Market research defined: types and examples

Guesswork simply doesn’t work for business success. You need to make informed decisions based on facts and metrics about your target market. How do you get that information? Market research, of course.

Before we begin discussing market research, we should clarify the difference between market research and marketing research.

In market research, you are studying a target market. Market research collects, analyzes, and utilizes data about a specific market, the product concept to be offered to that market, and customers (past, present, and potential future) for the product. The purpose of market research is to find out the viability of a product or service in the target market.

Examples of market research include target market, market size, market segmentation, and market trends.

Marketing research covers new product research, product development, advertising research, customer research, pricing, public relations, and everything from product conception to branding. Basically, it is research into the market in which the business wants to succeed and an assessment of the business’s marketing strategies. The purpose of marketing research is to inform decision-making for all marketing activities.

Examples of marketing research include advertising effectiveness, concept and product testing, and brand perception.

Market research is a part of marketing research, so there is some overlap. Examples of the overlap include research into the competition, pricing, product attributes, and demand. 

You can remember the difference between market research and marketing research with this quick tip: Market research typically involves research relating to markets (size, target market, segmentation, demand) and marketing research involves research related to marketing (concept testing, advertising awareness, brand awareness).

Market research is crucial to the success of your business because the valuable information learned about your target market allows you to develop products and create marketing campaigns that will appeal to your target customers.

Market research is important because it:

There are many types of market research—procedures and methodologies used to analyze data. The type of market research you perform is based on what you wish to learn, how you want to apply the results, and any goals you’ve set in relation to the research.

Primary research is a methodology for directly collecting data for your own use. It is the most reliable and accurate method for collecting data because you are collecting and analyzing it with your goals in mind. There are several ways to perform primary research.

In a focus group, you bring together a group of six to ten people who share some common characteristics (i.e. age, buying habits, or location). The group will be led by a moderator in a discussion of a predefined topic, such as a product, customer experience, or marketing message. 

Focus groups tend to be more difficult to run because the interviewer/moderator must record participant answers while moderating the discussion. They are suitable for gathering information, but if not conducted properly, they can result in skewed data. 

Skewed data can result from bias in a group setting:

Focus groups are good for qualitative research into new concepts, product launches, product updates, and marketing ideas.

Surveys are carefully crafted questions delivered to a target market to yield the best possible insights into customer feelings and behaviors. They may be delivered by paper survey in the mail, telephone, or online questionnaire. A mix of open and closed-ended questions are generally used.

Surveys, especially online surveys, are easy to create, gather data, and analyze. SurveyMonkey even offers 150+ survey templates to help you get started. And SurveyMonkey Audience can find and survey your target audience in minutes.

It’s beneficial to use surveys to learn more about your target audience. They can be taken by current, former, and potential customers. Surveys are great to use in conjunction with other market research methods for an in-depth analysis.

Interviews are individual conversations with members of your target market. Face-to-face interviews may be conducted in person or online with the assistance of a video conferencing platform. As you ask questions during an interview, you can read nonverbal cues and ask natural follow-up questions in response to the interviewee's answers.

Interviews help you gain empathy for customer experiences and uncover new insights into the customer experience. 

However, this method still has the risk of acquiescence or research bias.

Interviews can be time-consuming, both in collecting information and analyzing it later.

Ethnography is qualitative research that involves observing and interviewing respondents in their own homes or office to gain insight by observing everyday behaviors and lifestyles. 

By interviewing and observing customers in their own homes, you can see how your products fit into the context of your customers’ everyday lives. You may see areas for product improvement or areas for new products as you observe.

Ethnographic research is extremely useful, but it is also time-consuming and costly. It certainly has its place in research, but other methods are generally more efficient and effective for market research.

In secondary research, you use existing research data from reliable sources to help solve your problem or answer your question. It is beneficial because it takes less time, is useful in filling knowledge gaps, and can act as a foundation for primary research. However, you have no control over the data or methodology, the data has not been collected with your goal in mind, and you must verify secondary data to ensure the quality of the methodology.

Public sources like the library are very useful for gathering secondary data. You can find information in professional journals, newspapers, census records, and other publications there.

Government libraries or websites usually offer free reference materials to researchers.

Commercial sources of secondary data are useful but can be costly. These sources include industry and trade publications or media sources.

A lot of research projects take place on college campuses. You may be able to access recent studies conducted at universities and educational institutions with a simple Google search.

Qualitative research is a form of data collection from personal accounts and opinions. It is used to gain in-depth information about customers’ reasoning and motivations. It can be data collected from interviews, case studies, expert opinions, focus groups, or observational research. You can also collect qualitative data from surveys with open-ended questions for respondents to express their opinions in their own words in a text box.

