What is a Marketing Research Report and How to Write It?

market research reports disadvantages

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There is nothing more embarrassing for a marketer than to hear a client say “…this doesn’t quite address the business questions that we need to answer.” And unfortunately, this is a rather common occurrence in market research reporting that most marketers would care to admit.

So, why do most market research reports fail to meet client expectations? Well, in most cases, because there is more emphasis on methodology and analytic techniques used to craft the report rather than relying on data visualization, creative story-telling, and outlining actionable direction/steps.

Now, our next big question is, how do you avoid your client’s dreaded deer-in-the-headlights reaction when presenting such a report? This blog post will answer this and much more, as we go through the following:

What Is a Market Research Report?

Why is market research important, differences between primary and secondary market research, types of market research, market research reports advantages and disadvantages, how to do market research, how to prepare a market research report: 5 steps, marketing research report templates, marketing research reports best practices, bring your market research reports a step further with databox.

marketing_overview_hubspot_ga_dashboard_databox

The purpose of creating a market research report is to make calculated decisions about business ideas. Market research is done to evaluate the feasibility of a new product or service, through research conducted with potential consumers. The information obtained from conducting market research is then documented in a formal report that should contain the following details:

  • The characteristics of your ideal customers
  • You customers buying habits
  • The value your product or service can bring to those customers
  • A list of your top competitors

Every business aims to provide the best possible product or service at the lowest cost possible. Simply said, market research is important because it helps you understand your customers and determine whether the product or service that you are about to launch is worth the effort.

Here is an example of a customer complaint that may result in more detailed market research:

Suppose you sell widgets, and you want your widget business to succeed over the long term. Over the years, you have developed many different ways of making widgets. But a couple of years ago, a customer complained that your widgets were made of a cheap kind of foam that fell apart after six months. You didn’t think at the time that this was a major problem, but now you know it.

The customer is someone you really want to keep. So, you decide to research this complaint. You set up a focus group of people who use widgets and ask them what they think about the specific problem. After the conducted survey you’ll get a better picture of customer opinions, so you can either decide to make the changes regarding widget design or just let it go.

PRO TIP: How Well Are Your Marketing KPIs Performing?

Like most marketers and marketing managers, you want to know how well your efforts are translating into results each month. How much traffic and new contact conversions do you get? How many new contacts do you get from organic sessions? How are your email campaigns performing? How well are your landing pages converting? You might have to scramble to put all of this together in a single report, but now you can have it all at your fingertips in a single Databox dashboard.

Our Marketing Overview Dashboard includes data from Google Analytics 4 and HubSpot Marketing with key performance metrics like:

  • Sessions . The number of sessions can tell you how many times people are returning to your website. Obviously, the higher the better.
  • New Contacts from Sessions . How well is your campaign driving new contacts and customers?
  • Marketing Performance KPIs . Tracking the number of MQLs, SQLs, New Contacts and similar will help you identify how your marketing efforts contribute to sales.
  • Email Performance . Measure the success of your email campaigns from HubSpot. Keep an eye on your most important email marketing metrics such as number of sent emails, number of opened emails, open rate, email click-through rate, and more.
  • Blog Posts and Landing Pages . How many people have viewed your blog recently? How well are your landing pages performing?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics and HubSpot Marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring your leads. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

marketing_overview_hubspot_ga_dashboard_preview

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot and Google Analytics 4 accounts with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Marketing research requires both primary and secondary market research. But what does that mean and what are the main differences?

Primary market research takes in information directly from customers, usually as participants in surveys. Usually, it is consisted of:

  • Exploratory Primary Research – This type of research helps to identify possible problem areas, and it’s not focused on discovering specific information about customers. As with any research, exploratory primary research should be conducted carefully. Researchers need to craft an interviewing or surveying plan, and gather enough respondents to ensure reasonable levels of statistical reliability.
  • Specific Primary Research – This type of research is one of the best ways to approach a problem because it relies on existing customer data. Specific research provides a deeper, more thorough understanding of the problem and its potential solutions. The greatest advantage of specific research is that it lets you explore a very specific question, and focus on a specific problem or an opportunity.

Secondary market research collects information from other sources such as databases, trend reports, market or government statistics, industry content, etc. We can divide secondary market research into 3 categories:

  • Public market data – Public sources range from academic journals and government reports to tax returns and court documents. These sources aren’t always easy to find. Many are available only in print in libraries and archives. You have to look beyond search engines like Google to find public source documents.
  • Commercial data – Those are typically created by specialized agencies like Pew, Gartner or Forrester. the research agencies are quite expensive, but they provide a lot of useful information.
  • Internal data – Your organization’s databases are gold mines for market research. In the best cases, your salespeople can tell you what they think about customers. Your salespeople are your direct sources of information about the market. Don’t underestimate your internal data.

In general, primary research is more reliable than secondary research, because researchers have to interview people directly. But primary research is expensive and time-consuming. Secondary research can be quicker and less expensive.

There are plenty of ways to conduct marketing research reports. Mostly, the type of research done will depend on your goals. Here are some types of market research often conducted by marketers.

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.

An interview is an interactive process of asking and answering questions and observing your respondent’s responses. Interviews are one of the most commonly used tools in market research . An interview allows an organization to observe, in detail, how its consumers interact with its products and services. It also allows an organization to address specific questions.

A focus group is a group of people who get together to discuss a particular topic. A moderator leads the discussion and takes notes. The main benefit of focus groups is that they are quick and easy to conduct. You can gather a group of carefully-selected people, give them a product to try out, and get their feedback within a few hours/days.

Product or service use research helps you obtain useful information about your product or service such as:

  • What your current customers do with the product/service
  • Which features of the product/service are particularly important to your customers
  • What they dislike about the product/service
  • What they would change about the product/service

Observation-based research helps you to observe your target audience interacting with your product or service. You will see the interactions and which aspects work well and which could be improved. The main point is to directly experience the feedback from your target audience’s point of view.

Personas are an essential sales tool. By knowing your buyers’ pain points and the challenges they face, you can create better content, target messaging, and campaigns for them. Buyer persona research is based on market research, and it’s built around data that describes your customers’ demographics, behaviors, motivations, and concerns. Sales reporting software can significantly help you develop buyer personas when you gain insights after you collected all information.

Market segmentation research is carried out to better understand existing and potential market segments. The objective is to determine how to target different market segments and how they differ from each other. The three most important steps in writing a market segmentation research report are:

  • Defining the problem
  • Determining the solution [and]
  • Defining the market

Related : 9 Customer Segmentation Tips to Personalize Ecommerce Marketing and Drive More Sales

A price that is too high, or too low, can kill a business. And without good market research, you don’t really know what is a good price for your product. Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy.

In a competitive analysis, you define your “competition” as any other entity that competes with you in your market, whether you’re selling a widget or a piece of real estate. With competitive analysis research, you can find out things like:

  • Who your competitors are
  • What they’ve done in the past
  • What’s working well for them
  • Their weaknesses
  • How they’re positioned in the market
  • How they market themselves
  • What they’re doing that you’re not

Related : How to Do an SEO Competitive Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide

In today’s marketplace, companies are increasingly focused on customer loyalty. What your customers want is your product, but, more importantly, they want it delivered with a service that exceeds their expectations. Successful companies listen to their customers and respond accordingly. That’s why customer satisfaction and loyalty research is a critical component of that basic equation.

Related : 11 Tactics for Effectively Measuring Your Customer Service ROI

Who you are, what you stand for, what you offer, what you believe in, and what your audience thinks of you is all wrapped up in brand. Brand awareness research tells what your target audience knows about your brand and what’s their experience like.

A campaign research report is a detailed account of how your marketing campaign performed. It includes all the elements that went into creating the campaign: planning, implementation, and measurement.

Here are some of the top advantages and disadvantages of doing market research and crafting market research reports.

  • Identify business opportunities – A market research report can be used to analyze potential markets and new products. It can give information about customer needs, preferences, and attitudes. Also, it compare products and services.
  • A clear understanding of your customers – A market report gives company’s marketing department an in-depth picture about customers’ needs and wants. This knowledge can be used to improve products, prices, and advertising.
  • Mitigates risks – 30% of small businesses fail within the first two years. Why is this so? The answer is that entrepreneurs are risk takers. However, there are risks that could be avoided. A good marketing research will help you identify those risks and allow you to mitigate them.
  • Clear data-driven insights – Market research encompasses a wide range of activities, from determining market size and segment to forecasting demand, and from identifying competitors to monitoring pricing. All of these are quantified and measurable which means that gives you a clear path for building unique decisions based on numbers.

Disadvantages

  • It’s not cheap – Although market research can be done for as little as $500, large markets like the United States can run into millions of dollars. If a research is done for a specific product, the budget may be even much higher. The budget also depends on the quality of the research. The more expensive it is, the more time the research will take.
  • Some insights could be false – For example, if you are conducting a survey, data may be inadequate or inaccurate because respondents can, well, simply be dishonest and lie.

Here are the essential steps you need to take when doing market research:

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.

The job of a marketing persona is to describe your ideal customer and to tell you what they want, what motivates them, what frustrates them, and what limits them. Finding out these things means you have a better chance of designing your products, services, marketing messages, and brand around real customers. There is no one right way to create a buyer persona, though.

For example, if you’re in an industry focused on education, you could include things like:

  • Educational level
  • Education background

It’s recommended that you create 3-5 buyer personas for your products, based on your ideal customer.

This should be a representative sample of your target customers so you can better understand their behavior. You want to find people who fit both your target personas and who represent the broader demographic of your market. People who recently made a purchase or purposefully decided not to make one are a good sample to start with.

The questions you use determine the quality of your results. Of course, the quality of your results also depends on the quality of your participants.

Don’t ask questions that imply a yes or no answer. Instead, use open questions. For example, if you are researching customers about yogurt products, you could ask them: „ What have you heard about yogurt ?” or “ What do you think of yogurt ?“.

Avoid questions that use numbers, such as “ How many times a week do you eat yogurt ?”

Avoid questions that suggest a set of mutually exclusive answers, such as “ Do you like yogurt for breakfast, lunch, or dinner ?”

Avoid questions that imply a scale, such as “ Do you like chocolate-flavored yogurt ?”

Market researchers sometimes call one company the top competitor, another middle competitor, and the third one small competitor. However you classify them, you want to identify at least three companies in each category. Now, for each business on your list, list its key characteristics. For example, if your business sells running shoes, a key characteristic might be the product’s quality.

Next, make a list of your small business’s competitive advantages. These include the unique qualities or features of your business that make it the best choice of customers for the products or services it offers. Make a list of these competitive advantages and list them next to the key characteristics you listed for your business.

You have just finished writing your marketing research report. Everything is out there quantified or qualified. You just have to sum it up and focus on the most important details that are going to make a big impact on your decisions. Clear summary leads to a winning strategy!

Related : How to Prepare a Complete Marketing Report: The KPIs, Analysis, & Action Plan You Need

Here’s how to prepare a market research report in 5 simple steps:

Step 1: Cluster the data

Step 2: prepare an outline, step 3: mention the research methods, step 4: include visuals with narrative explanations, step 5: conclude the report with recommendations.

Your first step is to cluster all the available information into a manageable set. Clustering is the process of grouping information together in a way that emphasizes commonalities and minimizes differences. So, in market research, this will help to organize all the information you have about a product, service, or target market and identify your focus areas.

A marketing research report should be written so that other people can understand it:

  • Include background information at the beginning to explain who your audience is and what problem you are trying to solve for them.
  • In the body of the report, include a description of the methodology – Explain to the reader how your research was done, what was involved, and why you selected the methodology you used.
  • Also in the body of the report, include the results of your market research. These may be quantitative or qualitative, but either way they should answer the questions you posed at the beginning.
  • Include the executive summary – A summary of the entire report.

The market research methodology section includes details on the type of research, sample size, any limitations of the studies, research design, sample selection, data collection procedures, and statistical analyses used.

Visuals are an essential part of the presentation. Even the best-written text can be difficult to understand. Charts and graphs are easier to understand than text alone, and they help the reader see how the numbers fit the bigger picture.

But visuals are not the whole story. They are only one part of the presentation. Visuals are a cue for the reader. The narrative gives the story, not just the numbers.

Recommendations tend to follow logically from conclusions and are a response to a certain problem. The recommendation should always be relevant to the research rationale, that is, the recommendation should be based on the results of the research reported in the body of the report.

Now, let’s take a look at some dashboard reporting templates you could use to enhance your market research:

  • Semrush (Position Tracking) Report

Brand Awareness Report

Sales pipeline performance report, customer success overview report, stripe (mrr & churn) report, semrush (position tracking) report template.

This free SEMRush dashboard template will help you monitor how your website’s search visibility on search engines evolves on a monthly basis. This dashboard contains all of the information you need to make changes and improve the ranking results of your business in Google Search.

Semrush (Position Tracking) Report Template

This Brand Awareness Report will help you to get a sense of your brand awareness performance in Google Analytics, Google Organic Search, and Facebook. Use this dashboard to track brand awareness the same way you track other marketing campaigns.

Brand Awareness Report

Are your sales and marketing funnel healthy and growing? How is your sales and marketing funnel performing? What are the key conversion rates between your lifecycle stages? With a pipeline performance dashboard , you’ll get all of the answers quickly.

Sales Pipeline Performance Report

This Customer Success Overview Dashboard allows you to analyze how your customer service team’s responsiveness impacts your business. Use this dashboard to assess the correlation between your customer service performance and churn rate. 

Customer Success Overview Report Template

This Stripe dashboard tracks your churn rate and MRR growth in real-time and shows you which customers (and how many of them) you have at any given point in time. All you have to do to get started is to connect your Stripe account.

Stripe (MRR & Churn) Report Template

As we said earlier, there are no strict rules when it comes to writing marketing research reports. On the other hand, you must find your focus if you want to write a report that will make a difference. Here are some best practices you should keep in mind when writing a research report.

  • Objectives – The objective of a market research report is to define the problems, identify key issues, and suggest recommendations for further research. If you answer them successfully, you’re on the right way.
  • Don’t worry about the format – Be creative. The report could be in a form of a PowerPoint presentation, Excel sheet, interactive dashboard or even a video. Use the format that best fits your audience, but make sure to make it easy to read.
  • Include an executive summary, scorecard , or a dashboard – This is really important because time is money, and most people don’t have time to waste. So, how to put everything important in a short role? Address all of the objectives and put them in a graphic dashboard or scorecard. Also, you can write an executive summary template (heart of the report) that can be easily updated and read by managers or CEOs.
  • Use storytelling –  A good story always makes a great point because it’s so memorable. Your research report results can double the effect with a catchy story.
  • Keep it short – It’s not a secret that we are reading so little in the digital era. Use a lot of white space and bullet points. Too much text on a page means less focus for the reader.
  • Be organized – Maintain the order of information. It’s important for the reader to navigate through the report easily. If they want to find some details or specific information it would be great to divide all sections with appropriate references.
  • Methodological information – Methodological details could be boring. Include only the most important details that the reader needs to know to understand the big picture.
  • Use images (or other visualizations) whenever you can – A good picture speaks for 1.000 words! If you can communicate the point visually, don’t hesitate to do it. It would be a lot easier for those who don’t like a lot of text to understand your results. But don’t push them where you can’t.
  • Create readable graphs – The crown of marketing research reports is a comprehensive graph. Make sure to design precise and attractive graphs that will power up and round your story.
  • Use the Appendix  – You can include all secondary information such as methodological details and other miscellaneous data in the Appendix at the end of the report.

Market research reports are all about presenting your data in an easy-to-understand way and making calculated decisions about business ideas. But this is something easier said than done.

When busy stakeholders and executives grab a report, they need something that will give them an idea of the results – the big picture that addresses company wide-business goals.

Can a PowerPoint presentation or a PDF report meet those expectations? Most likely not. But a dashboard can.

Keep in mind that even with the best market analysis in the world, your market research report won’t be actionable if you don’t present the data efficiently and in a way that everyone understands what the next steps are. Databox is your key ally in the matter.

Databox dashboards are designed to help you present your market research data with clarity – from identifying what is influencing your business, and understanding where your brand is situated in the market, to gauging the temperature of your niche or industry before a new product/service launch.

Present your research results with efficient, interactive dashboards now by signing up for a free trial .

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25 Advantages and Disadvantages of Market Research

Market research is a systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data and information to gain insights into various aspects of a market, including its size, trends, customer preferences, competition, and potential opportunities or threats. It is a fundamental tool used by businesses, organizations, and governments to make informed decisions, develop effective strategies, and stay competitive in their respective markets.

advantages and disadvantages of market research

Market research has ancient roots. It dates back to the time of the Babylonians, who gathered information on crop yields and prices. Even in those early days, data collection and analysis were used to make informed decisions.

To capture a holistic view of consumer behavior , market researchers often combine data from various channels, including social media, e-commerce, traditional surveys, and customer support interactions.

While market research offers numerous advantages, it also comes with its fair share of disadvantages.

Advantages of Market Research

The advantages of market research are not just about surface-level benefits. They are about deepening understanding, mitigating risks, and driving sustainable growth.

1. Informed Decision-Making

Market research provides businesses with a wealth of information that forms the foundation for informed decision-making.

This advantage goes beyond the general idea of making better choices. It means that decisions are grounded in empirical evidence and insights gathered from data analysis. This precision can lead to more effective resource allocation, optimized strategies, and ultimately, increased profitability.

2. Customer Understanding

The understanding of customers garnered through market research is multifaceted. It goes beyond merely recognizing demographics ; it delves into psychographics, behavior, motivations, and pain points.

In-depth customer profiles help businesses craft highly targeted marketing campaigns, design products that meet specific needs, and enhance customer experiences. The result is not just customer satisfaction but customer loyalty and advocacy.

3. Competitive Advantage

Market research serves as a strategic compass for gaining a competitive advantage. It allows businesses to assess their strengths and weaknesses relative to competitors.

By benchmarking performance against rivals, companies can identify areas for improvement or differentiation. This advantage is not about following the competition but strategically outperforming them in ways that resonate with customers.

4. Risk Mitigation

Market research plays a pivotal role in risk mitigation. It’s not just about identifying risks but also understanding their potential impact.

Businesses can use market research to assess the severity of threats and the likelihood of their occurrence. Armed with this knowledge, they can develop contingency plans, adapt to changing market conditions, and reduce exposure to unforeseen risks.

5. Product Development

The advantage of market research in product development is not limited to identifying features customers desire. It extends to optimizing the entire product life cycle. Research helps in defining product specifications, pricing strategies, and launch plans.

It also guides post-launch improvements based on feedback and market response. This iterative approach leads to more successful products with a higher chance of market acceptance.

6. Market Segmentation

Market segmentation through research is akin to using a finely tuned lens to view a diverse audience. It allows businesses to create highly tailored marketing messages, product variations, and distribution channels for each segment.

This personalization leads to higher conversion rates, better customer engagement, and more efficient use of marketing resources.

7. Measuring Effectiveness

Market research doesn’t stop after implementing strategies; it includes continuous monitoring and evaluation. It allows businesses to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, product launches, and other initiatives.

Metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLV), and conversion rates help gauge success. This feedback loop ensures strategies can be adjusted in real time for maximum impact.

8. Enhanced Communication

Effective communication is at the heart of successful marketing, and market research is the cornerstone of this process. It helps businesses understand the language, preferences, and communication channels favored by their target audience .

By tailoring messages accordingly, companies can create a genuine connection with customers, fostering brand loyalty and advocacy.

9. Cost Efficiency

The cost-efficiency advantage of market research extends beyond immediate savings. It ensures that resources are allocated where they are most likely to generate returns.

By avoiding wasted efforts on unproductive strategies or irrelevant markets, businesses can achieve higher returns on investment (ROI) and operate more efficiently.

10. Long-Term Growth

Market research isn’t just about short-term gains; it’s a catalyst for long-term growth. It facilitates innovation, identifies emerging trends, and helps businesses evolve with changing consumer preferences.

This adaptability is essential for sustained success and staying ahead in a dynamic marketplace.

11. Brand Building

Market research plays a pivotal role in brand building. It helps businesses understand how their brand is perceived by customers and competitors.

what are the advantages of market research

By conducting brand perception surveys and analyzing the results, companies can identify areas for improvement in brand image, messaging, and positioning. This insight allows for the development of a more compelling and consistent brand identity , which is essential for long-term success and customer loyalty.

12. Product Innovation

Market research is instrumental in driving product innovation . Beyond simply understanding customer needs, it delves into anticipating future needs and desires.

Through methods like trend analysis and concept testing, businesses can identify emerging market trends and consumer preferences. This proactive approach enables companies to stay ahead of the curve by developing innovative products that resonate with evolving consumer demands.

13. Optimized Pricing Strategies

Pricing is a critical element of any business strategy, and market research provides invaluable insights for optimizing pricing strategies .

By conducting pricing surveys, competitive pricing analysis, and willingness-to-pay studies, companies can set prices that maximize revenue while remaining competitive. This precision in pricing can lead to increased profit margins and improved market positioning.

14. Global Expansion

For businesses considering global expansion, market research is indispensable. It helps in assessing the viability of entering new markets by providing insights into local consumer behavior , cultural nuances, regulatory environments, and competitive landscapes.

In-depth international market research ensures that expansion efforts are well-informed, reducing the risks associated with entering unfamiliar territories.

15. Evaluating Marketing Channels

In the digital age, businesses have a multitude of marketing channels at their disposal, from social media and email marketing to content marketing and influencer partnerships.

Market research helps in evaluating the effectiveness of these channels for reaching and engaging with the target audience. By analyzing customer preferences and behavior, businesses can allocate marketing budgets to the most productive channels, maximizing their marketing ROI.

Disadvantages of Market Research

Certainly, let’s explore the disadvantages of market research in greater detail, shedding light on the intricacies and potential challenges associated with this crucial business practice.

1. Costly and Time-Consuming

Market research can be a resource-intensive endeavor. The costs associated with data collection, analysis, and hiring experts can add up quickly, especially for small businesses with limited budgets .

Additionally , conducting comprehensive research often takes time, and in rapidly changing markets, delays can lead to missed opportunities.

2. Risk of Bias

Bias is a significant concern in market research. Researchers and survey designers must be vigilant to minimize bias in various forms, including question phrasing, sample selection, and interpretation of results.

Failure to address bias can lead to skewed data, undermining the reliability and accuracy of research findings.

3. Complex Data Analysis

Interpreting market research data can be complex, requiring expertise in statistics and data analysis.

Misinterpretation of data or improper statistical methods can lead to incorrect conclusions and misguided decision-making. This complexity may necessitate the involvement of trained analysts or data scientists.

4. Overreliance on Data

While data-driven decision-making is essential, an overreliance on data can stifle innovation and creativity.

what are the limitations of market research

Market research primarily deals with existing data and known trends, which may limit the exploration of new ideas and unconventional solutions. Striking a balance between data-driven insights and strategic vision is crucial for holistic decision-making.

5. Limited Predictive Power

Market research excels at providing insights into past and current market conditions, but predicting the future is inherently challenging.

Rapid changes in consumer behavior, technological advancements, and external factors can make accurate forecasting difficult. Businesses should be aware that research findings are not crystal balls but rather informed estimations.

6. Data Privacy Concerns

With the increasing emphasis on data privacy regulations and ethical considerations, mishandling customer data can lead to legal issues and reputational damage.

Businesses must navigate a complex landscape of data protection laws and ensure they handle customer information ethically and transparently.

7. Information Overload

In the digital age, businesses have access to vast amounts of data. Handling this information overload can be overwhelming.

Distinguishing valuable insights from noise and managing the sheer volume of data can be challenging, requiring robust data management systems and skilled analysts.

8. Resistance to Change

Implementing changes based on market research findings can be met with resistance, particularly if the findings challenge established beliefs or practices within an organization.

Managing organizational change , convincing stakeholders, and aligning teams with research-driven strategies can be a complex and time-consuming process.

9. Competitive Intelligence Risks

While monitoring competitors is crucial, there’s a risk of overemphasizing competitive intelligence to the detriment of innovation.

Focusing too much on what competitors are doing can lead to a “ follow the leader ” mentality rather than forging a unique market position. Businesses should use competitive intelligence as a tool for inspiration rather than imitation.

10. Sample Size Limitations

The accuracy of market research findings heavily depends on the representativeness of the sample used for data collection.

Small or unrepresentative samples can lead to skewed results and misguided strategies. Ensuring a large enough and diverse sample can be challenging, especially when dealing with niche markets or elusive demographics.

Conclusion:

Market research is a valuable tool for businesses seeking to thrive in competitive markets. It offers a plethora of advantages, including informed decision-making, customer understanding, and a competitive edge. However , it is not without its drawbacks, such as costliness, bias, and limitations in predicting the future.

To harness the benefits of market research while mitigating its disadvantages, businesses must approach it strategically. They should invest in high-quality research, ensure data integrity, and strike a balance between data-driven decisions and visionary thinking.

Moreover , staying updated on ethical and legal considerations in data collection and management is crucial to maintaining a positive reputation and customer trust.

In a rapidly changing business landscape, market research remains an indispensable tool for companies looking to adapt, grow, and succeed. When conducted thoughtfully and with a keen understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, market research can be a cornerstone of sustainable business success.

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The Pros And Cons Of Market Research

by Hutch | Blog | 0 comments

Customers are at the heart of every marketing campaign. Marketing materials that fail to capture the attention of target customers will fail to lead to profit. Market research can identify which advertising messages are creating unique pain points in potential customers.

Targeted advertising messages can be adjusted to reach the exact individuals most likely to purchase a product or service. By creating customized marketing materials tailored to each customer type, companies can increase their chances of achieving outstanding business success.

This article will help you gather more information about the topic if you’re unfamiliar with market research. You’ll also learn how market research helps a business and what are the downsides of conducting this activity.

What Is Market Research?

Image of shrug

Market research is the systematic approach to gather data on potential clients and target markets in an effort to understand them, beginning with who they are. It’s a significant factor in maintaining a competitive advantage and a key ingredient in business strategy.

Market research provides information that’s useful for decision-making and a base of knowledge about how to reach a large audience and build customer loyalty.

There are several ways a company can conduct market research. You can continue reading this to learn about comprehensive research methods. Here are also some of the ways businesses conduct market research:

Field Studies

Field studies rely on consumers’ descriptions of their shopping environment, like eating at a fast-food restaurant or visiting a boutique. Another widely used method is elicitation, where researchers go out into the marketplace and make direct observations of target customers, whether good and bad.

Representative Sampling

Person getting feedback

Representative sampling is another common type of market research. In this method, researchers randomly choose representative persons from the population; these represent the target consumers. These selected individuals are asked to fill out surveys.

These surveys give researchers valuable insights about buying decisions, such as how buyers decide what products to buy, why they make those decisions, and how much they want to buy.

Focus Groups

Another form of market research uses focus groups. Focus groups are homogenous groups that meet to discuss and exchange ideas. Participants of focus groups may be asked to share their views on a given topic and their overall impressions of a specific product.

These surveys allow researchers to obtain comprehensive information about how and why individual purchases are made and the attitudes and behaviors that guide buying decisions. But, because many purchasers are reluctant to share information, research groups can have low response rates.

Use Of Secondary Information

People looking at graphs

An alternative to surveys and focus groups is the use of secondary information. Secondary information comes from within the organization itself: from current workers, customers, or competitors. Secondary data can make adjustments to the market research approach that has already been conducted.

Secondary information can show where and how workers, customers, competitors, or other essential factors might have changed if the surveyor had completed the survey differently, for instance.

A straightforward way of collecting this data is to do a survey among your customers or employees. Just email them a link to a   survey form you’ve built on your website  and have them fill it in. A small reward – like a discount for customers, or cash for your workers – can increase response rates significantly.

What Are The Advantages Of Market Research?

Market research is one of the most critical and inevitable factors in every business. Here are ways market research can be beneficial:

Company Growth

Person pointing at graph

Market research helps the company understand, analyze, evaluate, and pinpoint areas with the highest growth potential.

It plays a significant role in understanding consumer behavior or behavioral economics , preferences, buying behavior, and making changes based on the shifting change in all the critical factors of marketing like place, cost, promotion, and product.

With this information, the company can plan its promotion strategies accordingly to achieve its sales targets.

Increases Loyal Customer Base

Marketing research also helps in identifying the customers that have a high probability of increasing sales. This allows the company to build a new strategy to target these customers specifically for further growth.

For instance, it considers how people use a new product or how the current customers are using the product, how the market trends affect the development in terms of sales, how much demand there is for the product in the market, and others.

Development of Effective Marketing Strategies

Image of person Planning

Apart from analyzing the market trends and consumer behavior, market research also helps plan a marketing strategy. It helps in designing and executing a campaign accordingly that would ultimately help in increasing sales.

It’s also an effective way of understanding the present scenario and the product demands.

It can also provide information on which advertisements or marketing campaigns attracted the most customers and which are the ones that are not as effective. With this information, a business can avoid spending too much on campaigns that aren’t bringing many customers in.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Market Research?

Although market research has some significant advantages for companies, it also has some downsides. Some of the disadvantages of market research include:

Image of paying

One of the main reasons some businesses refuse to conduct market research is that it entails enormous costs. Market research can be intimidating for small companies after knowing all of the tools and processes needed to complete the activities.

It may be cost-effective to research independently, but it won’t benefit them in the long run because they don’t have the tools and strategies to gather essential data.

Targetting A Large Population

One of the challenges for market researchers is the lack of respondents for their studies. Asking people to answer surveys or forms can be tricky. That’s why it’s essential to conduct different strategies to gather as much information as needed for your market research.

Time-Consuming

Image of watch

A small business doesn’t conduct market research because it takes a considerable amount of time. Conducting market research entails a lot of preparation, and the gathering of data should be done extensively.

This is important because when you rush into doing the process, you might not have credible information to help your business.

Market research plays a vital role in businesses. Businesses need to develop a comprehensive understanding of their target market. Market research aims to know how consumers make buying decisions, what factors influence buying decisions, and how to create changes to increase product sales without significantly decreasing service or profit.

There are many methods you can use as part of your marketing research process.

You can ask people to take a survey or interview a focus group. You can also use the Internet, like using social media or Reddit as a marketing resource .

Market research has many advantages. It helps your company grow and become competitive as it finds effective marketing ways to attract more customers. However, market research also comes with a cost. That’s why many smaller businesses avoid conducting this activity because it can be expensive and time-consuming.

As a business owner, it’s essential to weigh out the advantages and disadvantages of doing market research.

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What is a Marketing Research Report and How to Write It

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In essence, a market research report is a document that reveals the characteristics of your ideal customers, their buying habits, the value your product or service can bring to them, and the list of your top competitors.

The marketing research report paints a picture of what kinds of new products or services may be the most profitable in today’s highly competitive landscape. For products or services already available, a marketing research report can provide detailed insights as to whether they are meeting their consumers’ needs and expectations. It helps understand the reasons why consumers buy a particular product by studying consumer behavior, including how economic, cultural, societal, and personal factors influence that behavior.

Furthermore, the purpose of writing a marketing research report is to make calculated decisions about business ideas – whether they’re worth pursuing or not. This requires one primary skill which is observing the pattern which is hidden in the User Generated Content (UGC) written in different tones and perspectives on the social web.

Simply put, writing a market research report is a vital part of planning business activities and serves as a neat way to assimilate all the information about your target market and prospective customers.

Now, there are two key varieties of marketing research report formats – primary and secondary.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Let’s take a look at the main recipes of how to make a market research report in detail:

Primary Research

This method of marketing research involves gathering firsthand information about your market and prospective clients. You study your customers directly by conducting:

  • Interviews (either by telephone or face-to-face)
  • Surveys and polls (online or by email)
  • Questionnaires (online or by email)
  • Focus groups discussions with a sample of potential customers and getting their direct feedback

Some crucial questions that you need to ask your prospective customers in your primary research are:

  • What are the factors that motivate you to purchase this product or service?
  • What do you like or dislike about this type of product or service already available on the market?
  • Are there any areas you’d like to suggest for improvement?
  • What according to you is the appropriate price for this product or service?

