How to Conduct Your Own Market Research

Market resarch is critical to understanding your customers and competitors.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Determine your goals and objectives in conducting market research. What do you want to find out? What is your target population?

2. Give clients and suppliers a brief questionnaire to get the necessary information.

3. Follow up with phone calls. Ask for additional information and inquire about specific likes and dislikes.

4. Create a focus group of customers or suppliers to give feedback on what they want from your business.

5. Talk to your employees who man the frontlines, listening to customers. Encourage them to capture customer comments, opinions and ideas. Reward your employees for doing so.

6. Delegate a job of summarizing customer comments in one report on a regular basis.

7. Examine sales records to see where popular selling regions are and what customers are buying.

8. Review questionnaires, interviews and focus group results to determine trends.

9. Prioritize changes you wish to make, based on feedback.

10. Decide who is responsible for making changes, and how.

Tips & Warnings

• Ask more questions, instead of telling people about your business.
• Read published materials, such as "U.S. Industrial Outlook" and "The Futurist."
• If possible, it is best to have more than one person involved in market research in order to enhance objectivity.
• Network at community organizations.
• Don't ask for feedback if you don't plan to use it.
• Make sure that your results aren't biased. Ensure that your results come from a broad cross-section of your customer base.

[paigeturner]

on 5/29/2009 Good points and interesting article. Surveying potential clients in addition to existing clients would give a broader data set. Thanks for posting this!

[zemzem82]

on 1/13/2009 great aticle its food for thought- zemzem.ecrater.com