In this article we collect some of the most important points that should be analyzed before deciding to launch a product or service. It is what is known as market research and the first question you should ask yourself is whether you really need to do it or can you do without it.
Lack of budget should not be a reason to launch without conducting a market study. The very survival of your company is at stake. Experts repeat ad nauseam that many times they see a business close six months after setting them up. They are companies with an offer that is out of the market because they make the mistake of thinking that our ideas are the same as those of the public. And they are not contrasted. They also remember that only 20% of the products that are tested are released on the market, so it is easy to imagine what happens to those that are not even tested.
The entrepreneur’s heat, which leads him to believe that his idea is good without contrasting it, and the belief that market research is expensive are behind this stark reality. And the truth is that an investigation to test an idea, with a team of professionals, can be done with an investment. But if there are not enough resources, there are also methods and tools for you to do the preliminary research work yourself and obtain reliable results.
Do your research . If we talk about market research, it means that we mean to follow a methodology that allows obtaining valid results to make decisions. It is useless asking a group of friends and acquaintances for an opinion. Nor is it enough to look at Google to make a small approximation of what the competition does. We are talking about you doing your own market research following a methodology as close as possible to that used by professionals. This will help you minimize risk in decision making. But you may be wondering where to start?
Define a goal : The first thing is to define the objective of the investigation. Know what you are going to do it for, what you want to find out and what use you are going to give it. Depending on the objectives, you will apply one or another methodology. In any case, the first thing the entrepreneur must consider is whether the product or service is good as well as the potential market that would be willing to pay for it and how he would like it to be. But first you have to know if the idea is going to work or not, what are the good things and what are the bad things.
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What Kind Of Research?
Depending on your objective, you will have to choose between the possible investigation tools. Some only provide raw, hard data (quantitative studies). Others, quality values or purchase intention, opportunities and threats (qualitative).You can find your queries in this blog.
You may need a combination of the two to get started. For example, to start the same, the first thing that interests you is to know the size of the market you want to enter. Its value in price or by potential customers. For that, the consumption or purchase panels are used , in which people are asked what they have consumed or bought (they are not asked about purchase intention, which is what it tells you if you have a chance).
The panel will help you determine the size of your potential market, but you will have to complement it later with a satisfaction survey that will provide you with clues about the opportunities and threats that really exist in that specific segment.
Each tool serves a purpose . To test a new product, we will always do a product test. To know the motivations of purchase, the best is a survey. But if I am already in the market and I want to detect why there has been a drop in sales, I make a purchase panel and see what barriers have been. What has caused the non-growth, I analyze which of my competitors do grow, what factors have taken advantage of …
Who is my audience?
The third key decision is to choose the universe of people who will participate in the research. The minimum possible to obtain reliable results. And it will depend on the type of business you are going to set up. A business that is aimed at a general public and a national or global market is not the same as a local business for a highly segmented public.
What Should You Test To Know If You Jump
Don’t be obsessed with measuring purchase intent. In reality, it is not going to be what determines both the success or failure of your future business. What you should analyze in your research is if your business is relevant, if it is different, and if you also offer it at a competitive price.
Feasibility depends on three basic factors: that it is relevant, that it is different and that it is competitively priced. If you put those three variables together, you may have a star product. How do you analyze each one?
Degree of relevance . It is what gives us the clue as to whether we are going to be able to convince the client to leave the competition and come with us. For this, experts advise designing a product or an idea that really meets a need better or in a different way than the rest do today. This is something that can be consulted directly with the potential consumer.
What else Should You Test
Opportunity for price. The third variable is making sure your prices are competitive. This does not necessarily imply being cheaper. The equation suggested by the experts is that you can be more expensive, but only if you are relevant and different, those people are going to pay for you.
It is basically that. Meet a need in a better way that is being done: be different. Almost all product and service innovations start because they are different. Meeting a new need is very difficult in marketing, because almost all of them are satisfied. You have to provide something different. Going back to the ice cream example, you might ask yourself: Is it a relevant product? Well, maybe not, but it is different and that is where the consumer is beginning to be captured.
