Business Research: Reading The Consumer’s Pulse

It takes quite a lot more than just a brilliant idea to create a business, and to keep it thriving and successful for a long time. It takes every ounce of innovation that you may have to keep yourself ahead of your competition, and to constantly be on top of the game. Once you are in the market, you’re noticed, then what? To be able to keep the customers that you have created is no mean feat and that’s where most of the businesses choke, they can’t keep their customers.

First step is to create the product; next is to launch it with a bang, make waves, which will get you noticed. But the most important step is to sustain your consumer numbers, to be able to deliver year after year and not lose your valued customers to a competitor.

To be able to do that, a business owner must always stay ahead of his game, always know before others what his consumers are saying, whether or not they are completely satisfied with his product or if there is any change in the ongoing trend, and which way is it leading to so that he can be there first. It is imperative for any business to be aware of its competition, and to know how to beat it.

Rethinking Business Through Research

But how is it possible for a company to constantly know what the people are saying? They need a device, a communicator that would thoroughly delve into people’s minds and bring out what their satisfactions and complaints are regarding the particular brand/product.

Surveys are the best possible way of figuring out the ever changing mindsets of the consumers, and most importantly, exactly how and why the sales have increased or decreased. It is essential for a business owner, whether he is a startup or an established brand, to know the target market and the audience that he would be catering to. Decision-making is a crucial aspect of any business venture. A business owner can make firm decisions and stand by them, only when he is well aware of the surroundings of his marketplace. Along with the internal factors about his business, he might also need to have complete understanding about the external factors affecting the products, services and overall business.

Business research and market surveys come forward as the best solution to this dilemma. Since not everybody can be there in the market in person to ask every customer about his product, and such initiatives only lead to negative feedbacks because people don’t like to be held up at the malls answering why they chose what to buy, having surveys conducted online or via mails are the best way to generate feedback and positive image of your business. The responses can then be collected and scrutinized to weed out the problem. It helps tremendously because such business or industry analysis is the systematic process of gathering all the relevant market data, which can then be organized and analyzed to draw conclusions that are relevant to your industry.

Business Mix and Survey Types

Surveys provide explicit data that a business owner requires to really understand what his consumers are saying about his product, and how he can further elevate his services. There are several types of surveys that can be conducted, which help in breaking down the different factors of a business and market place analysis so that there is as much amount of knowledge gained as possible, because only a business which knows everything about its target consumers and their desires would be able to survive in the arcane jungle of the competitive business world.

There are basically 3 types of researches that can be conducted in the market. Quantitative research or (quant) is about getting the hard measures of a market – market share, how many people think, how many people saw our advertising, how many people would buy. Qualitative research (qual) is about the softer issues exploring why people do things or think the way they do. These types of survey are usually complementary – you might explore the reasons why people buy in qual, then measure how important these reasons are in quant. The third type of research is observation studies, which is increasingly being used to monitor social media behavior and online analysis.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

Quantitative surveys address the general public with the same question, so as to gather what all the people collectively want to say about a certain product, and qualitative surveys require an in depth research about the market data, they are subjective and based on case studies. The observation studies are the fastest and the most relevant style of research because in this method direct data is collected without any interference from question asking experts. The researchers observe the markets, follow the rise and fall of sales and its reasons depending on the behavior of the consumers observed first hand, and then the reports are compiled based on those studies. They give a more genuine idea of what is what in the real market.

To address different genres of the market, you need to have different types of surveys designed. They need to be systematically designed so that each sector of the consumer feels equally valued, and each set of the different types of the customer would get thoroughly evaluated. For instance, if a laundry detergent is being surveyed, there is going to be different types of consumers observed to find out what particular audience is the detergent captivating, and why is the rest of them going towards a different brand. It could be the pricing, or a supply demand issue, or it could be the lack of proper advertisement that many people might not be aware of the product yet. To make a business overall sound and successful, all the areas need to be addressed from the marketing, the placing, the pricing and the promotion of the product. And each area needs to be equally researched, and equally worked upon, and equally upgraded. For every sector of a business, it is important to conduct surveys to find out the employee satisfaction, which would lead to better service and ultimately customer satisfaction. Conducting surveys online has become the latest trend, and it has proven itself to be faster, easier to access and cheaper to afford for all companies.

Why Online Survey Is Your Best Bet?

Everybody is online these days, so the best way to approach your consumer is through his comfort zone, so that the respondent does not feel answering the questionnaire as a hassle. It is now extremely easy to build up your own surveys online, through websites that offer such fabulous opportunities to any business owner who really wants to delve in the minds of his customers. Surveys are the surefire way of understanding the root of any problem. Anything from customer demographics to Gas Mileage, business demographics or motivation for buying experience can now be conducted online via the ready to launch surveys available online these days. Online surveys yield quicker results because people don’t hesitate in taking them as they are mostly free, or cheap, and not too much time consuming.

Online websites, like SurveyCrest, provide such templates that can enable any new user to easily conduct his own survey for anything he wants to gather data about. Any brand can easily access its consumers using online survey templates and figure out the countless benefits of knowing what their consumer wants.

The video above teaches any survey neophyte the tricks of this easy yet covetous trade. Just click play to get a view of how simple it really is to know what your target audience is thinking about your product, and start conducting surveys to help your business grow and prosper!