Qualitative research focuses on the “how” and “why” of customer behaviors. It provides the opportunity to capture new concepts and unique perspectives.

Examples of qualitative research:

Quantitative research relies on numerical or measurable data. It is typically used to make informed decisions or decide on a course of action. It can also be used to prove or disprove a hypothesis you have after analyzing qualitative research. Quantitative questions make up the bulk of most surveys.

Quantitative research can be collected by polls, surveys, and secondary research. The data can be used to provide benchmarks for future research and a foundation of knowledge for qualitative research. Larger sample sizes from quantitative research mean that your results will likely be statistically significant.

Examples of quantitative research:

Businesses use brand research to create, manage, and maintain their brands. A brand includes images, logos, narratives, characteristics associated with it, values, tone, and company identity. The main purposes of brand research are to understand how your brand is performing in relation to the competition, identify areas for improvement, and determine positive attributes to showcase in your marketing.

Brand research can and should be used throughout the lifecycle of a business. 

Brand awareness is the extent to which customers in your target market are aware of your business, products, and services. High brand awareness means that customers are more likely to seek out your brand when making a purchase.

The following quantitative metrics help you assess brand awareness:

Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty occurs when your customers have good reasons and opportunities to choose another brand, but they continue to choose yours. They will buy from your brand regardless of the price or convenience of a competitor. These repeat purchases help drive the success of new products, sustain your products over the long term, and help you identify new customers.

Brand loyalty metrics include:

Brand perception is the sum of the thoughts and feelings a customer has about your brand. It may include awareness, what they’ve heard about the brand, what they think about the brand, and how customers interact with the brand. It includes products, services, and even employees.

Ways to track brand perception:

Your brand identity is a collection of all the elements that make up your brand. This includes logos, images, and key messaging. A successful brand identity creates an emotional connection with customers—creating loyal advocates for your brand and products.

You can measure your brand identity with a survey. If you need help finding the right people to take your brand identity survey, SurveyMonkey Audience can connect you with the consumers who meet your specifications.

Brand recall is often measured within a brand awareness survey. There are two types of brand recall: Aided and unaided.

Brand recall improves your chances of a customer associating your brand with a particular product or service. This provides a competitive advantage. Brand recall also boosts customer loyalty and retention.

Brand value is the financial worth of your brand if you were going to sell it today. Brand value includes your name, logo, colors, packaging, digital assets, and brand identity. It also includes intangible assets like brand equity.

The main part of brand value that you have control over is brand equity. Improving brand equity improves your brand value. Measure your brand equity with our survey template.

Customer market research should be performed on a regular basis to get to know your customers well. It focuses on target customers, key influences on purchase decisions, and what you can do to encourage sales.

What makes your customers happy? Measure customer satisfaction to increase retention. Prioritize customer feedback and identify actionable insights to improve the customer experience.

Measure customer satisfaction with the following: 

What experiences have led to increased customer loyalty? Use surveys to explore what’s working and what you can add to increase loyalty. Your surveys can explore building customer loyalty programs, the effectiveness of your campaigns, customer service problems and solutions.

Use these customizable survey templates to begin researching customer loyalty:

Who are your customers? What are their behaviors and preferences? What characteristics do they share? Customer segmentation is the process of classifying customers into groups based on shared characteristics. This allows you to refine and target your messaging and advertising and to position your product, service, or brand to appeal to particular segments.

Market research surveys provide the detailed data you need to create customer segments. You may segment based on geographic location, demographic characteristics, psychological traits, purchasing behaviors, values, and needs. 

SurveyMonkey offers a Consumer Segmentation market research solution to help you find out more about your target consumer segments.

Perform competitive analysis to identify competitors, gather information about them, and perform an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. Through this research, you will gain insights into your own business.

Use some of our templates and solutions to begin collecting data:

Any research work that’s done before a new product goes to market is product research. The goal is to get feedback from users before you create the product for a successful launch. From the concept stage right up to launch, you’ll use a variety of market research methods to validate your concepts, messaging, packaging, target market, and more. 

A product testing survey is sent to your target market to ask for feedback on a range of topics related to your product development. You’ll compare metrics such as purchase intent, quality, and value to find out what product concepts your customers like best.

Why perform product testing?

Start with our product testing survey template. You can customize it for your needs.

Market research should be a critical component of your business strategy. Use its many types to get to know your customers better, gain an advantage over the competition, launch new products successfully, and strengthen your brand.

Ready to get started? SurveyMonkey Audience will help you get responses to your surveys from all over the world in just minutes. Find your ideal respondents now!

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