Learn how to recognize the right moment for market research and how it can unlock untapped opportunities for your business.
Understanding your market and consumers is crucial for the long-term success of your company. A vital tool for gaining these insights is conducting a proper market study.
But how do you know when it’s the right time to invest in such a study?
Well, it’s essential to be aware of the signs that indicate the need for such an endeavor and the benefits it can bring to your business.
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5 Situations Indicating the Need for Market Research
- When you are preparing to launch a new product or service on the market.
Market research can help you validate your idea.
- When exploring new market segments.
Market research can help identify the risks and benefits associated with entering a new market by providing detailed insights into the needs and preferences of consumers in that market.
- When you need to analyze consumer behavior towards your products and services.
Market research can help you detect changes in consumer preferences and behavior, allowing you to adapt your business strategies accordingly, ensuring you remain relevant and attractive to your target audience.
- When your products or services are not reaching their potential or are not perceived as intended by consumers.
This is the moment to examine why this is happening. Market research can identify problems and provide solutions for improvement, helping you adjust your strategies and optimize performance.
- When you focus on differentiating yourself from the competition.
Market research can help you identify competitive advantages by understanding how your brand is perceived, what consumers value, and how you can stand out in the market.
Launching a New Product or Service
This step requires a deep understanding of the market and consumer demands. In this context, conducting a market research study involves closely examining the needs and preferences of potential target markets to validate your idea and adjust your offering accordingly.
Before advancing the development of a new product or service, it is wise to carry out detailed market research to carefully analyze consumption trends, client behavior, and competition. This way, you will have a clearer picture of the potential for success and the feasibility of your idea.
Without adequate market research, launching a new product or service can prove to be an unproductive and risky endeavor. Conversely, a market study provides essential information for making strategic decisions and ensures that your new product or service has the best chance of success.
Thus, the research will yield the necessary information about product characteristics, pricing, marketing strategy, and other aspects of the offer to ensure it meets market demands correctly.
Entering a New Market
Market research can help identify entry opportunities into a new market, such as gaps in existing offers, unmet needs, and unknown consumer expectations or certain consumption trends.
Moreover, it can help identify potential threats, such as fierce competition, high entry barriers due to legislative or economic changes.
Through market research, you will gain a detailed understanding of consumer behavior, preferences, and needs in the new market. This understanding allows you to adapt your offer to respond efficiently to market demands, as well as develop appropriate marketing strategies to attract and retain clients.
When you manage to evaluate competition in the new market, by identifying key economic players, strong and weak points, and the strategies they adopt, you are better prepared to face market challenges.
Through detailed market research, we can also create realistic projections regarding market potential and evaluate the feasibility of entry by assessing risks from an economic and strategic point of view.
This way, you will be able to make informed decisions about investments in the new market and establish achievable long-term goals for your business.
Understanding Consumer Behavior
Regardless of the level at which your business is operating, if you aim to develop it, you are surely interested in analyzing consumer behavior, both within your field of activity and among your own consumers and brand fans.
Through market research, you can identify trends and changes in preferences, needs, and consumer behavior.
The way consumers interact with products or services, new preferences for certain features or functionalities, or even changes in the purchasing or communication channel are aspects that are worth knowing by the company. This helps you create a business and marketing strategy based on real-world economic and societal realities.
MKOR conducts market studies using a quantitative and qualitative approach to detect changes in consumer behavior and provide a deep understanding of the reasons behind these changes. This helps you adapt your offer to better meet consumer needs and adjust your business strategy to remain relevant and efficient.
Your Products or Services Are Not Reaching Their Business Potential
The Romanian market is extremely competitive, resulting in many situations where a company’s products or services do not reach the expected level of success.
If your company is facing such a situation, it is crucial to identify the reasons behind these shortcomings. Market research becomes essential in this process as it offers the opportunity to directly interact with consumers and identify their needs and preferences related to the product or service in question.
Through market research, you will obtain details related to the characteristics of the product/service, price, design, customer care, or any other elements you want to explore. Subsequently, you will be able to develop and implement appropriate solutions to improve the product or service, better adapting it to consumer requirements and expectations.
Differentiation from Competition
In the book Zero to One, authors Blake Masters and Peter Thiel state that “the success of a business is precisely given by the things it can do that the rest of the competitors cannot.”
Therefore, it is crucial, if you want to stay in the market for the long term, to differentiate yourself from the competition. Clearly, sometimes differentiation is something intentional, set from the beginning of the business plan.
However, often, differentiation becomes evident over time because many products on the market are similar in price and characteristics.
Another approach could be striving to offer products and services as best as possible and then finding out what the consumer experience is. Ideally, they should tell you what differentiates your business. If they do not identify anything special, it means you have more work to do.
It is essential to identify the areas where you can improve to differentiate yourself.
Your consumers’ suggestions are more valuable than your internal marketing team’s assumptions.
Concretely, here’s how a market study can help:
- You can collect direct feedback from consumers regarding existing products or services;
- You can measure the level of customer satisfaction with your products or services;
- You can compare the performance of your products or services with those of the competition;
- You can identify consumer needs and preferences to come up with new products and services;
- You can identify problems related to the return of products or the lack of necessary information to facilitate the buying decision.
The Benefits of Conducting Market Research
Market research is an essential tool for any business that wants to thrive and grow sustainably. It allows you to access valuable insights about the market, clients, and competitors, which can lead you to make informed decisions and develop more efficient strategies.
One primary benefit is that through surveys, interviews, and market analysis, you can discover what consumers want from your products or services.
For example, if you are a company operating in the fashion market, you can conduct a behavior and attitude study to understand which styles and colors are most popular among your audience. Based on this information, you can develop collections that directly meet customer requirements, thereby enhancing their satisfaction and loyalty.
Another benefit of market research is identifying untapped or underexploited market opportunities. By analyzing trends and consumer behavior, you discover market segments that are not served by the competition or uncover needs and desires that consumers have which are unmet.
Additionally, one of the most important benefits is that market research represents an efficient way to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of your marketing and business strategies.
Through satisfaction studies, brand awareness analysis, and competitive analysis, you can measure the impact of your marketing campaigns and identify which aspects are working well and which need improvement.
Finally, market research can save you time and money by helping you avoid costly mistakes and focus on strategies that yield the best results.
It’s better to concentrate on one important thing instead of trying to do everything at the same time. Also, it’s better to rely on experts than to divert your focus from your work to learn and apply new skills.
By conducting market studies, you can save time and money by avoiding marketing and advertising efforts that don’t reach your target consumers.
Thus, market research is a tool that gives you the opportunity to understand the market and your consumers better and to develop more efficient and better-directed strategies.
MKOR can support you from A to Z when you need market research.
👉 Are You Ready to Focus on Your Business Potential?
Contact us today to plan the market study that will guide you to success!
MKOR is an innovative and agile research agency. We strongly believe that the information collected directly from the market about consumers and their perception of your brand offers a clearer picture of the potential and challenges your company faces. Agility and empathy in business are our superpowers.
Together, we can create your own market study based on the specific needs of your company.
