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Consumer Research: Examples, Process and Scope

What is Consumer Research?

Consumer research is a part of market research in which inclination, motivation and purchase behavior of the targeted customers are identified. Consumer research helps businesses or organizations understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles.

It uses research techniques to provide systematic information about what customers need. Using this information brands can make changes in their products and services, making them more customer-centric thereby increasing customer satisfaction. This will in turn help to boost business.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

An organization that has an in-depth understanding about the customer decision-making process, is most likely to design a product, put a certain price tag to it, establish distribution centers and promote a product based on consumer research insights such that it produces increased consumer interest and purchases.

For example, A consumer electronics company wants to understand, thought process of a consumer when purchasing an electronic device, which can help a company to launch new products, manage the supply of the stock, etc. Carrying out a Consumer electronics survey can be useful to understand the market demand, understand the flaws in their product and also find out research problems in the various processes that influence the purchase of their goods. A consumer electronics survey can be helpful to gather information about the shopping experiences of consumers when purchasing electronics. which can enable a company to make well-informed and wise decisions regarding their products and services.

LEARN ABOUT: Test Market Demand

Consumer Research Objectives

When a brand is developing a new product, consumer research is conducted to understand what consumers want or need in a product, what attributes are missing and what are they looking for? An efficient survey software really makes it easy for organizations to conduct efficient research.

Consumer research is conducted to improve brand equity. A brand needs to know what consumers think when buying a product or service offered by a brand. Every good business idea needs efficient consumer research for it to be successful. Consumer insights are essential to determine brand positioning among consumers.

Consumer research is conducted to boost sales. The objective of consumer research is to look into various territories of consumer psychology and understand their buying pattern, what kind of packaging they like and other similar attributes that help brands to sell their products and services better.

LEARN ABOUT: Brand health

Consumer Research Model

According to a study conducted, till a decade ago, researchers thought differently about the consumer psychology, where little or no emphasis was put on emotions, mood or the situation that could influence a customer’s buying decision.

Many believed marketing was applied economics. Consumers always took decisions based on statistics and math and evaluated goods and services rationally and then selected items from those brands that gave them the highest customer satisfaction at the lowest cost.

However, this is no longer the situation. Consumers are very well aware of brands and their competitors. A loyal customer is the one who would not only return to repeatedly purchase from a brand but also, recommend his/her family and friends to buy from the same brand even if the prices are slightly higher but provides an exceptional customer service for products purchased or services offered.

Here is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS) helps brands identify brand loyalty and customer satisfaction with their consumers. Net Promoter Score consumer survey uses a single question that is sent to customers to identify their brand loyalty and level of customer satisfaction. Response to this question is measured on a scale between 0-10 and based on this consumers can be identified as:

Detractors: Who have given a score between 0-6.

Passives: Who have given a score between 7-8.

Promoters: Who have given a score between 9-10.

Consumer market research is based on two types of research method:

1. Qualitative Consumer Research

Qualitative research is descriptive in nature, It’s a method that uses open-ended questions , to gain meaningful insights from respondents and heavily relies on the following market research methods:

Focus Groups: Focus groups as the name suggests is a small group of highly validated subject experts who come together to analyze a product or service. Focus group comprises of 6-10 respondents. A moderator is assigned to the focus group, who helps facilitate discussions among the members to draw meaningful insights

One-to-one Interview: This is a more conversational method, where the researcher asks open-ended questions to collect data from the respondents. This method heavily depends on the expertise of the researcher. How much the researcher is able to probe with relevant questions to get maximum insights. This is a time-consuming method and can take more than one attempt to gain the desired insights.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

Content/ Text Analysis: Text analysis is a qualitative research method where researchers analyze social life by decoding words and images from the documents available. Researchers analyze the context in which the images are used and draw conclusions from them. Social media is an example of text analysis. In the last decade or so, inferences are drawn based on consumer behavior on social media.

Learn More: How to conduct Qualitative Research

2.Quantitative Consumer Research

In the age of technology and information, meaningful data is more precious than platinum. Billion dollar companies have risen and fallen on how well they have been able to collect and analyze data, to draw validated insights.

Quantitative research is all about numbers and statistics. An evolved consumer who purchases regularly can vouch for how customer-centric businesses have become today. It’s all about customer satisfaction , to gain loyal customers. With just one questions companies are able to collect data, that has the power to make or break a company. Net Promoter Score question , “On a scale from 0-10 how likely are you to recommend our brand to your family or friends?”

How organic word-of-mouth is influencing consumer behavior and how they need to spend less on advertising and invest their time and resources to make sure they provide exceptional customer service.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Targeting

Online surveys , questionnaires , and polls are the preferred data collection tools. Data that is obtained from consumers is then statistically, mathematically and numerically evaluated to understand consumer preference.

Learn more: How to carry out Quantitative Research

Consumer Research Process

The process of consumer research started as an extension of the process of market research . As the findings of market research is used to improve the decision-making capacity of an organization or business, similar is with consumer research.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research industry

The consumer research process can be broken down into the following steps:

Develop research objectives: The first step to the consumer research process is to clearly define the research objective, the purpose of research, why is the research being conducted, to understand what? A clear statement of purpose can help emphasize the purpose.
Collect Secondary data: Collect secondary data first, it helps in understanding if research has been conducted earlier and if there are any pieces of evidence related to the subject matter that can be used by an organization to make informed decisions regarding consumers.
Primary Research: In primary research organizations or businesses collect their own data or employ a third party to collect data on their behalf. This research makes use of various data collection methods ( qualitative and quantitative ) that helps researchers collect data first hand.

LEARN ABOUT: Best Data Collection Tools

Collect and analyze data: Data is collected and analyzed and inference is drawn to understand consumer behavior and purchase pattern.
Prepare report: Finally, a report is prepared for all the findings by analyzing data collected so that organizations are able to make informed decisions and think of all probabilities related to consumer behavior. By putting the study into practice, organizations can become customer-centric and manufacture products or render services that will help them achieve excellent customer satisfaction.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

After Consumer Research Process

Once you have been able to successfully carry out the consumer research process , investigate and break paradigms. What consumers need should be a part of market research design and should be carried out regularly. Consumer research provides more in-depth information about the needs, wants, expectations and behavior analytics of clients.

By identifying this information successfully, strategies that are used to attract consumers can be made better and businesses can make a profit by knowing what consumers want exactly. It is also important to understand and know thoroughly the buying behavior of consumers to know their attitude towards brands and products.

The identification of consumer needs, as well as their preferences, allows a business to adapt to new business and develop a detailed marketing plan that will surely work. The following pointers can help. Completing this process will help you:

Attract more customers
Set the best price for your products
Create the right marketing message
Increase the quantity that satisfies the demand of its clients
Increase the frequency of visits to their clients
Increase your sales
Reduce costs
Refine your approach to the customer service process .

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research

Consumer Research Methods

Consumers are the reason for a business to run and flourish. Gathering enough information about consumers is never going to hurt any business, in fact, it will only add up to the information a business would need to associate with its consumers and manufacture products that will help their business refine and grow.

Following are consumer research methods that ensure you are in tandem with the consumers and understand their needs:

The studies of customer satisfaction

One can determine the degree of satisfaction of consumers in relation to the quality of products through:

Informal methods such as conversations with staff about products and services according to the dashboards.
Past and present questionnaires/ surveys that consumers might have filled that identify their needs.

T he investigation of the consumer decision process

It is very interesting to know the consumer’s needs, what motivates them to buy, and how is the decision-making process carried out, though:

Deploying relevant surveys and receiving responses from a target intended audience .

Proof of concept

Businesses can test how well accepted their marketing ideas are by:

The use of surveys to find out if current or potential consumer see your products as a rational and useful benefit.
Conducting personal interviews or focus group sessions with clients to understand how they respond to marketing ideas.

Knowing your market position

You can find out how your current and potential consumers see your products, and how they compare it with your competitors by:

Sales figures talk louder than any other aspect, once you get to know the comparison in the sales figures it is easy to understand your market position within the market segment.
Attitudes of consumers while making a purchase also helps in understanding the market hold.

Branding tests and user experience

You can determine how your customers feel with their brands and product names by:

The use of focus groups and surveys designed to assess emotional responses to your products and brands.
The participation of researchers to study the performance of their brand in the market through existing and available brand measurement research.

Price changes

You can investigate how your customers accept or not the price changes by using formulas that measure the revenue – multiplying the number of items you sold, by the price of each item. These tests allow you to calculate if your total income increases or decreases after making the price changes by:

Calculation of changes in the quantities of products demanded by their customers, together with changes in the price of the product.
Measure the impact of the price on the demand of the product according to the needs of the client.

Social media monitoring

Another way to measure feedback and your customer service is by controlling your commitment to social media and feedback. Social networks (especially Facebook) are becoming a common element of the commercialization of many businesses and are increasingly used by their customers to provide information on customer needs, service experiences, share and file customer complaints . It can also be used to run surveys and test concepts. If handled well, it can be one of the most powerful research tools of the client management . I also recommend reading: How to conduct market research through social networks.

Customer Research Questions

Asking the right question is the most important part of conducting research. Moreover, if it’s consumer research, questions should be asked in a manner to gather maximum insights from consumers. Here are some consumer research questions for your next research:

Who in your household takes purchasing decisions?
Where do you go looking for ______________ (product)?
How long does it take you to make a buying decision?
How far are you willing to travel to buy ___________(product)?
What features do you look for when you purchase ____________ (product)?
What motivates you to buy_____________ (product)?

See more consumer research survey questions:

Customer satisfaction surveys

Voice of customer surveys

Product surveys

Service evaluation surveys

Mortgage Survey Questions

Importance of Consumer Research

Launching a product or offering new services can be quite an exciting time for a brand. However, there are a lot of aspects that need to be taken into consideration while a band has something new to offer to consumers.

LEARN ABOUT: User Experience Research

Here is where consumer research plays a pivotal role. The importance of consumer research cannot be emphasized more. Following points summarizes the importance of consumer research:

To understand market readiness: However good a product or service may be, consumers have to be ready to accept it. Creating a product requires investments which in return expect ROI from product or service purchases. However, if a market is mature enough to accept this utility, it has a low chance of succeeding by tapping into market potential . Therefore, before launching a product or service, organizations need to conduct consumer research, to understand if people are ready to spend on the utility it provides.
Identify target consumers: By conducting consumer research, brands and organizations can understand their target market based on geographic segmentation and know who exactly is interested in buying their products. According to the data or feedback received from the consumer, research brands can even customize their marketing and branding approach to better appeal to the specific consumer segment.

LEARN ABOUT: Marketing Insight

Product/Service updates through feedback: Conducting consumer research, provides valuable feedback from consumers about the attributes and features of products and services. This feedback enables organizations to understand consumer perception and provide a more suitable solution based on actual market needs which helps them tweak their offering to perfection.

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The past, present, and future of consumer research

Published: 13 June 2020
Volume 31 , pages 137–149, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

Maayan S. Malter ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0383-7925 1 ,
Morris B. Holbrook 1 ,
Barbara E. Kahn 2 ,
Jeffrey R. Parker 3 &
Donald R. Lehmann 1

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In this article, we document the evolution of research trends (concepts, methods, and aims) within the field of consumer behavior, from the time of its early development to the present day, as a multidisciplinary area of research within marketing. We describe current changes in retailing and real-world consumption and offer suggestions on how to use observations of consumption phenomena to generate new and interesting consumer behavior research questions. Consumption continues to change with technological advancements and shifts in consumers’ values and goals. We cannot know the exact shape of things to come, but we polled a sample of leading scholars and summarize their predictions on where the field may be headed in the next twenty years.

What is Qualitative in Qualitative Research

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

Beginning in the late 1950s, business schools shifted from descriptive and practitioner-focused studies to more theoretically driven and academically rigorous research (Dahl et al. 1959 ). As the field expanded from an applied form of economics to embrace theories and methodologies from psychology, sociology, anthropology, and statistics, there was an increased emphasis on understanding the thoughts, desires, and experiences of individual consumers. For academic marketing, this meant that research not only focused on the decisions and strategies of marketing managers but also on the decisions and thought processes on the other side of the market—customers.

Since then, the academic study of consumer behavior has evolved and incorporated concepts and methods, not only from marketing at large but also from related social science disciplines, and from the ever-changing landscape of real-world consumption behavior. Its position as an area of study within a larger discipline that comprises researchers from diverse theoretical backgrounds and methodological training has stirred debates over its identity. One article describes consumer behavior as a multidisciplinary subdiscipline of marketing “characterized by the study of people operating in a consumer role involving acquisition, consumption, and disposition of marketplace products, services, and experiences” (MacInnis and Folkes 2009 , p. 900).

This article reviews the evolution of the field of consumer behavior over the past half century, describes its current status, and predicts how it may evolve over the next twenty years. Our review is by no means a comprehensive history of the field (see Schumann et al. 2008 ; Rapp and Hill 2015 ; Wang et al. 2015 ; Wilkie and Moore 2003 , to name a few) but rather focuses on a few key thematic developments. Though we observe many major shifts during this period, certain questions and debates have persisted: Does consumer behavior research need to be relevant to marketing managers or is there intrinsic value from studying the consumer as a project pursued for its own sake? What counts as consumption: only consumption from traditional marketplace transactions or also consumption in a broader sense of non-marketplace interactions? Which are the most appropriate theoretical traditions and methodological tools for addressing questions in consumer behavior research?

2 A brief history of consumer research over the past sixty years—1960 to 2020

In 1969, the Association for Consumer Research was founded and a yearly conference to share marketing research specifically from the consumer’s perspective was instituted. This event marked the culmination of the growing interest in the topic by formalizing it as an area of research within marketing (consumer psychology had become a formalized branch of psychology within the APA in 1960). So, what was consumer behavior before 1969? Scanning current consumer-behavior doctoral seminar syllabi reveals few works predating 1969, with most of those coming from psychology and economics, namely Herbert Simon’s A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice (1955), Abraham Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation (1943), and Ernest Dichter’s Handbook of Consumer Motivations (1964). In short, research that illuminated and informed our understanding of consumer behavior prior to 1969 rarely focused on marketing-specific topics, much less consumers or consumption (Dichter’s handbook being a notable exception). Yet, these works were crucial to the rise of consumer behavior research because, in the decades after 1969, there was a shift within academic marketing to thinking about research from a behavioral or decision science perspective (Wilkie and Moore 2003 ). The following section details some ways in which this shift occurred. We draw on a framework proposed by the philosopher Larry Laudan ( 1986 ), who distinguished among three inter-related aspects of scientific inquiry—namely, concepts (the relevant ideas, theories, hypotheses, and constructs); methods (the techniques employed to test and validate these concepts); and aims (the purposes or goals that motivate the investigation).

2.1 Key concepts in the late - 1960s

During the late-1960s, we tended to view the buyer as a computer-like machine for processing information according to various formal rules that embody economic rationality to form a preference for one or another option in order to arrive at a purchase decision. This view tended to manifest itself in a couple of conspicuous ways. The first was a model of buyer behavior introduced by John Howard in 1963 in the second edition of his marketing textbook and quickly adopted by virtually every theorist working in our field—including, Howard and Sheth (of course), Engel-Kollat-&-Blackwell, Franco Nicosia, Alan Andreasen, Jim Bettman, and Joel Cohen. Howard’s great innovation—which he based on a scheme that he had found in the work of Plato (namely, the linkages among Cognition, Affect, and Conation)—took the form of a boxes-and-arrows formulation heavily influenced by the approach to organizational behavior theory that Howard (University of Pittsburgh) had picked up from Herbert Simon (Carnegie Melon University). The model represented a chain of events

where I = inputs of information (from advertising, word-of-mouth, brand features, etc.); C = cognitions (beliefs or perceptions about a brand); A = Affect (liking or preference for the brand); B = behavior (purchase of the brand); and S = satisfaction (post-purchase evaluation of the brand that feeds back onto earlier stages of the sequence, according to a learning model in which reinforced behavior tends to be repeated). This formulation lay at the heart of Howard’s work, which he updated, elaborated on, and streamlined over the remainder of his career. Importantly, it informed virtually every buyer-behavior model that blossomed forth during the last half of the twentieth century.

To represent the link between cognitions and affect, buyer-behavior researchers used various forms of the multi-attribute attitude model (MAAM), originally proposed by psychologists such as Fishbein and Rosenberg as part of what Fishbein and Ajzen ( 1975 ) called the theory of reasoned action. Under MAAM, cognitions (beliefs about brand attributes) are weighted by their importance and summed to create an explanation or prediction of affect (liking for a brand or preference for one brand versus another), which in turn determines behavior (choice of a brand or intention to purchase a brand). This took the work of economist Kelvin Lancaster (with whom Howard interacted), which assumed attitude was based on objective attributes, and extended it to include subjective ones (Lancaster 1966 ; Ratchford 1975 ). Overall, the set of concepts that prevailed in the late-1960s assumed the buyer exhibited economic rationality and acted as a computer-like information-processing machine when making purchase decisions.

2.2 Favored methods in the late-1960s

The methods favored during the late-1960s tended to be almost exclusively neo-positivistic in nature. That is, buyer-behavior research adopted the kinds of methodological rigor that we associate with the physical sciences and the hypothetico-deductive approaches advocated by the neo-positivistic philosophers of science.

