Time-to-market is one of the most critical competencies a business must have, but also one of the most challenging — especially in areas like manufacturing, where product development cycles are measured in years, and first-mover advantages can translate into massive market share and, in many cases, sustainable marketplace leadership.
Indeed, many businesses enjoy continued year-over-year growth not necessarily because they have the most dynamic product or the best price, but because their product was first on the scene. Further, those who create a category and not just a product can strike the proverbial jackpot, and create the very terminology and vocabulary that their marketplace uses going forward.
While time-to-market has always been vital, what has changed in recent years is how market research is dramatically accelerating this process, and empowering businesses with actionable insights to make smarter, safer and more profitable decisions months — or even years — sooner than they could in the past.
Generally, here are the key reasons how and why market research is accelerating time-to-market:
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More Data Available
There is an unprecedented amount of data available to researchers that is automatically captured by various systems, including CRM’s, POS’s, call and contact centers, and the list goes on. When this data is captured, organized, analyzed and integrated correctly, it augments primary research (i.e. derived through qualitative data gathering methods such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, etc.) to tell a much clearer, broader and deeper product development story in a much quicker manner — which dramatically accelerates time-to-market.
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Automation & Technology
Researchers are leveraging automation and advanced technology tools (e.g. data mining, trend algorithms, etc.) to reveal marketplace insights much faster and more reliably than in the past. This is especially important in industries where product develop teams impose aggressive timelines on business development and marketing teams to provide critical answers to fundamental questions. When you’re wondering “what product features do our customers care about the most?” and “should we introduce this product as a standalone solution, or is it better in the long-run to position it as an auxiliary tool that enhances what our customers are already doing?”, you want to find the right answer before a huge investment is made.
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Constant Innovation
As noted in Forbes, “The cost, quality and performance standards of today will be obsolete within 18 months.” Granted, this timeline may be longer (or even shorter) in certain industries and marketplaces, such as consumer electronics. However, the point remains that product development does not stop when products hit the market and get sold to customers.
Market research helps companies capture and glean “the voice of the customer,” so they can start planning and implementing updates, improvements, enhancements and additions months or years sooner than in the past, and get next-generation products to the marketplace as quickly (and as profitably) as possible.
Learn More
To learn more about leveraging market research to accelerate your business’s time-to-market strategy and capacity, contact the Communications For Research team today. Our co-CEO Colson Steber will talk with you and make sure that your market research plan encompasses your business goals.
For more information on the value of market research and how it could benefit your company, download our FREE eBook:
