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How To Teach Market Research To Students

Feb 19, 2020

Blog Academic Institutions How To Teach Market Research To Students

The best way to explain market research to students? Compare it to pizza! Use the image and content below with your students, and even faculty members to use with their students, as well.

Market research can best be explained as a pizza:

• Comprised of several key ingredients that play a crucial role in creating one delicious meal.
• While edible and useful on their own, they provide maximum satisfaction when put together in a specific way.

Crust: Primary Data Primary data is the foundation, or the crust, of the rest of your market research. Without it, you can’t have a pizza, or a well-researched, reliable paper or project. Primary data refers to any research you collect yourself, whether that’s by interviewing subject matter experts; observing an environment; accessing original documents (notes, letters, etc.) or sources of data (company records). If you’re not able to conduct primary research, you can rely on our next ingredient to supply it.

Sauce: Syndicated Research Syndicated research is another foundational component of your pizza. Syndicated research refers to a collection of reports covering your topic or market (revenue data, competitor analyses, future market trends, etc.), written by industry experts and sourced from primary data.

Syndicated research and primary research, the sauce and the crust, make a powerful duo that ensures that all information gathered on your topic is reliable, and provides the foundation required to pile on information from upcoming ingredients, or sources. Remember, if you can’t access primary data on your topic, syndicated research can serve as the base, or crust, of your paper, as it’s sourced from the first-hand knowledge of experts and original market data.

Cheese: Scholarly Reports Think of the cheese as scholarly reports, or reliable sources that provide commentary, context and interpretations of the primary and syndicated research you have. Scholarly reports can also help you identify and expand on subtopics. For example, if you’re researching the latest trends in the food manufacturing industry, you might consult the American Journal of Agricultural Economics for insight from scholars on how those trends will affect the agriculture industry specifically.

Pepperoni and Veggies: Internet Search General internet searches on search engines like Google, Wikipedia, Bing, etc. are an important, but typically optional part of a research project, just like pepperoni and veggies, as they provide extra value and a more complex taste.

Only when your pizza is assembled with the main ingredients above can you determine which ingredients you want to add on top. Similarly, if you’re armed with the information from the previous ingredients, you’ll know better how to navigate your web searches to find the final touches of information you want.

But don't rely too heavily on the toppings. It’s very easy to stumble upon misinformation via search engines than it is through primary or syndicated research.

Pro tip for using Wikipedia: When reading an article, scroll down to the References section to view and vet the sources. While there is a lot of useful information that the internet can provide, it’s crucial to the validity and effectiveness of your work that you make sure it’s supported by a solid foundation.

Stay ahead of industry trends, build your market research strategy and more.

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Written By Clara Mouawad

Clara Mouawad is the content writer at BCC Research. She contributes to our blog, social media, email marketing and more.

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Lesson Plan: Research the Market

Description.

In this lesson, students will learn and understand the important role market research plays in business.

Download the lesson plan

Scroll to the related items section at the bottom of this page for additional resources.

Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

Updated: 02/21/24

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

• Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
• Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

Free Market Research Kit

• SWOT Analysis Template
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
• Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
• Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
• Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

• Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
• Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

• Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
• Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
• Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
• Focus Groups
• Product/ Service Use Research
• Observation-Based Research
• Buyer Persona Research
• Market Segmentation Research
• Pricing Research
• Competitive Analysis Research
• Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
• Brand Awareness Research
• Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

• Define your buyer persona.
• Identify a persona group to engage.
• Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
• List your primary competitors.
• Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

Don't forget to share this post!

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How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research

From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.

Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples. 

Last updated

Reading time.

A comprehensive (and successful) business strategy is not complete without some form of market research—you can’t make informed and profitable business decisions without truly understanding your customer base and the current market trends that drive your business.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct quick, effective market research  using an approach called 'lean market research'. It’s easier than you might think, and it can be done at any stage in a product’s lifecycle.

How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps

What is market research, why is market research so valuable, advantages of lean market research, 4 common market research methods, 5 common market research questions, market research faqs.

We’ll jump right into our 4-step approach to lean market research. To show you how it’s done in the real world, each step includes a practical example from Smallpdf , a Swiss company that used lean market research to reduce their tool’s error rate by 75% and boost their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) by 1%.

Research your market the lean way...

From on-page surveys to user interviews, Hotjar has the tools to help you scope out your market and get to know your customers—without breaking the bank.

The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours.

1. Create simple user personas

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data from people who use websites and products similar to your own. Start by defining broad user categories, then elaborate on them later to further segment your customer base and determine your ideal customer profile .

How to get the data: use on-page or emailed surveys and interviews to understand your users and what drives them to your business.

How to do it right: whatever survey or interview questions you ask, they should answer the following questions about the customer:

Who are they?

What is their main goal?

What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?

Pitfalls to avoid:

Don’t ask too many questions! Keep it to five or less, otherwise you’ll inundate them and they’ll stop answering thoughtfully.