Primary research also involves analyzing competitors’ strategies, so you can find gaps and weaknesses that you can turn into your strengths.

Secondary Research

The second method of writing a marketing research report is all about analyzing the data that has already been published and using the available information on the web. That is, secondary research is done from reliable reports and statistics found on the websites of other organizations or authority blogs in your industry.

Sources can be:

  • Public: This includes all the free sources like social media and forums, Google Trends, YouGov, and government sources such as the United States Census Bureau.
  • Commercial: This includes industry insights compiled by research agencies like Pew, Gartner, Forrester, and so on. Typically, these are paid.
  • Internal: This is the historical market data your organization already has in-house, such as the Net Promoter Score, customer churn rate, and so on.

Secondary data can help you identify competitors, establish benchmarks, and determine target customer segments or demographics – people who live a certain lifestyle, their income and buying patterns, age group, location, etc.

Market Research Reports Advantages and Disadvantages

Before we discuss how to write a marketing research report, let’s quickly take a look at market research report benefits and also some of the limitations in marketing research reports.

Advantages of Market Research Report

Here are the top reasons why you should invest in creating a market research report.

1. Gives a Better Understanding of Your Customers

The answers to questions like who will buy your product, what are the customers’ pain points, what motivates their buying behavior, and so on will be effectively answered with a market research report. Essentially, it will help you map out the full profile of your ideal customer and consequently, allow you to create tailored products and marketing campaigns.

2. Helps Spot Business Opportunities

As already mentioned, market research will give you insights about your competitors’ strategies, so you can find gaps in their offerings that you can turn into your product’s strengths. You may also find other business opportunities such as potential partnerships with brands that sell complementary products, or an opportunity to better upsell or cross-sell your products. For example, a keyword research report from a SaaS SEO agency provides an opportunity to acquire organic search ranking by creating in-depth, high-converting, and funnel-oriented content.

3. Minimizes Risks

Starting or running a business is synonymous with risk. In fact, nearly half of all small businesses with employees don’t survive for more than five years. Conducting proper market research frequently will allow you to stay on top of trends, and not waste your efforts and resources in things that would likely be fruitless.

For instance, before you launch a new product, conducting market research gives you a much better idea of the demand for your product. Or if an existing product is seeing a big drop in sales, market research helps you determine the root cause of the issue.

4. Facilitates Data-Driven Decision Making

When it comes to business decisions – data over guesswork, always. So, based on your market research results, you can make more informed decisions regarding the pricing, distribution channels, and marketing budget of your products.

Disadvantages of Market Research Report

As with anything, there are a couple of downsides to conducting marketing research as well.

1. Could Be an Expensive Activity

Conducting a comprehensive, in-depth research is usually a costly activity in terms of both time and money. To research the right audience with the right questions requires you to invest a lot of time. If you wish to use data by commercial market research agencies or get help from one such agency in conducting primary research, be prepared to spend a substantial amount.

2. Insights Gathered Could Be Inadequate or Even Inaccurate

Another problem often faced in marketing research is a lack of respondents. While you can figure out who is your target audience, getting them to fill out surveys and questionnaires can indeed be challenging. Plus, you’re using data you collected for drawing conclusions, which may be unreliable.

For example, by the time you act on the data you collected, it may have become outdated. This translates into poor decision making and the whole process may become counterproductive.

How to Prepare Market Research Report

Now, here are some concrete steps and guidelines for writing a marketing research report.

Step 1: Cluster the Data

First off, compile all the relevant data you’ve accumulated from your primary and/or secondary research efforts. Survey results, interview answers, statistics from third-party sources – bring it all together and then analyze the information to sketch out the profile of your target market.

Step 2: Prepare an Outline

Next, create a skeleton of the report so that you understand what information will go where. An outline with sections and subsections will help you structure your marketing research report properly. A typical report includes an introduction, background and methodology, executive summary, results, and a conclusion with links to all references.

With an outline in front of you, start by writing the front matter of your report – an introduction that provides a brief overview of your business and the reason you conducted the market research. Include a summary of the market research process and the results you have analyzed. For instance, you might have been gauging the feasibility of a new product, so summarize that your market research report is for a new product launch.

Step 3: Mention the Research Methods

An important next step is to clearly mention the methods used to conduct the research. That is, if you conducted polls, specify the number of polls, the percentage of responses, the types of people or businesses targeted, and the questions included in the poll. Tag all the resources for demographic information, such as census data.

Step 4: Include Visuals With Narrative Explanation

Visuals such as charts and graphs are an important part of any research paper. They make sure that the findings are easy to comprehend.

So, create tables, graphs, and/or charts illustrating the results of the research. Accompany it with a narrative explanation of the visual data. Highlight the inferences you made based on this data.

Step 5: Conclude the Report With Recommendations

Finally, conclude your report with a section that lists actionable recommendations based on the research results to facilitate decision making. For example, all the numbers may point to the conclusion that your customers desire a particular feature that no other product on the market is currently offering. In this case, it is clear that it’s a good idea to invest your resources in providing that feature and gain a competitive edge.

At the very end of the report, include reference links to all the sources and an appendix for supplementary materials and further reading.

Marketing Research Report Templates

Before you go, check out some templates and samples you can use to better understand the marketing research report structure, and maybe even use them to kickstart your report instead of preparing one from scratch.

  • Market Research Report for New Product Launch
  • Market Research Report for Restaurant (competitor analysis)
  • Social Media Market Research Report

Writing a marketing research report is a tried-and-true way to gain a solid understanding of your target audience and competitors while enabling you to make more informed decisions and minimize investment risks. Sure, it may take considerable time, effort, and even money to conduct thorough research and prepare a report, but when done well, the ROI of it all is well worth it.

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Shahid Abbasi is a Senior SEO and Content Marketing Analyst at Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.

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Exploring the Pros and Cons of Research Reports

The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive exploration into the various pros and cons of research reports. With the recent proliferation in academic, commercial, governmental and non-governmental organizations engaging in various forms of research initiatives, it has become increasingly important for professionals to understand both the benefits and limitations associated with these data collection methods. This paper will review how different types of report formats can influence results as well as examine key considerations when planning or evaluating a research report project. In addition, we will discuss practical strategies for overcoming some common challenges that arise when utilizing this type of information gathering approach. By examining each component thoroughly, readers should gain an enhanced appreciation for what factors contribute towards successful outcomes while identifying potential areas needing improvement if desired goals are not achieved.

I. Introduction to Research Reports

Ii. benefits of research reports, iii. limitations of research reports, iv. advantages and disadvantages of various types of research report structures, v. evaluating the costs associated with conducting a research report study, vi. strategies for overcoming common challenges in generating useful results from a research report, vii conclusion: exploring the pros and cons of undertaking a research report.

Research Reports: A Comprehensive Overview

It is undeniable that research reports are essential for advancing knowledge in a wide variety of disciplines. These documents provide detailed summaries and analyses of collected data, offering researchers the means to communicate their findings with precision and clarity. Research reports may vary depending on specific field or domain; however, they all generally adhere to certain accepted conventions in terms of formatting, language, organization and content.

  • Scientific Research Report
  • Business-related Research Report

One type of research report particularly common among scientists is the scientific research report. This format requires an introductory section which explains the purpose of the document as well as any theoretical foundations upon which it was built. The body typically contains descriptions about methodologies used during experimentation along with interpretations made from results obtained from those experiments. Lastly, there is usually some sort of conclusion drawn based off these observations that presents what can be inferred from them moving forward into future studies.

Another popular form within academic circles is the literary analysis research report—often required by English professors when reading classic texts such as Shakespearean plays or 19th century novels like Jane Eyre . Literary analysis reports aim at delving deeper into themes explored by authors while also critiquing its implications given various historical contexts it finds itself situated within today’s world. Additionally included will likely be biographical details related to authorial background in order to garner greater understanding for how this influences writings produced throughout said author’s lifetime.

Advantages of Market Research Reports

Market research reports have become increasingly valuable for businesses and other organizations. Such reports enable a deeper understanding of customer needs, provide insight into competitive markets, and offer useful guidance on how to optimize product offerings. Additionally, they are invaluable sources of data that can be used to inform decision-making processes.

For example, a business utilizing market research might identify in which countries it should open stores or explore the effectiveness of its current advertising campaigns. A company also may find out what products customers desire most or uncover emerging trends before their competitors do so they can react swiftly. Furthermore, information from these studies allows firms to gauge customer satisfaction with existing services or goods – invaluable when considering making changes or launching new products entirely.

The limitations of research reports are significant. Firstly, there is the issue of bias , especially with qualitative studies. The researcher’s own opinions can significantly influence their results, leading to a lack of impartiality and objectivity in the report’s findings.

Furthermore, most types of research reports , including surveys or case studies tend to focus on a small sample size that may not accurately reflect an entire population. Even if larger groups are considered for study, it is impossible to represent every individual within them meaning potential areas of exploration will be left out.

  • A great way to reduce bias as much as possible when producing research reports is through triangulation; collecting data from multiple sources and viewpoints.
  • When selecting your sample size for any kind of survey or experiment based project, aim high where you can – the greater number participants included in your research means more comprehensive results!

In terms of research report structure, there are several key advantages and disadvantages to consider. From experimental reports, which rely on the researcher’s data collection as the primary source of evidence, to literature reviews that offer a synthesis of other scholarly works in the field, each type has its own benefits and drawbacks.

  • Experimental Reports : These reports have great potential for uncovering causal relationships between variables because they can control many factors within an experiment or survey. However, it is challenging to capture all relevant information from participants in this format due to their limited scope.
  • Literature Reviews : Literature reviews provide broader coverage than single-source studies by incorporating multiple perspectives and analyzing different bodies of work. While very comprehensive compared with other structures such as case studies, literature reviews do not usually offer unique insights since much of the evidence used is derived from existing sources.

When evaluating the costs associated with conducting a research report study, one must first consider which type of report they are completing. For instance, if an individual is looking to conduct a market research survey , there will be varying expenses depending on the sample size and method used. The cost of using an online platform for data collection can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars depending on the length and scope of the project.

  • In addition to collecting data, researchers may need additional funds in order to analyze and present results through comprehensive reports or presentations. Hiring experts for this task could easily add several thousand dollars into budgeting calculations.

As research projects progress, common challenges may arise in the process of obtaining useful results from a report. In this section, we will explore strategies to help address these difficulties when working with qualitative research reports.

  • Ensuring accurate data representation: Research should be conducted thoroughly and meticulously in order for it to produce valid conclusions. To guarantee accuracy throughout the entire project lifecycle, steps such as verifying all data entered into the system and double-checking calculations can prove invaluable.
  • Managing time constraints: It is important that deadlines are met while producing a meaningful output which can sometimes cause difficulty if there are limited resources available or if an unexpected event occurs during the course of investigation. Therefore it is necessary to set realistic goals beforehand so that they remain achievable despite any potential disruptions.

The research report in question examined the pros and cons of undertaking a survey-based study. After considering both the advantages and disadvantages, it became clear that conducting such a study is not without its challenges. Nonetheless, with adequate preparation and attention to detail, researchers can maximize their chances for success.

Research reports provide an objective overview of data which allows all stakeholders to make informed decisions. They also offer great flexibility when it comes to structuring questions and gathering responses from respondents across different locations or demographic groups. Finally, survey-based studies are relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of research methods such as laboratory experiments or focus groups.

One major downside associated with these types of studies is that they rely heavily on self-reporting by participants who may be unreliable sources of information due to biases or lack knowledge about certain topics. Additionally, surveys can take considerable amounts of time before results are obtained; thus affecting turnaround times for projects relying on this type data collection method. Lastly, errors related sampling size could potentially affect accuracy levels within analysis.

Marketing Research

marketing research

Table of Content

Marketing research process, benefits of marketing research, disadvantages of marketing research.

The American Marketing Association defines marketing research as “the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information–information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance ; and improve understanding of marketing as a process.

Marketing research identifies the information needed to address business problems. It designs data collection methods, analyzes results, and communicates research outcomes to needy people and organizations.

The marketing research gives insight into customers’ preferences and what they want. These insights can be both qualitative and quantitative and can help a business make better decisions.

Good marketers use a formal process for marketing research that includes the following six steps to maximize the potential of all resources and practices.

Define the Problem, and Research Objective

Determining the problem is the most important step in any marketing research project. Before you can do any research or collect data, it is important to understand what you want to learn. The problem you are trying to solve in marketing research will help you determine the information you need and how to get it.

This will allow your company to identify the root problem or opportunity. For example, how can you best address a loss in market share or launch a product to a particular demographic .

Create the Research Plan

Marketing managers must make decisions about data sources, research methods, research instruments, sampling methods, contact methods, and research tools in order to design a research program.

Data Sources : A researcher can collect secondary data, primary data, or both. Secondary data is data that was collected for another purpose but already exists somewhere. Primary data is first-hand data that has been collected for a particular purpose or project.

Secondary data is often used to initiate marketing research. Researchers will need primary data if the data required is not available or is inaccurate, incomplete, unreliable, or outdated.

Marketers use Five Main Methods to Collect Primary Data : Observation, Focus Groups, Surveys, Behavioral Data, and Experiments.

Research Instruments : Marketing analysts use three main instruments to collect primary data: questionnaires, qualitative measures, and technological devices.

A questionnaire is a collection of questions that are asked to respondents. It is the most commonly used instrument to collect primary data due to its flexibility.

Testing and debugging are essential because of the potential errors in the form, sequence, and wording of the questions to influence the answers. Closed-end questions provide all possible answers.

The responses are easy to understand and tabulate. Open-ended questions allow respondents to respond in their own words. These questions are particularly useful for exploratory research where the researcher wants to gain insight into people’s thinking.

Sample Plan : The marketing researcher must create a sampling plan after deciding on the research method and instruments. Three decisions are required to make this happen:

  • Sampling unit : Whom do we survey? American Airlines Survey: Should the sampling unit be made up of first-class business travelers or first-class vacation travellers? Should it include travelers younger than 18 years old? Marketers must then create a sampling framework so that everyone in the target population has equal or known chances of being sampled.
  • Sample size : How many people do we need to survey? Although large samples are more reliable, it is not necessary to survey the entire population in order to get reliable results. With a reliable sampling process, even small samples of less than 1% of a population can provide high reliability.
  • Sampling procedure : Probability sampling is a way for marketers to estimate confidence limits for sampling error, and it makes the sample more representative.

Contact methods – The researcher must choose the method through which respondents can be reached. You can reach the respondents via email, phone, in person, or online.

Collect the Data

Marketing research’s data collection phase is usually the most costly and error-prone. Some respondents may be unavailable, offline, or far away. They must be contacted again or replaced. Others may refuse to cooperate or give dishonest or biased answers.

Analyze the Data

Next, the researchers will extract the findings by tabulating data and creating summary measures. To find more findings, the researchers will now calculate averages and dispersion of major variables.

They’ll also use advanced statistical techniques and decision modeling to create summary measures. They might test hypotheses or theories and apply sensitivity analysis to verify assumptions and strengthen their conclusions.

Report Findings

The researcher now presents his findings. Researchers are increasingly being asked to take a consultative role in translating data into insights and recommendations. Researchers are also looking at ways to make their findings more understandable and persuasive. If you do not have ideas for report writing then take help from experts.

Take the Decision

The final step in marketing research is to make important marketing decisions based on the research report. Top-level management knows about all alternatives available to them. They consider the pros and cons of each option and make the best decision for the company.

If management is not satisfied with the research report then they can discard it completely and conduct another marketing research from the very beginning.

Use to Find Marketing Opportunities

You might discover that the product you are planning is not what your market needs. Then, you can modify your offer and make it as per market demand to grab marketing opportunities.

