If you’ve ever wondered whether market research was really a crucial part of product development, you’re asking a surprisingly common question. After all, if you’re a professional in your field and you’re considered an “expert”, why should you have to do research? You’ll probably just come up with things you already know anyway, so why waste the time?
That mindset may seem like a logical one at first thought, but that’s a foolproof way to set yourself up for failure. You might be an expert in your field, but it doesn’t mean you know the market inside-and-out. Sure, you know what you’re going to develop and what it’s going to do, but who’s going to buy it and how are they going to use it? You need to have solid, fact-based answers to these questions if you want your development to be a success.
What do I need to research?
Before you just dive into random research, you need to have some guidelines in place to keep you on track. The point of research isn’t to discover an anecdote you haven’t heard before or absorb a bunch of new information that isn’t particularly useful to you. The point of research is to guide your development by answering some key questions.
Market research consists of gathering a number of different people from different demographics together and getting their opinion on relevant topics. That’s why online survey tools are an excellent way of collecting data. For instance, if you’re a company trying to launch a new device that’s going to be sold to first-time moms, you would gather some new mothers from all over the world and ask them about certain principles and ideas that relate to the device in order to guide your development. Online survey tools like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, QuestionPro, and of course, our QPoint, have the ability for you to share surveys and gather responses in many different ways and that will help you find the target audience easier. Sharon Pen says for Cron "Set goals for your marketing research project by identifying what it is you want to find out. For example, you might want to know why your sales are down in New York City compared to your other markets".
Their answers don’t just need to be heard, they need to be listened to and implemented into the development process. You could go ahead without their vital input and make a new and improved two-way video doorbell, but you’d miss their vital input in which they would have told you that they want a two-way doorbell with an alarm feature and that they want the two-way video to have an “auto answer” feature that makes it look like they’re home even if they aren’t able to respond through the app when someone rings. If you make a survey, you would get such valuable information and your product would be exactly what your target audience needs, so your earnings and success would be higher.
Deliver More Value
In the end, delivering more value to consumers is what research is all about. You can carry out the development portion and you might produce an “okay product”, but undoubtedly, a competitor will come along who will actually listen to consumers to make a truly great product that incorporates all the features they wanted from the beginning.
Conclusion
Users are the ones who should create a product to increase the earnings of the one who puts the desired product on the market. You can have a good product but if you make a survey and listen to what customers need, you will have an excellent product. Thanks to the technological advances, research is no longer time consuming and painstaking. Make a survey and listen to what people need, this is a secret of success. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up on QPoint and start with market research!
Quotation:
Pen, S. (n.d.). How to Make a Market Research Project. Retrieved October 26, 2017 from the Cron website: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/make-market-research-project-21889.html