Don’t worry too much about typical demographic questions like age or background. Instead, focus on the role these people play (as it relates to your product) and their goals.

How Smallpdf did it: Smallpdf ran an on-page survey for a couple of weeks and received 1,000 replies. They learned that many of their users were administrative assistants, students, and teachers.

Next, they used the survey results to create simple user personas like this one for admins:

Who are they? Administrative Assistants.

What is their main goal? Creating Word documents from a scanned, hard-copy document or a PDF where the source file was lost.

What is their main barrier to achieving it? Converting a scanned PDF doc to a Word file.

💡Pro tip: Smallpdf used Hotjar Surveys to run their user persona survey. Our survey tool helped them avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and find out who their users really are, in their own words. 

You can design a survey and start running it in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop builder. Customize your survey to fit your needs, from a sleek one-question pop-up survey to a fully branded questionnaire sent via email. 

We've also created 40+ free survey templates that you can start collecting data with, including a user persona survey like the one Smallpdf used.

2. Conduct observational research

Observational research involves taking notes while watching someone use your product (or a similar product).

Overt vs. covert observation

Overt observation involves asking customers if they’ll let you watch them use your product. This method is often used for user testing and it provides a great opportunity for collecting live product or customer feedback .

Covert observation means studying users ‘in the wild’ without them knowing. This method works well if you sell a type of product that people use regularly, and it offers the purest observational data because people often behave differently when they know they’re being watched. 

Tips to do it right:

Record an entry in your field notes, along with a timestamp, each time an action or event occurs.

Make note of the users' workflow, capturing the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘for whom’ of each action.

Don’t record identifiable video or audio data without consent. If recording people using your product is helpful for achieving your research goal, make sure all participants are informed and agree to the terms.

Don’t forget to explain why you’d like to observe them (for overt observation). People are more likely to cooperate if you tell them you want to improve the product.

💡Pro tip: while conducting field research out in the wild can wield rewarding results, you can also conduct observational research remotely. Hotjar Recordings is a tool that lets you capture anonymized user sessions of real people interacting with your website. 

Observe how customers navigate your pages and products to gain an inside look into their user behavior . This method is great for conducting exploratory research with the purpose of identifying more specific issues to investigate further, like pain points along the customer journey and opportunities for optimizing conversion .

With Hotjar Recordings you can observe real people using your site without capturing their sensitive information

How Smallpdf did it: here’s how Smallpdf observed two different user personas both covertly and overtly.

Observing students (covert): Kristina Wagner, Principle Product Manager at Smallpdf, went to cafes and libraries at two local universities and waited until she saw students doing PDF-related activities. Then she watched and took notes from a distance. One thing that struck her was the difference between how students self-reported their activities vs. how they behaved (i.e, the self-reporting bias). Students, she found, spent hours talking, listening to music, or simply staring at a blank screen rather than working. When she did find students who were working, she recorded the task they were performing and the software they were using (if she recognized it).

Observing administrative assistants (overt): Kristina sent emails to admins explaining that she’d like to observe them at work, and she asked those who agreed to try to batch their PDF work for her observation day. While watching admins work, she learned that they frequently needed to scan documents into PDF-format and then convert those PDFs into Word docs. By observing the challenges admins faced, Smallpdf knew which products to target for improvement.

“Data is really good for discovery and validation, but there is a bit in the middle where you have to go and find the human.”

3. Conduct individual interviews

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. They allow you to dig deep and explore their concerns, which can lead to all sorts of revelations.

Listen more, talk less. Be curious.

Act like a journalist, not a salesperson. Rather than trying to talk your company up, ask people about their lives, their needs, their frustrations, and how a product like yours could help.

Ask "why?" so you can dig deeper. Get into the specifics and learn about their past behavior.

Record the conversation. Focus on the conversation and avoid relying solely on notes by recording the interview. There are plenty of services that will transcribe recorded conversations for a good price (including Hotjar!).

Avoid asking leading questions , which reveal bias on your part and pushes respondents to answer in a certain direction (e.g. “Have you taken advantage of the amazing new features we just released?).

Don't ask loaded questions , which sneak in an assumption which, if untrue, would make it impossible to answer honestly. For example, we can’t ask you, “What did you find most useful about this article?” without asking whether you found the article useful in the first place.

Be cautious when asking opinions about the future (or predictions of future behavior). Studies suggest that people aren’t very good at predicting their future behavior. This is due to several cognitive biases, from the misguided exceptionalism bias (we’re good at guessing what others will do, but we somehow think we’re different), to the optimism bias (which makes us see things with rose-colored glasses), to the ‘illusion of control’ (which makes us forget the role of randomness in future events).

How Smallpdf did it: Kristina explored her teacher user persona by speaking with university professors at a local graduate school. She learned that the school was mostly paperless and rarely used PDFs, so for the sake of time, she moved on to the admins.