Get to Know Your Customer’s Taste

Knowing how clients’ tastes and preferences change is important so that the company can meet their needs, including purchasing habits and income levels. Based on the needs of the consumers, researchers can help determine which products should be manufactured or sold.

Marketing Strategies and Plans

What is your foundation for business strategy ? You can feel confident in your ability to reach your business goals if it is evidence-based. Marketing research provides valuable information to marketers for making marketing strategies and plans.

Reduce Marketing Risk

Marketing research can help you determine whether or not to act on a particular subject. You might find out that the location you want to open a shop is already a highly saturated market for your business. If this happens, it’s best to reconsider and move on to a better spot.

Calculate the Market Size

A researcher can assess the market size that must be covered to sell a product or service and make a reasonable profit for sustaining business.

Help in New Product Launch

Marketing research is a key factor in determining whether a new product will succeed or fail in the market. It allows new product testing on a smaller scale in the market and helps in getting feedback from customers about the product. It basically reduces the risk associated with launching a new product.

Information about Market Trend

Being ahead in business often means being first, best, or doing something no one else has done. It is important to keep an eye on the trends in your industry. Talk to your research agency to learn more about the various techniques that you can use to spot these trends and capitalize on them.

Measurement for Company Position

With the assistance of marketing research, a marketing company can assess its true image. Marketing research can help the management to determine where the company stands in relation to its reputation and its institution image.

Additional Budget

Companies are often turned off by the high costs associated with Marketing Research. It can be costly to hire a company for marketing research. You can also have your current employees conduct the research. It would still be expensive to conduct research, such as interviews, questionnaires, and so forth.

Time is another resource that marketing research needs. It is important to conduct proper research by asking the right questions and reaching the right audience. You will need to spend a lot of time researching if you want reliable information.

Inaccurate Information

False or incorrect feedback can be caused by biased research or poorly designed research. Marketing research may not reveal the customer’s attitudes towards your product, such as their intentions to purchase it. These intentions might not translate into actual sales in the future.

You can also conduct market research with a small group of people, which could provide inconclusive information about your product.

Rapid Change

The market today is experiencing tremendous changes. Everything that is relevant or applicable today will be obsolete tomorrow. Marketing research is not able to serve its purpose due to the rapid pace of change. Results or outcomes of research after a specific time period are irrelevant or meaningless.

Biased Results

A completely objective response or result cannot be achieved when a human being is involved. Research can be affected by personal values, prejudices, attitudes, needs, and other socio-cultural factors. Absolute chaos can result from subjectivity.

Companies can use marketing research to determine the demand for their product, its viability, and how it will perform in the real world.

Marketing research can be done using primary or secondary data, which gives a unique insight into a company’s offerings. Research and development (R&D), is a crucial part of a company’s success and growth.

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Published: July 23, 2019

Risks of Not Doing Thorough Market Research

Customer buying habits, needs and motivations are in many ways measurable, not mysterious. Today’s companies have more tools than ever to ground their innovative ideas with real market information — information revealing the feasibility of a new product or service as well as its roadmap to implementation.

Understanding the importance of market intelligence is the difference between strategic, competitive organizations turning their ideas into profit and those playing a continual guessing game. Before committing substantial resources — indeed, the future of your business — into the launch of a new product, service or branding endeavor, you must conduct intensive research into how customers will respond to that endeavor. Targeted market intelligence is how.

What Is Market Research?

Simply put, market research is when an organization identifies a specific set of information or questions they need to have answered to implement a successful and profitable business change.

This is a broad definition, and purposefully so. Market research is an expansive activity with numerous methodologies that can help a business do everything from launching new product packaging to picking music for commercials to converting customers away from the competition. Yet the purpose of performing market research is the same — to research and analyze the variables of a target goal or question, then create a business strategy informed by findings that’ll pave the way to that goal’s realization.

Benefits of market research

Using the benefits of market research, a company can better interpret:

  • Customers , current or prospective.
  • Markets , new or established, domestic or abroad.
  • Competition , prevailing or up-and-coming.
  • Products or services presently offered or in-the-works.
  • Technology , public or private, emerging or existing.
  • Entire industries , accounting for many of the variables above.

What Goes Into Thorough Market Research?

Steps for completing market research

While the goals behind conducting market research vary for each enterprise, its overall process holds the same core steps:

  • Outline the enterprise goals : Every good market research initiative begins by identifying your market research needs and goals . Organizations need to determine what information they truly require to answer a question, clarify indecision or better understand a business concept. Once compiled, that information helps build the roadmap for your market research methodologies.
  • Bring in stakeholders : Identify the individuals and teams who have an interest in achieving a specific enterprise goal. Consider stakeholders those conducting the research as well as those who must receive, interpret and implement market research findings within their own domains to achieve that enterprise goal.
  • Review budget allotment : Budget allowance influences what kinds of market intelligence methodologies can be conducted practically, as well as the length of analysis and additional resources or outside consultants to bring onboard.
  • Identify necessary facilities and additional resources : Can market analysis be performed completely in-house, using internal information like company sales reports or accounting ledgers? Will surveys need to be drafted and disseminated? Do actual customers or the general public need to be brought in for a live focus group? Account for all facility and technical resources as early as possible.
  • Conduct the research : Perform the market research methodology that gives the best chance to extract relevant, goal-solving information.
  • Interpret results to make a business decision : Market research can unearth reams of quantitative and qualitative data your key stakeholders then chisel into actionable, effective enterprise solutions, levering market intelligence for its true function — better-run businesses.

What Industries Use Thorough Market Research?

Market research industries

It’s no exaggeration to say in today’s commercial world, nearly all industries deploy thorough market intelligence to their advantage. However, a handful of sectors see strategic gains in conducting continual benchmarking, monitorization and market entry or defense research:

1. Consumer Goods

From shoes to showerheads, smartphones to hair-styling products, everyday commercial goods make the consumer’s life tick. Retailers glean the vast benefits of market research to assist with new product testing, development, consumer segmentation, distribution benchmarking and more retail-centered market strategies .

2. Pharmaceuticals

The pharmaceutical industry is a heavily regulated, cost-competitive sector that undergoes near-constant evolution. Pharmaceutical companies keep pace by performing keen healthcare market intelligence studies into operational profitability and cost advantages, consumer beliefs, new treatment commercialization plans, current treatment and drug therapy development and by maintaining competitor profiles.

3. Technology

Our lives are increasingly dependent upon and tethered to software and hardware. This Internet of Things (IoT) reality drives the hyper-competitive tech industry to perform fluid research and development (R&D) initiatives, conduct pricing analyses, monitor product warranty and servicing metrics, understand their brand’s public perception, optimize consumer retention and user experience (UX) and much more.

4. Banking and Finance

Advances in financial technology, also called fintech, and other industry disruptors have catapulted financial service companies into a new era of competitive undertakings. Differentiation in banking and finance has never been more essential, with market research and intelligence providing service and operational advantages for retail and corporate banks, lending institutions, insurance providers, investment firms and more.

5. Manufacturing

Industrial and commercial manufacturing companies navigate an increasingly complex and profit-volatile industry. From performing threat assessments on domestic and international competition and profiling changing consumer material tastes to undergoing supply chain, production and distribution analyses, the disadvantages of not doing proper market research could spell life or death for those in this industry.

From petroleum-based oil and natural gas to the rapidly advancing renewables market, the energy sector carries both traditional and alternative offerings set to define how future societies run. Energy companies have a long list of reasons for conducting marketing research, beginning with understanding shifting consumer energy attitudes and tastes to developing profitable go-to-market strategies, fuel sourcing supply chains, brand and product evolution and much more.

7. Food and Beverages

The sheer variety of packaged foods and beverages available to today’s consumer alone warrants thorough market research. From individual convenience stores conducting layout analyses to see which shelving designs boost average basket sales to the beverage and snack manufacturers expanding their own consumer taste R&D studies, there’s no shortage of opportunities for market intelligence in the food industry.

Primary Versus Secondary Market Intelligence

Primary research vs secondary research

While there are many market research methodologies for organizations to adopt, there are only two general categories those methods fall into — primary research or secondary research.

1. Primary Market Intelligence

Primary market research is studies or reports created by your organization, for your organization, using propriety information and specific research criteria aimed at addressing a focused business goal.

Proprietary information is the basis for overall analysis, allowing an organization to get precise, pinpointed answers on products, services, sales cycles, profitability and more. Examples of primary market intelligence research include:

  • A mining equipment manufacturer conducting efficiency and output assessments on all its plants.
  • An outdoor apparel label reviewing quarterly sales reports to identify the most successful product lines.
  • An all-natural cosmetics company determining which new logo idea is most appealing to its customers.

2. Secondary Market Intelligence

As the name suggests, secondary research is non-proprietary, non-customized pieces of broad market research and industry analysis. It focuses not on a particular business’ products, services or brand perceptions, but instead on the larger trends and variables affecting an industry.

Trade associations, the government and third-party groups interested in industry activities are most often responsible for publishing secondary market research. Common secondary market intelligence examples might include:

  • A report on Millennial smartphone browsing habits published by the Mobile Marketing Association.
  • Public transportation ridership data produced by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
  • Data on the top leisure spending habits in your state according to income bracket, published by the Pew Research Center.

What Are the Types of Market Research Intelligence?

Types of market research intelligence

Organizations have many options at their disposal to conduct thorough primary and secondary market research.

1. Consumer Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness encompasses how widely recognizable your business is to target customers, as well as prospective consumers and desired markets. It’s an important tenet of a business’ overall marketing strategy and business growth likelihood since poor brand awareness correlates with smaller market shares and diminished growth outcomes .

Consumer brand awareness research identifies variables like:

  • Brand identity : The words, phrases, descriptors and associations the general public ties to your company, positive or negative.
  • Brand recognition : How quickly a consumer matches branded collateral — logos, color schemes, audio branding sounds, and more — to your business.
  • Brand recall : The ability for the average consumer to name your products, business or collateral when discussing your industry.

2. Market Segmentation

Customer and market segmentation allow organizations to understand their customers better — plus identify segments with higher profit potential. Surveys and interviews with current and prospective consumers give insights into the values, habits, preferences, likes and dislikes of target populations, enabling an organization to morph their products or services to meet these motivations.

3. Research and Development (R&D)

R&D market research encompasses all the ways an organization tweaks and tailors their products according to market segmentation demands, cost-profit calculations and their overall brand identity. It allows a company to produce a superior product at a superior price point without sacrificing basic, profitable operational efficiencies.

R&D market research incorporates activities like:

  • Packaging design and testing
  • Product features and enhancements
  • Actual product testing
  • Product launch or re-launch improvements
  • Post-launch product support

4. Advertising and Marketing Intelligence

Advertising market intelligence

Marketing research is pivotal to understanding what advertising channels, messages and platforms are your strongest, meaning they connect with audiences, generate the most leads, nurture the most loyalty and imbue the most brand identity. Advertising market intelligence lets you create campaigns and marketing tactics with proven, positive customer impact, saving significant time and resources.

5. Satisfaction and Loyalty Testing

Satisfaction and consumer loyalty are coveted — and measurable — markers that a consumer will return to your brand, time and time again. Loyal customers are also more likely to recommend your products or services to others, browse your website, make repeat purchases, interact with your social accounts, give positive online reviews and be open to cross or up-selling opportunities.

You can measure customer satisfaction and loyalty using surveys, focus groups and interviews identifying:

  • Brand trust : How much consumers view your company as authentic, admirable, socially conscious and committed to its customers.
  • Brand messaging : Are current advertising and marketing methods imbuing customers with the “personality” you want to be known for?
  • Product or service appeal : Understanding what’s most important to the satisfaction of your customer — be that price, convenience, status, trendiness, safety or something entirely unique.

6. Market Pricing

Successful market pricing allows you to pinpoint how much target consumer segments would pay for a particular product with particular features. It involves a complementary blend of both primary and secondary research methods:

  • Primary market-pricing intelligence gleans what aspects of your products, services or branding customers respond best to, and will, therefore, pay a premium to experience.
  • Secondary market-pricing intelligence reveals what industry competitors charge for similar products or services, as well as generalized shifts in consumer tastes and values which inform product pricing. For example, the growing desire to be an eco-conscious consumer means certain segments will pay a dollar or two more for “green” goods compared to cheaper, non-green merchandise.

Top Marketing Research Methods for Businesses

Marketing research methodology

The way an enterprise chooses to collect information, conduct research and compile data is known as its marketing research methodology. What type of methodology an organization adopts — as well as if it’s primary or secondary leaning — is a direct reflection of the strategic business decisions it wants insights into.

Organizations can conduct their market data collection using any of the following approaches:

1. Experimental Studies

Controlled experiments let researchers manipulate specific product, service, advertising or environmental variables, then measure how those manipulations affect the whole. This approach works particularly well during product R&D or pre-launch preparations and for advertising and market intelligence research.

For example, researchers can present multiple versions a piece of software or variations of a commercial, then let test participants fill out response surveys. Overall, measuring such variable differences in controlled settings helps signal what works well for a product or brand and what doesn’t.

Experimental market research can be done in two settings:

  • Laboratory studies : Laboratory-tested market intelligence allows researchers to control nearly all product and environmental variables, therefore unearthing more quantitative, consistent findings. It works particularly well for commercial products, technology, food and beverages and is most often done with the assistance of a third-party research firm.
  • Field studies : Field-testing market research takes place in real-life environments, such as in a retail store, manufacturing plant or an entire city. It’s great to test actual market conditions and feasibility of certain products, services or branding mechanisms, as well as experiment with price points and buyer intent before applying to larger settings.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups are large, group interviews made up of pre-screened, volunteer consumers in target segments or relevant subject matter experts. Focus groups are a primary market research methodology ideal for extracting subjective or qualitative information about a brand or good — information that cannot be replicated in a trial-and-error lab setting.

Focus groups can be split into two categories:

  • Quantitative-centered focus groups , where group members receive pre-written surveys or tests with standardized, numeric-based questions evaluated together after completing.
  • Qualitative-centered focus groups , where group members are asked open-ended questions or given open-ended tasks for researchers to glean more subjective reactions and insights.

3. Primary Interviews

Primary interviews are one-on-one interviews conducted directly between researchers and a pre-screened candidate online, over the phone or face-to-face. That candidate has been selected for their congruence to your target consumer segments because they fit a market demographic or because they’re a subject matter expert who can lend interesting insights on market criteria.

4. UX Groups

User-experience groups are a subcategory of focus groups relevant for software, technology and some physical products. Members of UX groups are tasked with actually using a new product, often during the R&D phase. Using a mix of surveys, journals, individual and group interviews, researchers amass quantitative and qualitative data on the appeal of a product, from its user-friendliness to its actual task-enhancing ratings.

5. Benchmarking

Benchmarking research for key performance indicators KPIs

Market intelligence benchmarking allows an organization to identify and measure targeted key performance indicators (KPIs) within their operations, then compare those to competitors. Nearly all businesses benchmark, but not all leverage benchmarked data into formal business growth plans to account for:

  • Organizational structure comparisons
  • Improved supply chain management
  • Enhanced retail experiences and initiatives
  • Refreshed sales strategies
  • Overall cost reductions and maximized profitability

6. Internal Analyses

Completely internal market research turns a company’s attention inwards. It elevates static enterprise information into compelling and actionable ideas, ensuring your organization doesn’t collect data for the sake of collecting data — it wields it as a tool for innovation.

Internal data analyses can uncover trends and insights from:

  • Product line data
  • Accounting and financial planning spreadsheets
  • Website and social media platform traffic
  • Content-marketing analytics

7. External Analyses

Pure external analysis lets businesses understand the broader context behind an industry question or concern. Using only government publications, industry trade research and commercially available data, external analysis can review topics like:

  • Regional or national market conditions, for risk-adjusted entry and defense.
  • Emerging industry technology.
  • Growing consumer trends, fears or behaviors related to their industry.
  • Overall market or industry threats and disruptions.

