How does someone do market research?
Example:
Let take the telephone surveys for an example, can you telephone phone any one?, or do you need permission?, or do you get a list from someone?, etc,etc.
Answer:
Market research is not just 'surveys'. Its understanding the maret conditions your company/product has to weather to be successful. In some cases, surveys work well to understand customer satisfaction. In other cases, knowing where your customers are is much more critical.
In terms of your question about telephone surveys, it all comes down back to what goal you're trying to achieve. Typically a "random digit dial" method is used within a specific geographic area to get results that are representative of that area. If you have customer list.just call the customers.
Tyoe of Market Research will depend on your objectives:
Surveys are more suitable when you have to ask a series of questions.
Reserve telephone surveys for only one question research.
Mail surveys usually dont work.
Online surveys may not predict the right picture.
One suggestion: Mention your product or service and ask the question again. You would probably have more people giving you answers.
It really depends on the type of product and its market potential. I'd suggest you to identify your target market first. After having done this you can determine what is the best possible way that you mite get the correct results of your research. Some methods used are extensive and simple surveys, or obtain past records from similar companies of goods that you intend to deal on. Maybe you can also try find statistics from related sources and be resourceful in your ways. e.g. If I want to launch a new toilet seat and pot company in Ethiopia, I might want to go to the health department and find out the food habits of the people of Ethiopia to know the correct usage and thereby, the demand for toilets. (as the joke goes that in ethiopia people dont use toilets cos they dont have anything to eat)
Goodness..
Market Research is an art and a science.
Each technique you ask about above has methodologies and pros/cons associated with the technique.
For example:
In person interviews are expensive and very limiting to a rather small group of people. This is commonly referred to as "focus group" studies.
Telephone surveys are getting more and more difficult with the new Do Not Call law. Only legitimate market researches that have registered with the FTC can conduct research, other than that, any other company that calls its customers has to have a relationship in place with those customers (no more cold calling.)
Mail Surveys are great, but limiting in terms of the complexity of the surveys that you can administer. And, with so much junk mail and a 2% open rate common, it's expensive.
Online surveys are the best thing that happened to Market Reserach in my opinion, however, even this method has issues. Anti-spam laws, overprotected inboxes, and lack of a reliable, projectible sample for b2b and small attractive segments of the ppopulation (e.g. the wealthy), make it difficult to deliver without lots of resources.
Most lists, whether mail, phone, or email ARE PERMISSION BASED and you do pay for them.
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