If your business is looking to introduce a new product or service? You may want to consider conducting marketing research to set your business up for success. Marketing research is defined as the application of the scientific method in searching for the truth about market and marketing phenomena.
One thing I convey to my customers is to consider your businesses orientation. Are you focused on producing the best product, centered on productivity, making your shareholders happy, or thinking about your customer's needs. Marketing orientation is an approach to business that prioritizes identifying the needs and desires of consumers and creating products that satisfy them. (Kopp, 2019). As a business owner, if you are not listening to your customers (whether good or bad), you are probably experiencing revenue and growth issues. When you adjust to a market orientation, you will embrace the feedback, needs, and wants of your customers which can result in happier customers and increased sales.
Let's imagine you have heard customers state, "I love your 'xyz', but what it would be really cool if you included 'abc'." Now, I don't advise jumping on every idea customer's bring to your attention, but if you hear this repeatedly....maybe it's time to conduct some marketing research. Marketing research and strategic management work together to develop and implement a new marketing strategy:
Identifying and evaluating market opportunities
Analyzing market segments and selecting your target market
Proper planning and implementing a marketing mix that will add value to your customers and your business goals
Lastly, analyzing performance
For example, let's imagine you worked for Nike. Nike designs, develops, markets, and sells athletic footwear, apparel, accessories, equipment, and services. They have been in business since 1964 and are located in Beaverton, Oregon. Nike also owns Jordan and Converse. (CNN Business, 2020). As a marketing employee, you have fielded phone calls, emails, and reviews of customers asking for a women's line of athletic underwear for a number of years. Maybe it's time to conduct a little marketing research? How could you determine if this idea is actually a profitable avenue for the business?
Since this a new product for the company, you may be uncertain and need more information to make an educated hypotheses and presentation. First, you need to identify if this is an opportunity or a problem for the company. If we are talking about manufacturing women's athletic underwear for Nike - it could possibly be both an opportunity or problem. Since Nike already produces sports-bra's for women, they could potentially capture more market share by offering athletic underwear. Since Nike does not offer women's athletic underwear, they are loosing market share to companies like Lululemon, Sweaty Betty, and UnderArmour.
Nike is interested in discovering if this new women's athletic underwear line is worth pursuing; so the next step is determining what type of research the team will conduct to determine the viability of this opportunity. First, you will want to define the stages of your research. The typical research process follows these steps:
Defining research objectives (are women interested in purchasing athletic underwear from Nike?)
Planning a research design (what type of research will you conduct to help you collect information to compare to the objective?)
Planning a sample
Collecting data (electronically, mail, or SMS)
Analyzing the data
Formulating conclusions and creating a report on your findings
Before we get too far, let's discuss the objective of the research. Again, imagine we are working for Nike. Our objective is to find out if women are interested in purchasing athletic underwear from Nike. Next, we consider our research design. Research design is the framework of advanced decisions which create a master plan on how you are going to collect and analyze the data you collect. Research design falls into one of three categories: exploratory, descriptive, and casual. Depending on your objectives, timeline, and costs will determine which design category you will pursue.
For the Nike example, I would encourage the company to move forward with exploratory research design. Since we want to know if customer's would be interested in this new product, we need to EXPLORE. Some of the methods we could use to gather this data would be including surveys with any sports-bra purchase, in-store surveys of female shoppers, reviewing the sales reports from competitor companies, holding a pilot test with a number of customers, or creating a focus group to discuss the need for women's athletic underwear.
Through all these research methods, the marketing team will be able to collect and analyze the quantitative and qualitative data. This will help the team move forward to a hypotheses - shaping a idea from your theory if the athletic underwear will be a success!
(Photo Source: Unsplash.com)
References:
CNN Business. (2020, July 2). Nike Inc. https://money.cnn.com/quote/profile/profile.html?symb=NKE
Kopp, C. (2019, June 25). Investopedia. Market Orientation. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-orientation.asp
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