A bit of a letdown? Sure. But this story highlights an important lesson: sometimes you follow a lead and come up short, so you have to make adjustments on the fly. Lean market research is about getting solid, actionable insights quickly so you can tweak things and see what works.

💡Pro tip: to save even more time, conduct remote interviews using an online user research service like Hotjar Engage , which automates the entire interview process, from recruitment and scheduling to hosting and recording.

You can interview your own customers or connect with people from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. And no need to fret about taking meticulous notes—Engage will automatically transcribe the interview for you.

4. Analyze the data (without drowning in it)

The following techniques will help you wrap your head around the market data you collect without losing yourself in it. Remember, the point of lean market research is to find quick, actionable insights.

A flow model is a diagram that tracks the flow of information within a system. By creating a simple visual representation of how users interact with your product and each other, you can better assess their needs.

You’ll notice that admins are at the center of Smallpdf’s flow model, which represents the flow of PDF-related documents throughout a school. This flow model shows the challenges that admins face as they work to satisfy their own internal and external customers.

Affinity diagram

An affinity diagram is a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to better understand the big picture. For example, if you ask your users about their profession, you’ll notice some general themes start to form, even though the individual responses differ. Depending on your needs, you could group them by profession, or more generally by industry.

We wrote a guide about how to analyze open-ended questions to help you sort through and categorize large volumes of response data. You can also do this by hand by clipping up survey responses or interview notes and grouping them (which is what Kristina does).

“For an interview, you will have somewhere between 30 and 60 notes, and those notes are usually direct phrases. And when you literally cut them up into separate pieces of paper and group them, they should make sense by themselves.”

Pro tip: if you’re conducting an online survey with Hotjar, keep your team in the loop by sharing survey responses automatically via our Slack and Microsoft Team integrations. Reading answers as they come in lets you digest the data in pieces and can help prepare you for identifying common themes when it comes time for analysis.

Hotjar lets you easily share survey responses with your team

Customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the way a typical prospect becomes a paying customer. It outlines their first interaction with your brand and every step in the sales cycle, from awareness to repurchase (and hopefully advocacy).

The above  customer journey map , created by our team at Hotjar, shows many ways a customer might engage with our tool. Your map will be based on your own data and business model.

📚 Read more: if you’re new to customer journey maps, we wrote this step-by-step guide to creating your first customer journey map in 2 and 1/2 days with free templates you can download and start using immediately.

Next steps: from research to results

So, how do you turn market research insights into tangible business results? Let’s look at the actions Smallpdf took after conducting their lean market research: first they implemented changes, then measured the impact.

Implement changes

Based on what Smallpdf learned about the challenges that one key user segment (admins) face when trying to convert PDFs into Word files, they improved their ‘PDF to Word’ conversion tool.

We won’t go into the details here because it involves a lot of technical jargon, but they made the entire process simpler and more straightforward for users. Plus, they made it so that their system recognized when you drop a PDF file into their ‘Word to PDF’ converter instead of the ‘PDF to Word’ converter, so users wouldn’t have to redo the task when they made that mistake. 

In other words: simple market segmentation for admins showed a business need that had to be accounted for, and customers are happier overall after Smallpdf implemented an informed change to their product.

Measure results

According to the Lean UX model, product and UX changes aren’t retained unless they achieve results.

Smallpdf’s changes produced:

A 75% reduction in error rate for the ‘PDF to Word’ converter

A 1% increase in NPS

Greater confidence in the team’s marketing efforts

"With all the changes said and done, we've cut our original error rate in four, which is huge. We increased our NPS by +1%, which isn't huge, but it means that of the users who received a file, they were still slightly happier than before, even if they didn't notice that anything special happened at all.”

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Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. This might include primary research on brand awareness and customer satisfaction or secondary market research on market size and competitive analysis. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

David Darmanin, one of Hotjar’s founders, launched two startups before Hotjar took off—but both companies crashed and burned. Each time, he and his team spent months trying to design an amazing new product and user experience, but they failed because they didn’t have a clear understanding of what the market demanded.

With Hotjar, they did things differently . Long story short, they conducted market research in the early stages to figure out what consumers really wanted, and the team made (and continues to make) constant improvements based on market and user research.

Without market research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters:

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about them, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ‘what’, while research gives you the ‘why’. Big data, user analytics , and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices. Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices , and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and focusing on their customer experience , you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum. Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and product features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you’ll likely need to make changes once your untested business plan gets put into practice.

Lean User Experience (UX) design is a model for continuous improvement that relies on quick, efficient research to understand customer needs and test new product features.

Lean market research can help you become more...

Efficient: it gets you closer to your customers, faster.

Cost-effective: no need to hire an expensive marketing firm to get things started.

Competitive: quick, powerful insights can place your products on the cutting edge.

As a small business or sole proprietor, conducting lean market research is an attractive option when investing in a full-blown research project might seem out of scope or budget.

There are lots of different ways you could conduct market research and collect customer data, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just one research method. Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.

Which method you use may vary based on your business type: ecommerce business owners have different goals from SaaS businesses, so it’s typically prudent to mix and match these methods based on your particular goals and what you need to know.

1. Surveys: the most commonly used

Surveys are a form of qualitative research that ask respondents a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. When we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals about their company’s approach to research , surveys proved to be the most commonly used market research technique.

What makes online surveys so popular?  

They’re easy and inexpensive to conduct, and you can do a lot of data collection quickly. Plus, the data is pretty straightforward to analyze, even when you have to analyze open-ended questions whose answers might initially appear difficult to categorize.

We've built a number of survey templates ready and waiting for you. Grab a template and share with your customers in just a few clicks.

💡 Pro tip: you can also get started with Hotjar AI for Surveys to create a survey in mere seconds . Just enter your market research goal and watch as the AI generates a survey and populates it with relevant questions. 

Once you’re ready for data analysis, the AI will prepare an automated research report that succinctly summarizes key findings, quotes, and suggested next steps.

An example research report generated by Hotjar AI for Surveys

2. Interviews: the most insightful

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep (and reading non-verbal cues), but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice.

Regardless of how you conduct it, any type of in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.

What makes interviews so insightful?

By speaking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll gain greater empathy for their experience , and you can follow insightful threads that can produce plenty of 'Aha!' moments.

3. Focus groups: the most unreliable

Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, or marketing message to gain deeper insights.

What makes focus groups so unreliable?

If you’re new to market research, we wouldn’t recommend starting with focus groups. Doing it right is expensive , and if you cut corners, your research could fall victim to all kinds of errors. Dominance bias (when a forceful participant influences the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study) are two of the many ways your focus group data could get skewed.

4. Observation: the most powerful

During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor).

What makes observation so clever and powerful?

‘Fly-on-the-wall’ observation is a great alternative to focus groups. It’s not only less expensive, but you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other. The only downside is that you can’t get inside their heads, so observation still isn't a recommended replacement for customer surveys and interviews.

The following questions will help you get to know your users on a deeper level when you interview them. They’re general questions, of course, so don’t be afraid to make them your own.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

How you ask this question, and what you want to know, will vary depending on your business model (e.g. business-to-business marketing is usually more focused on someone’s profession than business-to-consumer marketing).

It’s a great question to start with, and it’ll help you understand what’s relevant about your user demographics (age, race, gender, profession, education, etc.), but it’s not the be-all-end-all of market research. The more specific questions come later.

2. What does your day look like?

This question helps you understand your users’ day-to-day life and the challenges they face. It will help you gain empathy for them, and you may stumble across something relevant to their buying habits.

3. Do you ever purchase [product/service type]?

This is a ‘yes or no’ question. A ‘yes’ will lead you to the next question.

4. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve?

This question strikes to the core of what someone’s trying to accomplish and why they might be willing to pay for your solution.

5. Take me back to the day when you first decided you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this goal.

This is the golden question, and it comes from Adele Revella, Founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute . It helps you get in the heads of your users and figure out what they were thinking the day they decided to spend money to solve a problem.

If you take your time with this question, digging deeper where it makes sense, you should be able to answer all the relevant information you need to understand their perspective.

“The only scripted question I want you to ask them is this one: take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this kind of a goal. Not to buy my product, that’s not the day. We want to go back to the day that when you thought it was urgent and compelling to go spend money to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Just tell me what happened.”

— Adele Revella , Founder/CEO at Buyer Persona Institute

Bonus question: is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

This question isn’t just a nice way to wrap it up—it might just give participants the opportunity they need to tell you something you really need to know.

That’s why Sarah Doody, author of UX Notebook , adds it to the end of her written surveys.

“I always have a last question, which is just open-ended: “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” And sometimes, that’s where you get four paragraphs of amazing content that you would never have gotten if it was just a Net Promoter Score [survey] or something like that.”

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research asks questions that can’t be reduced to a number, such as, “What is your job title?” or “What did you like most about your customer service experience?” 

Quantitative research asks questions that can be answered with a numeric value, such as, “What is your annual salary?” or “How was your customer service experience on a scale of 1-5?”

 → Read more about the differences between qualitative and quantitative user research .

How do I do my own market research?

You can do your own quick and effective market research by 

Surveying your customers

Building user personas

Studying your users through interviews and observation

Wrapping your head around your data with tools like flow models, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps

What is the difference between market research and user research?

Market research takes a broad look at potential customers—what problems they’re trying to solve, their buying experience, and overall demand. User research, on the other hand, is more narrowly focused on the use (and usability ) of specific products.

What are the main criticisms of market research?

Many marketing professionals are critical of market research because it can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s often easier to convince your CEO or CMO to let you do lean market research rather than something more extensive because you can do it yourself. It also gives you quick answers so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Do I need a market research firm to get reliable data?

Absolutely not! In fact, we recommend that you start small and do it yourself in the beginning. By following a lean market research strategy, you can uncover some solid insights about your clients. Then you can make changes, test them out, and see whether the results are positive. This is an excellent strategy for making quick changes and remaining competitive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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How to Conduct Market Research for a Startup

• 17 Mar 2022

With every innovative product idea comes the pressing question: “Will people want to buy it?”

As an entrepreneur with a big idea, what’s the best way to determine how potential customers will react to your product? Conducting market research can provide the data needed to decide whether your product fits your target market.

Before launching a new venture, you should understand market research. Here’s how to conduct market research for a startup and why it’s important.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about customers and the market as a whole to determine a product or service’s viability. Market research includes interviews, surveys, focus groups, and industry data analyses.

The goal of market research is to better understand potential customers, how well your product or service fits their needs, and how it compares to competitors’ offerings.

There are two types of research you can conduct: primary and secondary.

• Primary research requires collecting data to learn about your specific customers or target market segment. It’s useful for creating buyer personas, segmenting your market, and improving your product to cater to customers’ needs .
• Secondary research is conducted using data you didn’t collect yourself. Industry reports, public databases, and other companies’ proprietary data can be used to gain insights into your target market segment and industry.

Why Is Market Research Important for Entrepreneurs?

Before launching your venture, it’s wise to conduct market research to ensure your product or service will be well received. Feedback from people who fall into your target demographics can be invaluable as you iterate on and improve your product.

Performing market research can also help you determine a pricing strategy by gauging customers’ willingness to pay for your product. Additionally, it can improve the user experience by revealing what features matter most to potential customers.

When assessing which startups to fund, investors place heavy importance on thorough market research that indicates promising potential. Providing tangible proof that your product fulfills a market need and demonstrating you’ve taken the time to iterate on and improve it signal that your startup could be a worthwhile investment.

Related: How to Talk to Potential Investors: 5 Tips

How to Do Market Research for a Startup

1. form hypotheses.

What questions do you aim to answer through market research? Using those questions, you can make predictions called hypotheses . Defining your hypotheses upfront can help guide your approach to selecting subjects, researching questions, and testing designs.

An example question you may ask is: “How much are people in my target demographic willing to pay for the current version of my product?” Your hypothesis could be: “If my product contains all its current features, customers will be willing to pay $500 for it.”

Another example question you may ask is: “What’s the user’s biggest pain point, and is my product meeting their needs?” Your hypothesis could be: “I believe the user’s biggest pain point is needing an easy, unintimidating way to learn basic car maintenance, and I predict that my product meets that need.”

You can and should test multiple hypotheses, but try to select no more than a few per test, so the research stays focused.

Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Hypothesis Testing in Business

2. Select the Type of Research Needed to Test Hypotheses

Once you’ve formed your hypotheses, determine which type of research to conduct.

If your hypotheses focus on determining your startup’s place in the broader market, start with secondary research. This can include using existing data to determine market size, how much of that market your startup could reasonably own, who your biggest competitors are, and how your brand and product compare to theirs.

If your hypotheses require primary research, decide which data collection method best fits your needs. These can include one-on-one interviews, surveys, focus groups, and polls. Primary research allows you to gather insights into customer satisfaction and loyalty, brand awareness and perception, and real-time product usability.

3. Identify Target Demographics and Recruit Subjects

To gather meaningful insights, you need to understand your target demographic. Do you aim to cater to working parents, young athletes, or pet owners? Determine the type of person who can benefit from your product.

If you conduct primary research, you need to recruit subjects. This can be done in several ways, including:

• Word of mouth: The simplest but least reliable way to recruit participants is by word of mouth. Ask people you know to refer others to be research subjects, then screen them to confirm they fit your target demographic.
• Promoting the study on social media: Many social media platforms enable you to show an ad to people who fall into specific demographic categories or have certain interests. This allows you to get the word out to a large number of people who qualify.
• Hiring a third-party market research company: Some companies provide full market research services and recruit participants and conduct research on your behalf.

However you recruit subjects, ensure they take a screener survey beforehand, which allows you to determine whether they fit the specific demographic you want to study or have a trait that eliminates them from the research pool. It also provides demographic data—such as age and race—that enables you to select a diverse subset of your target demographic.

In addition, you can offer compensation to boost participation, such as money, meal vouchers, gift cards, or early access to your product. Make it clear that compensation is in appreciation for subjects’ time and honest feedback.

4. Conduct the Research

Once you’ve determined the type of research and target demographic necessary to test your hypotheses, conduct your research. To reduce bias, enlist someone unfamiliar with your hypotheses to perform interviews or lead focus groups.

Ask questions based on your audience and hypotheses. For instance, if you’re aiming to test existing customers’ purchase motivations, you may ask: “What challenge were you trying to solve when you first bought the product?”

If examining brand perception, your audience should consist of potential customers who don’t yet know your brand. Present them with a list of competitor logos—with yours in the mix—and ask them to rank the brands by perceived reliability.

