and limitations of your concept. This is vital as you must find a way to correct any perceived problems with your product or service before entering the marketplace.
-Understanding of your USP (unique selling proposition), in terms of its value to the target customer.
-Positioning of your product or service in your market. Specifically, is there a gap that you are successfully filling that represents an identified customer need?
-Reactions to specific elements of your program, such as a product size, packaging, or pricing or a service delivery approach.
-Learning as to how target consumers talk about products in your category, so you can be sure to use the correct language in all your external communications.
* Post-Introductory Research - This is a group of research that is intended to help you determine how your product or service was received by the marketplace following introduction. Obviously, revenues or sales are generally an excellent indicator of success, but there are many stories of brands that started off with excellent sales figures, but eventually failed due to the lack of repeat purchase by the consumer. The objective of this type of research is to delve into the reactions to your new product or service to determine whether it might have a future. Some of the questions addressed by this type of research are:
-How do buyers of the product or service feel about it once they have had actual in-the-market experience? Importantly would they make a second or third purchase; would they recommend it to others, etc.?
-What is the level of awareness of your offering among the target audience? If the people you are trying to sell to are unaware of your offering, it will be impossible to be successful.
-What message are they getting from your communications/advertising? Is this the intended positioning?
-How did the buyers feel about the price-value relationship of your offering?
-What are the repeat purchase patterns? For a product with a short purchase cycle (i.e., consumer goods, retail outlets, drug products, etc.) it is vital to understand the repeat purchase patterns to get a full picture of the response to the introduction.
Research Tools Available to Address the Questions in each Category - This section will identify the types of research that a small business entrepreneur could use to research the market, the product, and to conduct post introductory research on your product. Most of this research can be done free or with a very small investment.
* The Internet - This is the most common ways “research is conducted” today due to the ease of getting information at no cost. The most comprehensive tool for researching on the internet consists of using search engines such as Google to learn as much as possible about the market you are considering. Most people are amazed at the amount of information they can get by spending considerable time with Google to research their marketplace.
In addition to Google searching for articles and other published data about your marketplace, it is essential to visit and analyze the websites of all organizations that represent even remote competition. From the websites, you can learn a great deal about the competitors in terms of such things as:
-Their pricing
-Their key copy points seeking to deliver a USP
-Their intended positioning in the market
-Their method of sales and distribution
-Their promotional programs
* Social Media Platforms - In the current environment you can learn a great deal by simply posting a question on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. They all have very extensive audiences which can provide you with excellent answers to questions you are seeking about a marketplace.
* Consumer or Trade Publications - There are many publications, whether in print or on-line that can provide extremely valuable information about a market you may be considering entering. One example is the magazine Consumer Reports, which exists to provide comparative information about many different product and service categories. However, there are dozens of other printed and on-line resources that will evaluate products and services.
* Personal Visitations of Target Customers or Competitors - One obvious research source that is overlooked by many small business entrepreneurs is the opportunity to visit and talk with either the competition or the prospective customers. This cannot be easily accomplished in all product or service categories, but it is very relevant and extremely helpful in many. For example:
-If you are planning to open a retail store of any type, you should spend considerable time visiting other stores in your area that would be competition. It is also very useful to visit stores outside your market area (i.e., non-competitors) to understand how they do business. Some of the types of information you should be able to learn from these visitations are:
--How the store is organized
--How they promote and advertise their store
--Inventory carried & depth of inventory
--Pricing strategies
--Staffing of the outlet
--Square footage of the store
--Types of locations that appear to be most successful
--Most important vendors for them (i.e., who is supplying them with their product)
-Perhaps you have invented a product that will be sold to a retail store. In this case, it is essential to visit the prospective customers to understand what else they carry that is similar and where your entry would be positioned in the inventory. You should also learn about the pricing and distribution channels into the store. In some cases, you would be able to show the prospect a prototype of your product and therefore get some very valuable inputs about the attitudes toward what you are considering. One example of this is a client we had that was planning to sell a product to toy stores at $79. After considerable market research, it was determined that the only way for them to be successful was to sell it for $49, which required a major change in the entire production and marketing strategy of the organization.
-Often it can be productive to visit a company in your business who operates in a geographic area that is not competitive with you. For example, a consulting business that only operates in a limited geographic area, or a retail operation that has no intention of expanding to your area. Generally, these people will talk to you about the business and provide valuable tips that will be helpful to you in the planning process.
* E-Commerce Research - Whether or not your new business is in the e-commerce space, it can be very useful to study the websites of various e-commerce organizations that would be competitive with you. You can learn about the products they are featuring, their pricing, product selections etc.
* Free on-line Survey Tools - There are many different on-line survey tools that are available to conduct quantitative research among your audience. The objective of these is to obtain attitudes and behavioral information that will enable you to make more effective decisions relative to your own marketing plans. The most popular of these is Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com). This is a research tool you can use to implement quantitative market research on-line via questionnaires that you would develop. The big drawback to this and the other on-line tools is that you need to have a data base of e-mail customers who have opted-in to your website to survey them. It is not legal to purchase
