“Market research is easy. All we need to do is ask our customers questions, right? How hard is that? Heck, we can even have the interns do it in a few days —a week, tops.”
If you’ve heard — or possibly said — something similar to the above, then you know from dismal experience that pretty much every assumption is wrong (and I pity those interns).
Market research is not something that anyone without in-depth training and experience can do, because there are many pitfalls along the way. In this sense, market research is like any other legitimate and established professional discipline, such as project management or network security.
Normally here on our blog, we focus on best practices and strategic advice. However, today we’d like to head in the other direction: revealing the 3 most common — and costly — market research mistakes that inexperienced and uninformed companies make:
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Not Avoiding or Correcting for Population Specification
Population specification is a technique in which researchers prioritize a specific sampling population (e.g. all customers) vs. segmented demographics (e.g. men, women, under 30, students, professionals, etc.).
The reason this error is so common is easy to understand: it’s much simpler (read: faster and cheaper) for companies to simply group all of their respondents into one category and ask them questions.
Why this technique such a massive market research mistake, however, is that it fundamentally fails to appreciate that various segments behave differently. This invariably leads to a range of sampling errors, bias, and incorrect conclusions that translate into bad decisions.
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Not Identifying the Right Market Research Question
This market research mistake is deceptively difficult to detect, which is why it is so common. Many companies that launch a market research project aim to answer a question (or perhaps multiple questions). Everyone knows what the question is, and so there is no mystery there.
However, the problem can be — and often is — that the question is not the best or right one for the company to answer, in order to solve their issues, overcome challenges, achieve goals, and so on. Unfortunately, this does not come to light until significant money and time has been invested
To make things even worse, just as individuals can sometimes be in denial and refuse to accept painful truths, companies can refuse to see that their market research started out in the wrong direction. As a result, they attempt to fit round market research results into a square market research problem holes. The inevitable result is that they make poor decisions — and often blame the concept of market research itself, rather than seeing that the problem was 100% in the approach.
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Trying to do Everything In-House
In order to save money and time, some companies talk themselves into DIY market research. Granted, this is a perfectly viable approach if the company has the in-house resources to make this work (e.g. specialists, technology, systems, etc.).
However, most companies don’t have all of the pieces they need, which means partnering with a consultant to provide guidance advice, or an agency to handle some (or all) of the design, development, implementation, analysis and reporting, is an absolute must. For a deeper discussion, read our article: 4 Downsides of Do-it-Yourself Market Research.
Learn More
To learn more about avoiding these common and costly market research mistakes, and ensuring that you take the shortest path to value and ROI with your project or campaign, contact the Communications For Research team today. You’ll talk with our co-CEO Colson Steber and discuss your business goals to create a plan that will not only save you money, but lead to the most success for your company.
For more information on the value of market research and how you can communicate it to your clients, download our FREE eBook:
