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When was the last time you answered a landline telephone or opened your snail mail junk mail? It’s probably been a while, but companies still use both telephone and mail surveys to conduct their market research.
From launching a product to optimizing your marketing, market research plays an important role in your business’ success.
In this guide, we’ll cover when and how to use the most common types of market research. Plus, discuss the advantages of mobile market research over traditional methods like focus groups.
Recommended: How to Harness DIY Research for Better, Faster Insights
Regardless of whether you need a quick gut check or data for something more involved, the reason you need market research is the same. You want to know you are making the right decision and investing time and resources strategically.
Now that we’ve covered when to conduct market research and how it fits into nearly every aspect of your product and business development lifecycle, let’s look at the different types of market research.
Market research can be divided into two main categories: quantitative and qualitative research.
Quantitative research helps brands measure or track things with numerical data and statistics. A common quantitative measure for market research is NPS or net promoter score. NPS is a numerical measure of customers’ willingness to recommend a brand’s service or product.
Qualitative research collects data that cannot be measured. Qualitative research provides insights into consumers’ opinions and motivations.
For example, NPS measures how likely people are to recommend a company’s product or services. Qualitative research uses open-ended questions to identify why.
For both quantitative and qualitative research questions, you have to decide what type of survey or research methods you’ll use to reach your recipients.
The most common types of market research methods are:
Online surveys rose in popularity as internet access became more widely available in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Web-based surveys are considerably cheaper than reaching people by mail, phone, or in-person.
But, online surveys are beginning to experience many of the same issues mail surveys face. Most people’s email inboxes overflow with junk mail, just like their postal mailboxes. Cutting through the clutter and finding quality respondents for online surveys is becoming increasingly difficult.
Phone surveys remain a valuable market research tool because they allow for an in-depth conversation between the respondent and the interviewer. They can also help in getting responses to qualitative research requisition.
Phone surveys are one of the more expensive research methods, and as more households ditch their landline phones for mobile phones, research companies struggle to reach the right people. These types of surveys often skew toward older generations as they’re more likely to have a landline phone and be at home.
This old-school method uses pen, paper, and snail-mail. Companies mail surveys for respondents to complete and mail back. These surveys are often tossed directly in the recycling bin with other junk mail. Also, the delay between when someone answers and sends in the survey makes it impossible to ask follow-up questions.
Focus groups have been used in advertising and other market research for decades. While they allow for quick collection of qualitative insights, they are prone to bias. If everyone else in the room loves a commercial, the one person who hates it might be less likely to speak up.
It is challenging to keep focus groups representative of the general population and make the environment comfortable enough for everyone to share their opinions.
Most digital interactions now occur on people’s phones. The rise of mobile research platforms allows companies to quickly deploy market research questions at a fraction of the cost of more traditional research.
Market research is not a one size fits all thing. For the most accurate results, you’ll want to use a mix of different types of research methods.
For example, you can take an agile approach to research where you apply your findings from one step to the next one. Start with a quick mobile survey to decide which questions to include in a focus group or larger survey.
This type of agile research requires building up a market research toolbox of software and platforms to handle each piece of research.
OnePulse’s mobile platform revolutionizes the way companies conduct research. From an easy-to-use interface to fast results, deploying mobile research has never been simpler.
Create your account today to start sending your market research pulses.
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