Market research surveys: The quick start guide
It’s easy to conduct market research online using market research surveys. Learn how to rapidly create compelling market research surveys in minutes.
Market research surveys are intuitive and easy-to-use tools for gathering information from your target markets. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a small startup, you can use market research surveys to gain a better understanding of your target audience.
You can use these surveys to access key demographic information, finding out just about anything from what customers like about your business to what kind of products your market needs.
In order for you to position yourself in such as way that you retain existing customers or gain new business, you’ll need the right data to back you up. Let’s discover how to create and conduct market research surveys to get the information you need.
What is a market research survey?
A market research survey is a research method used to gather insights, information and data from your target audience. Sending out a tailored survey allows you to collect extensive feedback on a large scale. With ample responses, you can turn survey results into actionable steps to improve your business.
Here’s a glimpse of some of the information you can gather with market research surveys:
- Demographic information: Data on your customers’ gender identification, income level, age, highest level of education, location and more.
- Purchasing habits: You can survey people’s buying habits, questioning how often they shop with your business.
- Opinions: You can use market research surveys to ask your audience what they think about your products and services.
- Desires: Survey your audience to gain insight into what they would like to see your business provide in the future or what is lacking in the market.
- Intentions: Discover whether customers would be more or less likely to shop with your brand if you provided certain services.
As a form of data collection that’s quick to deploy and easy to scale, market research surveys are by far one of the best methods of gathering insight from your customers.
Market research vs. marketing research
Although market research and marketing research sound similar, they provide different information.
Market research gathers data that can help a business serve its customers better. Market research is vital when businesses want to enhance their offerings and improve their products.
On the other hand, marketing research identifies data that can support your marketing team’s efforts. Marketing research revolves around the four P’s of marketing: product, pricing, place and promotion. Here’s what each of these segments of marketing research hopes to discover:
- Product: Which aspects or features of the product or service are most valuable for a customer?
- Pricing: Is the current price too high, too low or just right for customers?
- Place: Is the product widely available via the purchase pathways that customers want to interact with?
- Promotion: What forms of advertising and which delivery channel are best for the customer?
Simply put, marketing research is any data that informs the customer’s purchase decision. Marketing teams can use this data to enhance packaging, optimise pricing strategies and deliver effective advertising to the customer.
Market research is a much broader form of customer data capture that spans all customer touchpoints and focuses on the customer experience (CX) with your brand as good as it can be.
Primary vs. secondary market research
Before you begin your market research survey, it’s a good idea to become familiar with the two main types of market research: primary market research and secondary market research.
| Definition | Methods | Real-world example | |
| Primary market research | Primary market research is the act of gathering data that you haven’t already collected. | Conducting online surveys Running a focus group Hosting 1-1 customer interviews Interviewing industry experts or SMEs | A business creates a survey about purchase habits and then shares it with its customers. |
| Secondary market research | Secondary market research is the act of gathering data that someone has already produced. | Pre-existing company data Pre-existing market data Public records Government reports Public industry reports Consumer market trend data | A business accesses an existing study to gather data on an industry trend that interests them. |
Types of market research survey
When launching market research surveys, you should have a clear intent in mind. The more specific your survey is, the more precise the data you gather will be.
Let’s explore some of the most common types of market research surveys.