Thus, the accepted approaches tended to be either experimental or survey based. For example, numerous laboratory studies tested variations of the MAAM and focused on questions about how to measure beliefs, how to weight the beliefs, how to combine the weighted beliefs, and so forth (e.g., Beckwith and Lehmann 1973 ). Here again, these assumed a rational economic decision-maker who processed information something like a computer.

Seeking rigor, buyer-behavior studies tended to be quantitative in their analyses, employing multivariate statistics, structural equation models, multidimensional scaling, conjoint analysis, and other mathematically sophisticated techniques. For example, various attempts to test the ICABS formulation developed simultaneous (now called structural) equation models such as those deployed by Farley and Ring ( 1970 , 1974 ) to test the Howard and Sheth ( 1969 ) model and by Beckwith and Lehmann ( 1973 ) to measure halo effects.

2.3 Aims in the late-1960s

During this time period, buyer-behavior research was still considered a subdivision of marketing research, the purpose of which was to provide insights useful to marketing managers in making strategic decisions. Essentially, every paper concluded with a section on “Implications for Marketing Managers.” Authors who failed to conform to this expectation could generally count on having their work rejected by leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research ( JMR ) and the Journal of Marketing ( JM ).

2.4 Summary—the three R’s in the late-1960s

Starting in the late-1960s to the early-1980s, virtually every buyer-behavior researcher followed the traditional approach to concepts, methods, and aims, now encapsulated under what we might call the three R’s —namely, rationality , rigor , and relevance . However, as we transitioned into the 1980s and beyond, that changed as some (though by no means all) consumer researchers began to expand their approaches and to evolve different perspectives.

2.5 Concepts after 1980

In some circles, the traditional emphasis on the buyer’s rationality—that is, a view of the buyer as a rational-economic, decision-oriented, information-processing, computer-like machine for making choices—began to evolve in at least two primary ways.

First, behavioral economics (originally studied in marketing under the label Behavioral Decision Theory)—developed in psychology by Kahneman and Tversky, in economics by Thaler, and applied in marketing by a number of forward-thinking theorists (e.g., Eric Johnson, Jim Bettman, John Payne, Itamar Simonson, Jay Russo, Joel Huber, and more recently, Dan Ariely)—challenged the rationality of consumers as decision-makers. It was shown that numerous commonly used decision heuristics depart from rational choice and are exceptions to the traditional assumptions of economic rationality. This trend shed light on understanding consumer financial decision-making (Prelec and Loewenstein 1998 ; Gourville 1998 ; Lynch Jr 2011 ) and how to develop “nudges” to help consumers make better decisions for their personal finances (summarized in Johnson et al. 2012 ).

Second, the emerging experiential view (anticipated by Alderson, Levy, and others; developed by Holbrook and Hirschman, and embellished by Schmitt, Pine, and Gilmore, and countless followers) regarded consumers as flesh-and-blood human beings (rather than as information-processing computer-like machines), focused on hedonic aspects of consumption, and expanded the concepts embodied by ICABS (Table 1 ).

2.6 Methods after 1980

The two burgeoning areas of research—behavioral economics and experiential theories—differed in their methodological approaches. The former relied on controlled randomized experiments with a focus on decision strategies and behavioral outcomes. For example, experiments tested the process by which consumers evaluate options using information display boards and “Mouselab” matrices of aspects and attributes (Payne et al. 1988 ). This school of thought also focused on behavioral dependent measures, such as choice (Huber et al. 1982 ; Simonson 1989 ; Iyengar and Lepper 2000 ).

The latter was influenced by post-positivistic philosophers of science—such as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Richard Rorty—and approaches expanded to include various qualitative techniques (interpretive, ethnographic, humanistic, and even introspective methods) not previously prominent in the field of consumer research. These included:

Interpretive approaches —such as those drawing on semiotics and hermeneutics—in an effort to gain a richer understanding of the symbolic meanings involved in consumption experiences;

Ethnographic approaches — borrowed from cultural anthropology—such as those illustrated by the influential Consumer Behavior Odyssey (Belk et al. 1989 ) and its discoveries about phenomena related to sacred aspects of consumption or the deep meanings of collections and other possessions;

Humanistic approaches —such as those borrowed from cultural studies or from literary criticism and more recently gathered together under the general heading of consumer culture theory ( CCT );

Introspective or autoethnographic approaches —such as those associated with a method called subjective personal introspection ( SPI ) that various consumer researchers like Sidney Levy and Steve Gould have pursued to gain insights based on their own private lives.

These qualitative approaches tended not to appear in the more traditional journals such as the Journal of Marketing , Journal of Marketing Research , or Marketing Science . However, newer journals such as Consumption, Markets, & Culture and Marketing Theory began to publish papers that drew on the various interpretive, ethnographic, humanistic, or introspective methods.

2.7 Aims after 1980

In 1974, consumer research finally got its own journal with the launch of the Journal of Consumer Research ( JCR ). The early editors of JCR —especially Bob Ferber, Hal Kassarjian, and Jim Bettman—held a rather divergent attitude about the importance or even the desirability of managerial relevance as a key goal of consumer studies. Under their influence, some researchers began to believe that consumer behavior is a phenomenon worthy of study in its own right—purely for the purpose of understanding it better. The journal incorporated articles from an array of methodologies: quantitative (both secondary data analysis and experimental techniques) and qualitative. The “right” balance between theoretical insight and substantive relevance—which are not in inherent conflict—is a matter of debate to this day and will likely continue to be debated well into the future.

2.8 Summary—the three I’s after 1980

In sum, beginning in the early-1980s, consumer research branched out. Much of the work in consumer studies remained within the earlier tradition of the three R’s—that is, rationality (an information-processing decision-oriented buyer), rigor (neo-positivistic experimental designs and quantitative techniques), and relevance (usefulness to marketing managers). Nonetheless, many studies embraced enlarged views of the three major aspects that might be called the three I’s —that is, irrationality (broadened perspectives that incorporate illogical, heuristic, experiential, or hedonic aspects of consumption), interpretation (various qualitative or “postmodern” approaches), and intrinsic motivation (the joy of pursuing a managerially irrelevant consumer study purely for the sake of satisfying one’s own curiosity, without concern for whether it does or does not help a marketing practitioner make a bigger profit).

3 The present—the consumer behavior field today

3.1 present concepts.

In recent years, technological changes have significantly influenced the nature of consumption as the customer journey has transitioned to include more interaction on digital platforms that complements interaction in physical stores. This shift poses a major conceptual challenge in understanding if and how these technological changes affect consumption. Does the medium through which consumption occurs fundamentally alter the psychological and social processes identified in earlier research? In addition, this shift allows us to collect more data at different stages of the customer journey, which further allows us to analyze behavior in ways that were not previously available.

Revisiting the ICABS framework, many of the previous concepts are still present, but we are now addressing them through a lens of technological change (Table 2 )

. In recent years, a number of concepts (e.g., identity, beliefs/lay theories, affect as information, self-control, time, psychological ownership, search for meaning and happiness, social belonging, creativity, and status) have emerged as integral factors that influence and are influenced by consumption. To better understand these concepts, a number of influential theories from social psychology have been adopted into consumer behavior research. Self-construal (Markus and Kitayama 1991 ), regulatory focus (Higgins 1998 ), construal level (Trope and Liberman 2010 ), and goal systems (Kruglanski et al. 2002 ) all provide social-cognition frameworks through which consumer behavior researchers study the psychological processes behind consumer behavior. This “adoption” of social psychological theories into consumer behavior is a symbiotic relationship that further enhances the theories. Tory Higgins happily stated that he learned more about his own theories from the work of marketing academics (he cited Angela Lee and Michel Pham) in further testing and extending them.

3.2 Present Methods

Not only have technological advancements changed the nature of consumption but they have also significantly influenced the methods used in consumer research by adding both new sources of data and improved analytical tools (Ding et al. 2020 ). Researchers continue to use traditional methods from psychology in empirical research (scale development, laboratory experiments, quantitative analyses, etc.) and interpretive approaches in qualitative research. Additionally, online experiments using participants from panels such as Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific have become commonplace in the last decade. While they raise concerns about the quality of the data and about the external validity of the results, these online experiments have greatly increased the speed and decreased the cost of collecting data, so researchers continue to use them, albeit with some caution. Reminiscent of the discussion in the 1970s and 1980s about the use of student subjects, the projectability of the online responses and of an increasingly conditioned “professional” group of online respondents (MTurkers) is a major concern.

Technology has also changed research methodology. Currently, there is a large increase in the use of secondary data thanks to the availability of Big Data about online and offline behavior. Methods in computer science have advanced our ability to analyze large corpuses of unstructured data (text, voice, visual images) in an efficient and rigorous way and, thus, to tap into a wealth of nuanced thoughts, feelings, and behaviors heretofore only accessible to qualitative researchers through laboriously conducted content analyses. There are also new neuro-marketing techniques like eye-tracking, fMRI’s, body arousal measures (e.g., heart rate, sweat), and emotion detectors that allow us to measure automatic responses. Lastly, there has been an increase in large-scale field experiments that can be run in online B2C marketplaces.

3.3 Present Aims

Along with a focus on real-world observations and data, there is a renewed emphasis on managerial relevance. Countless conference addresses and editorials in JCR , JCP , and other journals have emphasized the importance of making consumer research useful outside of academia—that is, to help companies, policy makers, and consumers. For instance, understanding how the “new” consumer interacts over time with other consumers and companies in the current marketplace is a key area for future research. As global and social concerns become more salient in all aspects of life, issues of long-term sustainability, social equality, and ethical business practices have also become more central research topics. Fortunately, despite this emphasis on relevance, theoretical contributions and novel ideas are still highly valued. An appropriate balance of theory and practice has become the holy grail of consumer research.

The effects of the current trends in real-world consumption will increase in magnitude with time as more consumers are digitally native. Therefore, a better understanding of current consumer behavior can give us insights and help predict how it will continue to evolve in the years to come.

4 The future—the consumer behavior field in 2040

The other papers use 2030 as a target year but we asked our survey respondents to make predictions for 2040 and thus we have a different future target year.

Niels Bohr once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Indeed, it would be a fool’s errand for a single person to hazard a guess about the state of the consumer behavior field twenty years from now. Therefore, predictions from 34 active consumer researchers were collected to address this task. Here, we briefly summarize those predictions.

4.1 Future Concepts

While few respondents proffered guesses regarding specific concepts that would be of interest twenty years from now, many suggested broad topics and trends they expected to see in the field. Expectations for topics could largely be grouped into three main areas. Many suspected that we will be examining essentially the same core topics, perhaps at a finer-grained level, from different perspectives or in ways that we currently cannot utilize due to methodological limitations (more on methods below). A second contingent predicted that much research would center on the impending crises the world faces today, most mentioning environmental and social issues (the COVID-19 pandemic had not yet begun when these predictions were collected and, unsurprisingly, was not anticipated by any of our respondents). The last group, citing the widely expected profound impact of AI on consumers’ lives, argued that AI and other technology-related topics will be dominant subjects in consumer research circa 2040.

While the topic of technology is likely to be focal in the field, our current expectations for the impact of technology on consumers’ lives are narrower than it should be. Rather than merely offering innumerable conveniences and experiences, it seems likely that technology will begin to be integrated into consumers’ thoughts, identities, and personal relationships—probably sooner than we collectively expect. The integration of machines into humans’ bodies and lives will present the field with an expanding list of research questions that do not exist today. For example, how will the concepts of the self, identity, privacy, and goal pursuit change when web-connected technology seamlessly integrates with human consciousness and cognition? Major questions will also need to be answered regarding philosophy of mind, ethics, and social inequality. We suspect that the impact of technology on consumers and consumer research will be far broader than most consumer-behavior researchers anticipate.

As for broader trends within consumer research, there were two camps: (1) those who expect (or hope) that dominant theories (both current and yet to be developed) will become more integrated and comprehensive and (2) those who expect theoretical contributions to become smaller and smaller, to the point of becoming trivial. Both groups felt that current researchers are filling smaller cracks than before, but disagreed on how this would ultimately be resolved.

4.2 Future Methods

As was the case with concepts, respondents’ expectations regarding consumer-research methodologies in 2030 can also be divided into three broad baskets. Unsurprisingly, many indicated that we would be using many technologies not currently available or in wide use. Perhaps more surprising was that most cited the use of technology such as AI, machine-learning algorithms, and robots in designing—as opposed to executing or analyzing—experiments. (Some did point to the use of technologies such as virtual reality in the actual execution of experiments.) The second camp indicated that a focus on reliable and replicable results (discussed further below) will encourage a greater tendency for pre-registering studies, more use of “Big Data,” and a demand for more studies per paper (versus more papers per topic, which some believe is a more fruitful direction). Finally, the third lot indicated that “real data” would be in high demand, thereby necessitating the use of incentive-compatible, consequential dependent variables and a greater prevalence of field studies in consumer research.

As a result, young scholars would benefit from developing a “toolkit” of methodologies for collecting and analyzing the abundant new data of interest to the field. This includes (but is not limited to) a deep understanding of designing and implementing field studies (Gerber and Green 2012 ), data analysis software (R, Python, etc.), text mining and analysis (Humphreys and Wang 2018 ), and analytical tools for other unstructured forms of data such as image and sound. The replication crisis in experimental research means that future scholars will also need to take a more critical approach to validity (internal, external, construct), statistical power, and significance in their work.

4.3 Future Aims

While there was an air of existential concern about the future of the field, most agreed that the trend will be toward increasing the relevance and reliability of consumer research. Specifically, echoing calls from journals and thought leaders, the respondents felt that papers will need to offer more actionable implications for consumers, managers, or policy makers. However, few thought that this increased focus would come at the expense of theoretical insights, suggesting a more demanding overall standard for consumer research in 2040. Likewise, most felt that methodological transparency, open access to data and materials, and study pre-registration will become the norm as the field seeks to allay concerns about the reliability and meaningfulness of its research findings.

4.4 Summary - Future research questions and directions

Despite some well-justified pessimism, the future of consumer research is as bright as ever. As we revised this paper amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that many aspects of marketplace behavior, consumption, and life in general will change as a result of this unprecedented global crisis. Given this, and the radical technological, social, and environmental changes that loom on the horizon, consumer researchers will have a treasure trove of topics to tackle in the next ten years, many of which will carry profound substantive importance. While research approaches will evolve, the core goals will remain consistent—namely, to generate theoretically insightful, empirically supported, and substantively impactful research (Table 3 ).

5 Conclusion

At any given moment in time, the focal concepts, methods, and aims of consumer-behavior scholarship reflect both the prior development of the field and trends in the larger scientific community. However, despite shifting trends, the core of the field has remained constant—namely, to understand the motivations, thought processes, and experiences of individuals as they consume goods, services, information, and other offerings, and to use these insights to develop interventions to improve both marketing strategy for firms and consumer welfare for individuals and groups. Amidst the excitement of new technologies, social trends, and consumption experiences, it is important to look back and remind ourselves of the insights the field has already generated. Effectively integrating these past findings with new observations and fresh research will help the field advance our understanding of consumer behavior.

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Malter, M.S., Holbrook, M.B., Kahn, B.E. et al. The past, present, and future of consumer research. Mark Lett 31 , 137–149 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-020-09526-8

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10 Essential Methods for Effective Consumer and Market Research

When it comes to understanding the world around you, market research is an essential step.

We live in a world that’s overflowing with information. Sifting through all the noise to extract the most relevant insights on a certain market or audience can be tough.

That’s where market research comes in – it’s a way for brands and researchers to collect information from target markets and audiences.

Once reliant on traditional methods like focus groups or surveys, market research is now at a crossroads. Newer tools for extracting insights, like social listening tools, have joined the array of market research techniques available.

Here, we break down what market research is and the different methods you can choose from to make the most of it.

What is market research, and why is it critical for you as a marketer?

Market research involves collecting and analyzing data about a specific industry, market, or audience to inform strategic decision-making. It offers marketers valuable insights into the industry, market trends, consumer preferences, competition, and opportunities, enabling businesses to refine their strategies effectively.

By conducting market research, organizations can identify unmet needs, assess product demands, enhance value propositions, and create marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience.

This practice serves as a compass, guiding businesses in making data-driven decisions for successful product launches, improved customer relationships, and a stronger positioning in the business landscape.

For marketers and insights professionals, market research is an indispensable tool. It helps them make smarter decisions and achieve growth and success in the market.

These 10 market research methods form the backbone of effective market research strategies.

Continue reading or jump directly to each method by tapping the link below.

Focus groups
Consumer research with social media listening
Experiments and field trials
Observation
Competitive analysis
Public domain data
Buy research
Analyze sales data

Use of primary vs secondary market research

Market research can be split into two distinct sections: primary and secondary. These are the two main types of market research.

They can also be known as field and desk, respectively (although this terminology feels out of date, as plenty of primary research can be carried out from your desk).

Primary (field) research

Primary market research is research you carry out yourself. Examples of primary market research methods include running your own focus groups or conducting surveys. These are some of the key methods of consumer research. The ‘field’ part refers to going out into the field to get data.

Secondary (desk) research

Secondary market research is research carried out by other people that you want to use. Examples of secondary market research methods include studies carried out by researchers or financial data released by companies.

10 effective methods to do market research

The methods in this list cover both areas. Which ones you want to use will depend on your goals. Have a browse through and see what fits.

1. Focus groups

It’s a simple concept but one that can be hard to put into practice.

You bring together a group of individuals into a room, record their discussions, and ask them questions about various topics you are researching. For some, it’ll be new product ideas. For others, it might be views on a political candidate.

From these discussions, the organizer will try to pull out some insights or use them to judge the wider society’s view on something. The participants will generally be chosen based on certain criteria, such as demographics, interests, or occupations.

A focus group’s strength is in the natural conversation and discussion that can take place between participants (if they’re done right).

Compared to a questionnaire or survey with a rigid set of questions, a focus group can go off on tangents the organizer could not have predicted (and therefore not planned questions for). This can be good in that unexpected topics can arise; or bad if the aims of the research are to answer a very particular set of questions.

The nature of the discussion is important to recognize as a potential factor that skews the resulting data. Focus groups can encourage participants to talk about things they might not have otherwise, and others might impact the group. This can also affect unstructured one-on-one interviews.

In survey research, survey questions are given to respondents (in person, over the phone, by email, or via an online form). Questions can be close-ended or open-ended. As far as close-ended questions go, there are many different types:

Dichotomous (two choices, such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’)
Multiple choice
Rating scale
Likert scale (common version is five options between ‘strongly agree’ and ‘strongly disagree’)
Matrix (options presented on a grid)
Demographic (asking for information such as gender, age, or occupation)

Surveys are massively versatile because of the range of question formats. Knowing how to mix and match them to get what you need takes consideration and thought. Different questions need the right setup.

It’s also about how you ask. Good questions lead to good analysis. Writing clear, concise questions that abstain from vague expressions and don’t lead respondents down a certain path can help your results reflect the true colors of respondents.

There are a ton of different ways to conduct surveys as well, from creating your own from scratch or using tools that do lots of the heavy lifting for you.

3. Consumer research with social media listening

Social media has reached a point where it is seamlessly integrated into our lives. And because it is a digital extension of ourselves, people freely express their opinions, thoughts, and hot takes on social media.

Because people share so much content on social media and the sharing is so instant, social media is a treasure trove for market research. There is plenty of data to monitor , tap into, and dissect.

By using a social listening tool, like Consumer Research , researchers can identify topics of interest and then analyze relevant social posts. For example, they can track brand mentions and what consumers are saying about the products owned by that brand. These are real-world consumer research examples.

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Social media listening democratizes insights, and is especially useful for market research because of the vast amount of unfiltered information available. Because it’s unprompted, you can be fairly sure that what’s shared is an accurate account of what the person really cares about and thinks (as opposed to them being given a subject to dwell on in the presence of a researcher).

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Your complete social listening guide.

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4. Interviews

In interviews, the interviewer speaks directly with the respondent. This type of market research method is more personal, allowing for communication and clarification, making it good for open-ended questions. Furthermore, interviews enable the interviewer to go beyond surface-level responses and investigate deeper.

However, the drawback is that interviews can be time-intensive and costly. Those who opt for this method will need to figure out how to allocate their resources effectively. You also need to be careful with leading or poor questions that lead to useless results. Here’s a good introduction to leading questions .

5. Experiments and field trials

Field experiments are conducted in the participants’ environment. They rely on the independent variable and the dependent variable – the researcher controls the independent variable in order to test its impact on the dependent variable. The key here is to establish whether there’s causality.

For example, take Hofling’s experiment that tested obedience, conducted in a hospital setting. The point was to test if nurses followed authority figures (doctors) and if the authority figures’ rules violated standards (The dependent variable being the nurses, the independent variable being a fake doctor calling up and ordering the nurses to administer treatment.)

According to Simply Psychology , there are key strengths and limitations to this method.

The assessment reads:

Strength: Behavior in a field experiment is more likely to reflect real life because of its natural setting, i.e., higher ecological validity than a lab experiment.
Strength: There is less likelihood of demand characteristics affecting the results, as participants may not know they are being studied. This occurs when the study is covert.
Limitation: There is less control over extraneous variables that might bias the results. This makes it difficult for another researcher to replicate the study in exactly the same way.

There are also massive ethical implications for these kinds of experiments and experiments in general (especially if people are unaware of their involvement). Don’t take this lightly, and be sure to read up on all the guidelines that apply to the region where you’re based.

6. Observation

Observational market research is a qualitative research method where the researcher observes their subjects in a natural or controlled environment. This method is much like being a fly on the wall, but the fly takes notes and analyzes them later. In observational market research, subjects are likely to behave naturally, which reveals their true selves.

They are not under much pressure. However, if they’re aware of the observation, they can act differently.

This type of research applies well to retail, where the researcher can observe shoppers’ behavior by day of the week, by season, when discounts are offered, and more. However, observational research can be time-consuming, and researchers have no control over the environments they research.

7. Competitive analysis

Competitive analysis is a highly strategic and specific form of market research in which the researchers analyze their company’s competitors. It is critical to see how your brand stacks up to rivals.

Competitive analysis starts by defining the product, service, brand, and market segment. There are different topics to compare your firm with your competitors. It could be from a marketing perspective: content produced, SEO structure, PR coverage, and social media presence and engagement. It can also be from a product perspective: types of offerings, pricing structure. SWOT analysis is key in assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

We’ve written a whole blog post on this tactic, which you can read here .

8. Public domain data

The internet is a wondrous place. Public data exists for those strapped for resources or simply seeking to support their research with more data. With more and more data produced every year, the question about access and curation becomes increasingly prominent – that’s why researchers and librarians are keen on open data.

Plenty of different types of open data are useful for market research: government databases, polling data, “fact tanks” like Pew Research Center, and more.

Furthermore, APIs grant developers programmatic access to applications. A lot of this data is free, which is a real bonus.

9. Buy research

Money can’t buy everything, but it can buy research. Subscriptions exist for those who want to buy relevant industry and research reports. Sites like Euromonitor, Statista, Mintel, and BCC Research host a litany of reports for purchase, oftentimes with the option of a single-user license or a subscription.

This can be a massive time saver, and you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting from the very beginning. You’ll also get all your data in a format that makes sense, saving you effort in cleaning and organizing.

10. Analyze sales data

Sales data is like a puzzle piece that can help reveal the full picture of market research insights. Essentially, it indicates the results. Paired with other market research data, sales data helps researchers better understand actions and consequences. Understanding your customers, their buying habits, and how they change over time is important.

This research will be limited to customers, and it’s important to keep that in mind. Nevertheless, the value of this data should not be underestimated. If you’re not already tracking customer data, there’s no time like the present.

Choosing the right market research method for your strategy

Not all methods will be right for your situation or your business. Once you’ve looked through the list and seen some that take your fancy, spend more time researching each option.You’ll want to consider what you want to achieve, what data you’ll need, the pros and cons of each method, the costs of conducting the research, and the cost of analyzing the results.

Get it right, and it’ll be worth all the effort.

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Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

Updated: 02/21/24

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

Free Market Research Kit

SWOT Analysis Template
Survey Template
Focus Group Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
Focus Groups
Product/ Service Use Research
Observation-Based Research
Buyer Persona Research
Market Segmentation Research
Pricing Research
Competitive Analysis Research
Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
Brand Awareness Research
Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

Define your buyer persona.
Identify a persona group to engage.
Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
List your primary competitors.
Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

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How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research

From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.

Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples.

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A comprehensive (and successful) business strategy is not complete without some form of market research—you can’t make informed and profitable business decisions without truly understanding your customer base and the current market trends that drive your business.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct quick, effective market research using an approach called 'lean market research'. It’s easier than you might think, and it can be done at any stage in a product’s lifecycle.

How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps

What is market research, why is market research so valuable, advantages of lean market research, 4 common market research methods, 5 common market research questions, market research faqs.

We’ll jump right into our 4-step approach to lean market research. To show you how it’s done in the real world, each step includes a practical example from Smallpdf , a Swiss company that used lean market research to reduce their tool’s error rate by 75% and boost their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) by 1%.

Research your market the lean way...

From on-page surveys to user interviews, Hotjar has the tools to help you scope out your market and get to know your customers—without breaking the bank.

The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours.

1. Create simple user personas

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data from people who use websites and products similar to your own. Start by defining broad user categories, then elaborate on them later to further segment your customer base and determine your ideal customer profile .

How to get the data: use on-page or emailed surveys and interviews to understand your users and what drives them to your business.

How to do it right: whatever survey or interview questions you ask, they should answer the following questions about the customer:

Who are they?

What is their main goal?

What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?

Pitfalls to avoid:

Don’t ask too many questions! Keep it to five or less, otherwise you’ll inundate them and they’ll stop answering thoughtfully.

Don’t worry too much about typical demographic questions like age or background. Instead, focus on the role these people play (as it relates to your product) and their goals.

How Smallpdf did it: Smallpdf ran an on-page survey for a couple of weeks and received 1,000 replies. They learned that many of their users were administrative assistants, students, and teachers.

#One of the five survey questions Smallpdf asked their users

Next, they used the survey results to create simple user personas like this one for admins:

Who are they? Administrative Assistants.

What is their main goal? Creating Word documents from a scanned, hard-copy document or a PDF where the source file was lost.

What is their main barrier to achieving it? Converting a scanned PDF doc to a Word file.

💡Pro tip: Smallpdf used Hotjar Surveys to run their user persona survey. Our survey tool helped them avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and find out who their users really are, in their own words.

You can design a survey and start running it in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop builder. Customize your survey to fit your needs, from a sleek one-question pop-up survey to a fully branded questionnaire sent via email.

We've also created 40+ free survey templates that you can start collecting data with, including a user persona survey like the one Smallpdf used.

2. Conduct observational research

Observational research involves taking notes while watching someone use your product (or a similar product).

Overt vs. covert observation

Overt observation involves asking customers if they’ll let you watch them use your product. This method is often used for user testing and it provides a great opportunity for collecting live product or customer feedback .

Covert observation means studying users ‘in the wild’ without them knowing. This method works well if you sell a type of product that people use regularly, and it offers the purest observational data because people often behave differently when they know they’re being watched.

Tips to do it right:

Record an entry in your field notes, along with a timestamp, each time an action or event occurs.

Make note of the users' workflow, capturing the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘for whom’ of each action.

#Sample of field notes taken by Smallpdf

Don’t record identifiable video or audio data without consent. If recording people using your product is helpful for achieving your research goal, make sure all participants are informed and agree to the terms.

Don’t forget to explain why you’d like to observe them (for overt observation). People are more likely to cooperate if you tell them you want to improve the product.

💡Pro tip: while conducting field research out in the wild can wield rewarding results, you can also conduct observational research remotely. Hotjar Recordings is a tool that lets you capture anonymized user sessions of real people interacting with your website.

Observe how customers navigate your pages and products to gain an inside look into their user behavior . This method is great for conducting exploratory research with the purpose of identifying more specific issues to investigate further, like pain points along the customer journey and opportunities for optimizing conversion .

With Hotjar Recordings you can observe real people using your site without capturing their sensitive information

How Smallpdf did it: here’s how Smallpdf observed two different user personas both covertly and overtly.

Observing students (covert): Kristina Wagner, Principle Product Manager at Smallpdf, went to cafes and libraries at two local universities and waited until she saw students doing PDF-related activities. Then she watched and took notes from a distance. One thing that struck her was the difference between how students self-reported their activities vs. how they behaved (i.e, the self-reporting bias). Students, she found, spent hours talking, listening to music, or simply staring at a blank screen rather than working. When she did find students who were working, she recorded the task they were performing and the software they were using (if she recognized it).

Observing administrative assistants (overt): Kristina sent emails to admins explaining that she’d like to observe them at work, and she asked those who agreed to try to batch their PDF work for her observation day. While watching admins work, she learned that they frequently needed to scan documents into PDF-format and then convert those PDFs into Word docs. By observing the challenges admins faced, Smallpdf knew which products to target for improvement.

“Data is really good for discovery and validation, but there is a bit in the middle where you have to go and find the human.”

3. Conduct individual interviews

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. They allow you to dig deep and explore their concerns, which can lead to all sorts of revelations.

Listen more, talk less. Be curious.

Act like a journalist, not a salesperson. Rather than trying to talk your company up, ask people about their lives, their needs, their frustrations, and how a product like yours could help.

Ask "why?" so you can dig deeper. Get into the specifics and learn about their past behavior.

Record the conversation. Focus on the conversation and avoid relying solely on notes by recording the interview. There are plenty of services that will transcribe recorded conversations for a good price (including Hotjar!).

Avoid asking leading questions , which reveal bias on your part and pushes respondents to answer in a certain direction (e.g. “Have you taken advantage of the amazing new features we just released?).

Don't ask loaded questions , which sneak in an assumption which, if untrue, would make it impossible to answer honestly. For example, we can’t ask you, “What did you find most useful about this article?” without asking whether you found the article useful in the first place.

Be cautious when asking opinions about the future (or predictions of future behavior). Studies suggest that people aren’t very good at predicting their future behavior. This is due to several cognitive biases, from the misguided exceptionalism bias (we’re good at guessing what others will do, but we somehow think we’re different), to the optimism bias (which makes us see things with rose-colored glasses), to the ‘illusion of control’ (which makes us forget the role of randomness in future events).

How Smallpdf did it: Kristina explored her teacher user persona by speaking with university professors at a local graduate school. She learned that the school was mostly paperless and rarely used PDFs, so for the sake of time, she moved on to the admins.

A bit of a letdown? Sure. But this story highlights an important lesson: sometimes you follow a lead and come up short, so you have to make adjustments on the fly. Lean market research is about getting solid, actionable insights quickly so you can tweak things and see what works.

💡Pro tip: to save even more time, conduct remote interviews using an online user research service like Hotjar Engage , which automates the entire interview process, from recruitment and scheduling to hosting and recording.

You can interview your own customers or connect with people from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. And no need to fret about taking meticulous notes—Engage will automatically transcribe the interview for you.

4. Analyze the data (without drowning in it)

The following techniques will help you wrap your head around the market data you collect without losing yourself in it. Remember, the point of lean market research is to find quick, actionable insights.

A flow model is a diagram that tracks the flow of information within a system. By creating a simple visual representation of how users interact with your product and each other, you can better assess their needs.

#Example of a flow model designed by Smallpdf

You’ll notice that admins are at the center of Smallpdf’s flow model, which represents the flow of PDF-related documents throughout a school. This flow model shows the challenges that admins face as they work to satisfy their own internal and external customers.

Affinity diagram

An affinity diagram is a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to better understand the big picture. For example, if you ask your users about their profession, you’ll notice some general themes start to form, even though the individual responses differ. Depending on your needs, you could group them by profession, or more generally by industry.

We wrote a guide about how to analyze open-ended questions to help you sort through and categorize large volumes of response data. You can also do this by hand by clipping up survey responses or interview notes and grouping them (which is what Kristina does).

“For an interview, you will have somewhere between 30 and 60 notes, and those notes are usually direct phrases. And when you literally cut them up into separate pieces of paper and group them, they should make sense by themselves.”

Pro tip: if you’re conducting an online survey with Hotjar, keep your team in the loop by sharing survey responses automatically via our Slack and Microsoft Team integrations. Reading answers as they come in lets you digest the data in pieces and can help prepare you for identifying common themes when it comes time for analysis.

Hotjar lets you easily share survey responses with your team

Customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the way a typical prospect becomes a paying customer. It outlines their first interaction with your brand and every step in the sales cycle, from awareness to repurchase (and hopefully advocacy).

The above customer journey map , created by our team at Hotjar, shows many ways a customer might engage with our tool. Your map will be based on your own data and business model.

📚 Read more: if you’re new to customer journey maps, we wrote this step-by-step guide to creating your first customer journey map in 2 and 1/2 days with free templates you can download and start using immediately.

Next steps: from research to results

So, how do you turn market research insights into tangible business results? Let’s look at the actions Smallpdf took after conducting their lean market research: first they implemented changes, then measured the impact.

#Smallpdf used lean market research to dig below the surface, understand their clients, and build a better product and user experience

Implement changes

Based on what Smallpdf learned about the challenges that one key user segment (admins) face when trying to convert PDFs into Word files, they improved their ‘PDF to Word’ conversion tool.

We won’t go into the details here because it involves a lot of technical jargon, but they made the entire process simpler and more straightforward for users. Plus, they made it so that their system recognized when you drop a PDF file into their ‘Word to PDF’ converter instead of the ‘PDF to Word’ converter, so users wouldn’t have to redo the task when they made that mistake.

In other words: simple market segmentation for admins showed a business need that had to be accounted for, and customers are happier overall after Smallpdf implemented an informed change to their product.

Measure results

According to the Lean UX model, product and UX changes aren’t retained unless they achieve results.

Smallpdf’s changes produced:

A 75% reduction in error rate for the ‘PDF to Word’ converter

A 1% increase in NPS

Greater confidence in the team’s marketing efforts

"With all the changes said and done, we've cut our original error rate in four, which is huge. We increased our NPS by +1%, which isn't huge, but it means that of the users who received a file, they were still slightly happier than before, even if they didn't notice that anything special happened at all.”

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Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. This might include primary research on brand awareness and customer satisfaction or secondary market research on market size and competitive analysis. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

David Darmanin, one of Hotjar’s founders, launched two startups before Hotjar took off—but both companies crashed and burned. Each time, he and his team spent months trying to design an amazing new product and user experience, but they failed because they didn’t have a clear understanding of what the market demanded.

With Hotjar, they did things differently . Long story short, they conducted market research in the early stages to figure out what consumers really wanted, and the team made (and continues to make) constant improvements based on market and user research.

Without market research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters:

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about them, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ‘what’, while research gives you the ‘why’. Big data, user analytics , and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices. Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices , and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and focusing on their customer experience , you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum. Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and product features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you’ll likely need to make changes once your untested business plan gets put into practice.

Lean User Experience (UX) design is a model for continuous improvement that relies on quick, efficient research to understand customer needs and test new product features.

Lean market research can help you become more...

Efficient: it gets you closer to your customers, faster.

Cost-effective: no need to hire an expensive marketing firm to get things started.

Competitive: quick, powerful insights can place your products on the cutting edge.

As a small business or sole proprietor, conducting lean market research is an attractive option when investing in a full-blown research project might seem out of scope or budget.

There are lots of different ways you could conduct market research and collect customer data, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just one research method. Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.

Which method you use may vary based on your business type: ecommerce business owners have different goals from SaaS businesses, so it’s typically prudent to mix and match these methods based on your particular goals and what you need to know.

1. Surveys: the most commonly used

Surveys are a form of qualitative research that ask respondents a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. When we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals about their company’s approach to research , surveys proved to be the most commonly used market research technique.

What makes online surveys so popular?

They’re easy and inexpensive to conduct, and you can do a lot of data collection quickly. Plus, the data is pretty straightforward to analyze, even when you have to analyze open-ended questions whose answers might initially appear difficult to categorize.

We've built a number of survey templates ready and waiting for you. Grab a template and share with your customers in just a few clicks.

💡 Pro tip: you can also get started with Hotjar AI for Surveys to create a survey in mere seconds . Just enter your market research goal and watch as the AI generates a survey and populates it with relevant questions.

Once you’re ready for data analysis, the AI will prepare an automated research report that succinctly summarizes key findings, quotes, and suggested next steps.

An example research report generated by Hotjar AI for Surveys

2. Interviews: the most insightful

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep (and reading non-verbal cues), but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice.

Regardless of how you conduct it, any type of in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.

What makes interviews so insightful?

By speaking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll gain greater empathy for their experience , and you can follow insightful threads that can produce plenty of 'Aha!' moments.

3. Focus groups: the most unreliable

Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, or marketing message to gain deeper insights.

What makes focus groups so unreliable?

If you’re new to market research, we wouldn’t recommend starting with focus groups. Doing it right is expensive , and if you cut corners, your research could fall victim to all kinds of errors. Dominance bias (when a forceful participant influences the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study) are two of the many ways your focus group data could get skewed.

4. Observation: the most powerful

During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor).

What makes observation so clever and powerful?

‘Fly-on-the-wall’ observation is a great alternative to focus groups. It’s not only less expensive, but you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other. The only downside is that you can’t get inside their heads, so observation still isn't a recommended replacement for customer surveys and interviews.

The following questions will help you get to know your users on a deeper level when you interview them. They’re general questions, of course, so don’t be afraid to make them your own.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

How you ask this question, and what you want to know, will vary depending on your business model (e.g. business-to-business marketing is usually more focused on someone’s profession than business-to-consumer marketing).

It’s a great question to start with, and it’ll help you understand what’s relevant about your user demographics (age, race, gender, profession, education, etc.), but it’s not the be-all-end-all of market research. The more specific questions come later.

2. What does your day look like?

This question helps you understand your users’ day-to-day life and the challenges they face. It will help you gain empathy for them, and you may stumble across something relevant to their buying habits.

3. Do you ever purchase [product/service type]?

This is a ‘yes or no’ question. A ‘yes’ will lead you to the next question.

4. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve?

This question strikes to the core of what someone’s trying to accomplish and why they might be willing to pay for your solution.

5. Take me back to the day when you first decided you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this goal.

This is the golden question, and it comes from Adele Revella, Founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute . It helps you get in the heads of your users and figure out what they were thinking the day they decided to spend money to solve a problem.

If you take your time with this question, digging deeper where it makes sense, you should be able to answer all the relevant information you need to understand their perspective.

“The only scripted question I want you to ask them is this one: take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this kind of a goal. Not to buy my product, that’s not the day. We want to go back to the day that when you thought it was urgent and compelling to go spend money to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Just tell me what happened.”

— Adele Revella , Founder/CEO at Buyer Persona Institute

Bonus question: is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

This question isn’t just a nice way to wrap it up—it might just give participants the opportunity they need to tell you something you really need to know.

That’s why Sarah Doody, author of UX Notebook , adds it to the end of her written surveys.

“I always have a last question, which is just open-ended: “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” And sometimes, that’s where you get four paragraphs of amazing content that you would never have gotten if it was just a Net Promoter Score [survey] or something like that.”

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research asks questions that can’t be reduced to a number, such as, “What is your job title?” or “What did you like most about your customer service experience?”

Quantitative research asks questions that can be answered with a numeric value, such as, “What is your annual salary?” or “How was your customer service experience on a scale of 1-5?”

→ Read more about the differences between qualitative and quantitative user research .

How do I do my own market research?

You can do your own quick and effective market research by

Surveying your customers

Building user personas

Studying your users through interviews and observation

Wrapping your head around your data with tools like flow models, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps

What is the difference between market research and user research?

Market research takes a broad look at potential customers—what problems they’re trying to solve, their buying experience, and overall demand. User research, on the other hand, is more narrowly focused on the use (and usability ) of specific products.

What are the main criticisms of market research?

Many marketing professionals are critical of market research because it can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s often easier to convince your CEO or CMO to let you do lean market research rather than something more extensive because you can do it yourself. It also gives you quick answers so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Do I need a market research firm to get reliable data?

Absolutely not! In fact, we recommend that you start small and do it yourself in the beginning. By following a lean market research strategy, you can uncover some solid insights about your clients. Then you can make changes, test them out, and see whether the results are positive. This is an excellent strategy for making quick changes and remaining competitive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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In an era where understanding consumer behavior is more than a competitive edge, it’s a survival imperative, NielsenIQ (NIQ) and GfK emerge as pivotal allies. This expertise is essential for businesses in B2C commerce, retail, and beyond, aiming to navigate the complex consumer landscape for informed, strategic decision-making.

Definition and Importance of Consumer Behavior Research

Consumer behavior research is the study of how individuals make decisions to spend their resources on consumption-related items. It involves understanding the what, why, when, and how of consumer purchases. This field is crucial for businesses as it sheds light on consumer preferences, buying patterns, and decision-making processes. By understanding these aspects, companies can tailor their products and marketing strategies effectively, ensuring alignment with consumer needs and market trends, ultimately leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Overview of the Impact of Consumer Behavior Research on Marketing Strategies

The insights from consumer behavior research are instrumental in shaping targeted marketing strategies. By understanding consumer motivations and behaviors, businesses can create more relevant and engaging marketing messages, leading to improved customer engagement and retention. This research helps in segmenting the market, identifying potential customers, and understanding the factors that drive consumer decisions. It also aids in predicting future trends, enabling companies to stay ahead of the curve. Effective use of consumer behavior research can lead to the development of products and services that meet the evolving needs of consumers, thereby enhancing brand loyalty and market share.

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Understanding Consumer Behavior

These diverse influences combine to form unique consumer profiles, which businesses must understand to effectively target their marketing efforts..

Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior is influenced by a complex interplay of psychological, social, cultural, and personal factors. Psychological factors include perceptions, attitudes, and motivation, which guide consumers’ emotional and cognitive responses. Social factors encompass family, friends, and societal norms that shape buying habits through peer influence and social trends. Cultural factors involve the broader societal beliefs, values, and customs that dictate consumer behavior in a particular region. Personal factors such as age, occupation, lifestyle, and economic status also significantly impact consumer choices. These diverse influences combine to form unique consumer profiles, which businesses must understand to effectively target their marketing efforts.

The Role of Consumer Behavior in Decision Making

Consumer behavior plays a critical role in the decision-making process. It involves understanding how consumers decide upon their needs and wants, choose among products and brands, and determine their purchase methods. This knowledge is vital for businesses to design and position their offerings in a way that resonates with the target audience. Understanding consumer behavior helps in predicting how consumers will respond to marketing messages and product features, enabling businesses to tailor their strategies to meet consumer needs effectively. It also assists in identifying opportunities for new product development and market expansion.

Consumer Behavior Theories and Models

Consumer behavior theories and models provide frameworks for understanding and predicting consumer actions. The Stimulus-Response Model, for instance, illustrates how marketing stimuli and environmental factors influence consumer responses. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs explains consumer motivation in terms of fulfilling basic to complex needs. The Theory of Reasoned Action and the Theory of Planned Behavior focus on the relationship between attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. The Consumer Decision Model outlines the cognitive process involving need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior. These models help businesses in developing strategies that align with consumer psychology and behavioral patterns. They also assist in segmenting the market and targeting consumers with personalized marketing approaches, enhancing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and product offerings.

Research Methods in Consumer Behavior Research

Customer analytics is vital for businesses across various sectors, including FMCG, sales, and e-commerce. It enables companies to create personalized experiences, improve customer engagement, and boost retention, ultimately leading to increased revenue. By understanding consumer behavior through data analysis, businesses can make informed decisions that resonate with their target audience.

Quantitative Research Methods

Quantitative research methods in consumer behavior research involve structured techniques like surveys and questionnaires to collect numerical data. These methods are useful for gauging consumer attitudes, preferences, and behaviors across larger populations. Statistical analysis of this data helps in identifying trends, testing hypotheses, and making generalizations about consumer behavior. Quantitative research is valuable for businesses as it provides measurable and comparable insights that can guide strategic decision-making. It helps in understanding the magnitude of consumer responses to various marketing stimuli and in assessing the potential market size for new products or services.

Qualitative Research Methods

Qualitative research methods in consumer behavior focus on understanding the deeper motivations, thoughts, and feelings of consumers. Techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups, and observational studies provide rich, detailed insights that are not typically captured through quantitative methods. This approach is crucial for exploring the underlying reasons behind consumer choices, preferences, and attitudes. Qualitative research helps businesses in gaining a deeper understanding of consumer experiences, emotions, and perceptions, which can be invaluable in developing more effective marketing strategies, product designs, and customer service approaches. It allows companies to explore new ideas and concepts with consumers, gaining insights that can lead to innovation and differentiation in the market.

Experimental Research in Consumer Behavior

Experimental research in consumer behavior involves manipulating one or more variables to observe the effect on another variable, typically consumer behavior or attitudes. This method is used to establish cause-and-effect relationships, providing insights into how changes in product features, pricing, or marketing strategies might influence consumer behavior. Controlled experiments, often conducted in laboratory settings or as field experiments, allow researchers to isolate the effects of specific variables. This type of research is particularly valuable for testing new products, pricing strategies, and marketing messages before full-scale implementation. It helps businesses in making informed decisions based on empirical evidence, reducing the risks associated with new initiatives.

Factors Affecting Consumer Behavior

Psychological factors.

Psychological factors play a significant role in shaping consumer behavior. These include individual motivations, perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs. Motivation drives consumers to fulfill their needs and desires, influencing their buying decisions. Perception, how consumers interpret information, can significantly impact their choices, as it shapes their understanding of products and brands. Attitudes and beliefs, formed through experiences and social influences, guide consumer preferences and loyalty. Understanding these psychological factors is crucial for businesses as they influence how consumers view and interact with products and services. By aligning marketing strategies with consumer psychology, businesses can more effectively influence purchasing decisions and build stronger customer relationships.

Social Factors

Social factors significantly influence consumer behavior, encompassing the impact of society, family, and peer groups. Family members and friends can influence buying decisions through recommendations or shared experiences. Social groups, including social networks and communities, also play a role in shaping consumer preferences and behaviors. The influence of social media has become particularly significant, as it not only connects consumers but also serves as a platform for sharing opinions and experiences about products and services. Understanding these social dynamics is important for businesses as they can leverage social influences through targeted marketing strategies, influencer partnerships, and social media campaigns. Recognizing the power of social factors can help businesses in building brand awareness and loyalty among consumer groups.

Cultural Factors

Cultural factors are deeply ingrained elements that influence consumer behavior, including values, beliefs, customs, and traditions. These factors vary across different regions and societies, affecting how consumers perceive and interact with products and services. Cultural influences can determine consumer preferences, buying habits, and brand perceptions. For instance, color symbolism, dietary preferences, and language can all vary significantly between cultures, impacting marketing strategies and product development. Businesses must understand and respect these cultural nuances to effectively cater to diverse consumer markets. Adapting products and marketing messages to align with cultural values and norms can significantly enhance a brand’s appeal and acceptance in different markets.

Personal Factors

Personal factors, including age, gender, occupation, lifestyle, and economic status, also significantly influence consumer behavior. These factors determine individual needs, preferences, and purchasing power. For example, younger consumers may prioritize trendy and innovative products, while older consumers might value functionality and durability. Lifestyle choices, such as health consciousness or environmental awareness, can also drive consumer preferences and choices. Economic factors, such as income and economic conditions, influence consumers’ ability to purchase and their sensitivity to price changes. Understanding these personal factors is crucial for businesses to segment their market effectively and tailor their products and marketing strategies to meet the specific needs of different consumer groups.

Consumer Purchase Decision Making

Stages of the consumer purchase decision-making process.

The consumer purchase decision-making process typically involves several key stages: problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior.

In the problem recognition stage, consumers identify a need or desire.

During the information search, they seek out information about products or services that can fulfill their need. In the evaluation stage, consumers compare different options based on attributes such as price, quality, and brand reputation.

The purchase decision involves choosing a product and making the purchase. Finally, in the post-purchase stage, consumers evaluate their satisfaction with the purchase, which can influence future buying decisions and brand loyalty.

Understanding these stages is essential for businesses to effectively influence consumers at each step, from raising awareness to ensuring post-purchase satisfaction.

Influences on Consumer Purchase Decisions

Consumer purchase decisions are influenced by a multitude of factors, including product attributes, brand reputation, marketing messages, social influences, and personal preferences. Product features such as quality, price, and usability are key determinants of consumer choices. Brand reputation, built over time through consistent quality and marketing efforts, also significantly impacts purchase decisions. Marketing messages and advertising play a crucial role in shaping consumer perceptions and driving demand. Social influences, including recommendations from family and friends, as well as online reviews and influencer endorsements, can sway consumer decisions. Personal factors such as individual needs, preferences, and financial constraints also play a critical role. Businesses must consider these diverse influences when developing products and crafting marketing strategies to effectively appeal to their target audience.

Impulse Buying Behavior

Impulse buying behavior refers to unplanned purchases made by consumers, often driven by emotional factors rather than rational decision-making. This type of behavior is typically triggered by external stimuli such as attractive product displays, promotional offers, or persuasive sales tactics. Emotional responses, such as excitement or the desire for instant gratification, also play a significant role in impulse buying. Retailers often leverage this behavior by strategically placing impulse items near checkout areas or using limited-time offers to create a sense of urgency. Understanding the triggers of impulse buying can help businesses in designing marketing strategies and store layouts that encourage such purchases, potentially increasing sales and customer engagement.

Online Shopping and Consumer Behavior

Impact of online shopping on consumer behavior.

The rise of online shopping has significantly impacted consumer behavior, offering convenience, a wider selection of products, and often competitive pricing. Online shopping has changed the way consumers research products, compare prices, and make purchasing decisions. The ease of access to a vast array of products and the ability to shop at any time have increased the frequency and diversity of purchases. Online reviews and ratings have also become important factors in the decision-making process, as consumers increasingly rely on the opinions of others. Additionally, the personalized shopping experiences offered by many online retailers, through targeted recommendations and tailored marketing messages, have further influenced consumer buying habits. Understanding these shifts in consumer behavior is crucial for businesses to adapt their strategies for the digital marketplace, ensuring they meet the evolving needs and expectations of online shoppers.

Factors Influencing Online Buying Behavior

Several factors influence online buying behavior, including website usability, product variety, pricing, customer reviews, and the overall shopping experience. A user-friendly website with easy navigation and a seamless checkout process is crucial for attracting and retaining online shoppers. A diverse product range and competitive pricing are also key factors in attracting consumers. Customer reviews and ratings significantly impact purchase decisions, as they provide social proof and reduce perceived risk. The overall shopping experience, including customer service, delivery options, and return policies, also plays a vital role in influencing online buying behavior. Security and privacy concerns are additional considerations, as consumers are increasingly aware of data protection and online fraud. Businesses must address these factors to create a compelling online shopping experience that meets consumer expectations and drives online sales.