Disadvantages of Not Doing Market Research

Disadvantages of not doing market research

The importance of conducting market research goes beyond a few feel-good assessments. Market intelligence hands organizations a blueprint for creating the best version of themselves. Market research offers many benefits, and neglecting to do market research can hurt your company in several ways:

1. Never Learning Your Competitive Advantages

Businesses that know their strengths, capabilities and pain points are far better equipped to make strength-maximizing, risk-mitigating business decisions. It’s a form of self-awareness critical to creating strategic growth outcomes .

Market intelligence allows organizations to craft nearly every operation to their competitive advantage. It spotlights what processes or activities are currently on-brand, lean and successful while also identifying things your competitors might be doing you can integrate, siphoning customers, expanding your market share and furthering your competitive momentum along the way.

2. Forgoing Customer-Centric Marketing Models

Market intelligence lets organizations know what makes their customers tick. When done consistently, thorough customer and market segmentation become both an art and a science. Through customer-focused market research using focus groups, surveys, interviews, field studies and more, companies can glean new sales strategies, devise more impactful brand messages and advertisements and overall make keener investments into customer-facing platforms and touch points.

3. Increasing Strategic, Operational Risk

Instead of making decisions in the dark, performing market research grounds business decisions and reduces the chance of plans going awry. Organizations have precise insights into what works and what doesn’t, both internally and externally. Backed by this information, they can tweak processes and allocate resources to:

  • Improve budget cycles
  • Enhance decision-making ROI
  • Speed up product or service times to market
  • Develop stronger market entry or product launch strategies

4. Can’t Make Data-Backed Enterprise Decisions

Just because something has a number to it doesn’t mean it’s infallible. Yet data-backed enterprise decisions inspire more confidence since they’re composed of real-world, reliable data. Stakeholders, therefore, have more confidence in making business decisions, decisions which:

  • Contain more preemptive, not reactive, plans, patterns and activities.
  • Better predict the competition’s motivations and behaviors.
  • Better predict customer’s motivations and behaviors.
  • Mitigate risk and respond more effectively when market anomalies do occur.

5. Leaves Business Stones Unturned

It’s impossible for businesses to control every variable across all the inevitable changes in consumer expectations, technology, facilities, product and service lines, marketplace health and general society. With market research, though, business leaders can rest assured their organizations have done due diligence, keeping a pulse on these things as they happen — not after the fact.

What’s more, this “pulse” is scientifically validated, analyzed and put into effect in equally measurable installments — no cut corners, no sloppy implementation. Simply a well-run business crossing and T’s and dotting I’s before making significant strategic moves.

Gain the Advantages of Thorough Market Research With Proactive Worldwide

When an organization seeks new ways to be the best version of itself, Proactive Worldwide provides answers through globally renowned market strategy and analysis services committed to your exact goals.

Proactive Worldwide provides enterprise intelligence services and consulting in three core domains:

  • Intelligence-Based Strategic Planning Services
  • Competitive and Market Intelligence Consulting
  • Customer Insights Research and Reports

Contact us today to see how intelligent market research can propel your organization to be where it should.

Why do market research

What can we help you achieve?

Get in touch with our market intelligence company today to start planning for the future of your organization.

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  • Primary Data vs. Secondary Data: Market Research Methods

by Lee Steinbock , on October 25, 2022

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Not only can you simply plug your search term into any web browser, but you will also get an almost innumerable number of results, many of which circularly source from one another. As such, how can you avoid bad data and ensure that you’re relying on the best information to make strategic decisions?

The experts here at Freedonia Custom Research (FCR) are here to help you navigate all of these data sources.

At the highest level, market research data can be split into primary and secondary data sources, although from a best practices perspective, secondary research should always be performed first.

Market Research Data - Primary vs. Secondary Data

What Is Secondary Data?

Secondary data is publicly available or relatively inexpensive to obtain and can be used as the foundation for any analysis or business decision — so long as you can feel comfortable regarding the source, something FCR can assist with.

Secondary Data Examples

Sources of secondary data include, but are not limited to, the following:

Company Websites

  • Advantages — Public companies tend to have investor relations sections on their websites that are full of reports and other investor documents that can provide insights on both the company, as well as the industry overall.
  • Disadvantages — Private companies are not required to report sales or other types of financial information, while public companies only have to report certain information, so if you are seeking information on a specific segment or product, details may be lacking.
  • Applications  — Company websites can be used across a number of research workflows. Revenue information can be used for market sizing, as well as market share analyses, while investor information can offer insights on sales splits and expected sales.

Government Statistics

  • Advantages — This data is widely available and easily accessible online. Topics range from product shipments and trade, to patents, pricing inflation, and building trends, to name a few.
  • Disadvantages — Data is organized in very specific manner, meaning it is often not presented specifically as needed, so further manipulation/analysis tends to be required.
  • Applications  — Government statistics tend to be utilized in market sizing exercises and the identification of market trends overall.

Industry Associations

  • Advantages — These groups often share lots of valuable information on their websites — including industry overviews, industry participants, product and company news, and other details regarding industry trends.
  • Disadvantages — Industry associations tend to compile industry data for their members, so access to this information is likely not available to everyone. Additionally, industry data typically only accounts for a certain share of overall activity. As such, further investigation as to the portion of the market represented is required.
  • Applications  — Industry association data can be a great initial source of information when performing a market sizing analysis, as well as identification of industry trends. The information contained in these sources can also be used to identify key players in the market and areas of focus.

Published Market Research Reports

  • Advantages — These reports, for a fee, can provide a great overview of an industry, including quantitative data you might not find elsewhere related to market size, growth rates, and industry participant market share.
  • Disadvantages — Because they are targeting as broad an audience as possible, these reports tend to be rather broad, with relatively standard segmentation. For those interested in greater detail on certain product segments or geographies, these reports may not be the best option.
  • Applications  — As noted, published market research often includes high-level quantitative information, which can assist in market size and share analyses. Depending on the report, details on major manufacturers involved in the industry may be available.

Trade Publications

  • Advantages — Sources like periodicals and news articles, many of which are available online, are a great industry-specific source for in-depth product, industry, and competitor data. Oftentimes, these sources include commentary from leading executives about new technologies, industry trends, and future plans.
  • Disadvantages — While certain periodicals are known for their data collection, the data from these organizations has similar disadvantages to those outlined above for industry associations. Quantitative details from newspaper articles tend to be derived from other secondary sources.
  • Applications  — Information from trade publications can be used for both qualitative and quantitative analyses. While the information might not get you as far as you need — in either instance — it can serve as a strong starting point.

As noted, there are often limitations to relying solely on secondary sources, especially if you are interested in a niche product or a new technology. In these cases, the information may be outdated or not accurately reflect the industry situation as a whole. You might be asking a question that no one has tried to answer before. So what should you do now? Primary research.

What Is Primary Data?

A primary resource is information that is collected specifically for your purposes, directly from people who are involved in the industry that is being examined. Methods of primary data collection will vary based on the goals of the research and the level of detail being sought.

Primary Data Examples

Examples of primary data sources include:

Focus Groups

  • Advantages — Focus groups allow companies to get very specific demographic end-user thoughts (qualitative data) on a new product or service that are still in the early stages of development.
  • Disadvantages — Feedback comes from small groups, so unless multiple focus groups are conducted and responses are compared, there may be sampling error issues.
  • Applications  — Focus groups can provide qualitative feedback on what end-users like, dislike, are confused by, or would do differently, in regard to the new offering.

In-Depth Interviews

  • Advantages — In-depth interviews allow for the targeting of key industry experts who can offer both quantitative and qualitative details that can help provide clarity to your current analysis. Not only do these allow for conversation regarding the research objectives, but they often can result in new paths of examination that arise organically from the conversation.
  • Disadvantages — The more detailed the information you are seeking, the fewer people there are that can provide the desired information. As such, not just anyone can perform in-depth interviews. They require significant contacts within the industry being studied, as well as extensive experience engaging experts on their level.
  • Applications  — In-depth interviews present the opportunity to gather detailed qualitative and quantitative insights from leading industry players about their business, competitors, and the industry at large.

Social Media Monitoring

  • Advantages — Social media monitoring shows that you don’t have to always participate in the conversation to learn from it.
  • Disadvantages — Without engaging with the market, you are often left to draw inferences from the information that is uncovered. If you have questions about why a group is saying something, you’re left to wonder.
  • Applications  — Social media monitoring allows for passive data gathering in the form of questions like: How much are people talking about your brand compared to competitive brands? Is what they’re saying positive or negative? Is the public clamoring for something the industry currently doesn’t provide? How are your competitors portraying themselves via social media, and what does that say about their strategy?
  • Advantages — Surveys are a great way to collect significant amounts of representative quantitative data via primary research methods.
  • Disadvantages — Whereas in-depth interviews are dynamic in nature, surveys are static, and don’t allow for follow-up or further probing as to the “why” someone does something. Additionally, the development of the questions used in a survey is critical to the success of the research, meaning that it’s more complex than simply saying, “This is what I want to know.”
  • Applications  — Surveys can be used to describe a given population in terms of who they are, what they do, what they like, and if they’re happy, among many other characteristics.

Freedonia Custom Research Is Here to Help

Overwhelmed at how to put all of the pieces together? Here are a few ways that the FCR team can help, based on our long track record of conducting secondary and primary market research for corporations across a wide array of industries:

  • Access to trusted secondary data — FCR has access to The Freedonia Group’s catalog of over 4,000 industry studies and focus reports, including Packaged Facts and Simba Information. This gives us a head start on secondary data collection on market sizing, growth, and competitive intelligence. Additionally, because of the Freedonia brand name, many industry participants are familiar with us and eager to share their perspectives.
  • Long list of industry contacts — FCR has been in business for nearly 20 years, throughout which we have been conducting primary research with decision-makers and industry influencers we can reach out to for in-depth interviews and surveys. We know what sorts of questions to ask various constituent groups (such as manufacturers, distributors, end-users, industry associations, and regulatory bodies), and because we are an independent, third-party firm, you can trust that their answers will be candid and unbiased.
  • Analytical experience — Not only do we know where and how to find all of the information that you are seeking, we also have the expertise to synthesize all of the information into meaningful and actionable insights for your business.

If you’d like to learn more about how Freedonia Custom Research can help you navigate a sea of data, please contact us at 440-684-9600 or request more information on our website .

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11 Benefits of Market Research + Free Templates

11 Benefits of Market Research + Free Templates

The benefits of market research are long-proven. Yet still, there are many who focus on instinct instead of insight.

While intuition is all good and well, there’s no getting away from the power of cold-hard data.

In this post, I list 11 market research benefits, with real-world examples and six free research templates thrown in for good measure.

Winston Churchill quote

1. Better communication with customers

Why it matters: Effective communication is the cornerstone of good relations. And, with how much time, effort, and money it takes to win a new client, ensuring you stay in their good books isn’t just nice – it’s a necessity.

The first benefit of market research is the ability to learn about your customer’s likes and dislikes – so you can adapt how you position the business and its products accordingly. Tailored communications speak to customers in a way that resonates far better than generalized messages.

The one-size-fits-all approach no longer works. Delivering comms in the right format, at the right time, via the right platform can boost engagement and help focus on driving value. With it, customers feel appreciated and receive information that’s both useful and relevant.

These days, all it takes is a quick click, and customers can unsubscribe from communications. This is why businesses must ensure every communication counts.

Example: Market research surveys are an ideal way to quickly understand how customers feel about your communications with them. Be direct, and ask them about the content, frequency, and formats they prefer.

If you want to establish the best time or day of the week to email, you can use your email campaign tracking data to show you the best and worst times, based on open rates, and click-through rates.

2. Enables strategic, data-driven plans

Why it matters: Market research benefits all types and stages of business planning. It gives you the numbers and insights you need to make accurate forecasts. It can also impact key decisions that can help you develop and adapt your strategy.

Here are a few examples where market research can benefit data-driven decision-making :

  • Deciding whether to modify or discontinue a product.
  • Prioritizing new features to develop for an existing product.
  • Establishing which marketing channels to invest in.
  • Selecting which social media platforms to utilize.
  • Choosing which new markets to enter or where to open a new retail outlet.
  • Evaluating the impact of a cost increase or change to pricing strategy.
  • Discover new partners, affiliates, or publishers to work with.
  • Targeting a new persona or different segment of a market.

Market research serves as a trusty compass, helping guide and steer decisions that impact growth and profitability. Once you implement a new tactic or campaign, you can again benefit from market research to measure and track ongoing success.

Paulo Ramazza Quote

3. Develop detailed target personas

Why it matters: It’s no secret that a comprehensive understanding of one’s target audience is fundamental to an organization’s success. Everything from product development to positioning and marketing is impacted by the effective development of target personas.

While most companies have a decent understanding of what their ideal customer profile looks like; a distinct advantage of market research is the depth of detail it offers about the preferences, behaviors, and habits of a target audience – based on actual facts and everyday actions they take online.

By doing audience analysis and consumer journey tracking , organizations can discover insights about their ideal customers quickly and in finite detail. So instead of having a static persona that doesn’t really change with the times; marketers can discover things like:

  • Age, gender, and geography
  • Audience loyalty & interests
  • Cross-shopping behaviors
  • Product search trends
  • View audience overlaps with rivals
  • Identify drop-off points in funnels
  • Optimize conversion funnels
  • Discover which marketing channels appeal to a specific audience

Grab our customer persona template to use a framework for this research – it’s at the end of this post, along with 5 other useful market research templates !

4. Reduce costs and save time

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of market research for a business is its ability to help organizations improve efficiency and reduce outlay – both from a time and cost perspective. While each business achieves different outcomes, doing proper research can help pave the way for process improvements.

A few examples include:

  • Spending less on marketing channels that don’t appeal to a target audience or drive ROI.
  • Decrease customer churn via surveys, enhanced support, or more suitable product offerings.
  • Prevent you from entering a new market in a territory that’s already saturated.
  • Testing the viability or appetite for a new product or service before making investment decisions.
  • Reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) through clearer targeting and messaging.
  • Identification of new partnerships or affiliates who can drive referrals to your business.

DocSend uses Similarweb to reduce marketing spend by 20% and reduced research time by 10% – as an added bonus it saw website traffic gains of around 10%.

Read more about how market research benefited DocSend here .

5. Stay ahead of the competition

Why it matters: These days, the competition is fierce in almost every market. Customers have many options to choose from, and outpacing your rivals is a constant battle. From new product or service offerings to campaigns and content – not to mention promotions and partnerships; keeping a keen eye on your market positioning is key.

A core benefit of market research is knowing what other players in your market are doing. More to the point, market research actually shows you how well these offerings are doing.

A competitive analysis framework is a great way to systematically record and track what your rivals are doing. It can help you spot opportunities, such as:

  • Develop new marketing campaigns and creatives
  • Adapt your product or service offerings
  • Give insights into new content to write about
  • Show you which channels work best for your target market
  • Find underserved segments of a market
  • See what customers like or dislike about your rivals
  • Help you develop your unique selling proposition (USP)

Good market research can be the differential factor that gives you an edge in your market.

In this scenario, I want to analyze the competitive landscape of a social media management company. I chose Sprout Social to review as it’s considered a market leader.

See how much competitive intel I can grab in less than a minute

In a snapshot, I can see an overview of its traffic and engagement. This includes the total visits, unique visitors , a link to its apps, and a breakdown of traffic by channel. With a quick compare, I see how these metrics stack up against others in the market. Later.com and influencermarketinghub.com are two players who consistently outperform sproutsocial.com – which means I can delve deeper into their successes, campaigns, and content next.

From the platform, I can see how many referrals they’re getting, and from where. Which ad networks and campaigns they’re running, and copies of the creatives being used.

Next, I look at the most popular pages on Sprout Social’s site. This shows several pages on the topic of small business social media are achieving significant growth – indicating my target audience is responding to these pages, so I should be covering or promoting content on a similar theme.

So, in less than a minute, I’ve discovered

  • How my competitor stacks up vs others in the market
  • Which traffic channels are growing
  • The best referral partners and advertisers
  • What marketing channels are showing the best results
  • Copies of their ad creatives
  • What content topics are the most popular
  • Top industry search terms
  • Uncovered two other major players to evaluate

Software like Similarweb makes it quick and easy to see the insights and metrics that matter most. Here, you can discover where you can get a competitive edge, and keep track of market trends and rival campaigns.

