All you need to know about Consumer Research

Define Research Objectives

Having a clear objective can keep the focus of consumer research from being distracted by the side element. The research objective consists of the question/ issue for which you are seeking customer feedback. 

Your research objective could be to understand:

• Customer experience and attitude about a product offered by your company
• Customer’s satisfaction level with the services
• Change in customer’s preference and interests
• Impact of marketing campaign
• Reason for a product’s poor performance in the market

You must clearly identify and establish the objective to have a clear picture of the goal you are trying to achieve at the end of the consumer research. A well-defined objective can help design the research process and prevent any costly mistakes during the process.

Gather secondary data

Secondary data indicates the information that is readily available for you to explore. These data exist in the form of journals, case studies, research papers, etc published in the past. 

In this step, you look through the secondary data to make sure that you avoid conducting research on an object for which you can gather all required data from the available data. This also helps you gain foundational knowledge on your topic or any related topic. 

Looking through the existing data, you can decide if you want to make any changes in your objectives or approach it differently. 

There are two sources of Secondary Data – Internal and External Data.

• Internal Secondary Data refers to the information that you can find from your company. For example, customer service interaction from the past, customer’s inquiry, sales audit, and so on. 
• External Secondary Data is the information that you need to collect from other organizations. Your company does not hold records of this information. Secondary data can be obtained either for free or you may have to pay. 

Sources of external data involve – Government data, Periodicals, and articles. The government collects data on its citizen’s income, population growth, and other societal factors. Periodicals can give you information related to business. 

Perform Primary research

After collecting secondary data you now need to gather your own data for Consumer Research. The primary research can be conducted in two ways – Qualitative and Quantitative Research. 

Qualitative Research: 

When your purpose is to gather subjective information from your customers, Qualitative Research is the better option. Customers are asked to answer the research questions in their own words. This gives you the chance to peek into the psychology of your customers. 

However, it is better to remember that qualitative research is conducted in a smaller sample size. The data gathered from this research therefore cannot be used to generalize against the entire target population. Nonetheless, it helps gather extensive insights from the audience and opens up the possibility of further research. 

There are two most common methods of conducting Qualitative Research: Interviews and Focus Groups

• Interviews can be conducted in person or via phone. A highly trained interviewer is put in charge of the respondent. The research engages the respondent in a conversation and asks the questions created for the research. 
• Focus Group involves a group of people who share similar characteristics and they engage in a discussion about the topic of the researcher in the presence of a moderator. The participants are encouraged to share their thoughts freely and discuss it with other participants. The entire session is recorded for data analysis. 

Quantitative Research: 

Quantitative research will bring you numerical data that can be easily analyzed. This type of research is conducted on a larger sample size which makes it possible to generalize the findings to the target population. 

There are three ways you can gather Quantitative data: Observation, Experimental Research, and Surveys. 

• In an Observation, marketers try to understand the relationship between the consumers and the company’s product by watching them interact with the product. The research is conducted in public. The marketer observes a customer’s behavior in the physical store of the brand or a shop that sells the brand’s product.
• Experimental Research is used to establish the cause-effect relationship between variables. In consumer research, it can be used to see the effect of pricing on the sale of a product. In experimental research, the independent variable is changed to observe its effect on the dependent variable. 
• Survey research can help gather data from a large number of consumers. It can be deployed via email, website, social media, or SMS. This allows the marketer to conduct various types of research and also reach a wide audience for insight. 

There are various surveys that you can conduct such as, 

• Brand awareness
• Customer satisfaction
• Demographic
• Exit surveys
• Likert Scale survey
• NPS^® surveys

Establish your Sample Size

It is not possible for any company to gather customer insight from all of their customers, even by using online surveys. There is always a limit to how many people you can reach. For this reason, marketers use sampling to narrow down their target population. 

Sample of a population refers to a number of selected respondents who share similar characteristics as the target population. A sample, thus represents the entire population. 

To establish a sample size there are three steps you should follow, these steps will make it easier to define your sample size: 

1. Who do you want to sample?
2. How many people do you need to survey?
3. Which sampling procedure should you use?

There are primarily two types of sampling procedure – Probability and Non-probability Sampling. 

Probability sampling gives every member of the population an equal chance of being selected. This procedure is further classified into: 

• Simple random sampling
• Systematic random sampling
• Stratified random sampling
• Cluster sampling

Non-probability sampling involves the researcher selecting the participants based on their judgment. This sampling procedure is classified into

• Convenience sampling
• Judgment sampling
• Quota sampling

Collect and Analyze the Research Data

Now that you have decided on the sample size as well as on the research method, it is time you collect the data. The collected data requires analysis to draw actionable insights from it. The analysis of the research data will help draw conclusions and give answers to the research objective. 

In the case of qualitative research, the data is gathered and codified based on the recurring themes. These repeating themes are then later analyzed to gain in-depth understanding. 

In the case of quantitative research, the responses are translated into numerical data. For data analysis software is used to identify patterns in customer response. 

Create Report from your Consumer Research

At the end of the research process you need to create a report that defines the research findings. The report should be made in a way that it is easy for the reader to understand the objective and the meaning of the end result. 

Your research report must also describe the entire research process. It should explain the objective, the purpose of research, the methods used for data collection and data analysis.