Avoid epic fails with market research

How many times have you read or heard about market research? I imagine many, and I also imagine everywhere: on TV, on social networking, on promotional emails. Even the butcher’s brother’s in law aunt talks about market research. But do you exactly know what it means?

The market research is a way of collecting, analyzing and storing data related to consumers’ behaviors and decisions. This is crucial within a company that produces goods or services, because it acts as a microscope and it helps understanding what is the best way forward in terms of marketing, communications or even “just” to know if customers are satisfied or not.

Market research, basically, is not only useful in understanding if a company is making mistakes. Because successes are quickly easy to understand , as well as epic fails, but those little dissatisfactions that month after month bring more and more customers to leave the product, are sometimes difficult to intercept and, in fact, we realize it only when the flop is now of epic proportions.

Market research is not only useful in understanding the development of a product or a service, but also to understand if the market needs that new product that a company, would like to launch. Now, before jumping in and hitting a rock, you should explore the market sea, but especially the fishes that live in, this is definitely a very good and right thing to do.

So obviously, there is not only one type of market research. Every aspect of the analysis has a specific field of reference. In fact, we are talking about exploratory research, like when you want to place a product, even a successful one, on a new market of research aimed to estimate the potential of a new product or customer satisfaction, or if a product does already exist, or also research aimed to establish the price but also aimed to the demand segmentation in case you need to figure out which customers you want to serve.

However, all of them have one single purpose: avoid epic fails. And, basically, what is this epic mistake that we should avoid? The uselessness of a service and customer dissatisfaction.

At the end, even if we are talking about economics, we should all remember that man is the greatest resource we have available.

If you need help, write me c.albrecht@iff-international.com

Christine Albrecht (Managing Director, Germany)