Difficult business problems require innovative ideas to solve them. Utilizing market research provides business decision makers with the insight needed to overcome these hurdles. Research & Marketing Strategies, Inc. (RMS) knows that when conducted appropriately, market research can have a generous return on investment (ROI).
Here are four examples for how market research can improve a business’ ROI:
- Understanding your market
Knowing your brand’s position and reputation is key to understanding your market. From here it is important to understand who your target audience is and what motivates them. It is also important to recognize how your target audience views your brand, and how that may differ from how leaders at your business view your brand. Knowing all of this will help your organization generate solutions geared towards your target market, as well as assist your organization in developing marketing that will effectively resonate with your target audience.
- Utilizing human resources effectively
As discussed in a previous blog, satisfied employees lead to satisfied customers. One way to evaluate employee satisfaction is to conduct employee satisfaction surveys. Leave room in the survey to ask employees for ideas on how to improve business operations. Front-line employees are extremely underutilized when it comes to corporate insight and strategic planning. Employees often see operational issues more clearly, and may have innovative ideas they have not yet communicated to business leaders.
- Improving your operations
In general, market research can help guide business operations through efficient and effective decision making. Utilizing insights for decision making ensures that you aren’t wasting resources on plans that won’t be well received by your users. Another way that market research can directly impact your operations is by segmenting your audience and identifying opportunities to better serve your market, while at the same time saving resources. An example of this for retail is that some organizations have found certain customers prefer a self check-out. Customers using these in addition to regular check-out lines decreases overall wait-times, and create an opportunity for staff to provide additional customer support, ultimately boosting sales. Banking has found many opportunities in this area as well, through expanding features for online portals, smart phone applications, and self-serve kiosks. Understanding customer preferences and segmenting audiences in this manner will help an organization generate a strategy that accommodates all users, while also taking advantage of more efficient platforms.
- Insight on your product/service offering
Research is a great tool when assessing consumer habits. Usage studies provide consumer insight to business decisions makers. The key is to ask the right questions that will help you understand how to be more valuable to consumers. Focus groups, feasibility studies, in-home usage testing (IHUTs), and longitudinal tracking studies are all examples of methods used in market research to evaluate products or services. Failed products like these (or these) could have benefited from additional market research to evaluate consumers’ perceptions, which may have saved their organizations from a costly product failure.
RMS is a market research firm located in Syracuse, NY. If you are interested in improving your business’ ROI, or learning more about how market research services can improve your organization, please contact the Senior Director of Business Development and Corporate Strategy, Sandy Baker at SandyB@RMSresults.com or by calling 1-866-567-5422.
