books on how to research the market

Root out friction in every digital experience, super-charge conversion rates, and optimize digital self-service

Uncover insights from any interaction, deliver AI-powered agent coaching, and reduce cost to serve

Increase revenue and loyalty with real-time insights and recommendations delivered to teams on the ground

Know how your people feel and empower managers to improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention

Take action in the moments that matter most along the employee journey and drive bottom line growth

Whatever they’re are saying, wherever they’re saying it, know exactly what’s going on with your people

Get faster, richer insights with qual and quant tools that make powerful market research available to everyone

Run concept tests, pricing studies, prototyping + more with fast, powerful studies designed by UX research experts

Track your brand performance 24/7 and act quickly to respond to opportunities and challenges in your market

Explore the platform powering Experience Management

• Free Account
• Product Demos
• For Digital
• For Customer Care
• For Human Resources
• For Researchers
• Financial Services
• All Industries

Popular Use Cases

Customer Experience

• Employee Experience
• Net Promoter Score
• Voice of Customer
• Customer Success Hub
• Product Documentation
• Training & Certification
• XM Institute
• Popular Resources
• Customer Stories
• Artificial Intelligence
• Market Research
• Partnerships
• Marketplace

The annual gathering of the experience leaders at the world’s iconic brands building breakthrough business results, live in Salt Lake City.

• English/AU & NZ
• Español/Europa
• Español/América Latina
• Português Brasileiro
• REQUEST DEMO

5 must-read market research books

Updated May 23, 2024

Our list of the top books for market researchers and business leaders is in! We searched high and low to find the best books on market research - check out some of our favorites and see our full list of must-read books.

Want to see more must-read titles? Check out our free ebook, 24 Essential Books for Researchers in 2024 .

1. The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail

By Charlene Li

Charlene Li upturns our thinking and suggests that disruption doesn’t create growth – growth creates disruption. She argues that disruption goes beyond innovation and provides a roadmap with three key areas: Strategy designed to meet the needs of future customers; leadership that creates a movement to drive and sustain transformation; and a culture that thrives on disruptive change.

By using prominent brand examples, including T-Mobile, Adobe, ING Bank, Amazon, Starbucks, Electrolux, SHNU, Nokia, Microsoft and Southwest, Li gives plenty of  Big Gulp Moments to inspire people to make cultural changes that prepare you for disruption. Invest in this book, think about the ideas and make up your own mind.

2. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior 

By Jonah Berger

Social influence is the invisible influence, according to the New York Times bestselling author, Jonah Berger. He explores the subtle influences that affect the decisions we make – from what we buy, to the careers we choose, to what we eat.

Berger explores some of the more subtle ways – like imitating other people or avoiding actions that may impact others’ opinions of you – to more overt ways that give you a peek under the cover of an unconscious system.

Read this if you’re looking for a fast read that digs into the psychology around why people sometimes behave differently, or comply with predicted behavior patterns.

3. The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

By Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Read about the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and—forty-five minutes later—they leave as best friends. Author and brother duo, Chip and Dan Heath, bring ‘moments’ into the limelight, with this fantastic collection of stories to delight and inspire you into action.

They explore (as the title suggests) how our most powerful moments are formed and how, by tapping into these elements, researchers and marketers can create more moments that matter and elevate the experiences they deliver.

4. Marketing to Mindstates: The Practical Guide to Applying Behavior Design to Research and Marketing

By Will Leach

Your non-conscious mind will filter out more than 99 percent of marketing you “see” today. So how do you make sure your marketing is part of the 1% that people don’t filter out?

In this book, Will Leach demystifies this nonconscious filter and explains how to bypass it, introducing readers to temporary moments of influence called mindstates. With a book that’s as practical as it is inspiring, Leach provides a powerful handbook for any marketer or researcher who wants to design creative that compels people to listen, care, and act.

5. Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

By Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

Storytelling is an increasingly important skill for any researcher. When it comes to presenting your insights and recommendations, the way you present them is often as important as the insights themselves, and getting stakeholders on board ensures they’re listened to and acted on.

Cole Nussbaumer Knafic’s book walks you through the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of telling stories with data from the way you visualize it to how you communicate it to different audiences. This book should be on every researcher’s shelves, and is packed with practical examples of how you can say goodbye to stale graphics, and use new approaches to deliver research with real impact.

Unlock the secrets to powerful market research

Whether you're looking to sharpen your market research skills or gain new insights into consumer behavior, these essential books are your key to unlocking more effective, impactful research strategies.

Eager to explore further? Download our free ebook to access the complete list and begin revolutionizing your market research approach today.

Free eBook: 24 essential books for researchers in 2024

Qualtrics // Experience Management

Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the experience management category, is a cloud-native software platform that empowers organizations to deliver exceptional experiences and build deep relationships with their customers and employees.

With insights from Qualtrics, organizations can identify and resolve the greatest friction points in their business, retain and engage top talent, and bring the right products and services to market. Nearly 20,000 organizations around the world use Qualtrics’ advanced AI to listen, understand, and take action. Qualtrics uses its vast universe of experience data to form the largest database of human sentiment in the world. Qualtrics is co-headquartered in Provo, Utah and Seattle.

Related Articles

August 6, 2024

Experience Management

Qualtrics’ commitment to secure and private AI

July 11, 2024

4 takeaways for government leaders from X4 2024

June 12, 2024

X4 London 2024: The power of humanised intelligence

June 11, 2024

Qualtrics named a Leader in Forrester Customer Journey Orchestration Platforms Wave

June 3, 2024

Meet the industry leaders addressing rising expectations with XM

May 30, 2024

Must-read customer experience books for 2024

May 24, 2024

How DISH is using insights to set the stage for post-merger success

May 20, 2024

Improving government customer experience: Insights from rankings and research analysis

Stay up to date with the latest xm thought leadership, tips and news., request demo.

Ready to learn more about Qualtrics?

