Canada Market Research - Company Services

A survey or poll (or a “questionnaire”, if you’re speaking specifically about the written survey document itself)  is a market research technique where consistent, carefully sequenced questions are asked, and respondents usually choose from pre-set, specific responses.  Typically, few if any open-ended questions are asked (e.g. do you have any comments?), so that the answers are easily measurable. (Note – a poll is the same as a survey – it is just usually done to the public at large, or released for public or newsmedia consumption).

NOTE: Since the purpose here is precise measurement, it is important to get random selection of a significant number of respondents wherever possible, and if measuring over time, to keep the survey questions consistent.  While some open-ended questions can be included, most Surveys are “measurable” – i.e. closed-ended questions such as “yes/no” or “on a scale of”

Best Applications

Best for measuring responses against each other (by location, demographics, preferences), such as:

• Measuring satisfaction
• Demographic information
• Measuring preferences
• Assessing brand awareness (aided and unaided)
• Measuring interest in pre-set choices
• Determining distribution channels
• Determining most common current marketing channels
• Measuring changes in any of the above over time

A survey or poll (or a “questionnaire”, if you’re Involves recruiting 5 – 8 unbiased participants to sit together (preferably in one physical room), and having an experienced moderator guide them through a balanced discussion about a certain product, service, or issue.  Participants are pre-screened, and drawn from the client’s ideal target market (e.g. female homeowners), and are usually paid for their participation.  Involves preparing a guidebook for the discussion, any discussion materials, and report. A minimum of 2 focus groups is recommended for any topic.

Best Applications

Best for testing and refine new ideas, especially visual ones requiring a “show and tell” element, such as:

• Refining product/service attributes
• Refining pricing based on seeing the product/service first

This compares a broad number of strategic parameters of various competing business on an apples-to-apples basis.  This can be done through online, phone, in-person means.  We sometimes include indirect competitors (e.g. Amazon, if you had an online retailer) to uncover best practices for pricing and user experience.

Some businesses also may wish to actually purchase products/services from competitors to assess the quality, service and engineering.

Best Applications

To identify and assess your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities vs. competitors, such as:

• Comparing product attributes
• Comparing website traffic patterns
• Comparing pricing
• Comparing skills of key personnel
• Comparing approaches to marketing

This helps to identify your current position in the market, and refine your mission and vision distinctly from other players in the industry.

A feasibility study is made up of several kinds of research, which then concludes with a recommendation on whether to proceed as-planned, proceed after suggested changes to the product, or not to proceed. Visit our Feasibility Study page for more information.

Best Applications

To determine if your new product/concept will succeed, specifically:

• Overall demand
• Ideal targets
• Product attributes
• Pricing vs. Cost
• Size of market, potential growth

This is usually done by mainly “Secondary Research”, i.e. rounding up the latest existing studies and data on the size, growth, key players, legislation and trends of the market, and key resources such as Statistics Canada.

Tenato also uses ground-breaking big-data and social media monitoring for finding leading-edge trends. In some cases, we also contact industry leaders within a  market to give us first-hand, very current comments on what is happening.

Best Applications

The benefits are to assess:

• Market demand
• Trends in demand
• Size of market
• Market share of key competitors
• Legislation
• Risks/Threats

An omnibus or panel survey allows you to tack-on your questions into an existing regular public panel; in fact, there are online survey panels going on all the time, and questions are being responded to by volunteer panellists who are paid across the country to answer surveys every week.

These charge by the question and number of respondents (costs go up if you need a more specific audience, such as minimum of 500 women homeowners only).  If you have more than 5 or so questions it will likely be worth it to do a “dedicated survey” – i.e. a survey written just for your purposes, and then execute that.   Tenato works with you to determine the questions needed, executes with the panel company and analyzes the data.

Best Applications

If you only have a couple of questions to answer, but need a highly accurate measurement, such as:

• Portion of population who need your service
• Demographics of that population
• Portion of population with a certain condition