So, have you decided it’s time to consider getting some market research? Good for you! Having solid market research will always make you feel more confident in bolder, better business decisions. The only problem is trying to decide what sort of research you need, how long it’ll take, and what it might cost.

Generally, it’s easiest to look at market research as falling into two groups: Primary and Secondary. 

Primary Market Research

Primary market research is brand new research that you’ll generate through various means such as creating a survey, doing customer interviews, conducting focus groups, or making competitor observations. And primary research is done exactly to your specifications for your particular questions.

Secondary Market Research

Secondary market research is research that other people have already gathered in some way and turned into usable reports and statistics. It won’t be super-specific to your particular business, but it’ll tell you information about things like the overall demand for certain products, key industry measures like size, share and profitability, as well as studies on industry trends. Secondary research is usually easier and less costly to obtain, so this is where most businesspeople start.

Back to Primary research, however, because this is where the deeper insights are usually found. And we’ll drill down here because there are also two main kinds of primary research: Quantitative and Qualitative. 

Types of Primary: Quantitative

Quantitative research means getting measurable data. For example, asking people “on a scale of 1 – 5, how happy are you with the service you received today?” It’s good for tracking trends over time, uncovering customer demographics, or for looking for pockets where issues might exist, such as one sales territory versus another. The questions are usually quick to answer, and it is important to get large enough sample sizes so that your numbers are reliable and repeatable. That said, it doesn’t usually tell you why people feel the way they do in any depth. That’s where qualitative research comes in.

Types of Primary: Qualitative

Qualitative research means using non-numerical, exploratory techniques to get at the deeper reasons for behaviours, and there are many ways to do this. Why do people feel a certain way? What decision making process did they use? Some of the best techniques here include depth interviews with customers or prospects, focus groups, or even doing consumer behaviour observation, either online or in a store. If you want to know what customers really think, depth interviews are usually very effective. 

That’s why at Tenato, we usually recommend a combination of types of research to tell us different things. For example…

• Is your product or service highly visual? Focus groups or a visual online survey will usually be necessary to capture real reactions to seeing your product. If a new product is involved, we do focus groups when we might need customers to touch or experience a product.  in case that’s overkill, a visual online survey – in other words, a survey with pictures of the products – will work well.

• Do you need to set or check a price point? Competitor research plus a survey of some kind will help you figure out how high or low to set your price, but if you’re trying to test a more innovative price structure, you may need depth interviews with prospects or customers.

• Are you wondering about you most effective selling message? For this, we recommend depth interviews to uncover your strengths, and then also doing competitor research to figure out what makes you distinct vs. their messaging.

• Got something brand new, or are you planning to diversify to new markets? We recommend depth interviews with prospects to reveal how and why they use their existing suppliers, and whether there are unmet needs still to be filled.

• Are you trying to benchmark against the rest of your industry? Secondary research is definitely worth getting. If you need to compare awareness levels, a survey is very helpful.

All in all, if you’re doing a whole new business growth or marketing strategy, you’ll probably want several kinds of research.

Which brings us to “What’s it going to cost?” Research costs vary widely depending on the scope. 

Costs depend on whether your project is local, regional or national, and can range from $5000, $50,000, or over $100K respectively – but for most businesses, we recommend a combination of customer and prospective customer interviews, competitor research and secondary industry research – usually in the range of $10K – $30K. Focus groups usually run about $4 – 5K each, with a minimum of two recommended, + a summary report, totalling around $15K. Timelines for research can run 4 – 12 weeks depending on the depth required, so if you’re urgent for answers, do get started early!

Well, we hope this helps you figure out your market research needs. Please give us a call if you’d like to chat further.