Affordable,Market,Research,Pub marketing Affordable Market Research

Awhile ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me. The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.To say it floored me would be an understatement.What was worse was a few days later t Automation technologies represent a fundamental aspect of any modern industry. The major types of industrial automation solutions, such as DCS, PLC, SCADA, and MES, are used on a large-scale in process and discrete industries.DCS technologie

____________________________________________________________Publication Guidelines:You may use this article as long as the byline, resourcebox, and links remain intact. If the article does not fityour Web site/newsletter guidelines, please requestadjustments. mailto:[email protected] .Please notify the author of use and provide a sample copy ofthe publication.Word count: 943Formatted 60 characters per line.Email questions to mailto:[email protected] Photo: Available to copy from Web site. Color: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com Black and White: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/about_bobette.htmAutoresponder: mailto:[email protected]:http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/Arts/MktRsrch.htmCopyright 2002 Bobette Kyle. All rights reserved.____________________________________________________________Affordable Market Researchby Bobette KyleUntil recently, limited budgets kept most types of marketresearch out of reach for entrepreneurs and other small- budgetbusinesses. Today, through the Internet, small-budget businesseshave more research options. Secondary research sources are easierto find. More affordable primary research methods - bothqualitative and quantitative - are available online as well.** Market Research Categories **There are four broad types of research, categorized by where theresearch originated and how the research is conducted.* Where the market research originated - primary versussecondary.Primary research originates with your company. Generally, theresults are proprietary and belong to you. You may find, however,that some research firms will conduct limited but relativelyinexpensive primary research with the requirement that they canmake the results available to other companies. An alternative toconducting primary research is to find secondary research, orresearch that originated elsewhere. You can obtain secondaryresearch either by purchasing the information or finding itthrough free resources.* How the market research is conducted - qualitative versusquantitative.Qualitative research tends to be exploratory and directional innature. It is designed to bring out issues associated with thesubject matter as well as clue you in to the best generaldirection to proceed. Quantitative research, on the other hand,is designed to be analytical and rigid. This type of researchproduces results that are more statistically accurate thanqualitative research results. Often, companies first conductqualitative research when developing a concept or looking forideas then later complete quantitative research to fine-tune andoptimize.* Combining the two categories.Combining the primary/secondary and qualitative/quantitativecategories results in the four types of research. These are:primary quantitative, primary qualitative, secondaryquantitative, and secondary qualitative research.** Secondary Market Research **As a small-budget business, much of your research will be limitedto secondary research. Both the good news and the bad news isthat there is a lot of it out there. By doing a targeted Internetsearch you are likely to find a lot of free, usefulinformation.Potentially, you can find secondary research from numeroussources. Press releases and news articles often quote studies.Industry leaders and suppliers publish white papers or otherstudies. Annual reports are also good places to look for industryinformation. Research firms’ sites are another source ofsecondary research. Their main business is conducting primaryresearch for clients or compiling and selling detailed syndicatedreports. Often, they have top line data available in the form ofpress releases or executive summaries. The Federal government isanother increasingly useful source of secondary data. At lastcount, 100 different government agencies publish freely availabledata.** Primary Qualitative Market Research **Qualitative research is conducted with a somewhat flexible formatso the participants can give their opinions and feedback.Inexpensive ways to conduct your own qualitative research via theInternet are through do-it-yourself online focus groups and viafeedback forms.* Online Focus GroupsOffline, a set of focus groups could cost about $10,000 and up.Online focus group services are a little more economical by canstill be pricey for a small-budget business. An online focusgroup is essentially a formal chat session. A trained moderatorleads a group of participants through a pre-determined discussionover the Internet. Participants are often recruited through aresearch firm’s own panel and are paid a fee forparticipating.If your budget cannot handle a professional service, you canconduct a focus group yourself by setting up a chat room andrecruiting your own participants. Be sure to test the chat roomservice first, paying attention to perceived professionalism andany glitches your participants may encounter. Also, for bestresults, you should consider hiring a trained moderator toconduct the online focus groups.* Feedback FormsA simple way to conduct ongoing qualitative research is through afeedback form. You can gain valuable insight by asking yourvisitors how you are doing, asking them for suggestions, and/orasking them their opinions. You can do this through a formdirectly on your site and/or via email to those on your opt-inlist.** Primary Quantitative Market Research **Quantitative research is used when you are looking for hardnumbers and precision. To produce a top-quality primaryquantitative research study you must generally work through aresearch agency. For a small-budget business, this type ofresearch is expensive. The Internet has made more inexpensivemeans of data collection and analysis possible. With the help ofsoftware or Web-based tools you can perform research throughcustomer surveys and collect visitor use patterns through Weblogs.* Customer SurveysThe Internet has made conducting surveys quicker and lessexpensive. Options range from do-it-yourself programs to researchservices with screened panels. You can use surveys in a varietyof ways - segmenting your customers, improving/developing yourproduct or site, and gauging brand awareness, for example.* Use PatternsAnother approach to quantitative research on the Web is to lookfor visitor use patterns such as, routes taken through your site,pages viewed, or ordering behavior. By studying Web logs you canknow which pages are most popular, how visitors navigate throughyour site, common entry pages, and where visitors often leave thesite. You can also determine the number of different visitors toyour site as well as the percent of visitors converted tocustomers. By using a traffic analysis service or software (oftenavailable through your hosting service), you can streamline theprocess.** Market Research Resources **Links to and summaries of research sites of all kinds mentionedcan be found on Web Site Marketing Plan's Research and DataAnalysis Resources page:http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/SR12.htm