2.2 Market research

The purpose of market research

The purpose of market research is to identify and understand customer needs. This is useful for businesses as it can help them learn more about what new products and services customers may like and how to promote them.

Primary research methods

Primary research is carried out by the business itself and is specific to them.

● Questionnaires ● Interviews ● Trialling ● Focus groups

Questionnaires

Questionnaires are a set of questions that are given to customers to conduct market research.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Only needs to be created once, which saves time	Customers may dispose of printed questionnaires
Easy to compare and analyse responses	Dicult to get more detailed opinions

Interviews

Interviews are where businesses talk to customers face-to-face to gather feedback and opinions.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Easier to get more detailed opinions	Very time consuming
Customers may be more likely to participate	Customers may not be completely honest

Trialling

Trialling is where businesses invite a small group of customers to test a product and give feedback before it is launched.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Customers can try before they buy	Opinions could still be biased
Opinions are less likely to be biased	Customers may only want to participate because the trial is free

Focus groups

Focus groups are where a group of customers are brought together to answer questions about a product.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Opinions are less likely to be biased	Difficult to measure results as opinions may not represent whole demographic
Customers can share a variety of opinions	Very time consuming

Secondary research sources

Secondary research is research carried out by other people or businesses

● Newspapers and magazines ● Census ● Websites ● Internal data

Newspapers and magazines

Newspapers and magazines are useful for learning about people's opinions, especially of competitors.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Content is up-to-date and a good source of ideas and inspiration	The information is not specific to the business and therefore may not be useful

Census

The census is a huge survey on the entire UK population run by the government every ten years.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Information is already recorded and analysed by experts which saves the business time	The information is not specific to the business so it may be dicult to find useful data

Websites

Looking at other websites is a free and easy way for businesses to look at what competitors are doing, how much they charge and how they are advertising.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Information is up-to-date and easy to find about competitors	May be dicult to interpret and use the information in a useful way

Internal data

Internal data includes documents, reports and other data that the business has collected in the past.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Information is readily available and tailored to the business already	Data is from the past so it may not be useful or accurate for the business anymore

Qualitative and quantitative data in market research

Qualitative data is data like opinions and feedback that isn't in numerical form.

• Audio recordings

• Customer photos

• Interview transcripts Quantitative data is data such as statistics that are in numerical form.

• Costs and money

• Time spent or taken

• Age of customers