6. Discover the best marketing channels

From email marketing to socials, affiliates, referrals, paid ads, and more; there are many marketing channels to leverage – and it’s not always obvious which is right for your business. Another key benefit of doing market research is the ability to hone in on the channels which deliver the best return on investment.

A trial-and-error approach can be costly. Not just from a dollar perspective, it can be a drain on your resources too. By first establishing the optimal marketing mix for your target audience or market, you can save time and money, and reach your goals faster.

Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence can show you which channels work best for your market and rivals. It also highlights the specific ad creatives and content being used for high-performing campaigns.

Similarweb marketing channels overview

Here, you see a snapshot of the marketing channels being used across five competitive sites. It shows the biggest drivers of traffic are direct and organic search. By clicking on any single channel, you can get a complete breakdown of the respective details. I’ve clicked to expand social media, as just one example, here’s what it tells me.

As well as being able to instantly see the insights that count, I can click on any channel to see a detailed breakdown of performance. Next, I can compare each channel to see who is outperforming others – which tells me exactly who I need to take a closer look at.

7. Identify growth opportunities

The benefits of doing market research apply to those launching new products or entering new markets . However, periodic research can also help you spot growth-focused opportunities that may not have been considered before.

market research benefits

Another compelling entrant to include in the benefits of market research is its ability to unearth opportunities to grow. Whether that’s through finding new customers, markets, channels, or creative ways to go to market and get more eyes on your business. A good case in point is in the identification of new partnerships for referrals; something that often comes about when doing a competitive analysis .

The advantages of using market research for growth are ongoing, throughout the lifecycle of your business. For example:

  • Reviewing competitor marketing channels could uncover key findings about a new affiliate site that’s sending a volume of traffic to their site.
  • A guest post or piece of content generates a high level of interest and drives traffic to the site.
  • Untapped segments for your products. Perhaps a rival is doing a better job of appealing to a different demographic. This, in turn, presents an opportunity to diversify your messaging or switch marketing channels. The same could apply to a new location or geographic region.
  • New partnerships. Joint ventures between businesses that share a similar target demographic can be mutually beneficial – helping both parties reach a new ready-prepped customer base.
  • Perhaps a rival is offering an add-on or upsell that you’ve failed to consider.
  • You might also conduct market research surveys where customers tell you something they’d like but which you don’t yet offer.

Success story: See how AirBnB used Similarweb to uncover opportunities for growth in new markets.

Airbnb market research example

8. Spot new or emerging trends

Why it matters: With how quickly consumer behaviors change and markets shift, it’s important to move with the times. Market research can help businesses stay in touch with what’s happening – something that applies to consumers, competitors, and the industry as a whole.

From changes to purchasing behaviors, new technologies, new products, or service features; researching trends and staying close to rising players in your market allows you to keep tabs on what things are attracting attention.

  • Which keywords or phrases are trending in your industry?
  • Is there a new player showing significant growth in your market?
  • What are your rival’s highest-hitting pages?
  • How are apps impacting your market – do you know which of your competitors have one, and is it successful?
  • Which campaigns in your industry are working and gaining traction?
  • Is there a specific asset, whitepaper, or offering that your target audience responds to?
  • Are there any seasonal trends that impact your market?
  • Can you see spikes in specific search terms or phrases?

While you can use digital research tools like Similarweb to quickly analyze a market, search trends, seasonal patterns, mobile app intelligence , and more – qualitative data, like surveys can be leveraged to understand customers and changing behaviors too.

Read more about how Wonderbly achieved its success here.

Market research benefits ROI

9. Makes it easy to evaluate and track your success

Why it matters: With the knowledge of where your business is performing well, or falling behind, you can set goals and direction more clearly. Benchmarking shows you industry standards, and maps out how rivals are doing; so you can measure relative performance.

For a business to grow, it needs to push the boundaries. The benefit of using market research here is that it shows you where and how big those boundaries are. A survey from PWC found businesses that set benchmarks achieve 45% more productivity and grow, on average 69 times faster than those that do not.

There are various types of benchmarking – each of which makes it possible to unpack and track the successes of those in your market and drill down into what success looks like for your business.

8 types of benchmarking

10. Inform market analysis – SWOT

Why it matters: A further benefit of doing market research is that it can show you any relative strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that exist between competitors and in a market. Greater awareness of these facts helps drive the right actions and gives clarity on areas of focus for the business. Without it, your business is susceptible to preventable mistakes.

With company and market research , you find out where opportunities and threats exist in your ecosystem. From environmental or technological factors to internal considerations; forewarned is forearmed. What’s more, a regular review of your SWOT, informed by market research, allows you to capitalize on new opportunities faster than others and keeps you in the strongest position where gaining a competitive edge is concerned.

Helpful: Read our complete guide to doing an industry SWOT analysis .

11. Inform a content marketing strategy

Why it matters: These days, the importance of having an effective, relevant, and successful content marketing strategy cannot be overstated. According to a 2020 competitive intelligence survey, companies have, on average, 29 competitors. So, regardless of your sector, in the digital world, it’s constant competition – be it for better visibility online, a higher CTR, or increased engagement.

So, how does market research benefit a business? And how can you stand out and get found online? With content marketing, of course.

An advantage of using market research to inform your content marketing strategy is that data doesn’t lie. Yes, it’s an old one but a good one. A data-driven approach to content marketing is a surefire way to uncover the most searched keywords , the right topics, and content to harness to your advantage.

You can use market research to uncover the following:

  • The busiest pages on any website.
  • Which topics and keywords drive the most traffic in your market?
  • New topics or keyword phrases that are trending or appearing seasonably.
  • Inform topic planning or theme building for a blog.
  • Help you discover new opportunities for dedicated landing pages.
  • What content or assets an audience engages with most.
  • Which channels are the most effective to deliver content?
  • The best time of day to post new content.

Success story:  See how Tourism New Zealand benefits from market research ; and how they use Similarweb to research content and keywords.  

Similarweb market research study with Tourism New Zealand

Limitations of Market Research

Regardless of whether it’s for an enterprise company or an entrepreneur – time, cost, and experience are viewed as the biggest limitations of market research. But this is an outdated perception that is no longer relevant or true to life.

Here’s how things are in 2022.

  • If cost is considered a limitation of market research – use secondary market research methods. Most of the time, the data can be found online, for free.

This guide to desk research shows you the best places to find secondary research data. 

  • Should you view time as a limitation – use software like Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence to quickly view insights in almost any market, company, or product.

If you’re on a deadline, let’s say you need to do market research for a business plan , market research tools can help you get it done in a day.

  • Perhaps you feel a lack of experience is preventing you from doing market research. Most market research tools require little to no training and are highly intuitive.

Use market research templates to guide you through the key data points you need to collect. 

Benefits of market research – In summary

Market research benefits any business, at any stage. From product teams to sales, customer support, marketing, operations, and management – there’s a relevant application in almost every department. However, many organizations choose only to use it for limited periods in limited areas of their business.

Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence makes key insights accessible to all. And with the ability to impact an entire business, at almost every level, it’s a market research tool with the power to deliver immense value and insights at pace.

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Get actionable insights for market research here

What are the advantages and disadvantages of market research?

The advantages of market research include things like gaining a competitive edge, data-driven decision-making, reducing expenditure, finding new markets to enter, trend-spotting, and developing growth-focused strategies. The only disadvantage is in how it’s conducted, and the time it takes to carry out the research. However, market research tools are designed to make the task of conducting research more efficient, and cost-effective.

Which goals can market research help you accomplish?

Market research can help you achieve key business objectives, such as growing your customer base, retaining a higher number of customers, improving marketing effectiveness, and increasing revenue.

How can market research benefit entrepreneurs?

The benefits of market research to entrepreneurs are plentiful. It can help startups and new businesses research the viability of a new product or service they want to bring to market. In addition, it allows entrepreneurs to accurately forecast demand, which can help both operationally and financially.

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10 key benefits of market research

Market research is available as a service to help any company, service provider, individual or organisation make better, more informed decisions. The more research is embedded in the strategic plans of a firm, the better equipped it is to deal with the changing environment within which it operates. Here is a list outlining the main benefits of investing in marketing research:

  • It helps businesses strengthen their position. Knowledge is power. Use market research to gain a better perspective and understanding of your market or target audience and ensure that your firm stays ahead of the competition.
  • It minimises any investment risk. This is a simple but vitally important and often business critical consideration. Spending what is often only a small proportion of your investment on researching and testing the market, product, concept or idea makes sound business sense.
  • It identifies potential threats and opportunities. Both primary research (fieldwork) and secondary research (desk research) can be utilised as an insurance policy against both obvious dangers on the road ahead. Coupling this with some qualitative research for deeper probing can highlight certain opportunities or warning signs that may otherwise have been missed.
  • It helps to discover your’s and your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s vitally important to adopt an ‘eye’s wide open’ approach to any market research project which is why it’s often advised to work with a market research agency to ensure completely unbiased reporting. Use research findings to adapt and learn from your own weaknesses whilst capitalising on your new-found knowledge from competitor analysis to take advantage and forge ahead of the pack.
  • It facilitates strategic planning. What is the foundation of your business strategy? If it’s evidence based and you’ve taken the time to invest in your own (and hopefully ongoing) research, you can be confident that you’ve given yourself the best chance to achieve your business goals.
  • It helps in spotting emerging trends. Staying ahead in business is often about being the first, being the best or doing something that no-one else has thought about. Regularly taking the ‘pulse’ of what’s hot and what’s not in your industry is a key discipline. Speak to your research agency or research consultant about the range of techniques you can employ to spot and exploit these trends.
  • It assists businesses to stay ahead of the competition.  Being the best demands a relentlessness to keep getting the basics right combined with a curiosity and willingness to innovate. Knowing how to leverage the findings and insights you extract from market research, audience research and data research are the keys to both getting ahead and staying ahead.
  • It provides revenue projections.  A market forecast is a core component of a market analysis projecting the future numbers, characteristics, and trends in your target market. Potential customers can then be divided into segments . You want to focus on the best market – which is not necessarily the largest one or the market with the highest growth – it will be the one that matches your own company profile.
  • It focuses on customer needs and demands. There are so many important reasons to keep your customers at the centre of all that you do in business and the same goes for research. With so many ways to reach customers using online panels, web communities, telephone survey’s, depth interviews and focus groups, market research keeps you attentive to where you can improve your proposition, customer service or product offering.
  • It helps to evaluate the success of a business against benchmarks. A PWC survey found that companies that benchmark achieve 69% faster growth and 45% greater productivity than those that don’t. Use market research for competitor research, employee engagement surveys, and to highlight performance or knowledge gaps and areas for potential growth. This will open your company up to thinking about new methods, ideas and tools to improve your business effectiveness.

Find out more…

If you’re interested to find out more about the many techniques and research methodologies that are available to you, then check out our introduction to market research .

How to avoid common market research mistakes…

To help you avoid some common market research pitfalls , we’ve put together a list of the most common market research mistakes  and how to avoid them!

Can we help you?

If you have a specific business question that you think could be solved with the help with a market research professional then we’d be delighted to have chat. Please get in touch using the form below or you can email [email protected] or call us on 01271 337 100.

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Top 10 Benefits of Market Research Reports

Last Updated on 07 th September 2023

A   market research report is an oral or written presentation, which includes a research project’s objectives, methodology, findings, and recommendations. Market research reports also provide information on an industry’s competitive landscape, current and future trends, industry size, key competitors, etc.

Comprehensive, high-quality market research reports offer valuable information ranging from the global forecast and market growth rate to a meticulous regional market analysis and industry analysis (including the state of competition and profitability).

AI (Artificial Intelligence), augmented reality, gamification, microdata collection, and non-conscious measurement are some of the emerging technologies helping market researchers conduct consumer research better and faster through a richer and more personalized stream of consumer data.

Businesses use market research reports to make calculated decisions, prepare RFPs, research best practices, and reduce business risks while staying on top of consumer trends and competitors’ activities.

Ready to learn more about a market research report? Keep reading!

Table of Contents

Market Research Report: Meaning and Definition

Components of a market research report, types of market research reports, syndicated research vs. custom research, blackridge research & consulting – market research reports & custom research services, wrapping up.

While a market analysis report is a subset of a market research report, a market research report encompasses various aspects of market analysis, such as market segmentation analysis and PESTLE (Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal, and Environmental) analysis.

A market research report serves as an accurate and verifiable source of information with supporting data for validation.

For example, a market research report uses Harvey balls for visual communication of qualitative information to analyze the degree of the impact of market-restraining factors in the near, medium, and long term.

Research Guide

A research guide (also known as a “course guide,” “subject guide,” and “pathfinder”) helps researchers find research materials and works on a subject or a topic.

Research Phases

Secondary market research helps gather as much information as possible from research already conducted by others and published as articles, reports, textbooks, etc. On the other hand, primary research using a questionnaire allows for complete validated information leading to subsequent phases of research, including:

  • Data triangulation
  • Market engineering (if forecasting is involved)
  • Expert validation
  • Report writing

A market research report typically includes the following:

Executive Summary: An executive summary summarizes the report findings clearly and crisply with charts, graphics, forecasts, infographics, etc.

Research Scope and Methodology: While the research scope relates to the extent or boundaries of a research study, the research methodology includes the type of research, data collection procedures, sample size, and study limitations, among other details.

Market Analysis: The market analysis provides an overview of market dynamics, including market volume and value. It also offers a detailed analysis of key market drivers and restraints, such as government policies and regulations and the impact of external factors like pandemic and war.

Industry Analysis: The industry analysis includes supply chain analysis and Porter’s Five Forces analysis. The Porter’s Five Forces framework examines an industry’s competitive environment and comprises the following:

  • The threat of new entrants
  • The threat of substitute products/services
  • The bargaining power of buyers
  • The bargaining power of suppliers
  • The intensity of competition/competitive rivalry

Market Segmentation and Forecast: The research report dissects the market into various segments with a detailed summary of the current scenario, market outlook, and recent developments for each segment and provides a demand forecast for the forecast period.

A “bespoke” market segmentation enables the research report to better align with a client’s requirements.

Regional Market Analysis: Apart from market dynamics, regional market analysis covers critical aspects, such as government policies and regulations, key projects, market trends and developments across regions, and the global impact of geopolitical conflicts and the pandemic.

Key Company Profiles: This section presents detailed profiles of the top industry players and includes a company overview, financial overview, relevant products and services, and recent developments.

Competitive Landscape: The competitive landscape provides deep insights into the following:

  • Joint Ventures (JVs)
  • Market shares and strategies of key players
  • Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)
  • Notable industry players
  • Partnerships

Conclusions and Recommendations: Conclusions are the “key findings” from research data analysis. The “conclusions” section summarizes the main takeaways from the research and presents them concisely and meaningfully in the report.  

Recommendations are “actionable suggestions” based on the conclusions drawn from the research. The “recommendations” section outlines actions and strategies recommended for businesses or organizations to capitalize on opportunities presented in the research study.

Market research reports are available in a broad range of categories, including (but not limited to) the following:

  • Automotive & Transport
  • Chemicals & Materials
  • Consumer Goods & Services
  • Energy & Natural Resources
  • Food & Beverage
  • Heavy Industry
  • Life Sciences
  • Manufacturing & Construction
  • Marketing & Market Research
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Public Sector
  • Service Industries (including Business Services & Administration and Financial Services)
  • Technology & Media
  • Telecommunications & Computing

Here are the top 10 benefits of using market research reports:

#1 Discover your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses

A market research agency or company can help you with unbiased reporting and strategic research findings to adopt an “eyes-wide-open” approach and learn from competitor analysis. For instance, you can better attract your target audience or target customers and differentiate your brand from the competition with insights derived from market research.

#2 Gather industry information faster

In a fast-paced industry, you need to gather information as soon as possible without spending a lot of time on primary research. Using a market research report takes the guesswork out of the data-gathering process—making available a wealth of information quickly and saving time significantly with secondary market research inputs. 

