Custom Market Research: Everything you need to Know

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Custom Market Research: Everything you need to Know - Voxco Custom market research
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A startup or a brand entering a new market often struggles to grasp the market landscape and the influence of market trends on the ROI. The brand may have one-of-a-kind innovation, but without competitive intelligence, consumer insights, and awareness, it can’t create the right strategy to ensure successful growth. 

But how can a brand gather such data? What type of research would help them gather the most insightful data for the business? 

Custom market research is one of the two widely famous research types that will offer companies the most advantage. In this article, we will explore how custom research can help a business gather essential insights and make a mission-critical strategy.

What is custom market research?

Custom research defines the type of research where a company conducts and funds its own research and owns the collected data. A market research company or brand runs research and gathers first-hand data. 

As the name suggests, the research is customized for the brand funding the research. It is unique to the company’s specific needs, making the data exclusive and proprietary. 

Custom market research is ideal for pivotal decisions when a company needs an unbiased third-party perspective to gain more granular insights, validate assumptions, and interpret conflicting data.

To better understand custom market research, let’s see how it differs from syndicated research. 

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What is the difference between custom market research & syndicated research?

Custom Vs. syndicated research: Definition

Syndicated research is where the market research firm sells the gathered data to multiple companies. This means that multiple brands have access to the same generic data.

Whereas, custom research is unique to every company. The company that conducts or funds the research has complete control over the data and the campaign. 

Custom Vs. syndicated research: Characteristics

  1. In syndicated research, the research firms determine the methodology and other research elements. The purchasing companies may make a few requests, but the firm entirely controls the procedure. 

In custom market research, the client company determines the requirement of the research. The client has complete control over the data so they also decide the participant qualification, the survey questions, the quota, and more. 

  1. In syndicated market research, the firm shares the data with the companies who want to purchase it. 

In custom research, since the client company/ individual researcher owns the data, they do not have to publish the data. 

Now that we have established the difference between the two, let’s see when you can use custom research. 

When should you conduct custom market research?

An explanatory or exploratory research best suits the intention of custom research. It helps obtain in-depth insights into a target market to help make informed decisions. Here are some of the use cases when you should use custom research.

→  You can use custom market research to validate your decision on market expansion, market entry, new product launches, etc. 

→ You can gather insights to benchmark the industry or gain competitive intelligence. 

→ Custom research can help you gather hard facts to resolve problems or identify areas of improvement. 

→ It can help you understand the target market and perform segmentation analysis.

Get started with Voxco's Market Research Toolkit.

  • 5 Market Research Templates 
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  • Guide to using Online surveys to conduct Market Research

What is the significance of custom market research?

Here are the points that tell how market research firms can be important in conducting customer research.

1. Development of new products with precise market assessment: 

Custom research allows organizations to test new product ideas with consumers before investing directly in production, thereby avoiding significant mistakes. It will enable you to delve deeper into the research topic and collect targeted data.

With relevant and accurate data on your hand, you can make strategic decisions and create an effective roadmap for product development. 

2. Effective business strategies to stay on top of competition:

Market research is advantageous for companies intending to learn about their strengths and weaknesses. It helps a brand navigate through business challenges and identify improvement opportunities by providing reliable insights. 

Custom market research allows you to have accurate competitive and market intelligence to make strategic decisions when the price of stake is high. It gives companies the tool to stay ahead of the competition, understand the target audience, build brand awareness, and boost ROI. 

3. Communicate the brand’s story:

What problems do your brand and its product/services solve? What is the mission of your brand? 

Custom research helps brands look at their story from the outside perspective. It keeps the brand connected to the customer by helping you continuously learn about their needs in this changing world. 

Market segmentation, consumer insights, and market surveys help you identify your audience’s needs and ensure that your brand mission aligns with emerging needs and trends.

See the true power of using an omnichannel survey platform to conduct online, offline, & phone surveys along with a built-in analytical suite.

Custom market research is ACTIONABLE!

Custom Market Research: Everything you need to Know - Voxco Custom market research
  • It focuses specifically on a company’s target marketplace rather than the “market in general,” since a trend in one geographical location may not be impactful in another.
  • Custom market research helps the different departments of your company gather the required data. A consumer satisfaction survey is helpful for the marketing team to create targeted communication, while a product satisfaction survey will help the product team meet customers’ expectations. 
  • It helps you gather exclusive insights about the competition in the market. The data can give you a competitive edge and help you stay in tune with the emerging trends and latest launches. This way, you can benchmark against competitors and create a roadmap for growth. 

Additional Read- How market research tools can help you solve market research challenges

How market research tool streamlines custom market research?

A market research tool resolves three budget-related factors for firms/companies conducting custom research. These factors involve time consumed during research, resources utilized and the quality of data gathered. 

An MR tool enables you to instantly reach a large number of target audiences at once using various channels. It ensures a higher response rate, making it easy to gather accurate and representative data. 

Another benefit of an MR tool is that it allows you to gather real-time data. Custom market research helps you gather a real-time portrayal of the target market, allowing you to make a decision in real-time. 

The automation also allows you to streamline the data collection and analysis process. This saves time and ensures quality data making custom research affordable and insightful. 

Additional read: Getting the most from market research tools. 

Voxco is trusted by 500+ global brands & the top 50 MR firms to gather data, measure sentiment, uncover insights and act on them.

See how Voxco can enhance your research efficiencies. 

Conclusion

It provides granular insights specific to your company’s needs. For a business at a critical growth point, gathering actionable insights using custom research is a sound choice. You can create a successful long-term and short-term roadmap for your brand using the data gathered. 

FAQs on custom market research

Companies intending to gather specific information on the target market use custom market research. This type of MR allows companies to gather data exclusive to their need which is ideal for making strategic decisions.

Your data requirements entirely determine the price of a custom research report. It is determined by the time required to prepare a custom research report, the tools needed for data collection, such as interviews, the complexity of data analysis, and so on.  

Syndicated research gathers and shares a general market perception with interested companies. This means multiple companies competing in the same market have access to the same data. 

However, custom research helps a company gather targeted insights. This means a brand has data specific to its business needs and complete control over the data. This ensures data confidentiality and quality. 

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