While the questions you ask are vehicles to prove or disprove hypotheses, ensure they don’t lead subjects in one direction. To craft unbiased research questions , use neutral language and vary the order of options in multiple-choice questions. This can keep subjects from selecting the same option each time if they sense the third option is always mapped to a certain outcome. It also helps account for primacy bias (the tendency to select the first option in a list) and recency bias (the tendency to select the final option in a list).

Once you’ve collected data, ensure it’s organized efficiently and securely so you can protect subjects’ identities .

Related: 3 Examples of Bad Survey Questions and How to Fix Them

5. Gather Insights and Determine Action Items

After you’ve organized your data, analyze it to extract actionable insights. While some of the data will be qualitative rather than quantitative, you can detect patterns in responses to make it quantifiable. For instance, noting that 15 of 20 subjects mentioned feeling overwhelmed when attempting to assemble your product.

Once you’ve analyzed the data and communicated emerging trends using data visualizations , outline action items.

If the majority of users in your target demographic reported feeling overwhelmed while assembling your product, action items might include:

• Creating different versions of assembly instructions to test with other groups, varying diagrams and instructional language
• Researching instruction manual best practices

Each round of market research can offer more information about how your product is perceived and experienced by potential users.

Market Research as an Ongoing Endeavor

While it’s useful to conduct market research before launching your product, you should revisit your hypotheses and form new ones over the course of building your venture.

By conducting market research with each version of your product, you can gradually improve it and ensure it continues to fit target customers’ needs.

Are you interested in bolstering your entrepreneurship skills? Explore our four-week online course Entrepreneurship Essentials and our other entrepreneurship and innovation courses to learn to speak the language of the startup world.

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Market Research - Full Lesson

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22 May 2021

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Students should be able to identify the meaning of ‘market research’ and be able to explain what is meant by quantitative and qualitative research and data. Each activity aims to give students a basic understanding of different types of research that can be carried out, and the advantages and disadvantages of choosing each method.

Learning Objectives

• To be able to define what is meant by ‘market research’.
• To be able to explain what is meant by quantitative and qualitative data.
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Market Research

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ESP Marketing: Market Research

By David Baker

Students are introduced to the topic of market research in this instalment of David Baker's Marketing series, read a text about reasons for doing marketing it, and listen to a conversation between a marketing manager and an intern about market research.

ESP Marketing: Market Research—Intermediate Worksheet

Esp marketing: market research—intermediate teacher's notes, esp marketing: market research—advanced worksheet, esp marketing: market research—advanced teacher's notes, esp marketing: market research—audio.

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Public relations

Segmentation, marketing strategy, related articles.

Let’s Talk Business: Marketing—Social Networking Strategy

Get your students talking about using social media for marketing.

Students are introduced to the topic of public relations in this instalment of David Baker’s Marketing series. Students read a text about different aspects of public relations and listen to a conversation between a marketing manager and an intern about the company’s PR department.

Students are introduced to the topic of marketing strategy in this instalment of David Baker's Marketing series. Students read a text about European low-cost airlines and listen to a conversation between a marketing manager and an intern about marketing strategy.

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Lesson: Market Research

Description.

In this lesson, students learn that market research is critical to the success of a retail business. They begin by taking a survey of prospective customers to learn both product preferences and time of day preferences. Students then try to save some money by taking a similar survey but with reduced sample size. They are introduced to the mathematical concept of decreasing reliability of a survey as the sample size decreases. Students then explore the more sophisticated technique of analyzing survey data through segmentation. Finally, students use market research information to book radio advertising on a radio station that matches the demographic of their target customers. They run the simulation to try to achieve a specific profit goal.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Define market research
• Explain the difference between primary and secondary research
• Determine an adequate sample size for a survey
• Use segmentation to analyze survey results
• Use market research to make smart advertising decisions for a business

Lesson: Product

In this lesson, students begin as managers of a grocery store that is performing poorly. They look at their location and surrounding customers. Next, students use surveys to discover what products these customers want. Unfortunately, those aren’t the products their store is currently stocking. They replace a non-popular product with a popular one and see sales rise. Students then add a display to carry another popular product and and see an additional increase in sales. Finally, students take over an electronics store with similar problems and work to change the product offerings in pursuit of a specific weekly profit goal.

• Explain the importance of product choices in retailing
• Use surveys to determine most popular products
• Be able to change product mix and interpret sales results
• Manage product selection to achieve profit goals

Lesson: Place

In this lesson, students learn about location...location, location. Students begin by looking around their city. They identify the available square footage of buildings and the cost per square foot for the space. They compare costs per square foot for downtown versus suburban locations. Students next study what types of customers are near each location. Students also scout competitor locations within the city. Finally, students are asked to choose a location for their store. They run the simulation to try to reach a specific profit goal. If they are not successful, they try relocating their store.

