Doing your own market research isn't difficult, although it does tend to be time consuming. If you own a small business, you're probably researching your markets continually informally. Every time you talk to a customer about what he or she wants, or chat with a supplier or sales rep, you're conducting market research.
But more formal market research is also necessary to keep your business vital and growing. I think of market research as a grid (see the bottom of this page).
The Market Research Grid shows the two types of data sources and the three areas of research that are important to any business. You need to gather information from and about your customers to focus your marketing efforts, maintain and improve your customer service, and to guide your efforts in developing new products and/or services.
Looking at the Market Research Grid, information gathered about the competition can help you determine what works and what hasn't worked, give you ideas for improving your products and/or services, and provide insight into how to increase or shift your share of the market.
The environment section of the Market Research Grid refers to those economic, social, and political forces that shape business. Gathering information about the environment allows you to stay abreast of and respond to particular trends or events that impact your small business. Whether it's a predicted drop in interest rates, or the closure of a local mill, you need to be aware of it and judge the ripple effect on your business, for good or ill.
Think of secondary data sources as market research data that's already been collected by someone else. Telephone books, government publications, and sources such as Statistics Canada, trade journals, and surveys conducted by other companies are all examples of information that's already been gathered that you can use to get a fix on what your customers want, what the competition has done, and what the environment is like. You can find links to many valuable secondary data sources, including Canadian statistics, in my Business Reference Information library.
Primary sources provide firsthand information. When you survey your customers or question the competition, you're gathering information directly from the source. While this kind of market research data can be the most costly and time-consuming to gather, it can also be the most valuable, because it's the most current and the most specific.
Let's look at how you can use this grid to do your own market research. Click to continue reading.
Market Research Grid
| customer | competition | environment | |
| secondary | |||
| primary |
