| How to Conduct Market Research for Results |
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| Written by Ahim Kandler |
| Thursday, 24 December 2009 00:22 |
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The essence of proper market research is to identify and analyze market opportunities. It addresses issues like estimating market size, identifying targeted customers, analyzing competitors, measuring demand for a product. Like a tree that grows from the roots to the trunk to the leaves, marketing management starts with market research, builds upon a strategy and ends with executing specific programs. If you develop a strategy that is based on the wrong information, you will get catastrophic results. Because managers usually shortcut this stage, they often times encounter difficulties and setbacks when they move to develop the business: wrong distributors are approached, they don't know exactly how to best find their prospective customers, leads are generated in the wrong segment, whole financial forecasts are based on questionable data and assumptions. Have you ever traveled to another country in your holidays? I bet you have. Except if you deliberately wanted to depart on an adventure, you have most likely planned the flight, you have checked which hotels are most attractive to you, you have planned which cities to visit, and you have perhaps learned a couple of words in the local language. The same is true for market research: if you want to depart on a business adventure, you don't need to research anything. But business shouldn't be an adventure because you don't want to lose your own or your investors' money. The key benefits of a properly conducted market research are: you save time and efforts in generating leads, you make profitable deals with more suitable distributors, you reduce your time to market, you don't waste cash on ineffective advertising. Here is what you should actually do:
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