Through highly-customized analytics, result focused analytics and consulting; we enable our clients to realize better ROI. 90% of all data that exists today has been created in the last two years. And by 2020 the amount of data will be 50x of what it is today. This means we have vast quantities of unstructured data, which we now have the ability to process in real-time. This means that our advanced market research techniques will enable you to take better decisions and make more optimum utilization of your marketing spends.
Surveys are qualitative research in which people are asked a short series of open-ended or closed-ended questions. These questions can be given as an on-screen questionnaire or by email. Surveys were the most common method when we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals how their companies did research.
Why do so many people fill out online surveys? First, they are easy and cheap to run, and you can get a lot of information from them quickly. Also, the data is pretty easy to analyse, even when looking at answers to open-ended questions that might seem complicated to classify.
Surveys are a great way to do advanced market research because they give you a lot of information about your customers’ thoughts and motivations.
But there are some problems with surveys as well. First, writing questions that get to the heart of what you want to know can be challenging. This means that the data you collect might not be as valuable as you’d like. Second, surveys are only as good as the sample of people you ask. The data will be wrong if your sample doesn’t represent your target market.
And finally, because surveys depend on people taking the time to answer questions, there’s always a chance that your response rate will be low. (Although there are ways to get more people to complete surveys.)
Keep these pros and cons in mind if you’re considering surveys as part of your market research. And our team at Sixthfactor Research can help you if you need help writing survey questions or analysing survey data.
Interviews are one-on-one talks with people who are in your target market. Face-to-face interviews are the best way to dig deep and pick up on nonverbal cues, but if that’s not possible, video conferencing is a good second choice.
No matter how you go about it, any kind of in-depth interview will help you learn a lot about your target customers.
Why do interviews give us so much information?
By talking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll understand what they’re going through better and be able to follow interesting threads that can lead to many “Aha!” moments.
Focus groups get together a carefully chosen group of people who are in the target market for a business. A trained moderator leads a conversation about it to learn more about the product, the user experience, or the marketing message.
What is so bad about focus groups?
I wouldn’t suggest starting with focus groups if you’re new to market research. Doing it right costs money, and if you try to save money by taking shortcuts, your research could be full of mistakes. In addition, your focus group data could be skewed in many ways. Two of them are dominance bias and moderator style bias. Dominance bias is when a vital participant affects the group, and moderator style bias is when different moderator personalities lead to varying results in the same study.
During a customer observation session, someone from the company watches an ideal user interact with their product and writes down what they see (or a similar product from a competitor).
Why is an observation so brilliant and effective?
Instead of focus groups, “fly-on-the-wall” observation is a great way to get information. It’s cheaper, and you can see how people use your product in a natural setting without affecting each other. The only problem with observation is that you can’t know what’s happening in their heads, so it can’t replace customer surveys and interviews.
