telephone surveys are great for reaching niche groups of consumers within a specific geographic area or connected to a particular brand, or who aren’t very active in online channels. They’re not well-suited for gathering data from broad population groups, simply because of the time and labor involved.

How to use market research 

Data isn’t an end in itself; instead it’s a springboard to make other stuff happen. So once you’ve drawn conclusions from your research, it’s time to think of what you’ll actually do based on your findings.

While it’s impossible for us to give a definitive list (every use case is different), here are some suggestions to get you started.

Leverage it . Think about ways to expand the use – and value – of research data and insights, for example by using research to support business goals and functions, like sales, market share or product design.

Integrate it . Expand the value of your research data by integrating it with other data sources, internal and external. Integrating data like this can broaden your perspective and help you draw deeper insights for more confident decision-making.

Justify it . Enlist colleagues from areas that’ll benefit from the insights that research provides – that could be product management, product development, customer service, marketing, sales or many others – and build a business case for using research.

How to choose the right type of market research 

Broadly speaking, choosing the right research method depends on knowing the type of data you need to collect. To dig into ideas and opinions, choose qualitative; to do some testing, it’s quantitative you want.

There are also a bunch of practical considerations, not least cost. If a particular approach sounds great but costs the earth then clearly it’s not ideal for any brand on a budget.

Then there’s how you intend to use the actual research, your level of expertise with research data, whether you need access to historical data or just a snapshot of today, and so on.

The point is, different methods suit different situations. When choosing, you’ll want to consider what you want to achieve, what data you’ll need, the pros and cons of each method, the costs of conducting the research, and the cost of analyzing the results. 

Market research examples

Independent agency Bright/Shift used GWI consumer insights to shape a high-impact go-to-market strategy for their sustainable furniture client, generating £41K in revenue in the first month. Here’s how they made the magic happen .

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Examples of Marketing Research Problems

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How to capture market share through the understanding of consumer needs, limitation for a marketing research project.

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Companies and other organizations use marketing research to manage the risks associated with offering new products and services. These organizations don't want to spend too much money developing a product line that research indicates will be unsuccessful. A well-designed and well-executed marketing study can go a long way towards identifying consumer tastes and demographic preferences to help with a product launch. However, several common types of problems occur with market research that can make it overly costly and produce results of questionable value for the organization.

Poor Survey Design

Organizations use marketing research to find out what customers think and what they want. The survey is a direct way of collecting quantitative, or numerical, information and qualitative, or descriptive, information. When there are errors in the survey design, marketing research problems can surface.

For example, a company might use a method that is designed to collect a random sample from the target consumer population, but the method is not really random. Therefore, the organization cannot generalize its survey results to represent the target population. Similarly, poorly-worded survey questions can lead to ambiguous results from respondents who didn't grasp the intent of the question.

Survey Nonresponse

One marketing research problem relates to how the survey is offered to the target population. Marketers design a survey that many customers choose not to respond to. They look at reasons why people don't want to participate, and they might reach conclusions such as the survey takes too much effort or that the incentive for participation is not appealing to respondents.

Survey respondents are rarely willing to spend more than a few minutes on a voluntary survey. For longer efforts, consider offering some sort of compensation such as cash, a gift card, or a free product to encourage participation.

The Problem of Survey Bias

A survey might include one or more sources of bias. Marketers might believe, for example, that they have created an online survey to appeal to respondents of all ethnic backgrounds, but the survey questions, and even images, might be biased to favor one ethnic group or could offend one or more ethnic groups.

The famous image of the "Dewey Defeats Truman" newspaper headline in 1948 was the result of survey bias. The journalists had surveyed voters by telephone, thereby missing the opinions of the many voters that did not have telephones at the time.

A survey's format and content must be acceptable to all audiences from which marketers seek to gather information.

Issues with Observation Research

Some marketing research involves observing consumers in action and noting their preferences. Marketers can become intrusive, interfering with a consumer's experience to the point that a consumer feels disgusted and leaves the business site. For example, a fast-food chain's researchers need to determine if there is a need for a new location of its store so they survey people going through the drive-through line. Although researchers conduct a short survey, they aggravate customers by slowing down the line.

A market survey is a more complicated undertaking than it might, at first, appear. You might want to employ the services of marketing professionals if you do not have someone on staff with survey design experience.

• Survey Monkey: Market Research Surveys
• Satrix: Tope Ten Survey Design Problems
• History: Dewey Defeats Truman headline

Audra Bianca has been writing professionally since 2007, with her work covering a variety of subjects and appearing on various websites. Her favorite audiences to write for are small-business owners and job searchers. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Master of Public Administration from a Florida public university.

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Research problem: Everything a market researcher needs to know

A research process includes several steps that assist individuals involved in a study in conducting successful testing. Defining a research problem is an essential step in any research and can help in outlining your study’s methodology.

LEARN ABOUT: Research Process Steps

In this article, we will define a research problem and go over everything a researcher should know.

Content Index

What is a research problem?

What is the research problem statement, what is the purpose of a research problem statement, characteristics of a research problem, characteristics of a research problem statement.

• Components of a research problem?

Steps to formulate a research problem

Marketing research problem example, research problem statement example, extensive research problem software, platform, and tool, top seven benefits of using a robust research software, advantages of formulating a research problem, how questionpro helps researchers solve research problems.