#3 Get a holistic view of the market

A market research report offers a holistic view market, so you are better prepared to make decisions based on complete information. Gauging overall market conditions, including current market size, potential risks, and saturation level, helps a company gain more awareness of a specific market.

In addition, market research helps understand all the key facets of consumer behavior. For example, a company can modify its product development or pricing strategy by leveraging research-backed insights into consumer shopping habits, including consumer spending and behavior patterns.

#4 Focus on customer demands and needs

Reach out to your customers through in-depth interviews, focus groups, online panels, telephone surveys, web communities, and more to improve your product or customer service offerings and USP.

Keyword research is also a widely used method to identify popular search terms and phrases and gain insights into what your customers are searching for online.

#5 Identify potential threats and opportunities

Don’t miss good opportunities or warning signs! A market research report enables you to examine internal and external factors affecting your business goals so you can identify your competitive advantages and disadvantages. Both primary research (fieldwork) and secondary research (desk research) can alert you to apparent dangers and potentially rewarding opportunities.

#6 Minimize investment risk

Investing in a market research report is often a small proportion of your investment in researching and testing the market, concept, idea, or product. For instance, market forecasts (for a specific forecast period) based on primary and secondary research facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the market and provide quantified insights to support critical business decision-making.

#7 Spot emerging trends

Staying on top of “what’s hot” and “what’s not” helps you be a step ahead of your competitors and exploit these trends to accelerate innovation, gain a competitive edge, improve customer satisfaction, and increase revenue.

You can use a tool like Google Analytics to gather, visualize, and analyze data and track key metrics to identify changes in customer needs and preferences.

Google Analytics offers freemium and paid services to understand the customer journey and boost marketing ROI. Small- and medium-sized businesses can use the free version to track key website metrics with features like conversion reporting and flow visualization. However, the paid version is ideal for advanced search based on attribution modeling, integration, etc. 

#8 Strengthen your credibility and reputation

When you use objective analysis for decision-making, you will not only develop better business strategies but also improve your professional reputation. Instead of being the sole source of data and information, you can lend credibility and trust to your conclusions by leveraging a variety of market research reports.

#9 Use objective data to make informed decisions

A third-party report provides a better picture of what is actually happening in a market without any bias. Such a report is necessary to accurately understand the market landscape and industry issues and position the brand better to drive business growth. A market research report’s impartiality helps get a holistic view of the market for better decision-making.

#10 Validate internal research

Market research reports save you time by providing answers to the most demanding questions. Even if you don’t have the time or resources to conduct primary research, you can use a market research report to validate information gathered from primary sources, such as interviews, speeches, and videos, and make research findings credible.

Syndicated research reports are standard reports that cater to a larger audience and are ideal for preliminary or exploratory research.

While syndicated research is cheaper than ad-hoc research (research conducted as a one-off study for a specific client and a specific purpose), it does not represent exclusivity because the same results—in the form of reports, presentations, or even raw data—are made available to all subscribers.

Syndicated research is conducted and funded by a market research company in an area of interest to multiple companies or organizations within a particular industry.

Furthermore, the market research firm determines the scope of the research project based on the chosen methodology/methodologies.

Contrary to syndicated research, custom research offers the flexibility to design the research scope and methodology in alignment with clients’ requirements and enables exhaustive research to provide market intelligence critical for decision-making.

Here are the main advantages of using custom market research services:

  • Accurate data collection
  • Competitive advantage
  • Enhanced ROI (Return on Investment)
  • In-depth understanding
  • Long-term growth
  • Market segmentation
  • New product development
  • Risk mitigation
  • Strategic marketing

Many leading companies invest in custom market research to gather tailored insights, focus resources on the right opportunities, develop personalized marketing strategies, and leverage growth opportunities based on the market landscape, customer needs, emerging trends, etc.

As one of the industry-leading market research companies, Blackridge Research & Consulting specializes in a wide range of market research reports and custom research services .

Market Research Reports

Blackridge Research & Consulting’s “ Syndicated Report Store ” offers insight-rich, value-driven market research reports available across industries, such as:

  • Commodities
  • Environment
  • General Purpose Machinery
  • Oil & Gas
  • Power Generation
  • Power Storage
  • Power Transmission & Distribution

Visit the Syndicated Report Store for industry-specific market research reports customizable to your business requirements, or contact the industry experts for upcoming reports.

Custom Research Services

Whether you need actionable insights into the current market scenario, a detailed competitive analysis, an in-depth assessment of buyer personas, or professional market researchers to craft an online survey, we can help.

Our knowledgeable and experienced market research professionals use proven research methods and state-of-the-art market research tools to provide tailored solutions for your marketing research needs.

Blackridge Research & Consulting specializes in a comprehensive range of custom research services comprising (but not limited to) the following:

  • Market Analysis and Assessment (including market sizing and forecasting, market share analysis, market trends analysis, identification of potential customers, and target market analysis)
  • Competitive Intelligence
  • Customer Profiling and Insights
  • Product and Strategy Development
  • Business Plan Preparation
  • Market Entry and Development
  • Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Research
  • Quantitative and Qualitative Research
  • Designing and Conducting Surveys
  • Pricing Research
  • Risk Analysis and Mitigation

Our clients worldwide trust our industry expertise and commitment to delivering bespoke solutions while ensuring best-in-class timeliness and quality on various market research projects.

Contact us today to get started with research that addresses your specific needs and delivers the results you have been looking for.

A market research report saves you hours of time and helps you solve business challenges with discerning insights and well-structured solutions.

While market research reports usually focus on buyers and sellers, industry reports focus mainly on the producers or manufacturers—analyzing their products and processes, competitive positioning, and their influence on customers.

For example, an industry report may include financial ratios, which can help determine how well an industry is doing by studying the mathematical relationship between two numbers related to the industry’s performance.

In addition to an industry overview, an industry report provides industry statistics generally used as a benchmark to assess individual performance.

Trade publications or trade journals are especially helpful for understanding industry trends and best practices, professional development opportunities, and news about agencies, brands, and marketing campaigns.

Unlike big companies, which can afford custom market reports, small business owners access customer and market information through reliable sources of free statistics, such as the U.S. Small Business Administration’s market research resource list . This list provides a diverse range of federal business statistics—from employment statistics and income statistics to sales statistics and trade statistics.

Market research reports add credibility to your work—whether you are making recommendations to a senior executive, preparing a key presentation for an important client, or refining your business plan.

A market research report is not just a systematic and structured representation of market research data—it is your secret to success in a highly competitive business environment.

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Market Research: Need, Advantages and Disadvantages

Meaning of marketing research.

Marketing research may be defined as the mechanism which helps in linking the customers, producers and several other end-user to the marketer and help in finding and communication of all required information. It is the system that leads to the collection of data, analysis of data and then interprets the required information to the users.

Marketing research plays an important role in studying consumer behaviour and making adjustments according to the change in the various elements of marketing mix viz. promotion, place, price, and product. It is a very efficient tool for the marketers to understand the trends of the market that mainly consists of information relating to new product launch in the market, trends in consumer demand, pricing strategy of the competitor and available close substitutes of the product. These all information acquired through this process enables in the smooth functioning of the marketing process.

Need of Marketing Research

Need and Advantages of Market Research

Easy detection of market problems and opportunities.

The first and primary advantage of marketing research is that it give complete information about the market. It give details regarding the marketing opportunities about the product which decides its success or failure. Apart from this it also helps in identifying the competitive nature of the market, whether customers are satisfied or not, the sales level of the company and also the channel of distribution used.

Helps in Marketing Strategies Formulation

Doing business today is a very difficult task as it requires to conduct deep marketing research acquiring knowledge. Also, today business is not conducted only at a local level but at a global level which involves a very difficult task of managing a large number of customers and various channels used for distribution. And above all, it is a very difficult task to predict people needs. The marketing information gathered through marketing research helps in the easy formulation and implementation in pre-decided strategies.

Understanding of Customer Needs

Today the success of every business depends on its customers and therefore nowadays marketing activities are customer targeted.  Marketing research play a very effective role in collecting the information regarding the customer wants which help in designing the product accordingly so that the customer need and wants can be satisfied easily.

Improve Sales Performance

Every company performance is measured by its sales level. Sales level clearly depicts the performance level of the company in the market. Marketing research helps in understanding the sales territories and analyzing the sales force effectiveness. And if any problem is detected it helps in taking actions accordingly thereby helps in increasing the sales volume.

Helps in Launching of New Products

Marketing research plays a very effective role in determining the success or failure of the new product to be launched in the market. It facilitates and makes it possible for testing of the upcoming product in a market on a small scale and also help in getting the response of the customers regarding the new product. So it basically lowers the risk involved in the launching of a new product.

Helps in Evaluating The Export Potential

Nowadays business is not conducted at a local level only but at a world level. Foreign trade serves as the best source of earning a large amount of income. But doing business on an international level requires conducting a large amount of research and gathering information.

Marketing research helps in evaluating the export potential of the company product. It aims at collecting information from customers from different countries which helps in predicting export potential.

Support the Management in Decision Making

Managers at the top-level require all relevant information before making any decision. Unless and until all required relevant information is supplied to the management team their functions are useless. Marketing research plays a very effective role in the supply of all current and accurate information to the management team.

Disadvantages of Market Research

Market research takes time.

Market research takes time to analysis the new trends and fashion. Sometimes market research fails to analysis trends which gives negative response to the company.

Research Is Expensive

Market research is an expensive process, it takes time and huge money to analysis new trends of the industry.

Inaccurate Information

Modern time is changing time, fashion and trends change over the night. So, market research fails to understand fashion and trends of the industry.

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Related posts:

  • Characteristics of Primary and Secondary Market
  • Characteristics of Research Methodology
  • Marketing Research – Meaning, Scope, Objectives & Process
  • Methodology of Operation Research
  • 9 Applications of Marketing Research
  • Aims and Objectives of Research Methodology

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Advantages And Disadvantages of Business Reports

Table of Contents

Reports are a crucial form of business communication.

They help in documenting important facts and data for businesses. However, at the same time reports can be time-consuming and expensive to prepare.

In the article, we have drafted the advantages and disadvantages of business reports with examples that can help you re-evaluate your decision of writing business reports.

What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of A Company Report?

Advantages of business reports:.

The main characteristic of a business report is that it is used as a tool for communication, analysis and decision-making. There are a number of benefits of business reports . They are:

1) Helps in making crucial business decisions: Good report writing is a key ingredient in making important decisions and taking steps towards the development of a company. The information provided in a business communication report is used to formulate strategies, take action and analyze complex problems.

2) Business reports act as a tool for managers: Business reports are a great managerial tool. They make it easy for the managers and executives in a company to oversee how the business is running. Managers use the components in business reports to achieve the following functions:  

3) Represent important facts and business data: The purpose of a business report is to communicate factual data and accurate information. Business reports rely on information collected through researching and consulting credible sources. For example, the stats about a company’s monetary standing are recorded in a financial report.

4) Overcoming business challenges: Any kind of business sees its highs and lows. Over the lifespan of a business, challenges and problems of various kinds may arise. Reports help in recording and analyzing problems. These reports can be referenced in the future to solve these issues from recurring. 

5) Recourse for investigation: Reports are crucial for documenting research, accidents, field studies, etc. The researchers conduct their studies and the key findings of their investigation are written in the form of reports. Along with this, they may offer solutions and recommendations for solving the issues that arise.

Conclusion-and-Recommendations-from-business-report

The above image is a real example of a conclusion and recommendation given within a business report.

6) Help to communicate important information: One of the prime benefits of a report is that it serves as a communication channel. There are many different types of business reports that bridge the gap between different sectors and executives of a company. They also reduce the administrative distance between different levels of management.

Disadvantages of Business Reports:

In the above section, we discussed the advantages of a business report. The importance of business reports in the effective functioning of a company is crucial . They are a vital part of any business. However, there are a few drawbacks and limitations to business reports come. They are: 

1) Business reports are not interactive: One major limitation of a report is that they are not interactive. Once a report is drafted and submitted, it takes some time for the manager to review it and offer feedback. This could cause delays in communication and lead to a waste of time.

2) Business reports can be biased: Report writing must always contain factual and accurate information for effective decision-making. A writer may slip personal bias and opinions into the report. This could change the nature of a report which is supposed to be unbiased and objective.

3) Extensive use of technical jargon: Business reports should be easy to understand and skim through for busy managers. However, sometimes a writer may include extensive technical language and “insider terms” in the report making its readability suffer.

4) Outlining is time-consuming: A report usually must follow a set format and guidelines. Before writing it, a writer must collect factual information from different sources and prepare an outline for the report. This information is then written accordingly in an introduction, body and conclusion format.

Outline-format-of-a-business-report

This process can be time-consuming. Even in the case of informal business reports , a format and outline have to be prepared.

5) Limited Time Span: As a company carries operations, the need for reports increases. A report is prepared for a specific time and purpose. After this purpose is achieved, the report becomes redundant. This makes the usefulness of a report valid only for a limited amount of time.   

6) Inaccurate data cannot be changed once drafted: The purpose of a business report is to convey factual data collected from credible sources. However, sometimes the data collected may be subject to change. It cannot, however, be reflected in a report that’s already drafted.

Accident-Report-Written-to-General-Manager

For example, an accident report may provide information about a mishap but more information related to the case could be found later.

Related Reading: 20 Importance of Business Report In Business Communication

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Research Report

A research report is used to document the key findings of a systematic research process and field studies . In this section, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of a research report.

Advantages of a Research Report:

1) Identifying knowledge gaps: A research report is used to document the research already collected and also to identify areas that require further investigation.

2) Understanding the audience: A research report helps in understanding the customers and their needs. This information is used by a company to improve its services to its target audience. 

3) Precise information: Research information contains clear and precise information. All the content in this report is well-researched and collected from multiple reputed sources.

Disadvantages of a Research Report:

1) Insufficient Data: Sometimes while conducting research, the data collected may be insufficient. This makes the process of formulating strategies riskier as the data collected is limited.

2) Deadlines: It may not always be possible to form a high-grade research report as the writer is only provided with a limited time to research.

3) Research may be expensive: A research report can require a large number of funds as it can include work trips, running ads, conducting surveys and interviews, etc. 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Market Report

Market research is a must for any company. Understanding what the market demands and how to meet their needs must be a top priority. This is why market research is conducted.

We will look at some advantages and disadvantages of a market report.

Advantages of a Market Report:

1) Minimizes Investment Risk: When adequate market research is done, it reduces the risk for a company to invest funds towards a product or service as they have more knowledge to make decisions.

2) Helps strengthen company position: With the help of a market report, a company can better understand the demands of its customers and stay ahead of its competitors.

3) Identifies threats and opportunities: A company can identify channels which may cause them problems and try to eliminate taking unnecessary risks. Likewise, by studying a market report, they can also identify new opportunities. 

The disadvantage of a Market Report: 

1) Market research is expensive: Conducting market research can be quite costly. A company may even need to hire a separate research team to do it for them. 

2) Inaccurate Information: The information from marketing research can be inaccurate and poorly researched. This can cause potential losses to a company.

3) Information may become outdated: Due to ever-changing market conditions, a market research report may become outdated after a certain period of time. 

Advantages of Company Analysis: 

A company analysis is used to evaluate the performance of a company’s business activities. This is accomplished by taking objective metrics and statistics into consideration.  

Here are a few advantages of Company Analysis:

1) Studying Competitors: In the marketplace, a business may have to face competition from other companies. Company analysis helps a company study the competition and provides information to evaluate which areas can be improved.

2) Industry Analysis: A company analysis report can help in understanding current market trends, growth drivers, maturity of the industry, potential challenges and opportunities. 

3) Business Offerings: A company must always be aware of its customers and their demands. A company analysis is used to give a clear idea of the products and services a company offers to the market. 

Types of Business Reports

1) Informational Report: Informational report is defined as an objective report which leaves out detailed explanations and only mentions facts. Example – annual budget report, employee roles, attendance report, etc.