Comparison of Online and Offline Consumer Behavior

Online and offline consumer behaviors exhibit distinct differences, influenced by the unique aspects of each shopping environment. Online shopping offers convenience, a broader selection, and often more competitive pricing, leading to different purchasing patterns compared to offline shopping. Consumers tend to spend more time researching and comparing products online, while offline shopping is often driven by immediate needs and sensory experiences. The tactile experience and instant gratification of offline shopping are not replicable online, but the online environment offers personalized recommendations and a wealth of product information. Offline shopping also provides opportunities for personal interaction and immediate problem resolution, which can enhance customer satisfaction. Understanding these differences is crucial for businesses to tailor their strategies for each channel, ensuring a cohesive and complementary shopping experience that meets the needs and preferences of consumers in both online and offline environments.

Consumer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Importance of customer satisfaction in consumer behavior research.

Customer satisfaction is a critical component of consumer behavior research, as it directly impacts repeat purchases and brand loyalty. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat buyers, recommend the brand to others, and provide positive reviews. Customer satisfaction is influenced by various factors, including product quality, customer service, and overall shopping experience. Understanding and measuring customer satisfaction helps businesses identify areas for improvement, enhance customer experiences, and build long-term relationships with consumers. High levels of customer satisfaction lead to increased customer loyalty, which is essential for business growth and sustainability.

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is influenced by a range of factors, including product quality, price, service quality, brand image, and customer expectations. Product quality is a primary determinant of satisfaction, as consumers expect products to perform as advertised. Price also plays a role, as consumers evaluate the value they receive relative to the cost. Service quality, encompassing customer service interactions and the overall shopping experience, significantly impacts satisfaction levels. A positive, helpful, and efficient service experience can enhance satisfaction, while negative experiences can lead to dissatisfaction. Brand image, shaped by marketing communications and past experiences, influences consumer expectations and perceptions. Meeting or exceeding these expectations is key to achieving high levels of customer satisfaction. Additionally, personal factors such as individual needs, preferences, and past experiences also influence satisfaction. Businesses must consider these diverse factors to effectively meet consumer needs and enhance satisfaction levels.

Relationship Between Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

The relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty is strong and direct. Satisfied customers are more likely to develop a sense of loyalty to a brand, leading to repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth recommendations. Loyalty is not just about repeat buying; it also involves an emotional connection and a preference for the brand over competitors. Satisfied customers are also more likely to be forgiving of minor issues and are less sensitive to price changes. Conversely, dissatisfied customers are more likely to switch to competitors and share negative experiences with others. Building customer loyalty requires consistently meeting or exceeding customer expectations, providing high-quality products and services, and maintaining positive customer relationships. Loyal customers are valuable assets to businesses, as they tend to have a higher lifetime value, lower acquisition costs, and can become brand advocates, promoting the brand through their networks.

Consumer Research and Marketing Strategies

Utilizing consumer research to develop effective marketing programs.

Consumer research is a vital tool for developing effective marketing programs. By understanding consumer needs, preferences, and behaviors, businesses can create targeted marketing strategies that resonate with their audience. Consumer research helps in identifying market segments, understanding consumer pain points, and uncovering opportunities for product development or enhancement. It also provides insights into the most effective channels and messages for reaching the target audience. Utilizing consumer research in marketing program development ensures that strategies are data-driven and customer-centric, increasing the likelihood of success. It enables businesses to tailor their marketing efforts to the specific needs and preferences of different consumer segments, improving engagement and response rates. Additionally, ongoing consumer research allows businesses to adapt their marketing strategies in response to changing consumer trends and market conditions, ensuring continued relevance and effectiveness.

Targeting Specific Consumer Segments Based on Research Findings

Targeting specific consumer segments based on research findings is a key strategy for effective marketing. Consumer research provides detailed insights into different consumer groups, including their demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and preferences. By analyzing this data, businesses can identify distinct segments within their target market, each with unique needs and characteristics. Targeting these segments with tailored marketing messages and product offerings increases the relevance and appeal of the brand to each group. For example, a segment characterized by health-conscious consumers would respond more positively to marketing messages emphasizing the health benefits of a product. Segment-specific targeting allows businesses to allocate marketing resources more efficiently, focusing on the most promising segments with the highest potential for conversion and loyalty. It also enhances the customer experience by providing consumers with products and marketing messages that are more closely aligned with their individual needs and preferences.

Adapting Marketing Strategies to Consumer Behavior Trends

Adapting marketing strategies to consumer behavior trends is essential for businesses to stay relevant and competitive. Consumer behavior is constantly evolving, influenced by factors such as technological advancements, cultural shifts, and economic changes. By staying attuned to these trends, businesses can anticipate changes in consumer needs and preferences, and adjust their marketing strategies accordingly. This may involve adopting new marketing channels, such as social media or influencer marketing, to reach consumers where they are most active. It could also mean developing new products or services that align with emerging consumer trends, such as sustainability or personalization. Adapting marketing strategies to consumer behavior trends requires a proactive approach, with ongoing research and analysis to identify emerging patterns. Businesses that successfully adapt to these trends can capture new market opportunities, enhance customer engagement, and maintain a competitive edge.

Case Studies in Consumer Behavior Research

Analysis of real-life examples and their implications.

Real-life case studies in consumer behavior research provide valuable insights into the practical application of theoretical concepts and the effectiveness of different marketing strategies. For example, a case study in the automotive industry might analyze how consumer preferences for eco-friendly vehicles have influenced car manufacturers’ product development and marketing strategies. In the retail sector, a case study could examine the impact of online shopping on brick-and-mortar stores and how these businesses have adapted to the digital era. These case studies offer concrete examples of how businesses have successfully navigated changes in consumer behavior, providing lessons and strategies that can be applied in other contexts. They also highlight the importance of consumer research in identifying market trends, understanding consumer needs, and developing effective marketing strategies. By analyzing real-life examples, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of consumer behavior, learn from the successes and challenges of others, and apply these insights to their own strategies.

Examination of Successful Marketing Campaigns Based on Consumer Behavior Research

Examining successful marketing campaigns that are based on consumer behavior research can provide valuable insights into effective marketing practices. These case studies demonstrate how a deep understanding of consumer needs, preferences, and behaviors can be leveraged to create impactful marketing campaigns. For instance, a campaign that effectively uses consumer data to personalize messages and offers can result in higher engagement and conversion rates. Another example might be a campaign that taps into current consumer trends, such as sustainability or wellness, to resonate with the target audience. Analyzing these successful campaigns can reveal key strategies and tactics that businesses can adopt, such as the use of specific channels, messaging techniques, or promotional offers. These case studies also highlight the importance of data-driven decision-making in marketing, showing how consumer research can inform and guide successful marketing initiatives.

Motivating Consumers and New Product Adoption

Strategies to motivate consumers to adopt new products.

Motivating consumers to adopt new products is a critical challenge for businesses. Effective strategies for encouraging new product adoption include leveraging social proof, offering free trials or samples, and creating educational content. Social proof, such as customer testimonials or influencer endorsements, can reduce perceived risk and increase consumer confidence in trying a new product. Free trials or samples allow consumers to experience the product firsthand, reducing barriers to adoption. Educational content, such as how-to guides or product demonstrations, can help consumers understand the value and benefits of the new product. Additionally, businesses can use targeted marketing campaigns to reach early adopters and innovators who are more likely to try new products and spread the word to others. Creating a sense of urgency or exclusivity around the new product, through limited-time offers or exclusive access, can also motivate consumers to adopt the product more quickly.

Innovations in Consumer Behavior Research for New Product Development

Innovations in consumer behavior research are playing a crucial role in new product development. Advanced analytics and data mining techniques allow businesses to analyze large datasets and uncover deep insights into consumer needs and preferences. Social listening tools enable companies to monitor social media and online conversations, gaining real-time insights into consumer opinions and trends. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies are being used to test consumer reactions to new products in simulated environments, providing valuable feedback before market launch. Behavioral economics principles, such as understanding cognitive biases and decision-making processes, are also being applied to better predict consumer responses to new products. These innovations in consumer behavior research provide businesses with more accurate and comprehensive data, enabling them to develop products that are closely aligned with consumer needs and preferences, increasing the likelihood of market success.

Social Media and Consumer Behavior

Influence of social media on consumer behavior.

Social media has a profound influence on consumer behavior, shaping how consumers discover, research, and share information about products and services. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter serve as important channels for brand communication and engagement. Consumers use social media to seek recommendations, read reviews, and gather opinions from their networks, which significantly influences their purchasing decisions. Brands leverage social media for targeted advertising, influencer partnerships, and content marketing, creating opportunities for direct interaction and engagement with consumers. Social media also facilitates the spread of trends and viral content, quickly influencing consumer preferences and behaviors. The interactive and dynamic nature of social media means that consumer opinions and trends can rapidly change, requiring businesses to be agile and responsive in their social media strategies. Understanding the influence of social media on consumer behavior is essential for businesses to effectively engage with their audience and influence purchasing decisions.

Role of Social Media in Shaping Consumer Perceptions and Purchase Decisions

Recap of the importance of consumer behavior research.

Consumer behavior research is essential for businesses seeking to understand and effectively respond to the evolving needs and preferences of their target audience. It provides valuable insights into why consumers make certain choices, what influences their purchasing decisions, and how they interact with brands. This research is crucial for developing effective marketing strategies, creating products that meet consumer needs, and enhancing the overall customer experience. By staying informed about consumer behavior trends and applying these insights, businesses can improve customer engagement, increase brand loyalty, and drive growth. In today’s competitive marketplace, a deep understanding of consumer behavior is a key differentiator, enabling businesses to create more personalized, relevant, and impactful marketing initiatives.

Future Directions and Emerging Trends in Consumer Behavior Research

The future of consumer behavior research is marked by rapid advancements in technology and data analytics, leading to more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of consumer preferences and behaviors. Emerging trends include the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to analyze consumer data, providing deeper and more predictive insights. The integration of biometric data, such as eye tracking and facial recognition, offers new ways to understand consumer responses to marketing stimuli. The growing importance of sustainability and ethical considerations is also influencing consumer behavior, leading to increased demand for eco-friendly and socially responsible products. Additionally, the rise of the experience economy is shifting focus from product features to customer experiences, requiring businesses to create more immersive and engaging customer interactions. Staying abreast of these trends and continuously innovating in consumer behavior research will be crucial for businesses to remain relevant and competitive in the changing market landscape.

How NIQ and GfK Can Help

In the complex world of consumer behavior, NIQ and GfK offer the expertise and tools necessary to navigate this landscape effectively. With comprehensive solutions like:

NielsenIQ’s Homescan : Track, diagnose, and analyze consumer behavior from more than 250,000 households across 25 countries.
Consumer analytics : Go deeper and create more clarity around shopper behavior with custom surveys and segmentation.
Consumption moments : Reveal the true motivations behind customer consumption behavior and usage to guide product innovation and marketing strategy.
gfknewron marke t : Create the right opportunities with gfknewron market
gfknewron predict : Plan your future using the world’s most comprehensive sales tracking data for Tech & Durables.
gfknewron Consumer : Understand your consumers’ behavior to redefine your success

By leveraging these tools, businesses can gain a competitive edge, adapting to market changes and consumer trends with agility and precision.

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How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

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What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry. The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

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Why is market research important?

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete.

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research

Qualitative research
Quantitative research
Exploratory research
Descriptive research
Causal research
Cross-sectional research
Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research.

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant.
Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment.

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment.

Market research methods

Surveys and questionnaires
Focus groups
Observational research
Online research tools
Experiments
Content analysis
Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data:

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback.

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

Set clear objectives
Identify your target audience
Choose your research methods
Use the right market research tools
Collect data
Analyze data
Interpret your findings
Identify opportunities and challenges
Make informed business decisions
Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign?

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process.

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective.

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study.

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors.

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research.

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

Product Image Advanced Search CRMConnected

Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends.

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values.

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups.

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started.

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

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Consumer Market Research – A Comprehensive Guide for 2022

Consumer trends are shifting more quickly than ever.

And businesses are shifting with them, focusing on keeping aligned with their consumers. After all, it’s all about the customer.

But what implications does this have for brands?

To future proof your business and continue to stay relevant, you need access to learnings and insights about your consumers and the greater market.

This is where consumer market research comes in.

What is Consumer Market Research?

Consumer market research is the overall study of the target consumer in a particular industry. Brand marketers turn to consumer market research to gain business intelligence in three main areas:

Customers (Habits, needs, desires, pain points, overall sentiment)
Their company and products (Feelings about their overall brand and products)
Competitors (What’s working for them, strategies, etc.)

Types of Consumer Market Research

There are two types of consumer market research:

Primary research
Secondary research

Primary research involves actively collecting information and data. The research can be further divided into quantitative research, such as surveys, charts, and statistics, or qualitative research, which are ideas, feelings, focus groups, and interviews.

Secondary research is working with aggregate data that already exists and information that’s already out there, such as looking at product reviews.

Why Use Consumer Market Research?

Brands can use insights gathered from their consumers in several different ways. Here are some of the most common use cases.

Brand Research – Managing your company’s brand/identity, including the images, narratives, and characteristics that people associate with it. This can include your consumers’ advocacy, awareness, loyalty, and perceptions, as well as your brand’s penetration, positioning, and value.
Product development – Developing new products is made easier by incorporating feedback from your target consumers. It allows you to research and test the product, positioning, packaging, messaging, and more.
Understanding audiences – Segmenting specific audiences to understand their motivations, needs, pain points, and how to best approach them and speak to them.
Tracking brand sentiment – Tracking brand sentiment helps you understand how your target audience feels about your brand, what differentiates you from your competitors, and the overall trends in the industry, such as pricing, that can determine where opportunities lie.
Testing ad campaigns – Test creative from your ad campaigns with consumer market research to see what resonates with your audience and creates the desired impact.
Measuring satisfaction – Consumer market research can measure customer satisfaction and overall loyalty to your brand.
Competitive analysis – Assess competitive brands’ strengths and weaknesses and analyze consumer perception.
Usability testing – Observe how consumers use your product in real-time, or journey testing on a website or application.

Consumer Market Research Best Practices

Consumer market research is a critical tool in a marketer’s arsenal for a variety of objectives. However, success hinges on a set of best practices. By following these best practices, you’ll be able to reap the benefits of consumer market research and further your marketing strategy.

Pre-qualify Your Consumers/Define Your Scope

Make sure you are speaking to the right consumers for your study by screening them first. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

Do they use your product category?
Do they use your brand or a competitor brand?
Do they shop at a particular retailer?
Do they fit the lifestyle/attitudes of your consumer target?
Is your product premium or casual?

You should ensure you are talking to consumers who fit your target audience. If not, your efforts won’t yield many benefits.

Be Clear About Your Purpose

You should know ahead of time what you want to learn from the study and how the data will support your business decisions. To do this, form some hypotheses that the study will be designed to prove/disprove, and specific questions should be built around that purpose.

Work Backward From Business Issue to Survey Question

The best way to plan out consumer market research and find success is to work backward from the issue itself to the survey questions. For example:

What decision are you trying to make, or what issue or knowledge gap in your business are you trying to solve?
What consumer data would help address that issue or inform that decision?
What survey questions would best help to obtain that consumer data?

Keep it Simple

Ask consumers clear and concise questions designed to specifically obtain the information that is relevant to your brand.
Do not ask leading questions that push consumer response in a certain direction.
Allow for “Neutral” and “Does not apply” answer choices.
A single survey should be addressing three research goals at most to ensure your survey is focused and not overwhelming. Keep to no more than 30 questions total.

Choose An Appropriate Structure or Format For Each Question

The answer scales and options you provide to consumers in your survey are very important and will impact the data you receive.

Know when to ask “Select one” vs. “Select all that apply,” or when to use a scale.
Randomize answers when appropriate.
Keep answer choices balanced and not lopsided.
Use comprehensive answer choices and avoid overlapping.
Make sure the answer choices you provide fit with the question asked.
Use open-ended questions sparingly.

Preview and Test Your Survey

You’ll want to ensure that the survey you put out reflects your initial goals. Previewing your survey beforehand helps avoid any potential mistakes and allows you to check that your survey is logical, engaging, and not too overwhelming.

You should also have someone else in your organization test your survey for a second opinion.

Ensure You Have a Sufficient Sample Size

Make sure you have a sufficient sample size for your data to be readable and representative. It can be a serious mistake to make crucial business decisions based on data that might not be meaningful due to the sample size.

As a rule of thumb, the more important the business decision you’re making based on this data, the higher the threshold.

Any differences in the data you highlight should not be within the margin of error—too small to be considered a meaningful difference. A difference of 5% or less may be within the margin of error, especially if you do not have a considerable sample size.

Segment Your Results for Deeper Insights

Your total sample results are only part of the story!

Some of the most meaningful survey results can be found by splitting your survey results.

For example:

Male/female
Different age ranges
Users of your product vs. your competitor product
First-time parents vs. parents with multiple children

Achieving deeper and more valuable insights starts with segmenting the results of your overall surveys.

How To Perform Consumer Market Research

Consumer market research can take on many different forms, such as:

Focus groups
In-depth interviews
Message boards
Behavioral observations (purchase activity, website activity, etc.)
Applied consumer neuroscience (eye-tracking, facial coding, etc.)
Social media listening

Although some larger brands have internal research teams, many brands turn to a market research agency to conduct their consumer market research. Working with a research firm is usually done on a project basis. A number of firms specialize in consumer market research, including:

After reaching out to a research firm, you’ll need to share your objectives with them. The firm needs to know what you’re looking to learn and who your consumer market is. The research firm will then recruit people, build the necessary surveys, conduct research, collect the data, analyze, and then produce the results you’re seeking. Typically, this process takes between six and eight weeks. This timeline can be a hindrance since brands typically need answers fast, and starting from scratch for every study can be inefficient.