A Concise Guide to Market Research

The Process, Data, and Methods Using IBM SPSS Statistics

• © 2019
• Latest edition
• Marko Sarstedt   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5424-4268 0 ,
• Erik Mooi   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3613-1179 1

Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto-von-Guericke- University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Department of Management and Marketing, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

• Compact, hands-on, and step-by-step introduction to quantitative market research techniques
• Discusses the theory of important quantitative techniques and links directly to their use in SPSS
• Includes a wide range of educational elements, such as learning objectives, keywords, self-assessment tests, and case studies
• Links to additional material and videos via the Springer Multimedia App

Part of the book series: Springer Texts in Business and Economics (STBE)

1.41m Accesses

217 Citations

12 Altmetric

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

About this book

This book offers an easily accessible and comprehensive guide to the entire market research process, from asking market research questions to collecting and analyzing data by means of quantitative methods. It is intended for all readers who wish to know more about the market research process, data management, and the most commonly used methods in market research. The book helps readers perform analyses, interpret the results, and make sound statistical decisions using IBM SPSS Statistics. Hypothesis tests, ANOVA, regression analysis, principal component analysis, factor analysis, and cluster analysis, as well as essential descriptive statistics, are covered in detail. Highly engaging and hands-on, the book includes many practical examples, tips, and suggestions that help readers apply and interpret the data analysis methods discussed.

The new edition uses IBM SPSS version 25 and offers the following new features:

• A single case and dataset used throughout thebook to facilitate learning
• New material on survey design and all data analysis methods to reflect the latest advances concerning each topic
• Improved use of educational elements, such as learning objectives, keywords, self-assessment tests, case studies, and much more
• A glossary that includes definitions of all the keywords and other descriptions of selected topics
•  Links to additional material and videos via the Springer Multimedia App

Similar content being viewed by others

Digital Marketing Research – How to Effectively Utilize Online Research Methods

Small Business Marketing Research: Methodological Alternatives to the Often Used Demand and Opinion Survey

• Market Research
• Research Methods

Table of contents (10 chapters)

Front matter, introduction to market research.

• Marko Sarstedt, Erik Mooi

The Market Research Process

Getting data, descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing and anova, regression analysis, principal component and factor analysis, cluster analysis, communicating the results, back matter, authors and affiliations.

Marko Sarstedt

About the authors

Marko Sarstedt  is chaired professor of Marketing at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Germany). His main research is in the application and advancement of structural equation modeling methods to further the understanding of consumer behavior and to improve marketing decision-making. His research has been published in journals such as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Organizational Research Methods, MIS Quarterly, and International Journal of Research in Marketing. Marko has co-edited several special issues of leading journals and co-authored several widely adopted textbooks, including “A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM)” (together with Joe F. Hair, G. Tomas M. Hult, and Christian M. Ringle).

Erik Mooi i s senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne (Australia). His main interest is in business-to-business marketing and works on topics such as outsourcing, inter-firmcontracting, innovation, technology licensing, and franchising using advanced econometrics. His research has been published in journals such as Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and the Journal of Business Research. He is also program director at the Centre for Workplace Leadership, a fellow at the EU centre for shared complex challenges, as well as a fellow at the Centre for Business Analytics at Melbourne Business School.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : A Concise Guide to Market Research

Book Subtitle : The Process, Data, and Methods Using IBM SPSS Statistics

Authors : Marko Sarstedt, Erik Mooi

Series Title : Springer Texts in Business and Economics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56707-4

Publisher : Springer Berlin, Heidelberg

eBook Packages : Business and Management , Business and Management (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-662-56706-7 Published: 28 September 2018

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-662-58592-4 Published: 11 January 2019

eBook ISBN : 978-3-662-56707-4 Published: 18 September 2018

Series ISSN : 2192-4333

Series E-ISSN : 2192-4341

Edition Number : 3

Number of Pages : XVII, 396

Number of Illustrations : 69 b/w illustrations, 109 illustrations in colour

Topics : Marketing , Management , Statistics for Business, Management, Economics, Finance, Insurance

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

From Idea to Insight: A 7-Step Market Research Guide

• by Alice Ananian
• September 4, 2024

In today’s fast-paced business world, guesswork is a luxury no one can afford. Enter market research: your secret weapon for making bold, informed decisions that propel your business forward. Whether you’re an ambitious entrepreneur, a savvy small business owner, or a cutting-edge marketing professional, mastering the market research process is the key to unlocking unprecedented growth and staying ahead of the competition.

Ready to transform raw data into golden opportunities? This guide will walk you through seven essential steps that turn the complex art of market research into a streamlined, powerful tool for success. From defining laser-focused objectives to leveraging cutting-edge AI analysis, you’re about to embark on a journey that will reshape how you understand your market, your customers, and your business potential.

The 7-Step Market Research Process: An Overview

Before diving into the details, let’s take a quick look at the seven steps that comprise an effective market research process:

• Define Your Research Objectives
• Develop Your Research Plan
• Collect Relevant Data
• Analyze and Interpret the Data
• Present Your Findings
• Make Informed Decisions
• Monitor and Iterate

Following this structured approach ensures that your market research is comprehensive, focused, and yields valuable insights. It’s worth noting that modern tools, such as AI-powered market research platforms like Prelaunch.com’s AI Market Research feature , can significantly streamline this process, making it more efficient and accessible for businesses of all sizes.

Now, let’s explore each step in detail.

Step 1: Define Your Research Objectives

The first and perhaps most crucial step in the market research process is defining your research objectives. This step sets the foundation for your entire research effort and ensures that you’re asking the right questions to get the information you need.

Identifying the problem or opportunity

Start by clearly articulating the business problem you’re trying to solve or the opportunity you’re looking to explore. Are you considering launching a new product? Trying to understand why sales are declining? Or perhaps you’re looking to enter a new market? Clearly defining the issue at hand will help focus your research efforts.

Setting clear, measurable goals

Once you’ve identified the problem or opportunity, set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for your research. For example, instead of a vague goal like “understand customer preferences,” you might set a goal to “identify the top three features that 70% of our target market considers essential in a new product within the next two months.”

Formulating research questions

Based on your goals, develop a set of research questions that will guide your data collection efforts. These questions should be specific and directly related to your objectives. For instance, if your goal is to understand customer preferences, you might ask questions like:

• What features do customers value most in similar products?
• How much are customers willing to pay for these features?
• What unmet needs exist in the current market?

By clearly defining your research objectives, you’ll ensure that your market research efforts are focused and yield the insights you need to make informed business decisions.

Step 2: Develop Your Research Plan

With your objectives clearly defined, the next step is to develop a comprehensive research plan. This plan will serve as your roadmap, outlining how you’ll gather the information needed to answer your research questions.

Choosing research methodologies

Decide whether qualitative research, quantitative research, or a combination of both will best serve your objectives:

• Qualitative research : This method explores the “why” and “how” of consumer behavior through in-depth interviews, focus groups, or observational studies. It’s excellent for gaining deep insights into customer motivations and perceptions.
• Quantitative research : This approach focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis. Surveys and polls are common quantitative methods that can provide measurable data on consumer preferences and behaviors.

