Overview
For any business that creates, promotes or
sells products, product research should be an important part of its
business plan. All too often people start a business based on one
product or one type of product without thinking very far beyond that.
While they might do well at first, soon they will find sales slowing
down because they are not moving beyond their original customer base,
who already have the product, and they are not offering their old
customers anything new. Product research eliminates this problem by
making sure that old customers have a reason to come back and that new
products will attract new customers.
Product research might sound like something far too vague to be of
any value. It might even sound like something that is going to take a
huge amount of time for very little return. Why does a company that
already has good products need to do product research anyway?Well, very few companies succeed over the long-term by selling one item or one type of item. Most successful companies have several services or products they sell, with a great many of those products revolving around something similar.
For instance, a company might start out selling custom baby clothes and then expand to personalized baby bottles, baby picture frames, and toys. Another example is a pet store that expands to offer obedience classes or grooming. The point is that to be successful you need use product research.
How it Works
If you are considering conducting product research, chances are you have already identified a problem and have the need for more information. Product research, a step-by-step process, can help you to quickly get the necessary information to get your company back on track.The six major steps of the marketing research process are identifying and defining your problem, developing your approach, establishing research design and strategy, collecting data, performing data analysis, and reporting and presentation.
Benefits
Product research can improve your business by finding a consumer need and filling it. For example, if there were no big button telephones with large numbers and a company's product research pointed out that many customers had trouble dialing, creating and marketing a large button telephone would be a risk that is supported by product research. It is likely to be a profitable product for the company and they would have missed out on the opportunity if it were not for product research.Product research can also help a company take a good product and make it better. If a current product is not living up to its promises, then the company that does product research will discover a need to improve and will have an advantage over the competition. It is a common form of competition to improve on each other's products, and it is one of the best results of product research.