Types Of Market Research

There are two main types of market research:

1) Business to business (or industrial market research)

2) Consumer

Business to business market research focuses on data gathered from business clients and produces conclusions and strategy direction.

Consumer market research focuses on trends gathered from data and attempts to predict buying patterns, future needs and sales approaches.

Gathering information from these different groups requires different techniques and approaches.

Consumers tend to be busy and therefore more dismissive of market research so any approaches need to be focused. Speed is often the key whilst still preserving the outcome of the research. Offering incentives to complete the market research is essential.

Businesses have more time available and can provide some quality indepth research. The key is to choose the target audience carefully and to work with them in focus groups or one to one situations (eg. interviews, telephone research etc).

A subset within these two types of market research are:

1) Ad Hoc - This is research carried out at a point in time with a view to collecting data applicable to that point in time. Examples might be a customer satisfaction survey or a product usage survey.

2) Continuous Research - This is research carried out at different time periods to show time series results. Examples would be focus groups or one to one interviews. The key is that the target audience remains the same - or at least similar each time.

Whichever type of market research you use, with careful planning, it will reap rewards.

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types of market research