When anyone starts a new business, he/she doesn’t just wing it. He/she creates a long plan, researches his/her business strategies before he/she jumps into the market. Otherwise, his/her business could easily collapse. If he/she wants to stay in the market and makes his/her business successful, he/she needs to know how to conduct market research.
What is market research?
Market research is the system of collecting information about the market state of a company. His/her research studies the structure of a market and what requires a possible customer tick. Market research seems very complex but it’s very important if he/she wants to gain success in the business. Researching the market will help him/her to reduce risks and understand what customers want. It also helps to clarify what makes the differences between his/her company and another one.
Now the question arises ‘How to conduct market research?’ Researching the market is a long and time taking process. This cannot be done overnight. Even this process can run after establishing any company. There are 7 major steps of market research.
- Determine the purpose of the study: There are many reasons behind conducting market research. Anyone can use these to estimate business threats, reduce the effect or generate opportunities. So before starting any market research just make sure whether the research is internal or external. When the internal purposes include things like improving cash flow or business operations the external purpose includes trying to convince bestowers to provide business loans. So anyone has to make sure that whether the study will be internal or external before preceding his/her research.
- Looking at industry’s outlook: In anyone’s research, draft the present state of his/her business. It includes where the industry is heading applying metrics such as size, trends, and calculated growth. He/she has to make sure that he/she has enough relevant data to back up his/her claims. This step will let bestows watch that he/she has completed the business’s industry homework. And it will also show them the worthiness of anyone’s business.
- Pinpoint target customers: If anyone thinks every person in the society is the customer then he/she is wrong. When anyone makes research on the market he/she will determine who the actual customers are. While determining the perfect customers he/she has to keep some things in his/her mind. These are
i) The age of the customers
ii) The income of them
iii) Gender
iv) Their location
v) Their job/occupation
vi) Their educational level
Even marital status also affects the marketing research. Then he/she has to think about the customer’s choice. After all of these researchers must think about customer’s characteristics. So pinpointing target customers will help a business gain market efficiently.
- Compare Business Competition: Any business must have competitors. So any business owner must keep in his/her mind that if he/she wants to keep his/her company in this market, he/she must have to identify all the competitors. Then make research about competitors’ success, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then make a plan how to compete with them and reach all the targeted customers. Then it will be very easy to stay in this competitive market.
- Gather Additional Data: While researching the market, information is the greatest asset for this. These data should be unbiased, relevant, and factual and the researchers/ business owners can back up this information and make the best decision based on that information.
- Analyze the findings: After completing the research, he/she has to analyze those. He/she has to lay out all the research and organize these by using different sections such as business market, business purpose, and competition. At first overview the business size and growth rate. Then make a shared parentage of the projected market. Buying or creating products and offering prices to the customers. Then find how much those customers are willing to pay.
- Put this research into action: These researches are done. Then he/she has to put all of this research into action. This research will take a lot of time but if he/she can apply these outcomes properly the business will be successful surely.
Sources:
blog.hubspot.com,
www.managementhelp.org,
www.patriotsoftware.com
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Written By,
Md. Istiak Ahmed
Department Of Management
Session: 2019-2020
Mawlana Bhashani Science And Technology University, Santosh, Tangail.
