How to Conduct a Market Survey

Surveys are an important part of market research, helping to measure customer trends and tastes in a given market. Diverse in size, design, and purpose, market surveys are an extremely important source of data, helping a company or organization determine the right product or service for its target market and how it works. their promotion. The steps below will give you a basic guide to market research as well as some tips on optimizing your results.

Table of Contents

Identify the right market

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Clarify the purpose of the market investigation. Before planning, you need to know what your ultimate goal is. What do you want to learn? Want to test a new product’s acceptability? Also consider the effectiveness or reach of the target audience of your new marketing strategy as your goal. Whatever it is, make sure it’s very clear in your mind.

For example, suppose you have a company that supplies and repairs computer equipment. The goal of a market survey might be to determine how many students at a local university know about your business and are likely to come to you for their computer repair or product purchase. much.

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Define and outline the nature, scope, and size of the market. Before you start investigating a certain market, you need to understand it. Choose demographic and geographic parameters, identify customers by product type, and understand the number of people present in the market.

Narrow down to a short list of desired data, such as consumption habits or average income.
The business and computer repair scenario above will be relatively simple. You just focus on college students. However, you may also want to target high-income or more tech-savvy students who are more likely to buy.

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Determine what aspect you want to investigate in that market. It completely depends on the marketing goals and they are extremely diverse. If you’re launching a new product, you probably want to know how well-recognized or desired it is in a given market. Or, maybe you’ll want to learn about the specific consumption habits of your market, such as when, where, and how much is spent. Make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to learn.

At the same time, you also need to clarify the type of information you want. You can use qualitative questions to gather information that can’t be measured directly with numbers, such as whether a customer has a suggestion to help improve a product or service. Or, you can also ask quantitative questions that capture digitized or quantifiable information, such as asking customers to rate a product’s performance on a scale of 1 to 10.
You may also want to determine exactly what attracted customers to buy your product. In this case, don’t forget to ask specific questions of recent shoppers (in the last month) about their buying experience and resources to help them find the product. From there, bring into play the more appreciated aspects and improve any areas that are weak or lacking. ^{[1] X Research Source}
Continuing with the example above, you can focus on returning old customers or new customers choosing your business over your competitors.

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Determine when and where customers can be reached. You can conduct an investigation at the mall or on the street, by phone, online or by mail. Results may vary, depending on the time of day and time of year. Choose the method and time that best suits your investigation.

Consider the target audience when approaching. It can be a predefined target demographic or simply a group of customers who have used a product or service.
Don’t forget who your target customers are, especially if using an online survey. In many cases, you cannot reach the target market through online channels, especially when the audience is older people. ^{[2] X Research Source}
For example, a computer repair business might decide to interview students face-to-face at the center of campus or conduct an online interview through a frequently visited website.

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Determine the type of survey you use. Surveys can be divided into two general groups: questionnaires and interviews. The only difference lies in who records the respondent’s feedback: in the questionnaire group, respondents record their own answers, while in the interview, the interviewers write down their responses. what they say. In addition, there are several other options, such as how to conduct an investigation, online or in person. Surveys can also be carried out in groups or individually. ^{[3] X Research Sources}

The questionnaire can be administered by contact and questionnaires in person, by mail or online. Interviews can be conducted either face-to-face or by phone.
Questionnaires are an effective form of market investigation with closed-ended questions. However, they limit respondents’ ability to express their thoughts and printing costs can be expensive. ^{[4] X Research Sources}
Interviewing allows the interviewer to formulate additional questions to explore more deeply and clearly the thoughts of the respondents. However, this form takes more time. ^{[5] X Research Sources}
Group surveys using questionnaires can be effective because respondents can cooperate and provide more informative responses. ^{[6] X Research Sources}

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Consider using an online survey platform. They are cost effective in organizing the investigation as well as sorting the results. All you have to do is search online and compare a few of the platforms you find, determining which one with the right tools. Make sure those are reputable platforms. You should also consider whether the target market is computer literate enough for an online survey.

Some of the most reputable and well-known platforms are SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, SurveyGizmo and PplDaddy. ^{[7] X Research Sources}

Collect the best results

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Select the sample size. To obtain reliable results, the sample size should be statistically significant. You may want to create a subsample, such as “male”, “18-24 years old”, etc. to reduce the risk of results being biased towards certain populations.