• Understand the concept of cost per square foot
• Be able to compare amount and cost of space at different locations
• Assess the types of customers around a given location
• Assess potential locations given competitor locations
• Choose a store location that will yield a profit

Lesson: Price

In this lesson, students see how prices interact with the law of supply and demand to determine sales levels. They begin by reviewing the concepts of price, cost and margin. They then intentionally set prices quite high and observe that volume and profits drop. Next, they try setting prices very low. The observe greatly increased volume, but profits remain low due to slim margins. They try a price in between the initial price points and see how profit can be maximized. They see how profit can be plotted as a curve against price levels. Students then learn about the use of “loss leaders” to drive customers into stores with very low prices on attractive items. Finally, students are challenged to set prices for their store to meet a specific weekly profit goal.

• Explain the relationship between price, cost, and margin
• Explain how prices and sales volume is related
• Find a price that maximizes profit by generated reasonable volume and reasonable margins
• Define a “loss leader”
• Set prices across all products to achieve a profit goal

Lesson: Promotion - Traditional Media

In this lesson, students study the role of promotion in the marketing mix. They begin by finding their current weekly revenue on their Income Statement. Students then examine where their current customers are coming from -- a relatively small area of the city. To grow their customer base, they lease a billboard across town then compare their increase in revenue with the expense of the billboard. As an alternative to billboard promotion, they try running a one page ad in a newspaper circular. Students compare the revenue and expenses of the two different forms of promotion. Finally, students use promotions of their choosing to achieve a weekly revenue goal while keeping their promotional spending below a specified level.

• Understand promotion as a key element of the marketing mix
• Identify different types of promotion
• Track revenue and expenses associated with promotional activities
• Be able to compare efficiency of promotional campaigns
• Choose promotional means to achieve business goals

Lesson: Promotion - Email

In this lesson, students explore the use of Email as part of the marketing mix. Email is a relatively new, but extremely important, component of retail promotion. Students begin by looking atways to assemble target lists, including customer loyalty programs and purchased lists of Email addresses. They purchase a list and then make a strong offer to attract customers to sign up to receive more Emails. Students discover some perils of Email promotion by trying to send to the same list too frequently. This results in high spam reports that could shut down their Email capability. Finally, students use what they have learned about Email to promote their business successfully and reach a specific profit goal.

• Identify different sources of Email address lists
• Understand the importance of subject lines and offers in Email marketing
• Track and analyze Email response metrics
• Avoid spam reports by properly spacing Emails
• Use Email promotion to achieve profit goals

Lesson: Staffing, Selling & Customer Service

In this lesson, students take responsibility for staffing several types of retail stores. They begin in a grocery store and set conservative staffing levels for cashiers and stockers. They observe customers complaining about long lines and unstocked shelves. Students correct the staffing problem and observe increased profit on their Income Statement. Next students switch to an electronics store with high-ticket items that may require consultative selling. They use sales reports to find an item that is selling poorly. They then add salespeople and use the sales report to examine the subsequent increase in sales. Finally, students take on a sporting goods store with poor overall staffing and are challenged to staff the store to make a specific profit goal.

• Explain several different job functions within a retail store
• List the problems that can result from understaffing at each position
• Discuss why some retail establishments staff salespeople while others don’t
• Understand the expense/revenue tradeoff of staffing decisions
• Adequately staff a retail store to achieve a profit goal

Lesson: Purchasing & Inventory Control

In this lesson, students take over the role of purchasing manager in a retail business. They begin by intentionally purchasing a very low, conservative amount. They observe employees and customers complaining that they can’t find products they need. Next, they try purchasing very large amounts. This eliminates stock-outs, but now they observe certain products expiring. Students identify a specific product with a short shelf-life and set a custom purchasing level to eliminate expiration. Then students see how they can re-allocate space in their backroom to insure adequate stockpiles of products. Finally, students take control of all purchasing to try to run a full week with no products expiring and no complaints of customers being unable to find goods.

• Explain why purchasing is essential to a retail business
• Understand target inventory levels
• Explain the tradeoffs between purchasing too much and too little
• Set custom purchasing policies for rapidly expiring items
• Manage purchasing for efficiency and customer satisfaction

Lesson: Merchandising

In this lesson, students take over control of the layout of their store. Students begin by finding their weekly revenue on their Income Statement. Their revenue is good, but not great. They then identify whether certain items in the store are more likely “needs” or “impulse” items. Students are next introduced to the merchandising concept of putting needs in the back of the store to draw customers past impulse items. They rearrange a need item and watch as revenue increases. Students then place a “complementary” good next to the item it complements. Again, they experience rising sales. Finally, students are asked to apply these principles by rearranging their store layout to achieve a specific weekly revenue goal.