Often, a mixed-method approach combining both qualitative and quantitative research can provide the most comprehensive insights.

Determining your target audience

Identify the specific group of people from whom you need to gather information. This could be based on demographics, psychographics, or behavioral characteristics. The more precisely you define your target audience, the more relevant and valuable your research findings will be.

Selecting appropriate data collection methods

Choose the most suitable methods for collecting data from your target audience. Some options include:

• Surveys (online, phone, or in-person)
• Interviews (structured or unstructured)
• Focus groups
• Observational studies
• Secondary data analysis

Consider factors such as cost, time constraints, and the type of information you need when selecting your methods. AI-powered tools like Prelaunch.com’s AI Market Research feature can be particularly helpful in this stage, offering efficient ways to gather and analyze data from various sources.

By developing a thorough research plan, you’ll ensure that your data collection efforts are efficient, targeted, and aligned with your research objectives.

Step 3: Collect Relevant Data

With your research plan in place, it’s time to gather the data that will form the basis of your insights. This step involves implementing the data collection methods you’ve chosen and ensuring that you’re gathering high-quality, relevant information.

Primary research methods

Primary research involves collecting original data directly from your target audience. This can include:

• Conducting surveys: Use online platforms, email, or in-person methods to gather quantitative data from a large sample of your target audience.
• Performing interviews: Engage in one-on-one conversations with key individuals to gain in-depth qualitative insights.
• Organizing focus groups : Bring together small groups of people to discuss your research topics in a moderated setting.
• Observational studies: Watch and record how people interact with products or services in real-world settings.

Secondary research sources

Secondary research involves analyzing existing data from various sources. This can be a cost-effective way to gather background information and supplement your primary research. Sources may include:

• Industry reports and market studies
• Government databases and publications
• Academic research papers
• Competitor websites and annual reports
• Trade association publications

Leveraging AI for efficient data collection

Modern AI-powered tools can significantly enhance your data collection efforts. These tools can:

• Automate the process of gathering and organizing secondary research data
• Analyze large datasets quickly to identify trends and patterns
• Generate survey questions based on your research objectives
• Provide real-time insights as data is collected

By leveraging both traditional methods and advanced AI tools, you can ensure that you’re collecting a comprehensive and diverse set of data to inform your market research.

Step 4: Analyze and Interpret the Data

Once you’ve collected your data, the next crucial step is to analyze and interpret it. This process involves transforming raw data into actionable insights that can guide your business decisions.

Data cleaning and preparation

Before analysis can begin, it’s essential to clean and prepare your data:

• Remove any duplicate or irrelevant entries
• Check for and correct any errors or inconsistencies
• Standardize data formats for easier analysis
• Organize data into a structure that facilitates analysis

Statistical analysis techniques

Depending on the type of data you’ve collected and your research objectives, you may employ various statistical analysis techniques :

• Descriptive statistics: Calculate means, medians, modes, and standard deviations to summarize your data.
• Inferential statistics: Use techniques like hypothesis testing and regression analysis to draw conclusions about larger populations based on your sample data.
• Correlation analysis: Identify relationships between different variables in your dataset.
• Segmentation analysis: Group your data into meaningful segments based on shared characteristics.

Identifying patterns and trends

As you analyze your data, look for patterns, trends, and insights that address your research objectives:

• Compare results across different demographic groups or market segments
• Identify common themes in qualitative data
• Look for unexpected or surprising findings that challenge your assumptions
• Consider how different data points relate to each other and what story they tell together

Remember that the goal of this step is not just to summarize data, but to derive meaningful insights that can inform your business strategy. Be open to unexpected findings and be prepared to dig deeper into areas that seem particularly relevant or intriguing.

Step 5: Present Your Findings

After analyzing your data, it’s time to communicate your findings effectively to stakeholders. The way you present your research can significantly impact how it’s received and acted upon.

Creating clear and visually appealing reports

• Organize your findings logically, starting with an executive summary of key insights
• Use charts, graphs, and infographics to visualize data and make it easier to understand
• Include relevant quotes or case studies from qualitative research to bring your data to life
• Ensure your report is well-structured with clear headings and subheadings

Tailoring presentations to different stakeholders

• Consider the specific interests and needs of your audience (e.g., executives, marketing team, product developers)
• Adjust the level of detail and technical language based on your audience’s expertise
• Focus on the findings most relevant to each stakeholder group

Highlighting key insights and actionable recommendations

• Clearly state the main takeaways from your research
• Connect your findings directly to your initial research objectives
• Provide specific, actionable recommendations based on your insights
• Include potential implications of your findings for different areas of the business

Remember, the goal is not just to share information, but to tell a compelling story with your data that motivates action and informs strategy.

Step 6: Make Informed Decisions

The true value of market research lies in its ability to inform better business decisions. This step is where you translate your research findings into strategic action.

Connecting research findings to business objectives

• Revisit your initial research objectives and evaluate how your findings address them
• Identify which insights are most critical for achieving your business goals
• Consider both the opportunities and potential risks highlighted by your research

Assessing risks and opportunities

• Use your research to evaluate the potential success of new products, services, or marketing strategies
• Identify potential obstacles or challenges that your research has uncovered
• Consider how your findings might impact different scenarios or future market conditions

Developing data-driven strategies

• Create action plans based on your research insights
• Set specific, measurable goals for implementing changes or new initiatives
• Assign responsibilities and timelines for acting on your research findings
• Ensure that all strategic decisions are directly supported by your research data

Remember that while your research should guide your decisions, it’s also important to balance data with experience, intuition, and other business considerations.

Step 7: Monitor and Iterate

The market research process doesn’t end with implementation. Continuous monitoring and iteration are crucial for long-term success.

Implementing decisions based on research

• Put your data-driven strategies into action
• Ensure that all team members understand the research findings and their role in implementing changes

Tracking results and KPIs

• Set up systems to monitor the impact of your decisions
• Track relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your research objectives
• Regularly review performance against your goals and expectations

Conducting follow-up research for continuous improvement

• Plan for periodic follow-up research to assess the effectiveness of your strategies
• Be prepared to adjust your approach based on new data and changing market conditions
• Consider implementing ongoing research methods, such as customer feedback loops or regular market surveys

By viewing market research as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event, you can ensure that your business remains agile and responsive to market changes.

Mastering the market research process is essential for making informed business decisions in today’s competitive landscape. By following these 7 steps – defining objectives, developing a plan, collecting data, analyzing results, presenting findings, making decisions, and monitoring outcomes – you can gain valuable insights that drive business growth and innovation.

As markets evolve and consumer preferences change, ongoing market research will be key to staying ahead. Embrace this process as a fundamental part of your business strategy, and you’ll be well-equipped to make decisions that resonate with your target audience and drive your business forward.

Alice Ananian

Alice has over 8 years experience as a strong communicator and creative thinker. She enjoys helping companies refine their branding, deepen their values, and reach their intended audiences through language.

Related Articles

Top 10 Climate Tech Startups to Follow

• by Larisa Avagyan
• February 5, 2024

SurveyAnalytics Blog

Search this blog, best books for every market researcher, best market research books.

Remarkable post. I simply came across your blog and desired to say that I have really enjoyed searching your blog posts. Thank you for sharing such blogs. best books of all time

Post a Comment

Looking to publish? Meet your dream editor, designer and marketer on Reedsy.

Find the perfect editor for your next book

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Blog • Understanding Publishing

Posted on May 11, 2022

How to Research Your Market: An Author's Guide [Checklist]

About ricardo fayet.

Reedsy co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Ricardo Fayet is one of the world's leading authorities in marketing indie books. He is a regular presenter at several prestigious writers' conferences, where his unique personal style has made him an instantly recognizable figure.

Understanding the people who might buy your book is one of publishing's most critical skills. But until our mind-reading device arrives in the mail, the next best thing is... Reedsy's Market Research Checklist for Authors .

Download: Market research checklist

Based on tried-and-tested methods used by indie authors and publishers, the steps outlined in this checklist will help you better understand:

• What books readers are buying;
• Which authors you'll be competing with; and
• How this information can positively influence how you write and publish your book.

To download the free market research checklist, simply enter your email address in the box below.

Download Reedsy's Market Research Checklist!

Enter your email address and get it in your inbox right away.

Bonus resources

For the skills you might need to complete your market research, check out the resources mentioned in our checklist (plus a few more):

How to Find Your Target Reader (Free course). Need some help figuring out that perfect hypothetical reader who can unlock your understanding of your target audience. Take this free 10-day course and worry no more!

How to Validate Your Book Idea (Free course). Kindlepreneur's Dave Chesson teaches you his methodical approach to making sure your book has the best chance of success.

Choosing Comp Titles (Webinar transcript). Editor Sam Brody shows you how to pick a suitable comp title for both market research and book-pitching purposes.

How to Market a Book by Ricardo Fayet (Free ebook). It is an essential read for all aspiring indie authors — and it just so happens to have been written by me, a Reedsy co-founder!

Hire a Book Marketer (Paid service). For the best inside information on your target market, hire a top marketer from the world of publishing. Lucky for you, they're already here on Reedsy.

For more information on successfully selling more books, check out our online guide to book marketing .

Continue reading

Recommended posts from the Reedsy Blog

How to Format a Book in Google Docs in 7 Simple Steps

While there are much better alternatives, here's how you can format a book in Google's popular writing app.

The 6 Best Ghostwriting Companies to Write Your Book

Learn which companies you can trust if you want to find a ghostwriter to write your next book.

How to Publish a Book For Free: The 7 Best Sites

If you want to publish your book without spending a single dime, check out this handy list of 7 free self-publishing services.

5 Ways to Save on Your Self-Publishing Budget

If you want to self-publish a book without breaking the bank, here are 5 tips to ensure you still get the best result possible.

30 Great Book Dedication Examples to Inspire Your Own

A list of 30 of the best book dedications in the business that'll have you crying, laughing, and crying laughing.

Expository Writing: The Craft of Sharing Information

Expository writing is a fundamental part of how we learn and make sense of the world. Learn all about it in this post.

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Checklist: Market Research for Authors

Use this checklist to get to know your readers before you write your book.

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

Send us an email

How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

• Marketing Disciplines
• Social Media Strategy

Social media RFPs: The best questions to include (plus a template)

Template: Essential Questions to Ask in Your Social Media Management Software RFP

• Team Collaboration

How to build a marketing tech stack that scales your business

• Customer Experience

Brand trust: What it is and why it matters

• Now on slide

Build and grow stronger relationships on social

Sprout Social helps you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the only all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.

• Business Essentials
• Leadership & Management
• Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• Digital Transformation
• Finance & Accounting
• Business in Society
• For Organizations
• Support Portal
• Media Coverage
• Founding Donors
• Leadership Team

• Harvard Business School →
• HBS Online →
• Business Insights →

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

• Career Development
• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Earning Your MBA
• Negotiation
• News & Events
• Productivity
• Staff Spotlight
• Student Profiles
• Work-Life Balance
• AI Essentials for Business
• Alternative Investments
• Business Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Climate Change
• Creating Brand Value
• Design Thinking and Innovation
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Disruptive Strategy
• Economics for Managers
• Entrepreneurship Essentials
• Financial Accounting
• Global Business
• Launching Tech Ventures
• Leadership Principles
• Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
• Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
• Leading with Finance
• Management Essentials
• Negotiation Mastery
• Organizational Leadership
• Power and Influence for Positive Impact
• Strategy Execution
• Sustainable Business Strategy
• Sustainable Investing
• Winning with Digital Platforms

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.

About the Author

Create a Free Lulu Account

Maximizing Your Book’s Potential With Market Research

• February 2, 2023

If your goal is to sell the things you create, you need an audience. Right? Now I bet you’re thinking ‘yeah if only finding an audience was that easy.’ And you’d be right again; finding an audience who wants to buy what you create is often the biggest hurdle for new and growing creator businesses. 

To overcome that hurdle, you need to do a lot of market research around your genre or niche as well as looking at the target market for your book. When you narrow your focus to the audience who wants to buy the kinds of products you offer, you are much more likely to be successful.

You Might Also Like

• Complete Book Marketing Plan
• The 1,000 True Fan Theory: Sustainable Income For Creators
• Tracking Your Marketing Efforts With UTM Tags

What Is Market Research?

Market research involves an organized effort to learn about the specific group of people you want to buy your products or services. As an independent creator, you’ll need to define your target audience.  

This is important; market research is a two-part effort for creators. First, you need to find your potential customers and understand what they want. Then you need to find a publisher to help you distribute your products to those customers. 

Before you can do either of those research activities, you need to learn about your competition.

Finding and Understanding Your Competition

The easiest way to find an audience is to look at your competitors. If you write serial fiction , you can focus on authors in your genre and the readers or other writers following them. For nonfiction writers, look for the most successful creators and entrepreneurs in your industry and follow them.