A research problem is a specific question, problem, or difficulty that needs to be investigated or analyzed.

It is a concise statement that expresses the difference between what is currently known and what needs to be known or the difference between a current situation and a desired state.

Examining research problems helps to identify the key concepts and terms of research. A research problem should be clear, concise, and specific enough to guide the process and contribute to the definition of research project objectives, methods, and outcomes. It is the foundation of any research project, and a well-formulated research problem is required for any research study to be successful.

A research problem statement is a brief and precise description of the problem that a researcher wishes to investigate. It defines the research’s focus and serves as a framework for developing research questions or hypotheses.

Typically, the problem statement begins with a broad topic or research area and then narrows down to a specific research question or problem. It should explain why the research is important, what gaps in knowledge or understanding exist, and what potential implications or applications the research may have.

A good research statement keeps the researcher focused and guides the research project’s development. It also assists other researchers in comprehending the scope and significance of the research, as well as identifying potential areas for collaboration or further investigation.

LEARN ABOUT:   Action Research

A problem statement in research seeks to achieve the following:

• Introduce the importance of the topic in the research proposal.
• Position the problem in an appropriate and particular context.
• Provide a framework to analyze and report results.

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Make sure to fulfill these essential characteristics to have an effective research problem. Due to the variety of research, we conduct, it is not possible to inculcate all these characteristics. However, ensure to consider and cover most of these characteristics to enable people to look at, examine, and understand the marketing research problem.

Covers the essential needs or issues

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

The problem is stated logically and clearly

The research project is based on actual facts and evidence (non-hypothetical), the research problem generates and encourages research questions, it fits the budget and time frame, sufficient data can be obtained, the problem has an unsatisfactory answer, or is it a new problem.

Here are the characteristics of a research problem statement:

• It must address the gap in knowledge.
• It must be significant to the extent that it contributes positively to the research
• It must help in further research
• The collected empirical data confirm the clarity and understandability of the research problem.
• It must be in the researcher’s interest should and suit his/her time, practical knowledge, research skills , and resources
• The problem-solving approach must be ethical
• Customary research methods can be applied

LEARN ABOUT: Theoretical Research

Components of a research problem

A research problem has the following components:

Research consumer

Research-consumers objective, alternative means to meet the objective, doubts in the selection of alternatives, there must be more than one environ­ment.

Here are the five basic steps to formulate a research problem:

Identify the broad research area

Divide the broad area into sub-areas.

• Profile of soccer players
• Profile of soccer clubs
• Level of soccer clubs
• Impact of the club on the city
• Revenue generating areas 
• Sponsors of the soccer clubs

Choose a sub-area

Formulate research questions, set research objectives.

Organizations and companies use marketing research problems to gauge the risks associated with launching a new product or service. They do not wish to spend money expanding a product line where research shows it will not succeed. A well-designed, well-executed marketing research study helps in identifying customer interests, consumer tastes, and preferences to help with decisions around the product or service.

A research question is the most important aspect of the research. You must spend time refining and assessing the research questions before getting started with the research activities. A research question must be straightforward, to the point, focused, and appropriately complex to capture the most relevant information.

Having difficulty writing research problems? Follow these examples to write a problem statement:

Incorrect: What are the effects of social media on people? Correct: What effect does use Facebook every day have on teenagers?

In the above example, the first research question is not specific enough to capture accurate feedback. Nobody knows what social media you’re talking about and what ‘people’ you’re referring to.

Let’s look at another marketing research problem example.

Incorrect: Who has a better healthcare system? The US or the UK? Correct: How do low-income earning people feel about the healthcare system, and how do the UK and the US compare?

The next research question is comprehensive and does not draw a definite conclusion about the healthcare systems of both countries.

The third example of how to write a problem statement is:

Incorrect: What will help political parties address the issues of low voter turnout? Correct: What communication strategies can political parties apply to increase voter turnout among people between the age of 25-30?

Again, comparing both statements, the second one is more direct and implies only a specific group of people, thus collecting actionable information.

Formulating a marketing research problem is just one crucial part of the research process. Another essential aspect of marketing research is using a robust market research software tool that aids in your research activity. 

For example, The Research methods knowledge base is a comprehensive web-based textbook that covers all the topics in a typical introductory undergraduate or graduate social research methods course. It covers the research question, measurement (surveys, scaling, qualitative, unobtrusive), research design (experimental and quasi-experimental research ), data analysis, and writing the research paper.

You can do a whole lot by choosing the right research platform to solve a specific problem. By using a  research repository , you can mitigate the need to think of research and a research problem as a decentralized process in your organization. 

Here are the benefits of using a robust research software tool

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Here are the advantages of formulating a research problem:

Understanding the research procedure

Determining the research objective, design the research process, lays the foundation for research.

QuestionPro provides a number of tools and features to assist researchers in solving research problems, including:

• Survey creation:  QuestionPro offers to skip logic, branching, randomization, and a range of research question types.
• Data Collection:  QuestionPro lets researchers collect data through email, social media, and embedded surveys on websites.
• Real-time Data Analytics:  QuestionPro’s real-time data analytics solutions help researchers solve research issues. Researchers may quickly spot patterns and make data-driven decisions using the platform’s strong analytics tools.
• Collaboration:  Researchers can invite team members to surveys and exchange data and analytic results, making collaboration and task completion easy with QuestionPro.
• Integration with Other Tools:  QuestionPro integrates with a variety of other tools, including Salesforce, Hubspot, and Google Analytics.