2) Routine Report: This kind of report is prepared at routine intervals for routine activities. The frequency of a routine report can be hourly, weekly, monthly, etc.

3) Formal Report: A formal report is a form of business report which contains detailed facts, studies and objective information. This is done in a structured format including sections such as table of contents, appendices, etc. 

4) Informal Report: An informal report is usually in the form of a letter or a memo. Its tone is casual and can directly be addressed to the reader. Due to its short length, it is to the point and leaves out heavy details.

Related Reading : 10 Differences Between Formal & Informal Reports

5) Progress Report: A progress report tracks the development of progress across the company. It can track the performance of employees, teams, departments etc. This is done to ensure the work is meeting the goals set by the managers.

Related Reading : 15 Types Of Business Report In Business Communication

Frequently Ask Questions

Q1. what is a business report.

Ans. A business report is a collection of data and analysis that provides important information to the company. It is a formal document used to communicate information in a systematic manner. The information includes statistics, facts, research analysis, arguments, recommendations, etc.

Q2. Importance of business reports in business communication? 

Ans. The business reports will provide important and useful information on spending, growth, and profits. Business reports facilitate forecasts for the future, and marketing plans, guide budget planning and improve the decision-making process. It helps to track the progress and growth and identify the trends or any other irregularities that might require further investigation.

Q3. Why does an organization need to write a report?

Ans. Business reports provide useful management insights that include information like an organization’s spending, profits, and rate of growth. Business reporting promotes transparency, and for public companies, an annual report is a legal requirement to provide shareholders, the government, and others with financial data and ownership information about the business. 

Q4. What are the benefits of the business report for the organization?

Ans. There are several benefits of a business report, and these include: 

  • The report  provides consolidated as well as updated information
  • The report  helps in internal communication
  • The report  facilitates decision-making as well as planning. 
  • The report  discloses some unknown information. 
  • The report  gives relevant information to the employees. 

Q5. What are the main disadvantages of Report writing?

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MoSCoW Prioritization

What is moscow prioritization.

MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements. 

  The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the “W” in MoSCoW to mean “wish.”

What is the History of the MoSCoW Method?

Software development expert Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle. He designed the framework to help his team prioritize tasks during development work on product releases.

You can find a detailed account of using MoSCoW prioritization in the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) handbook . But because MoSCoW can prioritize tasks within any time-boxed project, teams have adapted the method for a broad range of uses.

How Does MoSCoW Prioritization Work?

Before running a MoSCoW analysis, a few things need to happen. First, key stakeholders and the product team need to get aligned on objectives and prioritization factors. Then, all participants must agree on which initiatives to prioritize.

At this point, your team should also discuss how they will settle any disagreements in prioritization. If you can establish how to resolve disputes before they come up, you can help prevent those disagreements from holding up progress.

Finally, you’ll also want to reach a consensus on what percentage of resources you’d like to allocate to each category.

With the groundwork complete, you may begin determining which category is most appropriate for each initiative. But, first, let’s further break down each category in the MoSCoW method.

Start prioritizing your roadmap

Moscow prioritization categories.

Moscow

1. Must-have initiatives

As the name suggests, this category consists of initiatives that are “musts” for your team. They represent non-negotiable needs for the project, product, or release in question. For example, if you’re releasing a healthcare application, a must-have initiative may be security functionalities that help maintain compliance.

The “must-have” category requires the team to complete a mandatory task. If you’re unsure about whether something belongs in this category, ask yourself the following.

moscow-initiatives

If the product won’t work without an initiative, or the release becomes useless without it, the initiative is most likely a “must-have.”

2. Should-have initiatives

Should-have initiatives are just a step below must-haves. They are essential to the product, project, or release, but they are not vital. If left out, the product or project still functions. However, the initiatives may add significant value.

“Should-have” initiatives are different from “must-have” initiatives in that they can get scheduled for a future release without impacting the current one. For example, performance improvements, minor bug fixes, or new functionality may be “should-have” initiatives. Without them, the product still works.

3. Could-have initiatives

Another way of describing “could-have” initiatives is nice-to-haves. “Could-have” initiatives are not necessary to the core function of the product. However, compared with “should-have” initiatives, they have a much smaller impact on the outcome if left out.

So, initiatives placed in the “could-have” category are often the first to be deprioritized if a project in the “should-have” or “must-have” category ends up larger than expected.

4. Will not have (this time)

One benefit of the MoSCoW method is that it places several initiatives in the “will-not-have” category. The category can manage expectations about what the team will not include in a specific release (or another timeframe you’re prioritizing).

Placing initiatives in the “will-not-have” category is one way to help prevent scope creep . If initiatives are in this category, the team knows they are not a priority for this specific time frame. 

Some initiatives in the “will-not-have” group will be prioritized in the future, while others are not likely to happen. Some teams decide to differentiate between those by creating a subcategory within this group.

How Can Development Teams Use MoSCoW?

  Although Dai Clegg developed the approach to help prioritize tasks around his team’s limited time, the MoSCoW method also works when a development team faces limitations other than time. For example: 

Prioritize based on budgetary constraints.

What if a development team’s limiting factor is not a deadline but a tight budget imposed by the company? Working with the product managers, the team can use MoSCoW first to decide on the initiatives that represent must-haves and the should-haves. Then, using the development department’s budget as the guide, the team can figure out which items they can complete. 

Prioritize based on the team’s skillsets.

A cross-functional product team might also find itself constrained by the experience and expertise of its developers. If the product roadmap calls for functionality the team does not have the skills to build, this limiting factor will play into scoring those items in their MoSCoW analysis.

Prioritize based on competing needs at the company.

Cross-functional teams can also find themselves constrained by other company priorities. The team wants to make progress on a new product release, but the executive staff has created tight deadlines for further releases in the same timeframe. In this case, the team can use MoSCoW to determine which aspects of their desired release represent must-haves and temporarily backlog everything else.

What Are the Drawbacks of MoSCoW Prioritization?

  Although many product and development teams have prioritized MoSCoW, the approach has potential pitfalls. Here are a few examples.

1. An inconsistent scoring process can lead to tasks placed in the wrong categories.

  One common criticism against MoSCoW is that it does not include an objective methodology for ranking initiatives against each other. Your team will need to bring this methodology to your analysis. The MoSCoW approach works only to ensure that your team applies a consistent scoring system for all initiatives.

Pro tip: One proven method is weighted scoring, where your team measures each initiative on your backlog against a standard set of cost and benefit criteria. You can use the weighted scoring approach in ProductPlan’s roadmap app .

2. Not including all relevant stakeholders can lead to items placed in the wrong categories.

To know which of your team’s initiatives represent must-haves for your product and which are merely should-haves, you will need as much context as possible.

For example, you might need someone from your sales team to let you know how important (or unimportant) prospective buyers view a proposed new feature.

One pitfall of the MoSCoW method is that you could make poor decisions about where to slot each initiative unless your team receives input from all relevant stakeholders. 

3. Team bias for (or against) initiatives can undermine MoSCoW’s effectiveness.

Because MoSCoW does not include an objective scoring method, your team members can fall victim to their own opinions about certain initiatives. 

One risk of using MoSCoW prioritization is that a team can mistakenly think MoSCoW itself represents an objective way of measuring the items on their list. They discuss an initiative, agree that it is a “should have,” and move on to the next.

But your team will also need an objective and consistent framework for ranking all initiatives. That is the only way to minimize your team’s biases in favor of items or against them.

When Do You Use the MoSCoW Method for Prioritization?

MoSCoW prioritization is effective for teams that want to include representatives from the whole organization in their process. You can capture a broader perspective by involving participants from various functional departments.

Another reason you may want to use MoSCoW prioritization is it allows your team to determine how much effort goes into each category. Therefore, you can ensure you’re delivering a good variety of initiatives in each release.

What Are Best Practices for Using MoSCoW Prioritization?

If you’re considering giving MoSCoW prioritization a try, here are a few steps to keep in mind. Incorporating these into your process will help your team gain more value from the MoSCoW method.

1. Choose an objective ranking or scoring system.

Remember, MoSCoW helps your team group items into the appropriate buckets—from must-have items down to your longer-term wish list. But MoSCoW itself doesn’t help you determine which item belongs in which category.

You will need a separate ranking methodology. You can choose from many, such as:

  • Weighted scoring
  • Value vs. complexity
  • Buy-a-feature
  • Opportunity scoring

For help finding the best scoring methodology for your team, check out ProductPlan’s article: 7 strategies to choose the best features for your product .

2. Seek input from all key stakeholders.

To make sure you’re placing each initiative into the right bucket—must-have, should-have, could-have, or won’t-have—your team needs context. 

At the beginning of your MoSCoW method, your team should consider which stakeholders can provide valuable context and insights. Sales? Customer success? The executive staff? Product managers in another area of your business? Include them in your initiative scoring process if you think they can help you see opportunities or threats your team might miss. 

3. Share your MoSCoW process across your organization.

MoSCoW gives your team a tangible way to show your organization prioritizing initiatives for your products or projects. 

The method can help you build company-wide consensus for your work, or at least help you show stakeholders why you made the decisions you did.

Communicating your team’s prioritization strategy also helps you set expectations across the business. When they see your methodology for choosing one initiative over another, stakeholders in other departments will understand that your team has thought through and weighed all decisions you’ve made. 

If any stakeholders have an issue with one of your decisions, they will understand that they can’t simply complain—they’ll need to present you with evidence to alter your course of action.  

Related Terms

2×2 prioritization matrix / Eisenhower matrix / DACI decision-making framework / ICE scoring model / RICE scoring model

Prioritizing your roadmap using our guide

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Moscow - Comprehensive Overview of the City, PEST Analysis and Analysis of Key Industries including Technology, Tourism and Hospitality, Construction and Retail

Market Research Report Summary

Moscow - Comprehensive Overview of the City, PEST Analysis and Analysis of Key Industries including Technology, Tourism and Hospitality, Construction and Retail report is published on May 7, 2021 and has 35 pages in it. This market research report provides information about Country PESTEL Analysis, Business & Government industry. It covers Russian Federation market data and forecasts. It is priced starting at USD 250.00 for Single User License (PDF) which allows one person to use this report.

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“City Profile - Moscow” provides historical and forecast data on key city level metrics along with analytical coverage of the latest political, economic, social, technological, infrastructural, legal and environmental issues affecting Moscow.

Moscow is the capital of the country and is the most populous city in Russia. The city has a significant economic and financial influence, accounting for a major of national GDP. Improvements in professional / business services and real estate are expected to be major drivers of growth.

The report contains detailed tourism, retail, construction, technology and public infrastructure data and insight into economic, social, and industry trends.

- The service sector remains the key contributor to the regional economy - and the major employer. - Moscow is a key tourist destination for both domestic and international tourists and witnessed a significant growth over the past two years. Strong performance is observed in the construction sector with increasing employment, number of building permits issued and building completions.

Reasons to Buy

- Gain a comprehensive knowledge of future economic and demographic trends and understand the performance of various sectors within the city. - Analyze and understand the business environment in the city to align your investment and expansion strategies. - The report helps to drive a conclusion in choosing a suitable city to invest or expand according to your business structure. - Explore new opportunities in the hospitality, tourism, construction, real estate and retail sectors.

Table of Contents City Snapshot PEST Analysis Political Economic Social Technology and Infrastructure Communications Internal Transport Networks Connectivity Airports Ports Business Environment Analysis Travel and Tourism Tourism Flows Hotels Attractions Events Construction and Real Estate Investment Real Estate Market Retail Retail Market Consumption, Income and Prices Appendix Sources Further Reading Ask the Analyst About MarketLine Disclaimer

List of Tables List of Tables Table 1: Moscow metropolitan area - key facts (estimates), 2020 Table 2: Moscow metropolitan area - real GDP and real GDP growth, 2000-25 Table 3: Moscow metropolitan area - economic growth comparison (Index 2010=100), 2000-25 Table 4: Moscow metropolitan area - GDP per capita comparison, 2000-25 (US$) Table 5: Moscow metropolitan area - employment structure, 2000-25 (% of total) Table 6: Moscow metropolitan area - main universities, 2020 Table 7: Moscow metropolitan area - population comparison, 2000-25 (million) Table 8: Moscow metropolitan area - population by age, 2000-25 (% of total) Table 9: Moscow city - mass transit network indicators, 2020 Table 10: Moscow metropolitan area - Sheremetyevo Alexander S. Pushkin International Airport, key indicators, 2018-20 Table 11: Moscow metropolitan area - Domodedovo Mikhail Lomonosov International Airport, key indicators, 2019-20 Table 12: Moscow metropolitan area - Vnukovo Andrei Tupolev International Airport, key indicators, 2018-20 Table 13: Moscow metropolitan area - Fortune Global 500 companies, HQ in City, 2020 Table 14: Moscow city - office rents, Q4 2020 Table 15: Moscow city - hotel KPIs, 2018-20 Table 16: Moscow city - UNESCO World Heritage Sites Table 17: Moscow metropolitan area - MICE and other events

List of Figures List of Figures Figure 1: Moscow metropolitan area - real GDP and real GDP growth, 2000-25 Figure 2: Moscow metropolitan area - economic growth comparison (Index 2010=100), 2000-25 Figure 3: Moscow metropolitan area - GDP per capita comparison, 2000-25 Figure 4: Moscow metropolitan area - employment structure, 2000-25 (% of total) Figure 5: Moscow metropolitan area - population comparison, 2000-25 Figure 6: Moscow metropolitan area - population by age, 2000-25 (% of total)

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    Last updated July 11, 2022 If you are thinking of starting a business, the first thing you have to do is to conduct thorough and extensive market research. There has never been a business which...

  14. 11 Benefits of Market Research + Examples

    Yet still, there are many who focus on instinct instead of insight. While intuition is all good and well, there's no getting away from the power of cold-hard data. In this post, I list 11 market research benefits, with real-world examples and six free research templates thrown in for good measure. 1. Better communication with customers.

  15. 10 key benefits of market research

    Here is a list outlining the main benefits of investing in marketing research: It helps businesses strengthen their position. Knowledge is power. Use market research to gain a better perspective and understanding of your market or target audience and ensure that your firm stays ahead of the competition. It minimises any investment risk.

  16. Top 10 Benefits of Market Research Reports

    While a market analysis report is a subset of a market research report, a market research report encompasses various aspects of market analysis, such as market segmentation analysis and PESTLE (Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal, and Environmental) analysis.

  17. Market Research: Need, Advantages and Disadvantages

    Disadvantages of Market Research Market Research Takes Time Research Is Expensive Inaccurate Information Meaning of Marketing Research Marketing research may be defined as the mechanism which helps in linking the customers, producers and several other end-user to the marketer and help in finding and communication of all required information.

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    This is why market research is conducted. We will look at some advantages and disadvantages of a market report. Advantages of a Market Report: 1) Minimizes Investment Risk: When adequate market research is done, it reduces the risk for a company to invest funds towards a product or service as they have more knowledge to make decisions.

  19. Market research

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  20. What is MoSCoW Prioritization?

    MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements. The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won't-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the "W" in MoSCoW to mean "wish.".

  21. PDF OFFICE knightfrank.com/research MARKET REPORT. MOSCOW

    The class of buildings is indicated according to the classification of the Moscow Research Forum 2013 Source: Knight Frank Research, 2021 Supply At the end of 2020, the total supply of offices in the Moscow market amounted to 16.99 million sq. m., including 4.59 million sq. m. of Class A and 12.40 million sq. m. of Class B.

  22. Moscow

    Market Research Report Summary. Moscow - Comprehensive Overview of the City, PEST Analysis and Analysis of Key Industries including Technology, Tourism and Hospitality, Construction and Retail report is published on May 7, 2021 and has 35 pages in it. This market research report provides information about Country PESTEL Analysis, Business & Government industry.

  23. Market Reports Archives

    Rent Growth Finally Reaccelerates After Nearly Two-Year Slowdown (October 2023 Rent Report) Annual rent growth ticked up in October for the first time since the pandemic peak in early 2022. Zillow Research • Nov 08 2023. Market Reports.