I suggest making a list of about 10 creators who are offering products or services similar to you. They are both your peers and your competition. Follow them on their preferred social media platforms, sign up for their email lists, and buy samples of their content. 

While you’re researching your competition, you can also learn from them. Watch their webinars, read their blog, and buy their books. You need to know what is working for the audience you’re hoping will buy your own content. As you observe these successful creators, you should begin to understand how they are succeeding and who they are engaging with. And—just as important—you’ll see things that don’t work or that you know won’t work for your audience. 

Define Your Target Market

Your marketing strategy should focus on targeting the audience you want to buy your book. This group of consumers will be a smaller group with specialized or specific wants and needs.

For example, creating a pen and marketing it as ‘the pen for anyone’ will fail. You’ll be competing against popular, well-known, and affordable products. We can all find a Bic™, there’s probably one within reach of you right now. Now imagine you design a pen that is stylish, durable, and ergonomic. For creators who like to write longhand, that might make a huge difference.

Your target market segmentation will need to look for those gaps in products or offerings that you can fill. Or an area within that group you’ve identified as a target market that can be further specialized—maybe there’s a demand for stylish and comfortable pens with a stylus on the end. Or in hot pink and orange colors. 

The more specific you can get, the more likely you are to be able to build a small but dedicated audience. Rather than trying to create something for everyone, aim for a product you can specifically target to an audience who wants or needs that product.

How To Do Market Research as a Creator

Once you’ve defined your audience and you understand who your competitors are, you need to actually gather details you can use when creating and marketing. Some of the work can be automated, using software like Sparktoro to better understand what your audience does online. 

This will help you focus on specific sites or social media platforms to understand what they are doing to encourage customers to keep coming back. Is there a blog or video series that updates regularly? Lots of new content on the homepage? Maybe a thriving forum? Take note and look for ways you can replicate or build on the things that are already working for your competition.

Another option is to use tools like AHREF’s site explorer to learn which sites similar to your own are earning traffic from search engines. This data might be just what you need to implement a new SEO strategy or reimagine your own website to better meet your intended audience’s expectations.

If you’ve already got an audience on social media or you’re sending regular emails to your mailing list, it’s still critical to look for ways to grow.

For example, you can grow your email list with a variety of methods, from offering premium content in exchange for signing up to promoting the added value or content social followers will get when they sign up. To build your social audience , you’ll need to look at each platform to determine what works best. But for all of them, you will need to make your content easy to share and you’ll have to post regularly on that platform to keep followers engaged. 

Selecting the Right Publisher

You need to let your audience inform how you publish. That means finding the right platform to create your content and the best means to distribute that content to your fans.

If you have many followers on a social media platform, you need to be able to sell through that platform. And if you’ve built your audience through an email list, you have to know how to convert those subscribers to buyers. 

For a book, you might publish through three or more sources. Almost all authors of every kind want to be on Amazon. But you’ll also want to leverage your audience to sell directly—earning more and giving you an opportunity to capture valuable customer information. 

Sell Your Book, Your Way

Sell books on your Wix, Shopify, or WooCommerce website with Lulu Direct. Or use our Order Import tool for your next book launch.

Again, look to your market research and the audience you’ll be targeting. Once you know what they want and expect, it will inform how you publish your content and make it available to them. This information will be invaluable when you start writing your next book as well!

Using Market Research To Improve Your Book

You can (and should) use your book market research to improve how you write. For nonfiction writers like coaches, marketing experts, or anyone selling their technical skills, the most important thing is for your book to be useful to your audience. One proven way to achieve that is to give them a book that fits their expectations 

Once you learn what your fans like, that should inform your work’s tone, pacing, and word count. You can’t try to sell huge novels to an audience who reads short stories . Don’t let other authors change your book idea, but do let them influence how you deliver that book. 

Market research is primarily a way to find your audience and your competitors/peers, but don’t overlook the value of learning what your audience wants. Connecting what you learn about your audience with how you create will lead you to offer better products and ultimately grow your business. 

Using Market Research To Reach Your Audience

Once you understand the kind of content, social media platforms, and format your intended audience likes, your job gets much easier. You don’t have to guess about these things. Market research will reveal what your audience expects—then it’s on you to give them what they want. 

Be aware of what is working within your genre and aim to leverage that while telling your unique stories or sharing your expert insights. No matter what you sell, you can’t hope to be successful as a creator or entrepreneur if you don’t know who you’re selling to and what they are looking to buy.

Paul is the Senior Content Manager at Lulu.com . When he’s not entrenched in the publishing and print-on-demand world, he likes to hike the scenic North Carolina landscape, read, sample the fanciest micro-brewed beer, and collect fountain pens. Paul is a dog person but considers himself cat-tolerant.

Great job! The article is well written and gives a clear and concise explanation of market research. It’s great to see a number of case studies illustrating how research can help companies gain insight into their customers and competitors and make informed decisions based on data. Overall, this article is a valuable resource for companies looking to do market research. I recommend!

Regards, Adam Marketing Manager

Keep Reading

Build A Profitable EComm Business For Just $1

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content

A magazine for young entrepreneurs

The best advice in entrepreneurship

Subscribe for exclusive access, the complete guide to market research: what it is, why you need it, and how to do it.

Written by Mary Kate Miller | June 1, 2021

Comments -->

Get real-time frameworks, tools, and inspiration to start and build your business. Subscribe here

Market research is a cornerstone of all successful, strategic businesses. It can also be daunting for entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup or start a side hustle . What is market research, anyway? And how do you…do it?

We’ll walk you through absolutely everything you need to know about the market research process so that by the end of this guide, you’ll be an expert in market research too. And what’s more important: you’ll have actionable steps you can take to start collecting your own market research.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the organized process of gathering information about your target customers and market. Market research can help you better understand customer behavior and competitor strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide insight for the best strategies in launching new businesses and products. There are different ways to approach market research, including primary and secondary research and qualitative and quantitative research. The strongest approaches will include a combination of all four.

“Virtually every business can benefit from conducting some market research,” says Niles Koenigsberg of Real FiG Advertising + Marketing . “Market research can help you piece together your [business’s] strengths and weaknesses, along with your prospective opportunities, so that you can understand where your unique differentiators may lie.” Well-honed market research will help your brand stand out from the competition and help you see what you need to do to lead the market. It can also do so much more.