QuestionPro provides a comprehensive set of research tools to assist researchers in solving research problems. QuestionPro provides a complete solution that can help researchers tackle their research problems with ease, from survey creation to data collection, real-time data analytics, collaboration, and integration with other tools. Contact QuestionPro right away to get the best value for your research process!

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45 Research Problem Examples & Inspiration

A research problem is an issue of concern that is the catalyst for your research. It demonstrates why the research problem needs to take place in the first place.

Generally, you will write your research problem as a clear, concise, and focused statement that identifies an issue or gap in current knowledge that requires investigation.

The problem will likely also guide the direction and purpose of a study. Depending on the problem, you will identify a suitable methodology that will help address the problem and bring solutions to light.

Research Problem Examples

In the following examples, I’ll present some problems worth addressing, and some suggested theoretical frameworks and research methodologies that might fit with the study. Note, however, that these aren’t the only ways to approach the problems. Keep an open mind and consult with your dissertation supervisor!

Psychology Problems

1. Social Media and Self-Esteem: “How does prolonged exposure to social media platforms influence the self-esteem of adolescents?”

• Theoretical Framework : Social Comparison Theory
• Methodology : Longitudinal study tracking adolescents’ social media usage and self-esteem measures over time, combined with qualitative interviews.

2. Sleep and Cognitive Performance: “How does sleep quality and duration impact cognitive performance in adults?”

• Theoretical Framework : Cognitive Psychology
• Methodology : Experimental design with controlled sleep conditions, followed by cognitive tests. Participant sleep patterns can also be monitored using actigraphy.

3. Childhood Trauma and Adult Relationships: “How does unresolved childhood trauma influence attachment styles and relationship dynamics in adulthood?

• Theoretical Framework : Attachment Theory
• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining quantitative measures of attachment styles with qualitative in-depth interviews exploring past trauma and current relationship dynamics.

4. Mindfulness and Stress Reduction: “How effective is mindfulness meditation in reducing perceived stress and physiological markers of stress in working professionals?”

• Theoretical Framework : Humanist Psychology
• Methodology : Randomized controlled trial comparing a group practicing mindfulness meditation to a control group, measuring both self-reported stress and physiological markers (e.g., cortisol levels).

5. Implicit Bias and Decision Making: “To what extent do implicit biases influence decision-making processes in hiring practices?

• Theoretical Framework : Cognitive Dissonance Theory
• Methodology : Experimental design using Implicit Association Tests (IAT) to measure implicit biases, followed by simulated hiring tasks to observe decision-making behaviors.

6. Emotional Regulation and Academic Performance: “How does the ability to regulate emotions impact academic performance in college students?”

• Theoretical Framework : Cognitive Theory of Emotion
• Methodology : Quantitative surveys measuring emotional regulation strategies, combined with academic performance metrics (e.g., GPA).

7. Nature Exposure and Mental Well-being: “Does regular exposure to natural environments improve mental well-being and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression?”

• Theoretical Framework : Biophilia Hypothesis
• Methodology : Longitudinal study comparing mental health measures of individuals with regular nature exposure to those without, possibly using ecological momentary assessment for real-time data collection.

8. Video Games and Cognitive Skills: “How do action video games influence cognitive skills such as attention, spatial reasoning, and problem-solving?”

• Theoretical Framework : Cognitive Load Theory
• Methodology : Experimental design with pre- and post-tests, comparing cognitive skills of participants before and after a period of action video game play.

9. Parenting Styles and Child Resilience: “How do different parenting styles influence the development of resilience in children facing adversities?”

• Theoretical Framework : Baumrind’s Parenting Styles Inventory
• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining quantitative measures of resilience and parenting styles with qualitative interviews exploring children’s experiences and perceptions.

10. Memory and Aging: “How does the aging process impact episodic memory , and what strategies can mitigate age-related memory decline?

• Theoretical Framework : Information Processing Theory
• Methodology : Cross-sectional study comparing episodic memory performance across different age groups, combined with interventions like memory training or mnemonic strategies to assess potential improvements.

Education Problems

11. Equity and Access : “How do socioeconomic factors influence students’ access to quality education, and what interventions can bridge the gap?

• Theoretical Framework : Critical Pedagogy
• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining quantitative data on student outcomes with qualitative interviews and focus groups with students, parents, and educators.

12. Digital Divide : How does the lack of access to technology and the internet affect remote learning outcomes, and how can this divide be addressed?

• Theoretical Framework : Social Construction of Technology Theory
• Methodology : Survey research to gather data on access to technology, followed by case studies in selected areas.

13. Teacher Efficacy : “What factors contribute to teacher self-efficacy, and how does it impact student achievement?”

• Theoretical Framework : Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory
• Methodology : Quantitative surveys to measure teacher self-efficacy, combined with qualitative interviews to explore factors affecting it.

14. Curriculum Relevance : “How can curricula be made more relevant to diverse student populations, incorporating cultural and local contexts?”

• Theoretical Framework : Sociocultural Theory
• Methodology : Content analysis of curricula, combined with focus groups with students and teachers.

15. Special Education : “What are the most effective instructional strategies for students with specific learning disabilities?

