When is Custom Market Research Necessary?

Market research is always a valuable tool, offering companies insight into consumer perceptions and market conditions that often lead to better business decisions. 

There are two basic types of market research: syndicated and custom. Syndicated market research is conducted by a research company with the goal of selling the data and results to any interested party. While useful, syndicated market research is never specific. It only provides broad generalizations about a market as a whole, including its overall size and outlook, as well as any meaningful industry trends and key players. 

Custom market research, on the other hand, is specific; as its name suggests, it is customized for an individual client and designed to render targeted market insights that serve that company’s own discrete needs and objectives. Both types of market research have their place in day-to-day business operations, but when companies want or need to focus on their business strategy, custom market research is not just helpful, it’s critical for success.

Take a look at three circumstances when conducting custom market research should become a priority:

Product Development

Developing a new market offering is a scary endeavor. It’s expensive and time-consuming and although there’s never a guarantee that your idea will meet people’s needs, you certainly have a better chance if — when — you understand the current market landscape. In this way, custom market research provides insurance against failure; when conducted correctly, it delivers detailed data that shed light on industry trends, consumer demand and behaviors, and potential manufacturing issues (and more). With this information in hand, companies are better prepared to deliver a product that consumers actually want and that has the potential to produce a healthy ROI.

Market Expansion

Market expansions are similarly risky. Without data to bolster your decisions, any type of market expansion is simply speculative, an experiment that may or may not actually produce positive results. Syndicated market research reports are good for background information, but custom market research is the only way for companies to verify supply and demand issues regarding their own specific products and services.

Customer Satisfaction Analysis

When considering your business strategy it might seem strange to look backward rather than forward. However, reviewing the experiences of your customers can tell you a lot about your company’s future trajectory. Turning toward your own customers not only allows you the opportunity to analyze your brand’s standing in the market now, but it also permits you the opportunity to change it in the future. By reviewing your customers’ perceptions of your own offerings, your own strategies, and your own services with custom market research you can figure out the products and experiences you need to be maximizing and remedy the ones that don’t work.

Want to Learn More?

Of course, these aren’t the only instances when customer market research becomes a necessary enterprise. To learn how custom market research can maximize your company’s own unique goals, please contact our team of market researchers at Research America.