When conducting research to better understand the targeted market it is important to make use of good marketing research techniques such as Questionnaires ,and  interviews which are most common, but you also have observations, and experiments. 

Let us have a look at some Market Research technique:

  • Questionnaires

Questionnaires contain a list of open-ended and closed ended questions that allow respondents to give their opinions and views about a specific product. Based on the data collected it becomes easy to identify patterns, trends, understand the market, and from there provide better product, service, or change their marketing strategy. 

Questionnaires can be given online, email, telephone or even face-to-face. The anonymity of this research allows respondents to give honest and true answers as they will not be influenced by someone else.

  • Interviews

Interviews are a way of getting better in-depth responses from your target market, nothing can beat a good face-to-face meeting; it allows clarification to be made in case of misunderstanding. 

An interview will also give the interviewer to ask more questions and benefit from the interviewee’s personal experience with a product or service and these responses can help the organisations to provide better products or new types of service that will be helpful and useful for its targeted market. 

  • Focus group

Focus group is a type of interview where a group of people will be selected to answer some questions on the product offering of an organisation, their feedback will allow the organisation to make better decisions such as: how they can enhance customer service, or features that they can add to make a product more appealing.

This type of research will also provide interviewers with different points of views which will give them a broader and bigger picture of the market. 

  • Observations

This refers to observing people in their natural environment and for organisations carrying such research an observer will go in malls, or shops to see the shopping habits of customers. For instance, the person undertaking this research will observe how customers behave, do they have the ability to make a decision, if the packaging influences their choice. 

We have other techniques that can be used to undertake market research but these are the most common ones. If you wish to have more information you can visit our blog ‘Marketing essentials’ or ‘Introduction to business strategy’. Do not hesitate to interact with us by leaving a message in the comment section found below, we will be happy to respond to your message.