• Theoretical Framework : Social Learning Theory
• Methodology : Experimental design comparing different instructional strategies, with pre- and post-tests to measure student achievement.

16. Dropout Rates : “What factors contribute to high school dropout rates, and what interventions can help retain students?”

• Methodology : Longitudinal study tracking students over time, combined with interviews with dropouts.

17. Bilingual Education : “How does bilingual education impact cognitive development and academic achievement?

• Methodology : Comparative study of students in bilingual vs. monolingual programs, using standardized tests and qualitative interviews.

18. Classroom Management: “What reward strategies are most effective in managing diverse classrooms and promoting a positive learning environment?

• Theoretical Framework : Behaviorism (e.g., Skinner’s Operant Conditioning)
• Methodology : Observational research in classrooms , combined with teacher interviews.

19. Standardized Testing : “How do standardized tests affect student motivation, learning, and curriculum design?”

• Theoretical Framework : Critical Theory
• Methodology : Quantitative analysis of test scores and student outcomes, combined with qualitative interviews with educators and students.

20. STEM Education : “What methods can be employed to increase interest and proficiency in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields among underrepresented student groups?”

• Theoretical Framework : Constructivist Learning Theory
• Methodology : Experimental design comparing different instructional methods, with pre- and post-tests.

21. Social-Emotional Learning : “How can social-emotional learning be effectively integrated into the curriculum, and what are its impacts on student well-being and academic outcomes?”

• Theoretical Framework : Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence Theory
• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining quantitative measures of student well-being with qualitative interviews.

22. Parental Involvement : “How does parental involvement influence student achievement, and what strategies can schools use to increase it?”

• Theoretical Framework : Reggio Emilia’s Model (Community Engagement Focus)
• Methodology : Survey research with parents and teachers, combined with case studies in selected schools.

23. Early Childhood Education : “What are the long-term impacts of quality early childhood education on academic and life outcomes?”

• Theoretical Framework : Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development
• Methodology : Longitudinal study comparing students with and without early childhood education, combined with observational research.

24. Teacher Training and Professional Development : “How can teacher training programs be improved to address the evolving needs of the 21st-century classroom?”

• Theoretical Framework : Adult Learning Theory (Andragogy)
• Methodology : Pre- and post-assessments of teacher competencies, combined with focus groups.

25. Educational Technology : “How can technology be effectively integrated into the classroom to enhance learning, and what are the potential drawbacks or challenges?”

• Theoretical Framework : Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)
• Methodology : Experimental design comparing classrooms with and without specific technologies, combined with teacher and student interviews.

Sociology Problems

26. Urbanization and Social Ties: “How does rapid urbanization impact the strength and nature of social ties in communities?”

• Theoretical Framework : Structural Functionalism
• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining quantitative surveys on social ties with qualitative interviews in urbanizing areas.

27. Gender Roles in Modern Families: “How have traditional gender roles evolved in families with dual-income households?”

• Theoretical Framework : Gender Schema Theory
• Methodology : Qualitative interviews with dual-income families, combined with historical data analysis.

28. Social Media and Collective Behavior: “How does social media influence collective behaviors and the formation of social movements?”

• Theoretical Framework : Emergent Norm Theory
• Methodology : Content analysis of social media platforms, combined with quantitative surveys on participation in social movements.

29. Education and Social Mobility: “To what extent does access to quality education influence social mobility in socioeconomically diverse settings?”

• Methodology : Longitudinal study tracking educational access and subsequent socioeconomic status, combined with qualitative interviews.

30. Religion and Social Cohesion: “How do religious beliefs and practices contribute to social cohesion in multicultural societies?”

• Methodology : Quantitative surveys on religious beliefs and perceptions of social cohesion, combined with ethnographic studies.

31. Consumer Culture and Identity Formation: “How does consumer culture influence individual identity formation and personal values?”

• Theoretical Framework : Social Identity Theory
• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining content analysis of advertising with qualitative interviews on identity and values.

32. Migration and Cultural Assimilation: “How do migrants negotiate cultural assimilation and preservation of their original cultural identities in their host countries?”

• Theoretical Framework : Post-Structuralism
• Methodology : Qualitative interviews with migrants, combined with observational studies in multicultural communities.

33. Social Networks and Mental Health: “How do social networks, both online and offline, impact mental health and well-being?”

• Theoretical Framework : Social Network Theory
• Methodology : Quantitative surveys assessing social network characteristics and mental health metrics, combined with qualitative interviews.

34. Crime, Deviance, and Social Control: “How do societal norms and values shape definitions of crime and deviance, and how are these definitions enforced?”

• Theoretical Framework : Labeling Theory
• Methodology : Content analysis of legal documents and media, combined with ethnographic studies in diverse communities.

35. Technology and Social Interaction: “How has the proliferation of digital technology influenced face-to-face social interactions and community building?”

• Theoretical Framework : Technological Determinism
• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining quantitative surveys on technology use with qualitative observations of social interactions in various settings.

Nursing Problems

36. Patient Communication and Recovery: “How does effective nurse-patient communication influence patient recovery rates and overall satisfaction with care?”

• Methodology : Quantitative surveys assessing patient satisfaction and recovery metrics, combined with observational studies on nurse-patient interactions.

37. Stress Management in Nursing: “What are the primary sources of occupational stress for nurses, and how can they be effectively managed to prevent burnout?”

• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining quantitative measures of stress and burnout with qualitative interviews exploring personal experiences and coping mechanisms.

38. Hand Hygiene Compliance: “How effective are different interventions in improving hand hygiene compliance among nursing staff, and what are the barriers to consistent hand hygiene?”

• Methodology : Experimental design comparing hand hygiene rates before and after specific interventions, combined with focus groups to understand barriers.

39. Nurse-Patient Ratios and Patient Outcomes: “How do nurse-patient ratios impact patient outcomes, including recovery rates, complications, and hospital readmissions?”

• Methodology : Quantitative study analyzing patient outcomes in relation to staffing levels, possibly using retrospective chart reviews.

40. Continuing Education and Clinical Competence: “How does regular continuing education influence clinical competence and confidence among nurses?”

• Methodology : Longitudinal study tracking nurses’ clinical skills and confidence over time as they engage in continuing education, combined with patient outcome measures to assess potential impacts on care quality.

Communication Studies Problems

41. Media Representation and Public Perception: “How does media representation of minority groups influence public perceptions and biases?”

• Theoretical Framework : Cultivation Theory
• Methodology : Content analysis of media representations combined with quantitative surveys assessing public perceptions and attitudes.

42. Digital Communication and Relationship Building: “How has the rise of digital communication platforms impacted the way individuals build and maintain personal relationships?”

• Theoretical Framework : Social Penetration Theory
• Methodology : Mixed methods, combining quantitative surveys on digital communication habits with qualitative interviews exploring personal relationship dynamics.

43. Crisis Communication Effectiveness: “What strategies are most effective in managing public relations during organizational crises, and how do they influence public trust?”

• Theoretical Framework : Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT)
• Methodology : Case study analysis of past organizational crises, assessing communication strategies used and subsequent public trust metrics.

44. Nonverbal Cues in Virtual Communication: “How do nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and gestures, influence message interpretation in virtual communication platforms?”

• Theoretical Framework : Social Semiotics
• Methodology : Experimental design using video conferencing tools, analyzing participants’ interpretations of messages with varying nonverbal cues.

45. Influence of Social Media on Political Engagement: “How does exposure to political content on social media platforms influence individuals’ political engagement and activism?”

• Theoretical Framework : Uses and Gratifications Theory
• Methodology : Quantitative surveys assessing social media habits and political engagement levels, combined with content analysis of political posts on popular platforms.

Before you Go: Tips and Tricks for Writing a Research Problem

This is an incredibly stressful time for research students. The research problem is going to lock you into a specific line of inquiry for the rest of your studies.

So, here’s what I tend to suggest to my students:

• Start with something you find intellectually stimulating – Too many students choose projects because they think it hasn’t been studies or they’ve found a research gap. Don’t over-estimate the importance of finding a research gap. There are gaps in every line of inquiry. For now, just find a topic you think you can really sink your teeth into and will enjoy learning about.
• Take 5 ideas to your supervisor – Approach your research supervisor, professor, lecturer, TA, our course leader with 5 research problem ideas and run each by them. The supervisor will have valuable insights that you didn’t consider that will help you narrow-down and refine your problem even more.
• Trust your supervisor – The supervisor-student relationship is often very strained and stressful. While of course this is your project, your supervisor knows the internal politics and conventions of academic research. The depth of knowledge about how to navigate academia and get you out the other end with your degree is invaluable. Don’t underestimate their advice.

I’ve got a full article on all my tips and tricks for doing research projects right here – I recommend reading it:

• 9 Tips on How to Choose a Dissertation Topic

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

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• The 10 Biggest Market Research Fails of All Time
• TrendSource Trending Blog

We at TrendSource eat, breath, and sleep market research. So when we are looking to unwind after hours, we sit around and get excited about some really dorky marketing and market research things. A few weeks ago, somebody got us talking about some of the biggest market research fails (read: disasters) in memory and, after kicking it around for a while, we thought we’d turn it into a blog.

So follow us through the ten biggest market research failures of the last 100 years. And then call us to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes. 

Colgate Frozen Entrees 

Some of you may be too young to remember  (ok, some of us too) Colgate’s ill-advised foray into frozen dinners, but in 1982 the toothpaste producer sought to branch out of center-aisle CPG and into the frozen food section. Perhaps they thought customers would enjoy chomping through a Colgate chicken-and-peas dinner before cleaning their pearly-whites with a pea-sized dollop of Colgate toothpaste? Some kind of closed system for the digestive system? Frankly, it’s somewhat difficult to know what they were thinking.

Regardless, the expansion was unwise. Consumers had long associated Colgate with oral hygiene, and could not extend that brand association to food products like TV dinners. And while clean teeth certainly are attractive and desirable, toothpaste itself is not very appetizing. This, as marketing professors have taught aspiring MBAs ever since, is a classic lesson in brand extension: don’t ask customers to radically shift their understanding of your brand. Maybe if Colgate had come up with an entirely new name (through rigorous market research, no doubt), we would all be chowing down on some of their chicken-and-peas right now.

Playboy Magazine Becomes a Never Nude

This is not going to tread into NSFW territory, we promise. But a little over a year ago in March 2016, Playboy magazine (whose reputation hopefully precedes it), decided it should no longer feature nudity and published its first non-nude issue and even released a safe-for-work app.