One alternative to gain continuity of results and speed is creating a dedicated panel. Dedicated panels also help reveal trends, and because the same set is followed across studies, it can provide deeper understanding and connected learnings. However, this can mean a larger upfront investment with a research firm to recruit and qualify panel members as well as more ongoing costs to “maintain” the panel.

The challenge with consumer panels is providing ongoing engagement and occupying the members to give them a reason to keep coming back between studies, which can be months apart. Just like in baseball, panel members need to be kept warm on the bench in between studies.

How Vesta Can Help With Consumer Market Research

Another alternative to many of the drawbacks and challenges that come with using research firms for consumer market research is the Vesta platform.

With your Vesta online brand community , you have a consumer panel ready to go at all times, meaning there’s no time needed for recruiting. Research needs arise constantly, and you need to be able to deliver results on a dime. Vesta delivers the speed that research firms, unfortunately, can’t provide.

There’s also the issue of engagement. When a research firm forms a panel, the period between surveys requires a certain level of engagement to avoid panel decay. The Vesta platform has activities, discussions, and quick offers to keep consumers interested and engaged, ensuring they’re always available when insights are needed.

Vesta also provides a ton of flexibility, with many different types of research tools, from polls for quick and fun insights to in-depth qualitative research in the form of focus groups and interviews. Vesta also offers applied consumer neuroscience options, such as eye-tracking and facial coding, to target non-conscious decision-making.

We know that consumer market research provides a ton of value to marketers. That’s why we’re here to help.

Consumer Market Research Can Greatly Impact Your Marketing Efforts

The power of consumer market research can’t be overstated. In a world where consumers have more control than ever, understanding what makes them tick can provide you with a considerable edge over your competitors.

Consumer market research helps brands in nearly every aspect of their business, from overall product development to the intricacies of ad creative.

While it might not be a magic pill, consumer market research can help you develop an effective marketing strategy and give you unparalleled insights into your target market.

Questions About Consumer Market Research?

The Vesta team is here to answer any questions you have, whether you’re looking for more information on consumer market research or how the Vesta platform can help. Reach out to us . We’re always here to help.

Interested in more?

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What Is Market Research?

How It Works
Primary vs. Secondary
How to Conduct Research

The Bottom Line

Marketing Essentials

How to Do Market Research, Types, and Example

Joules Garcia / Investopedia

Market research examines consumer behavior and trends in the economy to help a business develop and fine-tune its business idea and strategy. It helps a business understand its target market by gathering and analyzing data.

Market research is the process of evaluating the viability of a new service or product through research conducted directly with potential customers. It allows a company to define its target market and get opinions and other feedback from consumers about their interest in a product or service.

Research may be conducted in-house or by a third party that specializes in market research. It can be done through surveys and focus groups, among other ways. Test subjects are usually compensated with product samples or a small stipend for their time.

Key Takeaways

Companies conduct market research before introducing new products to determine their appeal to potential customers.
Tools include focus groups, telephone interviews, and questionnaires.
The results of market research inform the final design of the product and determine how it will be positioned in the marketplace.
Market research usually combines primary information, gathered directly from consumers, and secondary information, which is data available from external sources.

Market Research

How market research works.

Market research is used to determine the viability of a new product or service. The results may be used to revise the product design and fine-tune the strategy for introducing it to the public. This can include information gathered for the purpose of determining market segmentation . It also informs product differentiation , which is used to tailor advertising.

A business engages in various tasks to complete the market research process. It gathers information based on the market sector being targeted by the product. This information is then analyzed and relevant data points are interpreted to draw conclusions about how the product may be optimally designed and marketed to the market segment for which it is intended.

It is a critical component in the research and development (R&D) phase of a new product or service introduction. Market research can be conducted in many different ways, including surveys, product testing, interviews, and focus groups.

Market research is a critical tool that companies use to understand what consumers want, develop products that those consumers will use, and maintain a competitive advantage over other companies in their industry.

Primary Market Research vs. Secondary Market Research

Market research usually consists of a combination of:

Primary research, gathered by the company or by an outside company that it hires
Secondary research, which draws on external sources of data

Primary Market Research

Primary research generally falls into two categories: exploratory and specific research.

Exploratory research is less structured and functions via open-ended questions. The questions may be posed in a focus group setting, telephone interviews, or questionnaires. It results in questions or issues that the company needs to address about a product that it has under development.
Specific research delves more deeply into the problems or issues identified in exploratory research.

Secondary Market Research

All market research is informed by the findings of other researchers about the needs and wants of consumers. Today, much of this research can be found online.

Secondary research can include population information from government census data , trade association research reports , polling results, and research from other businesses operating in the same market sector.

History of Market Research

Formal market research began in Germany during the 1920s. In the United States, it soon took off with the advent of the Golden Age of Radio.

Companies that created advertisements for this new entertainment medium began to look at the demographics of the audiences who listened to each of the radio plays, music programs, and comedy skits that were presented.

They had once tried to reach the widest possible audience by placing their messages on billboards or in the most popular magazines. With radio programming, they had the chance to target rural or urban consumers, teenagers or families, and judge the results by the sales numbers that followed.

Types of Market Research

Face-to-face interviews.

From their earliest days, market research companies would interview people on the street about the newspapers and magazines that they read regularly and ask whether they recalled any of the ads or brands that were published in them. Data collected from these interviews were compared to the circulation of the publication to determine the effectiveness of those ads.

Market research and surveys were adapted from these early techniques.

To get a strong understanding of your market, it’s essential to understand demand, market size, economic indicators, location, market saturation, and pricing.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a small number of representative consumers chosen to try a product or watch an advertisement.

Afterward, the group is asked for feedback on their perceptions of the product, the company’s brand, or competing products. The company then takes that information and makes decisions about what to do with the product or service, whether that's releasing it, making changes, or abandoning it altogether.

Phone Research

The man-on-the-street interview technique soon gave way to the telephone interview. A telephone interviewer could collect information in a more efficient and cost-effective fashion.

Telephone research was a preferred tactic of market researchers for many years. It has become much more difficult in recent years as landline phone service dwindles and is replaced by less accessible mobile phones.

Survey Research

As an alternative to focus groups, surveys represent a cost-effective way to determine consumer attitudes without having to interview anyone in person. Consumers are sent surveys in the mail, usually with a coupon or voucher to incentivize participation. These surveys help determine how consumers feel about the product, brand, and price point.

Online Market Research

With people spending more time online, market research activities have shifted online as well. Data collection still uses a survey-style form. But instead of companies actively seeking participants by finding them on the street or cold calling them on the phone, people can choose to sign up, take surveys, and offer opinions when they have time.

This makes the process far less intrusive and less rushed, since people can participate on their own time and of their own volition.

How to Conduct Market Research

The first step to effective market research is to determine the goals of the study. Each study should seek to answer a clear, well-defined problem. For example, a company might seek to identify consumer preferences, brand recognition, or the comparative effectiveness of different types of ad campaigns.

After that, the next step is to determine who will be included in the research. Market research is an expensive process, and a company cannot waste resources collecting unnecessary data. The firm should decide in advance which types of consumers will be included in the research, and how the data will be collected. They should also account for the probability of statistical errors or sampling bias .

The next step is to collect the data and analyze the results. If the two previous steps have been completed accurately, this should be straightforward. The researchers will collect the results of their study, keeping track of the ages, gender, and other relevant data of each respondent. This is then analyzed in a marketing report that explains the results of their research.

The last step is for company executives to use their market research to make business decisions. Depending on the results of their research, they may choose to target a different group of consumers, or they may change their price point or some product features.

The results of these changes may eventually be measured in further market research, and the process will begin all over again.

Benefits of Market Research

Market research is essential for developing brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Since it is unlikely for a product to appeal equally to every consumer, a strong market research program can help identify the key demographics and market segments that are most likely to use a given product.

Market research is also important for developing a company’s advertising efforts. For example, if a company’s market research determines that its consumers are more likely to use Facebook than X (formerly Twitter), it can then target its advertisements to one platform instead of another. Or, if they determine that their target market is value-sensitive rather than price-sensitive, they can work on improving the product rather than reducing their prices.

Market research only works when subjects are honest and open to participating.

Example of Market Research

Many companies use market research to test new products or get information from consumers about what kinds of products or services they need and don’t currently have.

For example, a company that’s considering starting a business might conduct market research to test the viability of its product or service. If the market research confirms consumer interest, the business can proceed confidently with its business plan . If not, the company can use the results of the market research to make adjustments to the product to bring it in line with customer desires.

What Are the Main Types of Market Research?

The main types of market research are primary research and secondary research. Primary research includes focus groups, polls, and surveys. Secondary research includes academic articles, infographics, and white papers.

Qualitative research gives insights into how customers feel and think. Quantitative research uses data and statistics such as website views, social media engagement, and subscriber numbers.

What Is Online Market Research?

Online market research uses the same strategies and techniques as traditional primary and secondary market research, but it is conducted on the Internet. Potential customers may be asked to participate in a survey or give feedback on a product. The responses may help the researchers create a profile of the likely customer for a new product.

What Are Paid Market Research Surveys?

Paid market research involves rewarding individuals who agree to participate in a study. They may be offered a small payment for their time or a discount coupon in return for filling out a questionnaire or participating in a focus group.

What Is a Market Study?

A market study is an analysis of consumer demand for a product or service. It looks at all of the factors that influence demand for a product or service. These include the product’s price, location, competition, and substitutes as well as general economic factors that could influence the new product’s adoption, for better or worse.

Market research is a key component of a company’s research and development (R&D) stage. It helps companies understand in advance the viability of a new product that they have in development and to see how it might perform in the real world.

Britannica Money. “ Market Research .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Market Research and Competitive Analysis .”

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Understanding the ever-evolving, always-surprising consumer

For many consumers around the world, a return to normalcy feels so close, yet so far away, in light of the alarming spread of COVID-19 variants. Although it’s unclear what the next 12 to 24 months will bring, what’s almost certain is that consumers won’t simply revert to doing exactly what they did in 2019. In this episode of the McKinsey on Consumer and Retail podcast, three consumer-behavior experts share their insights into how consumers’ spending patterns and purchasing behaviors are changing, and what companies should do given those changes. An edited transcript of the conversation with executive editor Monica Toriello follows. Subscribe to the podcast .

Monica Toriello: Over the past several weeks, people in some parts of the world have resumed their prepandemic habits. Maybe you’ve recently seen a movie at a theater, or flown on an airplane, or even just stopped for a cup of coffee on your way to the office for the first time in over a year. But a return to “normal” won’t look the same for everyone. Today, we’ll hear from three people who intensively study consumer behavior. They’ll share fascinating insights into how consumers are changing and what companies should do about it.

Kari Alldredge is a McKinsey partner based in Minneapolis. Kari has been advising consumer-goods companies for more than 20 years on a variety of topics, and she leads McKinsey’s work in consumer-goods growth transformation. She is an author of several articles, including a recent one on COVID-19’s impact on demand and costs in the consumer-packaged-goods [CPG] industry .

Anne Grimmelt is a senior knowledge expert in McKinsey’s Consumer Packaged Goods Practice. She is based in Stamford, Connecticut. Anne has been one of the driving forces behind McKinsey’s consumer-sentiment survey , which was launched in 2008 and during the pandemic has expanded to 45 countries. It provides a rich fact base for how consumers are feeling about their finances and how their buying behavior is changing.

And our third guest is Anjali Lai, a senior analyst at Forrester. Anjali, who is based in New York, helps chief marketing officers [CMOs] and other business leaders to understand the shifts in consumer behavior and consumer decision making and then to figure out what these changes mean for the future of brands and industries.

[To comply with Forrester’s Citation Policy, this transcript excludes Anjali Lai’s comments. Listen to the full episode on McKinsey.com or on Apple, Google, and other podcast platforms.]

A ‘reversal of fortune’ for big brands

Monica Toriello: Kari, Anne, Anjali, it’s great to have you here today. All three of you have been keeping your fingers on the pulse of consumers, both before and throughout the pandemic. Have there been any surprises? Are consumers doing things that you didn’t expect? Or is there anything that seemed to be going one way in, say, March or April 2020 but is going in a different direction today?

Kari Alldredge: In 2019 or early 2020, the topic on the minds of large branded consumer-packaged-goods manufacturers was portfolio shaping: how to reimagine their portfolios, how to move away from center-of-store food products and big brands and instead engage with consumers in very different, more targeted, niche-oriented ways. The degree to which the pandemic pushed people back toward big brands in the center of the store, and toward cooking at home, has been a complete turnaround, a reversal of fortune, for large CPG companies.

Some of those changes could have been anticipated, but others are quite shocking: the notion that bread baking would become a phenomenon among millennials, or that pet ownership would skyrocket to the extent that it has, and that those same millennials would be willing to spend more than they spend on their daily Starbucks to feed their new pets.

So, many of those companies that were desperately searching for growth 18 months ago now have the opposite problem: their supply chains can’t keep up . The big question for all of them is which of those consumer behaviors are truly going to persist and be “sticky” coming out of this pandemic? Certainly, the dog that you adopted is likely to stay at your home. But when you go back to ordering your daily Starbucks and spending $7 a day on a coffee, are you going to spend the same amount to feed your pet? Those are the questions that are on many company leaders’ minds.

Anne Grimmelt: As Kari said, we saw a complete shift. Prepandemic, the growth was in smaller, niche brands, but early in the pandemic, it was large CPG players that really gained scale because their products were available on the shelf. They were also brands that were trusted by consumers, so consumers felt good buying them. If you look at point-of-sale data from IRI or Nielsen, you see that large companies—those with more than $2.5 billion in retail sales in the US market—picked up most of the share growth early in the pandemic, whereas smaller and midsize companies, as well as private label, were really not picking up growth.

In the second half of 2020 and in early 2021, small and midsize companies are regaining their sales growth. And we expect that private label is going to be powerful again , because if you dive into the why—why did consumers pick a new brand, and why did they pick the brands they chose?—it was about availability, it was about purpose, but it was also about value . It was about price points. Going forward, value is going to be even more important, and private label will gain strength in the future.

Trust as a strategic imperative

Monica Toriello: All three of you to some extent have written about customer loyalty: how to win it and how to retain it, particularly in an environment where people are willing to try new brands. Anne and Kari, you found that 39 percent of consumers tried new brands during the pandemic. And Anjali, in your research, you found that small brands are particularly good at earning consumers’ trust and consequently their loyalty. In a recent blog post, you wrote, “Now is the time for companies to embrace trust as a strategic imperative.” What does that mean? How should companies do that?

Even relatively mundane CPG companies are thinking about the end-to-end consumer journey, including consumer experience pre- and postpurchase. Kari Alldredge

Kari Alldredge: I’m seeing two interesting things in response to the trends you just talked about, Anjali. One is the degree to which even relatively mundane CPG companies are thinking about the end-to-end consumer journey, including consumer experience pre- and postpurchase, as they try to understand how to serve their existing consumers but also look for new ways to better meet consumer needs. The notion that there is a pre- and postpurchase experience related to a can of soda or a can of soup is a relatively novel idea, right? But, increasingly, the most forward-thinking companies are doing research across that entire journey to be able to understand the needs of consumers as they’re considering the range of options that are available to them—all the way through to satisfaction with usage and even disposal of the packaging of products.

Another interesting thing I’m seeing is a recognition that marketing is a dialogue, and a recognition of the degree to which consumers now “own” or shape the narratives of many brands. This, too, was happening before the pandemic but was vastly accelerated during the pandemic. The notion that a marketer positions the brand and delivers a message and a promise to consumers is really becoming quite an antiquated one, I think, as consumers themselves—through reviews, ratings , blogs, videos, and social-media posts—shape the identity of many of these brands. Recommendations from friends and family become part of the brand’s identity and are critical to shaping both loyalty and consumer trust.

We found in our research that about 33 percent of millennial and Gen Z consumers say they choose to buy a brand from a company that has their values, versus about 12 percent of baby boomers. Anne Grimmelt

Anne Grimmelt: Our research corroborates that. We found in our research that about 33 percent of millennial and Gen Z consumers say they choose to buy a brand from a company that has their values, versus about 12 percent of baby boomers. But every demographic group is leaning toward that.

Another finding from our research is the reasons why consumers change to a new brand. It is definitely the younger generation that more often indicates that it’s because of purpose. It’s because of what the company stands for, how it treats its employees, et cetera.

Purpose: More than just a buzzword

Monica Toriello: We’ve been hearing a lot about purpose and values, but I also hear some skepticism in certain pockets of the corporate world as to whether an emphasis on corporate purpose actually pays off. Because there is an attitude–behavior gap, right? What’s your response to a CEO who says, “Consumers like to say they care about purpose and values, but when they’re at the point of deciding to buy something, they truly only care about convenience or price or quality. Purpose is just a buzzword.”

Kari Alldredge: It’s necessary but not sufficient. I think there’s an increasing recognition that alignment with a consumer’s values may put you in the consideration set but won’t drive you over the line to purchase. You still have to have product superiority, whether that’s taste superiority, functional superiority, or a price-to-value equation that works for that particular consumer.

