Toll Free:
Choose your research— and your researcher—carefully.
There are two types of research: exploratory and descriptive.
Exploratory helps you understand market shifts and trends (although no research has yet adequately explained the trend of men wearing capri pants). Descriptive research builds on the exploratory research, as it attempts to understand the specifics of your target market’s preferences, desires and sensibilities. As its name suggests, descriptive research provides the color, the nuances…it fills in any gray space.
Both research types are indispensable—but remember, exploratory is the horse, descriptive is the cart. Doing them in reverse order would be a disaster.
Conduct exploratory research every three months. One relatively simple way is to sign up for Google Alerts. You type in keywords associated with your business, and this program will alert you whenever that term is Googled. Before long, trends will emerge, which should be shared internally. Get feedback, and decide if a descriptive study is warranted.
But, if you’re going to conduct exploratory research on a larger scale, or your circumstances call for descriptive research of any scale, make darn sure you seek out respected marketing research firm, and then meet with their principals before making your choice. You need researchers who have objectivity, who know where to source data, and who have sophisticated analytical techniques to amplify the color.
But in the meantime, start small with exploratory research, identify the trends that emerge and then conduct descriptive research to unearth insights.
OC
