Before embarking on your business journey and going all out on your business idea and investing your life savings, you should determine whether there is really a need or demand for your offering. This can be done by conducting market research.
What is Market Research?
Market Research is an important step and is crucial while planning to introduce new offerings or enter new markets. However, the truth is entering the market without a clear view may end up costing far more than what a market research would have. Consider market research to be an investment for the future success of your business.
Market research helps businesses understand their marketplace from the very start, enabling them to create strategies that will allow the business to grow and outshine competitors. The main forms of market research are primary and secondary. Primary research is a methodology where you collect data through field work, in-depth interviews, questionnaires. Secondary research is data collected from reliable printed and published sources. Sometimes depending on the objective, a combination of the two can deliver the results.
Why startups should conduct Market Research?
Market Understanding –
Does the product or service you wish to launch have potential? Market research will make it obvious that a new product you have planned may not be what your market wants or needs. You may then decide to make modifications on what you are going to offer to suit your audience.
Identifying Customers’ Needs and Want –
Who are your customers? What are they willing to pay? How can you meet their needs and exceed their expectations? Is there a gap in the market in what is currently available that you can capitalize on? Market research can help answer these questions and give you an in-depth understanding of your customer and their customers’ needs. A business consultant can assist you with conducting the market research and in analysis and presentation of data. They will help you understand demographic information such as your target customers’ gender, age, occupation, and economic status. You can also find out what products and services they are currently using and what they like and dislike about them as also customer behavior.
Develop the Right Product or Services –
Market research can help you know whether or not your product idea will appeal to your customer base. You can also gather competitive intelligence to find out how to differentiate yourself from other companies with similar products and services. A professional business consultant can help identifying the strengths and weakness of your competitors, also assist in developing unique offerings and create a strong value proposition. Understanding how competition is currently performing will also provide you with information on how the companies in your industry are performing.
Data that assists you in developing your business and revenue model –
It is important to know the market size. Once you realize that your product has potential, this market data should be used to prepare a business plan and financial projections that is more realistic.
An experienced business consultant can guide you in this step-by-step process.
We live in a highly competitive world. To ensure your product has a higher chance to succeed, proper data and planning is the need. Market research should be the first step of your entrepreneurial journey so that you can make informed decisions that are based on statistics and numbers which validate the business concept. There are many entrepreneurs who have tweaked their business model or even considered modifying their product offerings based on research data. These are the ones who have moved ahead of the competition and built profitable ventures.