It’s one thing to make a few subtle changes to stay current, but Playboy threw the baby out with the bathwater and alienated a customer base whose, um, tastes, were not that difficult to accommodate. One year after the change, the brand had lost its identity entirely. While they had made the change to increase the publications’ reputability and sharability in digital forums (few people want to share a link to Playboy on Facebook), their market research did not account for who would be doing the sharing once the brand had lost its cache and failed to draw eyeballs.

Exactly one year after the change, the new Playboy chairman concluded the experiment was over, and the Bunny Emperor could go back to not wearing any clothes. In hindsight, according to the new chair, it “was a bad idea, the whole thing.” It remains to be seen if the periodical will rebound, but there is at least one other take away from the Playboy experiment: for precisely one year, one could claim they only read Playboy “for the articles,” and not be immediately dismissed as a liar.

Starbucks Mazagran

For every Unicorn Frappuccino, there is a Mazagran.

In the mid-1990s, Starbucks partnered with Pepsi to sell Mazagran, a coffee-flavored, bottled soda found in grocery aisles. The product was a spectacular failure—described as tasting “interesting” at best—and was pulled within a year as sales declined after initial curiosity waned.

But maybe they needed to fail before they could succeed. Because the thing is, Starbucks got this one half right. Their market research had correctly told them that customers wanted a cold, sweet, bottled coffee beverage they could conveniently purchase in grocery stores. They just wanted it to resemble a milk shake, not a soda. Though it is impossible to prove, Starbucks urban legend even suggests that the idea for the Frappuccino was born out of Mazagran’s failure.

Wow! Chips 

Who doesn’t remember the potato chips that moved through us like the Norovirus?

Fried in Olestra, a sucrose-derived oil not absorbed by the body, Frito-Lay’s Wow! chips carried 1/3 the calories and none of the fat of their traditional crispy cousins. The late-1990s product came under Doritos, Ruffles, and Lays brands and, owing to the misguided low-fat diet craze of the era, initially sold like lowfat hotcakes. Within a year, however, sales had dropped by almost $150 million after the FDA forced the chips to carry a warning label advising they can cause, well, let’s just say gastrointestinal distress.

This was a market research failure of product testing, pure and simple. While exhaustive rounds of taste tests were no doubt performed, it would seem that none of those taste tests ever pushed past the suggested serving size. You see, Olestra is fine in small doses and issues only percolate when binge eating (also known as typical US snack-eating behavior) is involved. Thus, by overestimating Americans’ ability to eat just one (oh, the irony!) Frito-Lay walked themselves into an explosive disaster.

Celery Jell-O

It’s easy to look back on this one and say, well duh…because the thought of a seafood salad suspended in celery Jell-O is about as appetizing as…I got nothing, it just sounds disgusting. But remember, the product was coming on the heels of the late 1950s and early 1960s—an era of casseroles, tang, and the ambrosia salad. And lime Jell-O had long been used in the suspended salad craze, so they thought they’d help customers out with some savory Jell-O flavors. They were a bit late, however, as their 1965 release date came on the heels of the savory suspended salad trend.

The other problem? It did not taste good, holding a salad together or otherwise. They had, to quote a cinematic chaos theorist , been so worried about whether they could build something that they forgot to ask if they should. Customers continued using Lime Jell-O off-label for their savory recipes, and the vegetable flavor quickly disappeared.

Apple Newton

The classic example of being ahead of your time. The Apple Newton was an early PDA device that could take notes, store contacts, manage calendars, send faxes, and even translate handwriting to text (in theory).

That last point was the biggest problem, it turned out. By rushing the product to market before ironing out the handwriting to text feature, the company opened itself up to popular ridicule. In Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Tradeau’s hands, the Newton became a symbol of yuppie extravagance and excess—they were spending hundreds of dollars to buy hand-held computers to take inaccurate notes when a pen and paper could do it for a miniscule fraction of the cost. And without errors.

Market research will tell you consumers are enthusiastic about a potential new tech product. But only if that product works as advertised. If you can’t meet their expectations, your product is doomed to fail, no matter how high those expectations were.

Of course, nowadays, the technology has caught up to the market research and the personal handheld computer is so commonplace we can’t imagine a world not eagerly awaiting the next iPhone. But in the ‘90s, it was just ahead of its time.

This isn’t one brand in particular but TV manufacturers in general. Right around the time Avatar raked in its second billion dollars, TV-makers decided the iron was hot: Americans were ready for 3D TVs. Manufacturers pumped untold resources into developing units that were as non-disruptive and immersive as possible.

There were a couple of market research problems. First, everybody just assumed demand was there based on Avatar’s success. But in the hands of almost anybody not named James Cameron,  3DTV isn’t all that great: it requires glasses, eliminates second-screening, and gives some people headaches and neck strain. So while there was temporary enthusiasm in focus groups around the country, manufacturers mistook a flash in the pan for signs of a gold strike.

The second problem was an even bigger one, and frankly one that any market researcher worth her salt would have seen coming: even if the 3DTV works to perfection, what content will people watch on these magical boxes? Since the 3D movie craze died (did we really need Clash of the Titians 2 to be in 3D?) and channels like ESPN discontinued their 3D feeds, the answer is Nothing. 

With LG and Sony discontinuing their models, no major TV-makers manufactures currently offer 3D TVs, moving this one firmly into the loss column.