The required sample size depends on the accuracy desired. The larger the sample, the higher the reliability. For example, a survey with 10 participants gives a very large margin of error (about 32 percent), meaning that this data is fundamentally unreliable. However, a sample with size 500 will give you a more satisfactory margin of error – 5 percent. ^{[8] X Trusted Source Science Buddies Go to Source}
If possible, let participants self-report their demographic information. It can be general or specific information, depending on your preferences. Also, don’t forget to design these questions at the top of the questionnaire/interview. ^{[9] X Research Source}
- Be forewarned, though, that many people tend to avoid investigations that ask for personal information.
As the computer repair and supply business owner in the example above, you would want to interview a statistically significant number of students, perhaps by subject area, age, or gender.

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Prepare a list of questions to which the answers will yield the data needed for your market research. Questions should be specific and to the point, completely clear, and in as few words as possible.

If your goal is to get your customers’ real thoughts, focus on building open-ended questions that customers can answer with their own thoughts instead of multiple choice or ranking questions. class. ^{[10] X Research Source}
However, if you want numerical results, make sure the answers do, one way or another. For example, you could have attendees rate a product or service on a scale of 1 to 10.

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Find a way to quantify the answers received. If you’re researching interests, you’ll probably want respondents to rank sensations by numbers or keywords. If asking about money, use ranges of values. If the responses are descriptive, decide how to group them after completing the survey.

For example, with a computer business, you could ask students to rate from 1 to 10 the likelihood of visiting a store or the type of computer accessory they most want, depending on the type of information you need.

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Identify variables that may affect the results obtained. These often include the personality of the subject who is more likely to respond to the survey. For unbiased results, you need to find a way to reduce their influence in the results.

For example, as a computer business owner, you can do this through census screening. If you think engineering students are the main customer group, accept only their results, although it may be easier for history or foreign language students to agree to participate in the survey.

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Have someone else review the list of questions. Do not conduct a survey before the test, be it with friends or colleagues, to make sure the questions are really reasonable, the answers received are not difficult to quantify, and the investigation is easy to carry out. Specifically, ask the test subject to make sure:

The list of questions is not too long and complicated.
The survey does not make emotional assumptions about the target market
The question was asked as directly as possible. ^{[11] X Research Source}

Conduct investigations

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Plan the time and place of the investigation. Make sure you choose the right one, making sure to get the largest sample size. In addition, surveys can also be conducted online. Then, make sure you’ve posted them where there’s been the most targeted traffic or emailed them to the most viable addresses.

With the online survey, this will be the time the questionnaire is open (how long it takes respondents to complete the questionnaire).
For example, the target market of a computer business – engineers, is often busy all day in the computer room. Therefore, it is necessary to arrange an investigation before or after this time.

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If using a questionnaire, check the list again. Carefully re-read it a few times and have someone else do the same. Remember that the survey should be no longer than five minutes and the questions should be really simple. ^{[12] X Research Source}

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Conduct investigations, maximizing sample size and response accuracy. Remember that you may have to do it more than once or in different locations to get the full results. Just make sure that the survey is completely preserved between different times and locations. Otherwise, the results obtained may not be consistent.

For example, as a computer business owner, you can choose from several different survey locations and dates to better fit your student’s schedule.

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Analyze results. Record, categorize responses expressed numerically, average and analyze the different choices (very high or low). Read through and analyze the open-ended responses to get an overview of how participants responded and what their thoughts were. From there, create a report summarizing what you find, even if it’s for your personal use only.

Scroll through the whole thing, find truly excellent feedback from customers. Anything memorable, creative or positive can be bookmarked and reused for future advertising campaigns by the company. ^{[13] X Research Source}

Advice

In essence, market surveys lack flexibility and need to be conducted uniformly with all participants in order to obtain standardized results. This means that you cannot adjust the focus of the investigation throughout the process, even if you realize that many very important factors have been overlooked. It is both a strength and a weakness of market surveys and this should be considered when developing a survey program.
It’s always better to do a specific investigation, going straight to the point, than trying to cover a lot of things. The less clutter, the more useful and detailed the data obtained.
Provides accurate results. True results from a small sample are much better than “build up” just to increase the sample size.

Steps

Identify the right market

Collect the best results

Conduct investigations

Advice

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