Pre-activities
- Reading the following hyperlinked article and make note taking for your online diary:
Live - in person learning - 4 hour workshop:
BMM3013 Week 5 - Power-point - (leedstrinity.net)
Learning objectives:
- The importance of market research.
The steps in the marketing research process.
Hands on experience with Microsoft Forms.
- The field research experience!
Post-activities:
- Setting-up & launching online survey - see attached link to Survey Monkey.
Question 1: Describe the importance of market research?
ReplyDeleteMarket research can identify how customers and potential customers might view your business and identify gaps in customer expectations. This is powerful information to have when completing your marketing strategy. Having good market intelligence helps to minimise risks when making key business decisions.
DeleteIt helps businesses strengthen their position. Knowledge is power. Use market research to gain a better perspective and understanding of your market or target audience and ensure that your firm stays ahead of the competition.
DeleteIt minimises any investment risk. This is a simple but vitally important and often business critical consideration. Spending what is often only a small proportion of your investment on researching and testing the market, product, concept or idea makes sound business sense.
It identifies potential threats and opportunities. Both primary research (fieldwork) and secondary research (desk research) can be utilised as an insurance policy against both obvious dangers on the road ahead. Coupling this with some qualitative research for deeper probing can highlight certain opportunities or warning signs that may otherwise have been missed.
It helps to discover your’s and your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s vitally important to adopt an ‘eye’s wide open’ approach to any market research project which is why it’s often advised to work with a market research agency to ensure completely unbiased reporting. Use research findings to adapt and learn from your own weaknesses whilst capitalising on your new-found knowledge from competitor analysis to take advantage and forge ahead of the pack.
It facilitates strategic planning. What is the foundation of your business strategy? If it’s evidence based and you’ve taken the time to invest in your own (and hopefully ongoing) research, you can be confident that you’ve given yourself the best chance to achieve your business goals.
It helps in spotting emerging trends. Staying ahead in business is often about being the first, being the best or doing something that no-one else has thought about. Regularly taking the ‘pulse’ of what’s hot and what’s not in your industry is a key discipline. Speak to your research agency or research consultant about the range of techniques you can employ to spot and exploit these trends.
It assists businesses to stay ahead of the competition. Being the best demands a relentlessness to keep getting the basics right combined with a curiosity and willingness to innovate. Knowing how to leverage the findings and insights you extract from market research, audience research and data research are the keys to both getting ahead and staying ahead.
It provides revenue projections. A market forecast is a core component of a market analysis projecting the future numbers, characteristics, and trends in your target market. Potential customers can then be divided into segments. You want to focus on the best market – which is not necessarily the largest one or the market with the highest growth – it will be the one that matches your own company profile.
It focuses on customer needs and demands. There are so many important reasons to keep your customers at the centre of all that you do in business and the same goes for research. With so many ways to reach customers using online panels, web communities, telephone survey’s, depth interviews and focus groups, market research keeps you attentive to where you can improve your proposition, customer service or product offering.
It helps to evaluate the success of a business against benchmarks. A PWC survey found that companies that benchmark achieve 69% faster growth and 45% greater productivity than those that don’t. Use market research for competitor research, employee engagement surveys, and to highlight performance or knowledge gaps and areas for potential growth. This will open your company up to thinking about new methods, ideas and tools to improve your business effectiveness.
Question 2: What are the main steps in the marketing research process?
ReplyDeleteThe steps of the marketing research process are
Delete• Define the problem or objective of the research
• Design the research approach and plan
• Select a sample and collect data
• Analyse the data and draw conclusions1
• Prepare and present a report or communicate the results
The steps of the marketing research process are:
DeleteDefine the Problem or Opportunity
Develop Your Marketing Research Plan
Collect Relevant Data and Information
Analyse Data and Report Findings
Put Your Research into Action
he marketing research process follows a series of sequential steps that allow you to focus your efforts on understanding and addressing customer challenges.
DeleteMarket research is only as good as the information it collects. That’s why it’s critical to follow a step-by-step process that all leads to gathering quality data that is accurate and actionable. The following six steps offer the roadmap to success:
1. Define the problem. Focus on the core customer challenge to solve.
2. Develop your research plan. Create a roadmap that includes identifying your target audience, as well as determining what research tools to use, and the timeline and resources for the project.
3. Gather your information. Whether you use surveys, interviews or other methods, you will gather and organize your data. You can rely on qualitative and/or quantitative data to help you get started.
4. Analyze your data. Review the data for meaningful insights and home in on key points that will help inform your marketing campaigns and strategies.
5. Develop a strategy. Determine how your business can shape your future products and services with the marketing research you’ve just done.
6. Take action. Plan those next steps, which may include new product development, further concept testing, a new product launch, or fresh marketing campaign.
Savvy shortcut: SurveyMonkey’s market research resources offer a one-stop shop for key information, tools, and resources to expedite your market research efforts.
Question 3: What are the key features of - hands on experience with - Microsoft Forms.
ReplyDeleteKey Features of - hands on experience with - Microsoft Forms
Delete• Explore step-by-step instructions to integrate surveys with Microsoft
• Automate surveys and follow-up actions from survey results using Microsoft Forms
• Create custom report dashboards and explore advanced analytics for managing insights.
With Microsoft Forms, you can create surveys, quizzes, and polls, invite others to respond to it using almost any web browser or mobile device, see real-time results as they're submitted, use built-in analytics to evaluate responses, and export results to Excel for additional analysis or grading, Explore step by step instruction to integrate surveys with Microsoft
DeleteMicrosoft Forms, the web-based form builder that’s part of the Microsoft suite of products, has many helpful features to make data collection easier, more streamlined, and more effective. Check out the top Microsoft Forms features that help it stand out as a useful business tool.
DeleteQuestion 4: What are principal aspects of the field research experience?
ReplyDeleteHowever, there are certain steps that are universal to field (and other types of) research, including:
DeleteIdentifying a social problem or 'puzzle' that is misunderstood or unexplored.
Examining whether it would be possible to gain access to the site of that problem, whether this is a large corporate office or a remote tribe.
Deciding which method (s) would be suitable for your research aims.
1. Field research can be an important component of the career trajectories for researchers in numerous academic fields; however, conducting research in field settings poses risks to health and safety, and researchers from marginalized groups often face greater risks than those experienced by other researchers in their fields; If these additional risks are not actively and thoughtfully mitigated, they are likely to hinder the participation of qualified investigators in field research and counteract efforts to improve and promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the field sciences.
Delete2.Here we provide, from our perspectives as co-authors of a field safety manual for the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, United States, (A) background on risks and barriers that should be considered when planning and conducting field research and (B) suggestions on how to work as a collaborative team for developing an inclusive field safety manual.
3.As an example of a manual this proposed process has yielded, we have included our own field safety manual written with diversity, equity and inclusion as a central focus.
4.We hope this publication serves as a starting point for those interested in developing a similar document for use in their laboratory group, department or institution.
Field research involves a range of well-defined, although variable ,methods: informal interviews direct observation, participation in the life of the group ,collective discussions ,analyses of personal documents produced within the group, self-analysis results from activities undertaken off or on-line and life
Delete
ReplyDeleteField research is a process where data is collected through a qualitative method. The objective of field study is to observe and interpret the subject of study in its natural environment. It is used in the field of study of humans and health care professions.