The Purposes of Market Research

Why do market research? It can help you…

• Pinpoint your target market, create buyer personas, and develop a more holistic understanding of your customer base and market.
• Understand current market conditions to evaluate risks and anticipate how your product or service will perform.
• Validate a concept prior to launch.
• Identify gaps in the market that your competitors have created or overlooked.
• Solve problems that have been left unresolved by the existing product/brand offerings.
• Identify opportunities and solutions for new products or services.
• Develop killer marketing strategies .

What Are the Benefits of Market Research?

Strong market research can help your business in many ways. It can…

• Strengthen your market position.
• Help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.
• Help you identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Minimize risk.
• Center your customers’ experience from the get-go.
• Help you create a dynamic strategy based on market conditions and customer needs/demands.

What Are the Basic Methods of Market Research?

The basic methods of market research include surveys, personal interviews, customer observation, and the review of secondary research. In addition to these basic methods, a forward-thinking market research approach incorporates data from the digital landscape like social media analysis, SEO research, gathering feedback via forums, and more. Throughout this guide, we will cover each of the methods commonly used in market research to give you a comprehensive overview.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Primary and secondary are the two main types of market research you can do. The latter relies on research conducted by others. Primary research, on the other hand, refers to the fact-finding efforts you conduct on your own.

This approach is limited, however. It’s likely that the research objectives of these secondary data points differ from your own, and it can be difficult to confirm the veracity of their findings.

Primary Market Research

Primary research is more labor intensive, but it generally yields data that is exponentially more actionable. It can be conducted through interviews, surveys, online research, and your own data collection. Every new business should engage in primary market research prior to launch. It will help you validate that your idea has traction, and it will give you the information you need to help minimize financial risk.

You can hire an agency to conduct this research on your behalf. This brings the benefit of expertise, as you’ll likely work with a market research analyst. The downside is that hiring an agency can be expensive—too expensive for many burgeoning entrepreneurs. That brings us to the second approach. You can also do the market research yourself, which substantially reduces the financial burden of starting a new business .

Secondary Market Research

Secondary research includes resources like government databases and industry-specific data and publications. It can be beneficial to start your market research with secondary sources because it’s widely available and often free-to-access. This information will help you gain a broad overview of the market conditions for your new business.

Identify Your Goals and Your Audience

Before you begin conducting interviews or sending out surveys, you need to set your market research goals. At the end of your market research process, you want to have a clear idea of who your target market is—including demographic information like age, gender, and where they live—but you also want to start with a rough idea of who your audience might be and what you’re trying to achieve with market research.

You can pinpoint your objectives by asking yourself a series of guiding questions:

• What are you hoping to discover through your research?
• Who are you hoping to serve better because of your findings?
• What do you think your market is?
• Who are your competitors?
• Are you testing the reception of a new product category or do you want to see if your product or service solves the problem left by a current gap in the market?
• Are you just…testing the waters to get a sense of how people would react to a new brand?

Once you’ve narrowed down the “what” of your market research goals, you’re ready to move onto how you can best achieve them. Think of it like algebra. Many math problems start with “solve for x.” Once you know what you’re looking for, you can get to work trying to find it. It’s a heck of a lot easier to solve a problem when you know you’re looking for “x” than if you were to say “I’m gonna throw some numbers out there and see if I find a variable.”

How to Do Market Research

This guide outlines every component of a comprehensive market research effort. Take into consideration the goals you have established for your market research, as they will influence which of these elements you’ll want to include in your market research strategy.

Secondary Data

Secondary data allows you to utilize pre-existing data to garner a sense of market conditions and opportunities. You can rely on published market studies, white papers, and public competitive information to start your market research journey.

Secondary data, while useful, is limited and cannot substitute your own primary data. It’s best used for quantitative data that can provide background to your more specific inquiries.

Find Your Customers Online

Once you’ve identified your target market, you can use online gathering spaces and forums to gain insights and give yourself a competitive advantage. Rebecca McCusker of The Creative Content Shop recommends internet recon as a vital tool for gaining a sense of customer needs and sentiment. “Read their posts and comments on forums, YouTube video comments, Facebook group [comments], and even Amazon/Goodreads book comments to get in their heads and see what people are saying.”

If you’re interested in engaging with your target demographic online, there are some general rules you should follow. First, secure the consent of any group moderators to ensure that you are acting within the group guidelines. Failure to do so could result in your eviction from the group.

Not all comments have the same research value. “Focus on the comments and posts with the most comments and highest engagement,” says McCusker. These high-engagement posts can give you a sense of what is already connecting and gaining traction within the group.

Social media can also be a great avenue for finding interview subjects. “LinkedIn is very useful if your [target customer] has a very specific job or works in a very specific industry or sector. It’s amazing the amount of people that will be willing to help,” explains Miguel González, a marketing executive at Dealers League . “My advice here is BE BRAVE, go to LinkedIn, or even to people you know and ask them, do quick interviews and ask real people that belong to that market and segment and get your buyer persona information first hand.”

Market research interviews can provide direct feedback on your brand, product, or service and give you a better understanding of consumer pain points and interests.

When organizing your market research interviews, you want to pay special attention to the sample group you’re selecting, as it will directly impact the information you receive. According to Tanya Zhang, the co-founder of Nimble Made , you want to first determine whether you want to choose a representative sample—for example, interviewing people who match each of the buyer persona/customer profiles you’ve developed—or a random sample.

“A sampling of your usual persona styles, for example, can validate details that you’ve already established about your product, while a random sampling may [help you] discover a new way people may use your product,” Zhang says.

Market Surveys

Market surveys solicit customer inclinations regarding your potential product or service through a series of open-ended questions. This direct outreach to your target audience can provide information on your customers’ preferences, attitudes, buying potential, and more.

Every expert we asked voiced unanimous support for market surveys as a powerful tool for market research. With the advent of various survey tools with accessible pricing—or free use—it’s never been easier to assemble, disseminate, and gather market surveys. While it should also be noted that surveys shouldn’t replace customer interviews , they can be used to supplement customer interviews to give you feedback from a broader audience.

Who to Include in Market Surveys

• Current customers
• Past customers
• Your existing audience (such as social media/newsletter audiences)

Example Questions to Include in Market Surveys

While the exact questions will vary for each business, here are some common, helpful questions that you may want to consider for your market survey. Demographic Questions: the questions that help you understand, demographically, who your target customers are:

• “What is your age?”
• “Where do you live?”
• “What is your gender identity?”
• “What is your household income?”
• “What is your household size?”
• “What do you do for a living?”
• “What is your highest level of education?”