We talk a lot about the pandemic, which definitely shone a light on health in general, but there are other crises—like social justice and climate change —that have come to light over the past year and a half and that have really shaken the corporate community. These crises have helped companies understand that some of these factors are fundamental in how consumers perceive themselves and the world around them, to the point where we now actually see some change happening.

One of the things that I was struck by was the speed and seriousness with which many of the household-cleaning companies responded to the pandemic and the heroic efforts to convert production capacity to manufacture things like wipes and sanitizer. Yes, some of that was for financial gain, but I think there really was an almost wartime mentality that I saw companies get new energy from.

I think about center-of-store food manufacturers who, prepandemic, maybe viewed themselves as being a bit sleepy and not exciting in terms of attracting the best talent. Now when you hear them talk about what they do, there’s real pride in the fact that they fed America, or they kept America safe. It really changed the way they think about the importance of what they do.

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Sources of insight.

Monica Toriello: All three of you are experts in consumer behavior. But consumers are changing fast and they’re changing constantly. Anjali, in another recent blog post, you wrote, “Rather than expect consumers to settle into a defined postpandemic normal, CMOs should prepare for a constant evolution of consumer needs and expectations over the next 12 to 24 months.” So beyond reading the latest consumer research and analysis, what are the best ways for CMOs and CEOs to understand where consumers are and where they’re headed?

Kari Alldredge: One of the best sources of insights is their online channel partners and their own D2C [direct to consumer] sites . Companies should mine online data to get a quick pulse on the way consumers are thinking or feeling. They should look at ratings and reviews using advanced analytics to understand and see trends and what’s selling on sites like Kroger.com, Walmart.com, or Amazon.com. They could even develop products that they can quickly test in an online environment and then change and adjust, as opposed to thinking about mass development of a product that gets pushed out to thousands and thousands of brick-and-mortar retail stores.

Consumers don’t always know what they want, and they can’t predict how their behavior will change. So traditional consumer research—which asks consumers how likely they are to purchase something—is becoming less relevant or reliable than actual data in market. That’s why data from e-commerce sites can be so valuable.

Anne Grimmelt: Another very powerful way to understand consumers is by looking at what your peer companies do. You can go to industry conferences like the CAGNY [Consumer Analyst Group of New York] conference and hear a company like L’Oréal talk about how they use their D2C and their online-sales platform to see what type of color lipstick people try—not buy , but try —on their online platform. That information is critical for them to know where to innovate. What are the colors that people want and what are the products that people like to try out on the digital platform?

Similarly, I think it’s very important to keep an open mind beyond your own borders, to realize what’s happening elsewhere in the world. Going back to the topic of purpose, for instance, it is very much alive in the US but it’s also very much alive in Europe. Learning about the power of what consumers demand and how purpose is driving consumer decisions about CPG companies—and what companies in Europe are doing to meet consumer demand—can be valuable, wherever you are in the world.

Kari Alldredge: I think we also shouldn’t underestimate the resilience of consumers and the gravitational pull of life as we knew it before the pandemic. One thing that surprised me even in the past several weeks is the degree to which behaviors have bounced back. If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past 18 months it’s that I don’t have a crystal ball, or if I did, it is certainly broken—because there is no part of this last 18 months that I ever could have in a million years predicted.

At the beginning of the pandemic, one company I work with asked every board member, “When you look back, what’s the one thing that will be blazingly obvious that we either should always have done or never have been doing?” And one of the things that came up was shaking hands: “We’re never going to shake hands again.” But I attended a graduation ceremony in the beginning of June—so, early into the recovery—and what was striking to me is that the dean of that school shook the hand of, and physically embraced, every single one of the thousand students who crossed that stage. And this was at an institution that had been, like most educational institutions, incredibly thoughtful and conservative about their public-health response. Literally days after restrictions were lifted, the urge to connect was so strong that it looked as if the pandemic had never happened.

People are resilient. Hundreds of years of behavior certainly have been meaningfully changed by the past 18 months, but I think a lot of the old behaviors will bounce back pretty quickly.

Monica Toriello: So if you could gather all the CEOs and CMOs of consumer companies in one room and leave them with one message, what would it be? What is the one thing they need to do to position themselves for success in 2021 and 2022?

Anne Grimmelt: My one-liner would be, “Be open to change and be agile .”

Kari Alldredge: I would say, “Listen; don’t tell.”

Kari Alldredge is a partner in McKinsey’s Minneapolis office, and Anne Grimmelt is a senior knowledge expert in the Stamford office. Monica Toriello is an executive editor in the New York office.

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Market Research vs Consumer Research

Frankline kibuacha | jun. 24, 2021 | 2 min. read.

The terms market research and consumer research are used almost interchangeably. While this may be right to some extent, there is a difference between the term definitions and practice.

Market Research

Britannica defines market research as the study of the requirements of various markets, the acceptability of products, and methods of developing or exploiting new markets. Market research investigates and analyzes a target market. Researchers use market research to collect consumer data within a marketplace. It deals with the collection, analysis, and use of market data and market statistics.

Market research allows a company to discover the target market and get opinions and other feedback from consumers about their interest in a product or service.

Researchers use market research to gauge the marketplace’s wants, needs, attitudes, purchase behaviors, and other characteristics. It helps them understand and compare their products and services with their competitors’, industry standards, and thoughts about newly launched products and services. It is also used to explore fresh markets and understand consumers’ needs in the marketplace – both existing and new.

Consumer Research

Consumer research is actually a part of market research. It answers the ‘why’ – identifying the motivation and purchase behavior of targeted customers. Consumer research helps companies and brands understand customer psychology, create detailed purchasing behavior profiles, and provide systematic information about customer needs.

Another way to look at it is that consumer insights extend and enumerate the information gathered during market research to make relevant, specific, and actionable conclusions and predict audience reactions to a company’s brand, product, or service.

Using consumer research information, brands can make changes in their products and services, making them more customer-centric, thereby increasing customer satisfaction.

How They Compare

Market Research is an all-purpose term referring to the practice of collecting and analyzing data to answer discrete business questions, while consumer research is the practice of studying consumer behaviour to derive broader business insights for effective business decision-making.

Tony Oduor, GeoPoll’s Research Manager, summarizes it as thus: market research studies the entire market or a broad segment of the market while consumer research narrows down to a specific brand or product. For example, for a beverage company, market research will show the size of the soft beverage market and the gaps that need to be filled, and consumer insights will point out the most preferred beverage flavor.

Used together, market research and consumer research help brands understand where their business currently stands in the market, as well as what actions they can take to improve their position among consumers.

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GeoPoll conducts research for global fast-moving consumer goods brands, media houses, consulting firms, financial institutions, and technology companies. Our team includes researchers experienced in creating innovative solutions for tracking essential metrics such as brand health, testing new concepts , measuring advertisement effectiveness, and more. See our market research solutions and contact our team if you have questions regarding our capabilities.

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Tags Consumer Behavior , consumer insights , market research , research tips

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Housing Price Growth Expectations Increase; Renters Express Concern for Ability to Own a Home

NEW YORK—The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today released results from its 2024 SCE Housing Survey , which is part of the broader Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) and provides information on consumers’ housing-related experiences and expectations. The results show that the pace at which households expect home prices to rise in the next year has reaccelerated after falling last year, with average one-year ahead expectations now reaching their second highest reading in the survey’s history. In contrast, home price growth expectations for the next five years declined slightly. Expectations about the change in the cost of rent were considerably higher than home price expectations but followed a similar pattern, as rental price growth expectations increased for one-year-ahead and were essentially flat for five-years ahead. Homeowners’ expectations about the likelihood of refinancing their mortgages over the next 12 months rebounded slightly after falling last year, but remain well below pre-pandemic levels. Renters’ views on the ease of obtaining a mortgage deteriorated substantially, with 74.2% stating that obtaining a mortgage is somewhat or very difficult. In fact, renters’ self-assessed probability of ever owning a home decreased to a new series low.

The New York Fed also issued an accompanying Liberty Street Economics blog post that estimates the extent to which mortgage rate lock-in is suppressing U.S. household’s moving plans.

Key findings from the 2024 Survey, which was fielded in February 2024, are:

Home Prices/Rents

Average one-year-ahead home price growth expectations increased to 5.1% in February 2024 from 2.6% in February 2023. This level is slightly above the pre-pandemic mean of 4.2%, but below the 2022 series high of 7%. The increase is broad based across demographic groups, but particularly large for respondents residing in the South. Annualized home price growth expectations for the five-year horizon decreased by 0.1 percentage point to 2.7%.
Rent price growth expectations for the next year increased by 1.5 percentage points to 9.7%, which is the second highest reading in the series since 2022 and reversed last year’s decline. Annualized expectations for the next five years were essentially flat, increasing very slightly to 5.1% from 5.0%.

Housing Outlook

While attitudes toward housing as a financial investment remained strongly positive, they weakened slightly from the previous year, as 67.1% of all respondents characterized buying property in their zip code as a “very good” or “somewhat good” investment. This is slightly below the readings of the last three years, but still above the levels of optimism that prevailed in the pre-pandemic period. The share of respondents reporting that housing is a “bad” or “somewhat bad” investment increased to 9.1% from 7.9% a year ago.
Average expectations of residential mobility, the percent chance of moving to a different primary residence, fell to new series lows at both the one-year (13.4%) and three-year (24.5%) horizons, continuing a declining mobility trend since 2014.

Mortgage Rates

On average, households perceive that national mortgage rates are currently higher than pre-pandemic levels and expect them to rise further in the future. Households now expect mortgage rates to rise to 8.7% a year from now and 9.7% in three years’ time, both of which are series highs. Still, households on average believe there is a 61% chance that mortgage rates will fall over the next 12 months, which is also a series high.

Homeowners and Renters

Homeowners’ expected probability of refinancing rebounded slightly to 6.3% after falling for the last two years. It remains well below the pre-pandemic average of 10.4%.
Renters’ perceptions about the ease of obtaining a mortgage deteriorated substantially, as 74.2% stated that obtaining a mortgage is somewhat or very difficult. This represents an 8.4 percentage point increase from last year, and is well above the 2021 low of 50.5%. Further, renters’ self-assessed probability of ever owning a home decreased by 4.3 percentage points to 40.1%, which also reflects a series low.

About the SCE Housing Survey

The SCE Housing Survey , fielded annually as part of the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) since 2014, provides rich and high-quality information on consumers’ experiences, behaviors, and expectations related to housing. The survey collects data on households' home price growth perceptions and expectations; intentions regarding moving and buying a home in the future; and perceptions of credit conditions, as well as climate risk. For homeowners, the survey collects detailed information on their mortgage debt, past actions and experiences such as foreclosure or refinancing, and expectations regarding future actions, such as taking out new debt or investing in the home. For renters, the survey elicits preferences for owning versus renting, and perceptions regarding the ease of obtaining mortgage credit, and expectations of evictions, among other things.

More information about the SCE survey goals, design, and content can be found here .

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Money blog: 'Loud budgeting' - The money-saving trend that has nothing to do with giving up your daily coffee

Created accidentally by a comedian, "loud budgeting" is breaking down the taboo of speaking about money. Read this and the rest of our Weekend Money features, and leave a comment, and we'll be back with rolling personal finance and consumer news on Monday.

Saturday 11 May 2024 09:05, UK

Weekend Money

'Loud budgeting': The money-saving trend that has nothing to do with giving up your daily coffee
What is most in-demand period property?
£12m tea advert, downsizing, £320 tasting menus and job interview mistakes: What readers have said this week
Free childcare applications about to open for new age band
Where has huge week for UK economy left us?

Best of the week

How to avoid a holiday data roaming charge (while still using the internet)
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Ask a question or make a comment

By Jess Sharp , Money team

Money saving trends are constantly popping up on social media - but one in particular has been gaining huge amounts of attention.

Created accidentally by a comedian, loud budgeting is breaking down the taboo of speaking about money.

The idea is based on being firmer/more vocal about your financial boundaries in social situations and setting out what you are happy to spend your money on, instead of "Keeping up with the Joneses".

On TikTok alone, videos published under the hashtag #loudbudgeting have garnered more than 30 million views - and that figure is continuing to climb.

We spoke to Lukas Battle - the 26-year-old who unintentionally created the trend as part of a comedy sketch.

Based in New York, he came up with the term in a skit about the "quiet luxury" hype, which had spread online in 2023 inspired by shows like Succession.

The term was used for humble bragging about your wealth with expensive items that were subtle in their design - for example, Gwyneth Paltrow's £3,900 moss green wool coat from The Row, which she wore during her ski resort trial...

"I was never a big fan of the quiet luxury trend, so I just kind of switched the words and wrote 'loud budgeting is in'. I'm tired of spending money and I don't want to pretend to be rich," Lukas said.

"That's how it started and then the TikTok comments were just obsessed with that original idea."

This was the first time he mentioned it...

Lukas explained that it wasn't about "being poor" but about not being afraid of sharing your financial limits and "what's profitable for you personally".

"It's not 'skip a coffee a day and you'll become a millionaire'."

While talking money has been seen as rude or taboo, he said it's something his generation is more comfortable doing.

"I've seen more debate around the topic and I think people are really intrigued and attracted by the idea," he said.

"It's just focusing your spending and time on things you enjoy and cutting out the things you might feel pressured to spend your money on."

He has incorporated loud budgeting into his own life, telling his friends "it's free to go outside" and opting for cheaper dinner alternatives.

"Having the terminology and knowing it's a trend helps people understand it and there's no awkward conversation around it," he said.

The trend has been a big hit with so-called American "finfluencers", or "financial influencers", but people in the UK have started practising it as well.

Mia Westrap has taken up loud budgeting by embarking on a no-buy year and sharing her finances with her 11.3k TikTok followers.

Earning roughly £2,100 a month, she spends around £1,200 on essentials, like rent, petrol and car insurance, but limits what else she can purchase.

Clothes, fizzy drinks, beauty treatments, makeup, dinners out and train tickets are just some things on her "red list".

The 26-year-old PHD student first came across the idea back in 2017, but decided to take up the challenge this year after realising she was living "pay check to pay check".

She said her "biggest fear" in the beginning was that her friends wouldn't understand what she was doing, but she found loud budgeting helped.

"I'm still trying my best to just go along with what everyone wants to do but I just won't spend money while we do it and my friends don't mind that, we don't make a big deal out of it," she said.

So far, she has been able to save £1,700, and she said talking openly about her money has been "really helpful".

"There's no way I could have got this far if I wasn't baring my soul to the internet about the money I have spent. It has been a really motivating factor."

Financial expert John Webb said loud budgeting has the ability to help many "feel empowered" and create a "more realistic" relationship with money.

"This is helping to normalise having open and honest conversations about finances," the consumer affair manager at Experien said.

"It can also reduce the anxiety some might have by keeping their financial worries to themselves."

However, he warned it's important to be cautious and to take the reality of life into consideration.

"It could cause troubles within friendship groups if they're not on the same page as you or have different financial goals," he said.

"This challenge isn't meant to stop you from having fun, but it is designed to help people become more conscious and intentional when it comes to money, and reduce the stigma around talking about it."

Rightmove's keyword tool shows Victorian-era houses are the most commonly searched period properties, with people drawn to their ornate designs and features.

Georgian and Edwardian-style are second and third respectively, followed by Tudor properties. Regency ranked in fifth place.

Rightmove property expert Tim Bannister said: "Home hunters continue to be captivated by the character and charm of properties that we see in period dramas.

"Victorian homes remain particularly popular, characterised by their historic charm, solid construction, and spacious interiors. You'll often find Victorian houses in some of the most desirable locations which include convenient access to schools and transport links."

Throughout the week Money blog readers have shared their thoughts on the stories we've been covering, with the most correspondence coming in on...

A hotly contested debate on the best brand of tea
Downsizing homes
The cost of Michelin-starred food

Job interview mistakes

On Wednesday we reported on a new £12m ad from PG Tips in response to it falling behind rivals such as Twinings, Yorkshire Tea and Tetley....

We had lots of comments like this...

How on earth was the PG Tips advert so expensive? I prefer Tetley tea, PG Tips is never strong enough flavour for me. Shellyleppard

The reason for the sales drop with PG Tips could be because they increased the price and reduced the quantity of bags from 240 to 180 - it's obvious. Royston

And then this question which we've tried to answer below...

Why have PG Tips changed from Pyramid shape tea bags, to a square? Sam

Last year PG Tips said it was changing to a square bag that left more room for leaves to infuse, as the bags wouldn't fold over themselves.

We reported on data showing how downsizing could save you money for retirement - more than £400,000, in some regions, by swapping four beds for two.

Some of our readers shared their experiences...

We are downsizing and moving South so it's costing us £100k extra for a smaller place, all money from retirement fund. AlanNorth

Interesting read about downsizing for retirement. We recently did this to have the means to retire early at 52. However, we bought a house in the south of France for the price of a flat in our town in West Sussex. Now living the dream! OliSarah

How much should we pay for food?

Executive chef at London's two-Michelin-starred Ikoyi, Jeremy Chan, raised eyebrows when he suggested to the Money blog that Britons don't pay enough for restaurant food.

Ikoyi, the 35th best restaurant in the world, charges £320 for its tasting menu.