• Define merchandising in a retail store
• Identify items that are likely needs
• Identify items that are likely impulse purchases
• Identify items that are likely complementers
• Describe strategies for placing needs, impulse items, and complementers
• Use merchandising principles to improve the revenue of a business

Lesson: Security & Risk Management

In this lesson, students take on the role of security consultant for three different types of retail stores. They begin by looking at shrinkage (unexplained product shortages) at a grocery store. They identify which items are likely being shoplifted and reduce shoplifting by moving those items to more visible areas. Next, they look at an electronics store with high value items. They install an expensive scanner system and compare its cost with the shoplifting losses prevented. Finally, they head to a sporting goods store with medium value items and try to find an appropriate security system that will reduce losses within a certain budget.

• Explain the importance of security in a retail business
• Given different options for increasing security
• Analyze the cost-effectiveness of a security system
• Plan store security to achieve profit goals

Lesson: Financing & Business Planning

In this lesson, students will discover how to estimate their financing needs when starting a new business. They begin by figuring out how much they will need to spend on their building lease, equipment leases, and initial inventory. They then add in staffing costs to estimate their total start-up expenses. They take out a loan for the appropriate amount and start the business. After several weeks, they look at their Balance Sheet to see what their lowest cash position was. Using this information, they take on the challenge of starting an even larger retail store. Their goal is to borrow enough money to get the business off the ground while minimizing financing costs.

• Understand that most business require substantial financing (capital) to get started
• Be able to estimate start-up costs for a business
• Monitor cash levels to determine adequacy of financing
• Extrapolate from a small business to a larger business when estimating financing needs
• Acquire adequate financing to start a business while minimizing financing costs

Lesson: Retailing Mogul - Unique City Per Class

In this capstone project, students put to use the knowledge and skills they have learned in the lessons. They are challenged to build a retail grocery business from the ground up. They must choose a location, design their store layout, staff the business, choose products to carry, set prices, and more.  All students start in the same city and pursue a specific profit goal. By default, the class scoreboard is turned on so students can compare their profitability to others. The instructor can turn the scoreboard off.

• Understand the options for financing a start up
• Choose a suitable location for a business
• Design an effective retail floor plan
• Understands how to staff a retail business efficiently
• Plan merchandise selection and purchasing
• Use common financial statements to pursue a profit goal
• Understand the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship

Lesson: Extra Credit: Retailing Mega Mogul - Unique City Per Class

In this extra credit project, students are free to explore all that the simulation has to offer. They can start grocery, sporting goods, and electronics stores. They can also start multiple stores of each type. This project is open-ended; students do not have a specific profit goal and can continue on as long as they desire. By default, the class scoreboard is turned on so instructors can use this project as a competition.

• Understand how to start a grocery business
• Understand how to start a sporting goods business
• Understand how to start an electronics business
• Compare and contrast running different types of retail businesses
• Manage the complexity of running multiple businesses
• Understand the importance of long-term planning and effort in growing a large business or businesses

Lesson: Extra Credit: Turnaround

In this extra credit project, students take over a struggling sporting goods retailer. The business has poor staffing, inappropriate product selection, and a terrible layout. Students are challenged to find and diagnose the problems. They then set about correcting them. Students learn that a single correction may not produce profits if other factors are not aligned. Eventually, students work through all the issues to achieve a profit.  By default, the class scoreboard is turned on so students can compete against each other for the title of “Turnaround King.”

• Identify problems within an existing business
• Formulate corrective actions
• Use financial statements and other reports to assess effectiveness of corrections
• Understand how corrections in one area of a business affect and depend on other areas of the business
• Restore an unprofitable business to profitability
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Research Lesson Plan: Research to Build and Present Knowledge

*Click to open and customize your own copy of the  Research Lesson Plan . 

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Research , and supports the standard of gathering relevant information from multiple sources. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Prompt students to think of a time they had to do research, either for school or for themselves. Ask: 

• How did you determine what information to look for?
• What went well? What was challenging?

Step 2: BUILD BACKGROUND

• Read aloud the description on the Research topic page .
• Play the Movie , pausing to check for understanding. 
• Have students read one of the following Related Reading articles: “Way Back When” or “In Depth.” Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.

Step 3: ENGAGE Students express what they learned about research while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.

• Make-a-Movie : Create a tutorial that answers this question: What are the steps for writing  a research report? (Essential Literacy Skill: Acquire and use domain specific words and phrases)
• Make-a-Map : Make a spider map in which you state a research question in the center, and around it, identify sub questions and sources for finding answers in order to write a research report. (Essential Literacy Skill: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources)
• Creative Coding : Code a museum where each artifact represents a component of the research process. (Essential Literacy Skill: Make logical inferences from explicit details)

Step 4: APPLY & ASSESS 

Apply : Students t ake the Research Challenge , applying essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Assess: Wrap up the lesson with the Research Quiz . 

Step 5:  EXTEND LEARNING

Related BrainPOP Topics : Deepen understanding of research with these topics: Online Sources , Internet Search , and Citing Sources . 

Additional Support Resources:

• Pause Point Overview : Video tutorial showing how Pause Points actively engage students  to stop, think, and express ideas.  
• Modifications for BrainPOP Learning Activities: Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
• BrainPOP Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.

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