Product-Based Questions: Whether you’re seeking feedback for an existing brand or an entirely new one, these questions will help you get a sense of how people feel about your business, product, or service:

• “How well does/would our product/service meet your needs?”
• “How does our product/service compare to similar products/services that you use?”
• “How long have you been a customer?” or “What is the likelihood that you would be a customer of our brand?

Personal/Informative Questions: the deeper questions that help you understand how your audience thinks and what they care about.

• “What are your biggest challenges?”
• “What’s most important to you?”
• “What do you do for fun (hobbies, interests, activities)?”
• “Where do you seek new information when researching a new product?”
• “How do you like to make purchases?”
• “What is your preferred method for interacting with a brand?”

Survey Tools

Online survey tools make it easy to distribute surveys and collect responses. The best part is that there are many free tools available. If you’re making your own online survey, you may want to consider SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, or Zoho Survey.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis is a breakdown of how your business stacks up against the competition. There are many different ways to conduct this analysis. One of the most popular methods is a SWOT analysis, which stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” This type of analysis is helpful because it gives you a more robust understanding of why a customer might choose a competitor over your business. Seeing how you stack up against the competition can give you the direction you need to carve out your place as a market leader.

Social Media Analysis

Social media has fundamentally changed the market research landscape, making it easier than ever to engage with a wide swath of consumers. Follow your current or potential competitors on social media to see what they’re posting and how their audience is engaging with it. Social media can also give you a lower cost opportunity for testing different messaging and brand positioning.

SEO Analysis and Opportunities

SEO analysis can help you identify the digital competition for getting the word out about your brand, product, or service. You won’t want to overlook this valuable information. Search listening tools offer a novel approach to understanding the market and generating the content strategy that will drive business. Tools like Google Trends and Awario can streamline this process.

Ready to Kick Your Business Into High Gear?

Now that you’ve completed the guide to market research you know you’re ready to put on your researcher hat to give your business the best start. Still not sure how actually… launch the thing? Our free mini-course can run you through the essentials for starting your side hustle .

About Mary Kate Miller

Mary Kate Miller writes about small business, real estate, and finance. In addition to writing for Foundr, her work has been published by The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more. She lives in Chicago.

Related Posts

5 Ways Personalization in eCommerce Can Enhance Customer Experience

Engaging Your Audience with Social Media Quizzes and Polls

Email Marketing Automation: Tools and Strategies for 2024

How to Find Influencers: 6 Ways to Discover Your Perfect Brand Advocate

How to Create a Marketing Plan In 2024 (Template + Examples)

What Is UGC and Why It’s a Must-Have for Your Brand

Ad Expert Phoenix Ha on How to Make Creative Ads without Breaking Your Budget

14 Punchy TikTok Marketing Strategies to Amplify Your Growth

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel and Gain Subscribers Quickly

How to Get More Views on Snapchat with These 12 Tactics

12 Instagram Growth Hacks For More Engaged Followers (Without Running Ads)

Create Viral Infographics That Boost Your Organic Traffic

How to Create a Video Sales Letter (Tips and Tricks from a 7-Figure Copywriter)

How to Write a Sales Email That Converts in 2024

What Is a Media Kit: How to Make One in 2024 (With Examples)

FREE TRAINING FROM LEGIT FOUNDERS

Actionable Strategies for Starting & Growing Any Business.

• 1000+ lessons.
• Customized learning.
• 30,000+ strong community.

4 Best Market Research Books of All Time

Our goal : Find the best Market Research books according to the internet (not just one random person's opinion).

• Type "best market research books" into our search engine and study the top 5+ pages.
• Add only the books mentioned 2+ times.
• Rank the results neatly for you here! 😊 (It was a lot of work. But hey! That's why we're here, right?)

(Updated 2024)

As an Amazon Associate, we earn money from purchases made through links in this page.

Last Updated: Monday 1 Jan, 2024

• Best Market Research Books

The Market Research Toolbox

A concise guide for beginners.

Edward F. McQuarrie

Truth and Lies About Why We Buy

Martin Lindstrom

Marketing to Mindstates

The practical guide to applying behavior design to research and marketing.

Invisible Influence

The hidden forces that shape behavior.

Jonah Berger

• Best Market Research Books - Summer Reading List | QuestionPro www.questionpro.com
• Top 5 Books You Must Read if You Work in Market Research | Market Research Company New York | Drive Research www.driveresearch.com
• 50 Books Every Market Researcher Should Read - TranscribeMe www.transcribeme.com
• 5 Must-Read Market Research Books for 2022 - Qualtrics www.qualtrics.com
• 11 Must-Read Market Research Books for Beginners: I wouldn’t Miss Any www.bizadmark.com

What To Read Next

Explore other lists

Share this page

Email us if you have any feedback

• Business & Money
• Marketing & Sales

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Strategic Market Research: A Guide to Conducting Research that Drives Businesses Paperback – January 12, 2019

• Print length 136 pages
• Language English
• Publication date January 12, 2019
• Dimensions 6 x 0.34 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 173138517X
• ISBN-13 978-1731385178
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (January 12, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 136 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 173138517X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1731385178
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.7 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.34 x 9 inches
• #756 in Market Research Business (Books)
• #1,235 in Marketing & Consumer Behavior

About the author

Anne e beall ph d.

Anne E. Beall is an award-winning author whose books have been featured in People Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Toronto Sun, and she’s been interviewed by NBC, NPR, and WGN. Her book, Cinderella Didn’t Live Happily Ever After: The Hidden Messages in Fairy Tales won a Gold award from Literary Titan. Her subsequent book, Only Prince Charming Gets to Break the Rules won a Silver award. And her Heartfelt Connections book was named one of the top 100 Notable Indie books by Shelf Unbound. She has published in several literary journals including Minerva Rising Press, The Raven’s Perch, and Grande Dame Literary Journal. She received her PhD in social psychology from Yale University and is the founder of the strategic market-research firm, Beall Research.

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 73% 11% 6% 6% 4% 73%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 73% 11% 6% 6% 4% 11%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 73% 11% 6% 6% 4% 6%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 73% 11% 6% 6% 4% 6%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 73% 11% 6% 6% 4% 4%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book practical, useful, and concise. They also describe the content as a good reference guide and market research 101. Readers appreciate the emphasis on demystifying the research process and the accessible, clear, and succinct tables.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book's content practical, useful, and concise. They also say it provides a sense of the overall market research field, and is one of the best books on the subject. Readers also mention that it's an interesting read and a solid introduction.