"I don't think people pay enough money for food, I think we charge too little, [but] we want to always be accessible to as many people as possible, we're always trying our best to do that," he said, in a piece about his restaurant's tie up with Uber Eats...

We had this in...

Are they serious? That is two weeks' worth of food shopping for me, if the rich can afford this "tasting menu" then they need to be taxed even more by the government, it's just crazy! Steve T

If the rate of pay is proportionate to the vastly overpriced costs of the double Michelin star menu, I would gladly peel quail eggs for four-hour stints over continuing to be abused as a UK supply teacher. AndrewWard

Does this two-star Michelin star chef live in the real world? Who gives a toss if he stands and peels his quails eggs for four hours, and he can get the best turbot from the fishmonger fresh on a daily basis? It doesn't justify the outrageous price he is charging for his tasting menu. Topaztraveller

Chefs do make me laugh, a steak is just a steak, they don't make the meat! They just cook it like the rest of us, but we eat out because we can't be bothered cooking! StevieGrah

Finally, many of you reacted to this feature on common mistakes in job interviews...

Those 10 biggest mistakes people make in interviews is the dumbest thing I've ever read. They expect all that and they'll be offering a £25k a year job. Why wouldn't I want to know about benefits and basic sick pay? And also a limp handshake? How's that relevant to how you work? Jre90

Others brought their own tips...

Whenever I go for an interview I stick to three points: 1. Be yourself 2. Own the interview 3. Wear the clothes that match the job you are applying Kevin James Blakey

From Sunday, eligible working parents of children from nine-months-old in England will be able to register for access to up to 15 free hours of government-funded childcare per week.

This will then be granted from September.

Check if you're eligible here - or read on for our explainer on free childcare across the UK.

Three and four year olds

In England, all parents of children aged three and four in England can claim 15 hours of free childcare per week, for 1,140 hours (38 weeks) a year, at an approved provider.

This is a universal offer open to all.

It can be extended to 30 hours where both parents (or the sole parent) are in work, earn the weekly minimum equivalent of 16 hours at the national minimum or living wage, and have an income of less than £100,000 per year.

Two year olds

Previously, only parents in receipt of certain benefits were eligible for 15 hours of free childcare.

But, as of last month, this was extended to working parents.

This is not a universal offer, however.

A working parent must earn more than £8,670 but less than £100,000 per year. For couples, the rule applies to both parents.

Nine months old

In September, this same 15-hour offer will be extended to working parents of children aged from nine months. From 12 May, those whose children will be at least nine months old on 31 August can apply to received the 15 hours of care from September.

From September 2025

The final change to the childcare offer in England will be rolled out in September 2025, when eligible working parents of all children under the age of five will be able to claim 30 hours of free childcare a week.

In some areas of Wales, the Flying Start early years programme offers 12.5 hours of free childcare for 39 weeks, for eligible children aged two to three. The scheme is based on your postcode area, though it is currently being expanded.

All three and four-year-olds are entitled to free early education of 10 hours per week in approved settings during term time under the Welsh government's childcare offer.

Some children of this age are entitled to up to 30 hours per week of free early education and childcare over 48 weeks of the year. The hours can be split - but at least 10 need to be used on early education.

To qualify for this, each parent must earn less than £100,000 per year, be employed and earn at least the equivalent of working 16 hours a week at the national minimum wage, or be enrolled on an undergraduate, postgraduate or further education course that is at least 10 weeks in length.

All three and four-year-olds living in Scotland are entitled to at least 1,140 hours per year of free childcare, with no work or earnings requirements for parents.

This is usually taken as 30 hours per week over term time (38 weeks), though each provider will have their own approach.

Some households can claim free childcare for two-year-olds. To be eligible you have to be claiming certain benefits such as Income Support, Jobseeker's Allowance or Universal Credit, or have a child that is in the care of their local council or living with you under a guardianship order or kinship care order.

Northern Ireland

There is no scheme for free childcare in Northern Ireland. Some other limited support is available.

Working parents can access support from UK-wide schemes such as tax credits, Universal Credit, childcare vouchers and tax-free childcare.

Aside from this, all parents of children aged three or four can apply for at least 12.5 hours a week of funded pre-school education during term time. But over 90% of three-year-olds have a funded pre-school place - and of course this is different to childcare.

What other help could I be eligible for?

Tax-free childcare - Working parents in the UK can claim up to £500 every three months (up to £2,000 a year) for each of their children to help with childcare costs.

If the child is disabled, the amount goes up to £1,000 every three months (up to £4,000 a year).

To claim the benefit, parents will need to open a tax-free childcare account online. For every 80p paid into the account, the government will top it up by 20p.

The scheme is available until the September after the child turns 11.

Universal credit - Working families on universal credit can claim back up to 85% of their monthly childcare costs, as long as the care is paid for upfront. The most you can claim per month is £951 for one child or £1,630 for two or more children.

Tax credits - People claiming working tax credit can get up to 70% of what they pay for childcare if their costs are no more than £175 per week for one child or £300 per work for multiple children.

Two big economic moments dominated the news agenda in Money this week - interest rates and GDP.

As expected, the Bank of England held the base rate at 5.25% on Wednesday - but a shift in language was instructive about what may happen next.

Bank governor Andrew Bailey opened the door to a summer cut to 5%, telling reporters that an easing of rates at the next Monetary Policy Committee meeting on 20 June was neither ruled out nor a fait accompli.

More surprisingly, he suggested that rate cuts, when they start, could go deeper "than currently priced into market rates".

He refused to be drawn on what that path might look like - but markets had thought rates could bottom out at 4.5% or 4.75% this year, and potentially 3.5% or 4% next.

"To make sure that inflation stays around the 2% target - that inflation will neither be too high nor too low - it's likely that we will need to cut Bank rate over the coming quarters and make monetary policy somewhat less restrictive over the forecast period," Mr Bailey said.

You can read economics editor Ed Conway's analysis of the Bank's decision here ...

On Friday we discovered the UK is no longer in recession.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.6% between January and March, the Office for National Statistics said.

This followed two consecutive quarters of the economy shrinking.

The data was more positive than anticipated.

"Britain is not just out of recession," wrote Conway. "It is out of recession with a bang."

The UK has seen its fastest growth since the tailend of the pandemic - and Conway picked out three other reasons for optimism.

1/ An economic growth rate of 0.6% is near enough to what economists used to call "trend growth". It's the kind of number that signifies the economy growing at more or less "normal" rates.

2/ 0.6% means the UK is, alongside Canada, the fastest-growing economy in the G7 (we've yet to hear from Japan, but economists expect its economy to contract in the first quarter).

3/ Third, it's not just gross domestic product that's up. So too is gross domestic product per head - the number you get when you divide our national income by every person in the country. After seven years without any growth, GDP per head rose by 0.4% in the first quarter.

GDP per head is a more accurate yardstick for the "feelgood factor", said Conway - perhaps meaning people will finally start to feel better off.

For more on where Friday's figures leaves us, listen to an Ian King Business Podcast special...

The Money blog is your place for consumer news, economic analysis and everything you need to know about the cost of living - bookmark news.sky.com/money .

It runs with live updates every weekday - while on Saturdays we scale back and offer you a selection of weekend reads.

Check them out this morning and we'll be back on Monday with rolling news and features.

The Money team is Emily Mee, Bhvishya Patel, Jess Sharp, Katie Williams, Brad Young and Ollie Cooper, with sub-editing by Isobel Souster. The blog is edited by Jimmy Rice.

If you've missed any of the features we've been running in Money this year, or want to check back on something you've previously seen in the blog, this archive of our most popular articles may help...

Loaves of bread have been recalled from shelves in Japan after they were found to contain the remains of a rat.

Production of the bread in Tokyo has been halted after parts of a "small animal" were found by at least two people.

Pasco Shikishima Corp, which produces the bread, said 104,000 packages have been recalled as it apologised and promised compensation.

A company representative told Sky News's US partner network, NBC News, that a "small black rat" was found in the bread. No customers were reported to have fallen ill as a result of ingesting the contaminated bread.

"We deeply apologise for the serious inconvenience and trouble this has caused to our customers, suppliers, and other concerned parties," the spokesman said.

Pasco added in a separate statement that "we will do our utmost to strengthen our quality controls so that this will never happen again. We ask for your understanding and your co-operation."

Japanese media reports said at least two people who bought the bread in the Gunma prefecture, north-west of Tokyo, complained to the company about finding a rodent in the bread.

Record levels of shoplifting appear to be declining as fewer shopkeepers reported thefts last year, new figures show.

A survey by the Office for National Statistics shows 26% of retailers experienced customer theft in 2023, down from a record high of 28% in 2022.

This comes despite a number of reports suggesting shoplifting is becoming more frequent.

A separate ONS finding , which used police crime data, showed reports of shoplifting were at their highest level in 20 years in 2023, with law enforcements logging 430,000 instances of the crime.

Let's get you up to speed on the biggest business news of the past 24 hours.

A privately owned used-car platform is circling Cazoo Group, its stricken US-listed rival, which is on the brink of administration.

Sky News has learnt that Motors.co.uk is a leading contender to acquire Cazoo's marketplace operation, which would include its brand and intellectual property assets.

The process to auction the used-car platform's constituent parts comes after it spent tens of millions of pounds on sponsorship deals in football, snooker and darts in a rapid attempt to gain market share.

The owner of British Airways has reported a sharp rise in profits amid soaring demand for trips and a fall in the cost of fuel.

International Airlines Group said its operating profit for the first three months of the year was €68m (£58.5m) - above expectations and up from €9m (£7.7m) during the same period in 2023.

The company, which also owns Aer Lingus, Iberia and Vueling, said earnings had soared thanks to strong demand, particularly over the Easter holidays.

The prospect of a strike across Tata Steel's UK operations has gained further traction after a key union secured support for industrial action.

Community, which has more than 3,000 members, said 85% voted in favour of fighting the India-owned company's plans for up to 2,800 job losses, the majority of them at the country's biggest steelworks in Port Talbot, South Wales.

Tata confirmed last month it was to press ahead with the closure of the blast furnaces at the plant, replacing them with electric arc furnaces to reduce emissions and costs.

In doing so, the company rejected an alternative plan put forward by the Community, GMB and Unite unions that, they said, would raise productivity and protect jobs across the supply chain.

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IMAGES

Understanding the Consumer Journey Optimizes Customer Experience
Consumer Research
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COMMENTS

Consumer Research: Examples, Process and Scope
Consumer research is a part of market research in which inclination, motivation and purchase behavior of the targeted customers are identified. Customer research helps businesses or organizations understand customer psychology. Learn about consumer research model, process of consumer research with examples and questions.
The past, present, and future of consumer research
In this article, we document the evolution of research trends (concepts, methods, and aims) within the field of consumer behavior, from the time of its early development to the present day, as a multidisciplinary area of research within marketing. We describe current changes in retailing and real-world consumption and offer suggestions on how to use observations of consumption phenomena to ...
What is Consumer Research? Definition, Methods and Examples
Consumer research, also known as market research or consumer insights research, is defined as the process of collecting and analyzing information about consumers' preferences, behaviors, and attitudes toward products, services, brands, or market trends. Learn more about consumer research methods and examples.
Journal of Consumer Research
Publishes interdisciplinary scholarly research that describes and explains consumer behavior. Empirical, theoretical, and methodological articles span fields such as psychology, marketing, sociology, economics, communications, and anthropology.
10 Essential Methods for Effective Consumer and Market Research
These 10 market research methods form the backbone of effective market research strategies. Continue reading or jump directly to each method by tapping the link below. Focus groups. Surveys. Consumer research with social media listening. Interviews.
Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template
Download HubSpot's free, editable market research report template here. 1. Five Forces Analysis Template. Use Porter's Five Forces Model to understand an industry by analyzing five different criteria and how high the power, threat, or rivalry in each area is — here are the five criteria: Competitive rivalry.
Consumer Insights & Analytics
Read our latest research, articles, and reports on Consumer Insights and Analytics.
Association for Consumer Research
The Association for Consumer Research is a collection of academics, practitioners, and government leaders devoted to the study of consumer behavior. Together, ACR members use a variety of cutting-edge research methods to uncover consumer insights and disperse this knowledge to improve consumer, business, and social outcomes.
How to Do Market Research [4-Step Framework]
How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps. The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours. 1. Create simple user personas. A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data ...
Market Research and Consumer Behavior
There are 4 modules in this course. Your marketing quest begins here! The first course in this specialization lays the neccessary groundwork for an overall successful marketing strategy. It is separated into two sections: Market Research and Consumer Behavior. Gain the tools and techniques to translate a decision problem into a research ...
Consumer Behavior Research: Unlocking Market Insights
Utilizing Consumer Research to Develop Effective Marketing Programs. Consumer research is a vital tool for developing effective marketing programs. By understanding consumer needs, preferences, and behaviors, businesses can create targeted marketing strategies that resonate with their audience. Consumer research helps in identifying market ...
How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide
Before the iPhone's release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. ...
Consumer Market Research
Consumer market research is the overall study of the target consumer in a particular industry. Brand marketers turn to consumer market research to gain business intelligence in three main areas: Customers (Habits, needs, desires, pain points, overall sentiment) Their company and products (Feelings about their overall brand and products)
Market Research: What It Is and How to Do It
June 3, 2021 28 min read. Market research is a process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a given market. It takes into account geographic, demographic, and psychographic data about past, current, and potential customers, as well as competitive analysis to evaluate the viability of a product offer.
Consumer research: Understand your target market
A consumer research survey includes psychographics such as interests, attitudes, behaviors, and values so you can target the right market. Your research data will reveal new insights into your target market. For example, you know your target audience for your new accounting software is for companies of 50+ employees, but you want to be sure you ...
Six Types Of Research That Can Unlock Consumer Insights
Below is a guide to the types of research you can consider leveraging to analyze the consumer, as they can help you to gain valuable insights to fuel your business strategy: • Social listening ...
Consumer Research Strategies for Data-Driven Marketing Excellence
Consumer research offers crucial insights into customer needs, trends and purchasing behavior, guiding effective marketing strategies. Strategic tools. Techniques like surveys, focus groups and ...
The goods on consumer behavior
Research by consumer psychologists aims to promote consumers' well-being in sustainability, health, and money management. ... (Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 34, No. 5, 2017). One big question is how younger generations of consumers will approach sustainable consumption. Gen Z—the colloquial term for anyone born between the late 1990s ...
What is Market Research? Definition, Types, Process ...
Market research is defined as the systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data about a specific market, industry, or consumer segment. It involves studying customers, competitors, and market dynamics to identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and make informed business decisions. Market research provides valuable insights into ...
How to Do Market Research, Types, and Example
Market research is the process of assessing the viability of a new good or service through research conducted directly with the consumer which allows a company to ...
Marketing research
Consumer marketing research is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers in a market-based economy, and it aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns. [citation needed]
Understanding consumer behavior: Insights from McKinsey and Forrester
Anne Grimmelt: Our research corroborates that. We found in our research that about 33 percent of millennial and Gen Z consumers say they choose to buy a brand from a company that has their values, versus about 12 percent of baby boomers. But every demographic group is leaning toward that. Another finding from our research is the reasons why consumers change to a new brand.
Market Research vs Consumer Research
SUGGESTED 7 Trends in Survey Research to Watch in 2024 and Beyond. Tony Oduor, GeoPoll's Research Manager, summarizes it as thus: market research studies the entire market or a broad segment of the market while consumer research narrows down to a specific brand or product. For example, for a beverage company, market research will show the ...
Consumer Insights Research 2023: Our Findings
Despite vocal backlash, a significant majority of Americans stand with and support the LGBTQ+ community and Pride Month activations. Our research indicates that 88% of non-LGBTQ+ people remain positive or neutral about Pride Month marketing.With this in mind, brands should not be swayed by the activities of a minority but should instead create campaigns based on our insights.
Housing Price Growth Expectations Increase; Renters Express Concern for
The SCE Housing Survey, fielded annually as part of the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) since 2014, provides rich and high-quality information on consumers' experiences, behaviors, and expectations related to housing. The survey collects data on households' home price growth perceptions and expectations; intentions regarding moving and ...
The past, present, and future of consumer research
Abstract. In this article, we document the evolution of research trends (concepts, methods, and aims) within the field of consumer behavior, from the time of its early development to the present day, as a multidisciplinary area of research within marketing. We describe current changes in retailing and real-world consumption and offer ...
B2B Content Marketing Trends 2024 [Research]
New research into B2B content marketing trends for 2024 reveals specifics of AI implementation, social media use, and budget forecasts, plus content success factors. Marketers talk AI, common challenges, best results, and more in the 14th annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2024.
The State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2024
The Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2024 is our latest overview of the influencer marketing industry. It summarizes the thoughts of more than 3000 marketing agencies, brands, and other relevant professionals regarding the current state of influencer marketing, along with some predictions of how people expect it to move over the next year and into the future.
Transformative Trends and Growth Prospects in North America
Dublin, May 10, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "North America Floriculture Market Outlook, 2029" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's... May 10, 2024 07:04 ET | Source: Research and Markets
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In a statement released to Ad Age, Tor Myhren, Apple's vice president of marketing communications, said: "Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it's incredibly important to us to design products ...