Netflix and Qwikster

This should go without saying, but don’t make things more difficult for your customer in order to make them easier for you. Just ask Qwikster, errr, Netflix.

Realizing it was time to phase out its DVD mailing program in order to focus on streaming, Netflix briefly split into Netflix and Qwikster, forcing customers with joint DVD and streaming accounts to sign up for two separate services. That meant two different accounts and two different bills where there had been one.  From Netflix’s perspective, this was tidier, eliminated confusion, and made both services better. They had failed to test and consider user experience and customer sentiment.

While the company certainly was correct about the destination—who, beyond the person looking for a copy of that one great independent French film they saw ten years ago, even gets DVDs from Netflix anymore?—they took the wrong path. Customers felt put upon and herded, and Netflix quickly reversed course.

In the late 1950s, the Ford Edsel was supposed to be a game changer, the new American car for the New American family. And that, right there, was a big part of why it failed—supremely high expectations. For all the promises Ford made in marketing campaigns before the debut, you would have guessed it doubled as a washer-dryer and space ship. And then, after all that promise, it was just a car. And not a great performing or cost-effective one at that.

The thing is, Ford did the market research—lots of it. But they used it in an effort to appeal to everybody instead of identifying and attacking a particular segment. Thus, the Edsel debuted in 18 different models and varieties and was dubbed the “Ford Hermaphrodite” but confused consumers. Combine that with an almost-immediately mocked front grille roughly the size of Detroit, a gas guzzling engine even by contemporary standards, and a perplexingly bad name you arrive at a product failure so famous, Billy Joel put it in a song .

Crystal Pepsi

When Crystal Clear Pepsi debuted in the mid-1990s, clean and pure were buzzwords much like they are today. Miller had debuted Zima, a clear malt liquor also destined to fail, Ivory was abandoning the milky for the clear, and even EBSCO gasoline was being touted as crystal clear. So, looking at their market research, Pepsi decided to jump into the clear market with Crystal Clear Pepsi, a transparent, caffeine-free soda that tasted exactly like Pepsi.

Pepsi saw the writing on the wall, it just misread it.

Yes, customers were interested in clean and clear products and they still are today. They just didn’t think of Cola as one of them. They wanted their cola brown and full of caffeine, they wanted their clear sodas light and crisp like 7-Up.

Pepsi had used market research to conjure a niche market—consumers craving a visually different, but similar tasting, caffeine-free version of Pepsi—where one simply didn’t exist. Of course, nostalgia can freshen up even the smelliest ideas and Pepsi will be relaunching the beverage in a limited capacity this year

Because no survey of product failures would be complete without at least a cursory tip-of-the-hat to New Coke.

Facing waning sales and a perception that Pepsi tasted better (those Pepsi Challenge taste test commercials worked!), Coke began testing a new formula and released it in 1985. Though focus groups had been extremely favorable to the new taste—ranking it ahead of both Pepsi and the Classic formulation—the product was a sales and public relations disaster.

Coke had been so focused on flavor superiority they had failed to consider the intangible nostalgia and familiarity people attached to the classic flavor, and failed to account for the ways popular opinion can snowball and trump a simple taste test.

Consumers boycotted the brand, launched protests, and even hoarded cases of the Classic variety. Acknowledging the mistake, they phased out the brand slowly, but not before going down in history as the single greatest failed product launch of all time.

But it wasn’t all a failure. The move ultimately reminded people of their deep bonds with the brand which extended beyond flavor, dramatically turning around the brand’s fortunes. It remains the best-selling soda on the planet.

The Male Romper?

One final entrant, though it is only included under duress.

Some members of the TrendSource team insist the male romper is a product failure in-the-making. They say there is no market for this fashion, and that those who wear it will subject themselves to ridicule and alienation. They don’t need all the investigative might of our market research company, because they already know it for a fact.

But, according to this humble blogger, these people are wrong.

Male rompers are adorable and we will all soon be wearing them. Detractors are retrograde reactionaries clinging to their dated ideas of gendered fashion. They think it looks silly. But look at that man and tell me “silly” is what comes to mind.

Yeah, I thought not.

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2017 Retail Industry Report: Millennials Still Prefer In-Store Experience

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5 facts about Hispanic Americans and health care

Hispanic Americans have long faced health care challenges in the United States, including lower health insurance coverage rates and less access to preventative care.

Language and cultural barriers, as well as higher levels of poverty, are among the social and economic factors contributing to disparate health outcomes for Hispanic Americans. These disparities were apparent during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic , when Hispanics were far more likely than White Americans to have died from the virus .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to highlight Hispanic Americans’ attitudes about and experiences with health care. We surveyed U.S. adults from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, 2021, including 3,716 Hispanic adults (inclusive of those who identify as any race). A total of 14,497 U.S. adults completed the survey.

The survey was conducted on the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) and included an oversample of Black and Hispanic adults from the Ipsos KnowledgePanel. Respondents on both panels are recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the survey  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its methodology .

This study was informed by a group of advisers with expertise related to Black and Hispanic Americans’ attitudes and experiences in science, health, STEM education and other areas. Pew Research Center remains solely responsible for all aspects of the research, including any errors associated with its products and findings.

This analysis includes additional information from sources including KFF and the U.S. Census Bureau. Further information about these sources can be found through the links in the text.

