Using market research to generate statistics and insight, for making strategic business decisions, should be the cornerstone of any marketing activity. Accurate, robust, credible research, together with expert interpretation, means that business problems are simplified, and decisions can be made with confidence, ultimately avoiding potentially expensive mistakes. For example, according to various academic studies, around 80% of new product launches in the consumer FMGC industry, fail within their first year of launch. Market research performed correctly and interpreted by insight professionals could help avoid some of those failures.
Research used for business decision-making needs to be:
- Insightful, and interpreted by a researcher experienced in generating actionable insights and making strategic recommendations from research studies. It’s important that the ultimate outcome of the research, answers all key questions that it was designed to address, and they are presented in a simple and easy-to-understand way.
- Collaborative, generally a joint process with a member of the client organisation, who is more familiar with their own issues and can apply industry knowledge to conclusions, to make inferences on a wider context or to ensure nothing is assumed or overlooked.
- Unbiased & accurate, questions asked in a non-leading way and in a context that models a respondent’s mindset in the real world, like replicating consumer buying decision process, marketing communications shown in a similar fashion to how they’d be experienced in real life, or new product concepts accurately reflecting the level of communication someone would receive on-pack or via a 30 second ad.
- Robust & representative, based on a representative sample of people who are key to the business problem being addressed e.g. specific product category buyers, regular visitors to specific types of stores.
- Focussed but not blinkered, so that a detailed investigation of the topic in question can be made but does not make any speculative assumptions.
- Supplied by an expert, independent research agency, meaning there’s added credibility, effectiveness, reliability and assurance.