5 Key Areas of Interest for a Market Research

Market research, if well undertaken can serve the management of a company with insight into a market that can be successfully applied to the company’s marketing initiatives. But the question is what information can provide valuable and practical results on which a corporation can base on in taking strategic market decisions. What information gathered can be useful for the business and its objectives.

In other to really understand the potential of a market, more than just hearsay or common market indicators needs to be observed. There is more for a business to thrive in a market than just shallow observations. It is common practice in our business environment today to see businesses take on new markets with very limited information about the market and ignoring or decide to go blind towards every possible reason to avoid such markets.

Markets can be disguised due to certain variables that may be seasonal and businesses can wrongfully misinterpret the market signals and jump in only to find out it was a wrong move. In other to get more out of a market there are key areas your research needs to investigate in other to make the right decisions for a new market. Let’s look at five of these key areas below;

What are the existing market needs for your products and services?

Before stepping into a new market it is very important to first of all check if you even have a ready market in the first place. Everyone may agree to that, but many fail to further investigate the needs of that market. It is very possible to identify a market but it is another thing to understand the needs of that market. If your products or services fall short of the needs of the market, then you might be making a huge mistake stepping in such markets. It is very common to see people use different products for different purposes in different markets. Which explains how markets can be tricky some times.

It is very important to understand the customer’s needs, their priorities, and their expectations. When stepping into a new market, it should be understood, you are entering into new culture, probably different values and completely different expectations. If you can provide a product for a market but the outcome does not meet the customer’s expectations, you must consider refining the product to meet the desired expectations.

A market research should focus more on the market needs, ask questions to answer why the product is needed in the market in the first place. What problem is the product or service is solving? What does the market expect of your products? What will be the meaning of satisfaction for the customer? This information is very vital for a business stepping into a new market. It Is very important to note you might even have to repackage to meet certain market needs. The question here is how flexible are you to the market needs?

Development of the market needs

Developing the market needs is another vital and important area a market research needs to focus on. It is at this point majority of the recommendations can be useful. Identifying the market needs one thing and developing the market needs is another thing. In developing the market needs, you still need the customer as the end-user of a product or service, is in the best position to help you develop the market needs. This is very important at the market research level and even during marketing your products which explains why maintaining a strong relationship with the customer is key.

At the market research level, it is very important to ask questions to find out how certain customer needs can be met. It is very important to always understand developing the market needs only adds value to the customer which means a full understanding of the client needs must be attain. A full understanding needs to contain how the market needs can be achieve in the first place. With developing the market needs recommendations shifts from product portfolio management and to client portfolio management.

It is very important to understand if management is unable to develop the market needs, the clients will not be able to get the desired value, which will lead to lack of trust and poor customer relationships. This only explains why a good market research needs to focus on developing the market needs.

Available competition

Failing to know who your competition is and their market offerings, when stepping in a new market can be really bad for business especially in a new environment. Understanding your competition will expose you to a lot of information which will help your management team to make strategic marketing decisions. Your marketing research should focus on answering questions like, who are the primary competitors? Is the competition direct or indirect? How does the competition compete your company? How they don’t compete with your company? What are their weaknesses and what are their strengths? What are the profitable possibilities based on their weaknesses? What makes them unique? What are the customers talking about your competition? How do they place themselves in the market? How do they communicate their services or products to the clients? What are their sales volume? And Are they profitable?

Answers to these question will give great insight about the market. With such insights, your management team can formulate the company’s marketing strategy.

The characteristics, size and potential of target market or group

This is another important area a market research needs to be focus on. The market characteristics holds very important information which can provide a clear view of the market from glance. The market characteristics tells you almost everything you need to know about a specific market. These characteristics can conclude the entry of a new market after considering all other observations.

The market characteristics can help in identifying opportunities in the marketplace, for identifying possibilities of market segmentation, to understand the psychological aspects of the market, the customer profile and behavior.

When the market research focuses on the market characteristics, the research can unveil the company’s customers, market size, the market groups, potential market area, gender, age bracket, race, income, education levels, occupations, interests, skills, hobbies, the reaction of the market towards the product or service, perceived opinions, and values shared by consumers, how does the customer compare with  competition, what the customer considers valuable, customers bargaining power, customers buying decision, what the customer unmet needs may be, which advertising options appeals more? And many other information you can think about. These are valuable information to be obtained from a market research in other to better understand the market.

Regional resources

A complete market research should be able to focus on the regional resources of which the company can take advantage of. The market research should be able to direct the company’s effort into those regions with the greatest prospect for growth, supports business development and profitability.  Markets with a veritable network of agents and distributors, less tariff and trade barriers, and organized logistics, transportation not leaving out possibilities of value chain operations.

Some regions may offer free trade zones, tax exemptions, trade incentives to promote exports, international grants and loan facilities for target countries. Also, some regions may even offer insurance cover for country risk and loan or credit guarantees.

It is also important for a market research to consider human resource especially if the company is looking forward to setting an office in the area.

EndNote

There can be a considerable amount of information that can be obtained from a market research with focus to these key areas. Limiting your research in any of the above areas can lead to inadequate decision making. Focusing to get valuable information on these areas and with other supporting information can give the exporting company a full understanding of the market and all valuable information needed to make strategic decisions and in formulating a go-to market strategy. Ignoring these key areas or failure to extensively research on these areas might lead to poor decision making.