"...Easy to understand yet rich with wisdom , it equips readers with the essential skills to start the fascinating journey with research." Read more

"What a good business book should be: practical , useful, and concise." Read more

"...I found the book to be very relevant, practical and also as a good reference guide .Opeoluwa IdowuDallas Baptist University - MBA" Read more

"...She offers pragmatic, thoughtful advice to both students and practitioners and those of us using research in our day to day business lives...." Read more

Customers find the book concise, clear, and quick to read. They also say it illustrates with clear examples and covers big ideas in a digestible way. Readers also say the book is well written, with hardly any wasted words or phrases.

"The book impressively brings together simplicity and depth , creating an accessible entry point for both novices and seasoned scholars looking to..." Read more

"What a good business book should be: practical, useful, and concise ." Read more

"...It provides a concise summary of types of projects (quantitative and qualitative), different data collection strategies and it reflects the real-..." Read more

"...research and doing it right is all about and at the same time it provides nuance into what to look for given how people actually behave...." Read more

Customers find the book's intellectual level to be approachable and practical, emphasizing the demystifying the research process. They also say it creates an accessible entry point for both novices and seasoned readers.

"...book impressively brings together simplicity and depth, creating an accessible entry point for both novices and seasoned scholars looking to sharpen..." Read more

"...PhD myself, I greatly appreciate the others reliance and grounding in the scientific method . I feel I found a hidden gem with this book...." Read more

"...Anne Beall is clearly a very talented and experienced researcher , and many will be able to benefit enormously from her experience...." Read more

"Very practical and approachable . Her depth of knowledge is apparent and her writing style wastes no time...." Read more

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

The Market Effects of Algorithms

• Lindsey Raymond

September 2024

Related File

While there is excitement about the potential of algorithms to optimize individual decision-making, changing individual behavior will, almost inevitably, impact markets. Yet little is known about these effects. In this paper, I study how the availability of algorithmic prediction changes entry, allocation, and prices in the U.S. residential real estate market, a key driver of household wealth. I identify a market-level natural experiment that generates variation in the cost of using algorithms to value houses: digitization, the transition from physical to digital housing records. I show that digitization leads to entry by investors using algorithms, but does not displace investors using human judgment. Instead, human investors shift towards houses that are difficult to predict algorithmically. Algorithm-using investors predominantly purchase minority-owned homes, an area where humans may be biased. Digitization increases the average sale price of minority-owned homes by 5% or $5,000 and nearly eliminates racial disparities in home prices. Algorithmic investors, via competition, affect the prices paid by humans, which drives most of the reduction in racial disparities.  This decrease in racial inequality underscores the potential of algorithms to mitigate human biases at the market level.

• Follow on X
• Like on Facebook
• Follow on LinkedIn
• Subscribe on Youtube
• Follow on Instagram
• Subscribe to our RSS feed

Share this page:

• Share on Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Reddit

Get the Reddit app

For market research and insight professionals or students to talk about everything related to the world of market research. Qualitative, quantitative and methods in between. No surveys unless you're looking for survey critique, of which there is plenty. Temporary short-term bans will be handed out for those ignoring the rules.

Best Books on Market Research from Scratch?

tl;dr: do you know any B2C market research books for starting from nothing (no extant customers)?

I am in the process of starting up a small business (teaching code to kids). I know that market research is essential to marketing. In fact, every marketing / copywriting book I read stress the impossibility of efficacy without identifying your target customer.

But, whenever these books talk about market research, they almost invariably talk about either A) B2B research or B) reviewing your current customer data.

Well, I am trying to break into the B2C space and I have no customers yet because I haven't started yet.

So, does anyone know of any books that cover how to do B2C market research when starting from scratch? What do I google? What kind of reports do I pay for? Do I conduct interviews or focus groups? How do I determine if what I have gathered is worth acting on?

These are the questions I am asking. And any help answering them would be amazing.

Thanks for the help!!!!

By continuing, you agree to our User Agreement and acknowledge that you understand the Privacy Policy .

Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app

You’ve set up two-factor authentication for this account.

Enter a 6-digit backup code

Create your username and password.

Reddit is anonymous, so your username is what you’ll go by here. Choose wisely—because once you get a name, you can’t change it.

Reset your password

Enter your email address or username and we’ll send you a link to reset your password

Check your inbox

An email with a link to reset your password was sent to the email address associated with your account

Choose a Reddit account to continue

New bill passed in this state takes restaurant reservations off the resale market

New York’s legislature has passed a bill that would require third-party reservation services to obtain permission from restaurants to book on their behalf.

The bill, dubbed the Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act , says that third-party reservation services such as Resy and OpenTable cannot “advertise, promote, or sell reservations” on its platforms for a “food service establishment” without a written agreement with the establishments.

The legislation makes New York the “first state in the nation to pass legislation intending to combat the trend of predatory software flooding the online restaurant reservation marketplace,” according to a press release issued by the New York State Restaurant Association on June 6.

The bill was introduced in May by Senator Nathalia Fernandez, passed the State Assembly on June 3 and passed the state Senate three days later. It is awaiting a signature from Governor Kathy Hochul to become law.

Fernandez said in the news release that the bill will curb “the rampant exploitation of online restaurant reservations.”

“Between charging exorbitant rates for a reservation, to double-booking reservations, to phantom reservations leaving diners with less options and restaurants with empty tables—the onus is on us in the Legislature to take action,” she continued.

Making black market reservations in New York had become a side business, with practitioners snapping up blocks of meal times at the hottest restaurants with the intention of selling them back to people who want to dine there, NBC News reported . A student at Brown University made $100,000 over the course of 19 months from selling reservations, according to NBC News.

Melissa Fleischut, president and CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association, called the bill “a major victory” in the press release.

“Our members work hard each day to create a desirable dining experience,” she said. “Now, when diners do have the ability to dine out, they will no longer have to compete with predatory bots capturing reservations and reselling them at exorbitant prices.”

The CEOs of OpenTable and Resy, Debby Soo and Pablo Rivero, respectively, also applauded the legislation in the release.

“The passage of this bill is a meaningful one for restaurants and will help protect their bottom lines by reducing the ‘no shows’ caused by fraudulent reservations,” Soo said. “We are pleased to see New York take a strong stance to support its restaurants.”

“Resy joins many of its New York restaurant partners in applauding the New York State Legislature for passing the Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act,” Rivero said. “This important legislation is a significant step forward to protect restaurants and diners from reservation fraud.”