The importance of Market Research
by Startacus Admin
Marketest is a leading online market research company, who conduct market research for existing businesses and startups launching new products or services as well as academic institutions. Here, they share some invaluable thoughts on why market research is an essential part of the business startup process. Over to Marketest to explain all...
Often at times, both entrepreneurs and business owners ask to themselves the following questions:
- Am I providing something that is wanted or needed in the market?
- Where and how would potential customers prefer to buy?
- Who is most likely to buy from me (women, men, younger or older people, etc.)?
Market research is an essential part of the business start-up process but many entrepreneurs skip this vital stage because of the supposed cost. Market research determines the feasibility of a project and it is a way to adapt a business’ strategy (such as communication, pricing policy, product range, etc.) to the market. It is significant to carry out 
market research in order to confirm an idea, make a project credible, professionalise the “setting-up” approach or convince financial partners and other to invest in your business idea.
According to ESOMAR (the Global Research Trade Organisation), market research is “the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organisations. It uses the statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social, behavioural and data sciences to generate insights or support decision making”.
Market research involves scientifically-led studies to collect necessary market information, enabling entrepreneurs to make the right commercial decisions. The main reasons why market research is important for your business is based on the idea that it helps to estimate:
- The correct approach to use with potential investors, financial partners or people who will get involved into your business
- The potential turnover of your business
- Whether to launch your business idea
Undertaking market research is a cost-effective way to carry out bespoke research within your chosen target group. Also, it is more efficient and richer than traditional quantitative market research. 
For a tailor-made study, entrepreneurs need to know that market research can be either primary or secondary:
- Primary research refers to a new research or your own bespoke market research, which is carried out with the aim to answer to specific questions. Usually, it includes questionnaires, surveys and interviews.
- Secondary research includes information and data already available, and you can access to all information by utilising local libraries, trade associations, business schools, etc.
Furthermore, both primary and secondary research methods can be qualitative or quantitative:
- Qualitative Research provides an in-depth understanding of how and why things have happened. For this type of research, there are no fixed set of questions but, instead, a topic or discussion guide is used to explore several aspects exhaustively.
- Quantitative Research is numerically oriented and requires significant attention to the observable phenomena via statistical techniques. The main feature of this type of research is to ask to each respondent the same series of questions. This method includes:
- Surveys, which are questionnaires with the aim to collect data through a specific set of questions asked in the same way to many people. This type of research may be administered by mail, face-to-face, telephone, email or website.
Furthermore, quantitative data can be analysed through tables and graphs used to show the data with tests of correlations between two or more items (for instance, age, 
gender, socio-economic class). It may also be analysed with the hypothesis testing to identify whether there are genuine differences between target groups.
To sum up, market researchers analyse the data and fully understand the relationship between findings, competitors and the market trends. These specialists also evaluate and draw conclusions based on the findings to aid entrepreneurs to make important commercial decisions.
Understanding the market research process will not only provide knowledge on how it all works, but also indicate how in-depth research offers you with invaluable intellectual data. Due the high competition into markets, small businesses and start-ups need to find the best way to increase funds for their potential projects.
In order to convince financial partners to invest in your business plans, you need to consider providing first-hand market research information, with the aim to increase the interest of potential investors.
Nowadays, you can find many small companies that can help to collect qualitative or quantitative data about your idea. For instance, Marketest would be able to help you with quantitative market research with an indication on how people think in the UK market.
However, if you want to do market research entirely for free, you may opt for Google, one of the best information tools you could possibly hope for, where you can find out a bit about almost anything if you look hard enough."
But, if you would like to find out more about Marketest services, you can contact us at contact@marketest.co.uk or request a free quote
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Published on: 7th August 2017
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