Here are five key facts about Hispanic Americans and health care, based on a 2021 Pew Research Center survey of Hispanic adults and other sources:

Hispanic adults are less likely than other Americans to have seen a health care provider recently and to have a primary care provider. Seven-in-ten say they’ve seen a doctor or other health care provider in the past year, compared with 82% among Americans overall. Hispanics are also slightly less likely than Americans overall to say they have a primary care provider (68% vs. 76%).

Health care access among Hispanic immigrants differs markedly based on how long they have lived in the U.S. More recent arrivals are less likely than those who have been in the country longer to have seen a doctor recently and to have a primary care provider. For example, 48% of Hispanic immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a decade or less report having a primary care provider, compared with 79% among those who have been in the U.S. for more than two decades.

Recent arrivals make up a declining share of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. And more broadly, immigrants account for a declining share of the overall U.S. Hispanic population . In 2021, they made up 32% of all Hispanic Americans, down from 37% in 2010.

Hispanic Americans are less likely than people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds to have health insurance. As of 2021, the uninsured rate among Hispanics under age 65 was 19%, according to KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation . That was higher than the share among Black (11%), White (7%) and Asian Americans (6%). (These figures include rates among children as well as adults.)

While comparatively high, the uninsured rate among Hispanic Americans under age 65 in 2021 was down from 33% in 2010, before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to KFF.

Lower rates of health insurance coverage play a major role in Hispanic Americans’ less frequent interactions with health care providers.

The relative youth of the U.S. Hispanic population may be another factor at play. The median age of Hispanic Americans was 30 as of 2020, compared with 41 for non-Hispanic Americans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau . Among both Hispanic and non-Hispanic Americans, younger people are less likely than their elders to have seen a health care provider recently and to have a primary care provider.

Many Hispanic Americans say worse health outcomes for Hispanics are tied to occupational and structural factors. Some 53% of Hispanic adults say a major reason why Hispanic people generally have worse health outcomes is that they’re more likely to work in jobs that put them at risk for health problems. About half (48%) say a major reason is that Hispanic people have less access to quality medical care where they live.

At least four-in-ten Hispanic adults also point to communication problems arising from language or cultural differences (44%) and preexisting health conditions (40%) as major reasons. (Majorities view all of these factors as at least minor reasons for disparate health outcomes among Hispanic adults.)

The coronavirus outbreak took an especially heavy toll on Hispanic Americans when compared with White Americans. Hispanics also face higher rates of certain diseases like diabetes than some other Americans.

When it comes to progress in health outcomes for Hispanic people, 51% of Hispanic adults say health outcomes have gotten a lot or a little better over the past two decades, compared with 13% who say they’ve gotten a lot or a little worse; 34% say they’ve stayed about the same.

About a third of Hispanic Americans – including 58% of Hispanic immigrants – say they prefer to see a Spanish-speaking health care provider. Overall, 35% of Hispanic adults strongly or somewhat prefer seeing a Spanish-speaking doctor or other health care provider for routine care. A larger share (51%) say it makes no difference whether the doctor they see speaks Spanish or not. And 13% say they would rather not see a Spanish-speaking doctor.

Attitudes are broadly similar when it comes to seeing a Hispanic doctor or health care provider. A third of Hispanic adults say they would prefer to see a Hispanic doctor for routine care, while 59% say it makes no difference and 7% would rather not.

Among Hispanic adults, immigrants are much more likely than those born in the U.S. to prefer seeing a Spanish-speaking doctor (58% vs. 12%) and to prefer seeing a Hispanic doctor (47% vs. 20%). About half of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. mostly speak and read in Spanish.

Hispanic Americans account for 19% of the U.S. population . But only 9% of the nation’s health care practitioners and technicians are Hispanic, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center analysis of federal government data . And just 7% of all U.S. physicians and surgeons and 7% of registered nurses are Hispanic.

Black Hispanic adults are more likely to report negative health care experiences than other Hispanic adults. Overall, about half of Hispanic adults (52%) say they’ve had at least one of six negative health care experiences asked about in the Center’s 2021 survey, including feeling rushed or having to speak up to get the proper care. This is similar to the share of all U.S. adults who report having at least one of these types of negative experiences.

However, there are notable differences among Hispanics by race. Hispanic Americans who identify as Black are much more likely than White Hispanic adults to have faced negative health care experiences. For instance, 52% of Black Hispanic adults say they’ve had to speak up to get proper care, compared with 31% of White Hispanic adults. And Black Hispanic adults are 15 percentage points more likely than White Hispanic adults to say they’ve received lower-quality care (37% vs. 22%).

While negative health care experiences are fairly common, most Hispanic adults have generally positive opinions about their latest health care interaction. A 56% majority say the quality of care they most recently received from doctors or other health care providers was excellent or very good, while another 28% say it was good. Fewer (14%) say the care they received was only fair or poor. Black and White Hispanic adults are about equally likely to give positive ratings of their most recent health care experience.

Note: Here are the survey  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its methodology .

• Health Care
• Hispanics/Latinos
• Medicine & Health

9 facts about Americans and marijuana

5 facts about black americans and health care , 8 facts about americans with disabilities, inflation, health costs, partisan cooperation among the nation’s top problems, by more than two-to-one, americans say medication abortion should be legal in their state, most popular.

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