By Supriya Khedekar
Market research is a common term in the business world today. Many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) still hesitate to adopt it. Many SMEs believe that market research can be affordable only to more prominent organizations, and they tend to ignore the importance of market research for their organization.
Though evolving technologies comes with a lot of benefits, they are disrupting traditional business practices and also posing challenges to SMEs to beat the competitive environment. The situation has arisen the questions on the survival of small businesses. Market research is one such tool that can be the solution to the challenges faced by small and medium enterprises.
Here are some of the benefits that small and medium enterprises can avail through market research.
Identifying the Target Audience
Be it a small business or large business, identifying the target audience is the most important task of business organizations as the customer is the end-user of the service. Knowing what consumer demand, how they want is important.
Market research helps the organization to identify potential customers for their product and service. If SMEs are aware of their target audience, whom they are catering to, then it becomes easier to meet their requirements.
Market research provides useful information such as consumer age classification, buying behavior, preferences, and choices. SMEs can use this information to improve its services.
Defining and Monitoring the Brand
The brand is an essential component for SMEs as it gives their organization recognition. If the brand is not clearly defined, it may not add value to the customers.
Market research helps the organization to bring clarity about the brand by its positioning, essence. Also, market research aid to identify the deficiency of the organization’s brand and help them to build it with proper strategies. Brand clarity assist the customer to know the brand value and why they should use it.
Launching a New Product or Service
With the market saturated with a tonne of products and services, launching new products or services remains an essential objective for startups and SMEs.
Market research is a reliable tool if an organization wants to introduce or launch a new product or service. Market research helps to gauge the relevance and success of the new product in the market and test the feasibility of the new product or service.
Conducting market research provides insights about the market, consumer’s perceptions and thought concerned the product and also tells what competitors are doing.
Also, it assists in planning an effective marketing strategy for the new product or service to improve the service by changing the branding, appearance or cost of the product.
Creating Winning Marketing Campaigns
In today’s competitive world, effective marketing campaigns necessary to survive in the market.
Good marketing campaigns create good brands, whereas mediocre campaigns create an average brand. Effective marketing campaigns and strategies save businesses thousands of pounds.
Market research plays a vital role in creating winning marketing campaigns by identifying gaps in the market. It assists in making quality and informed business decisions. Market research gathers information and insights that help to formulate productive and evidence-based marketing strategies or campaigns.
Monitoring Activities of Competitors
Analysis of competitors is necessary for successful and profit-making businesses. Market research provides the company with a detailed analysis of the competitors’ activities they carry out for their business.
Competitor analysis provides answers to the following questions:
- What are the types of products or services they offer?
- What were the past strategies of the competitors?
- What are the present strategies of the competitors?
- What opportunities do competitors make available?
- What possible threat competitors may pose?
These answers guide small and medium enterprises to analyze the situation and make informed business decisions.
Identifying Potential Threats
Small and medium enterprises can be easily affected by the surrounding circumstances. Market research helps to identify potential threats well in advance.
This assists the business organization to take the appropriate steps or preventive measures to deal with the problematic circumstances.
Through market research, the business company can gauge whether they are optimistic or apprehensive about their strategies and adjust the plan if necessary.
Market research helps identify those points that otherwise would have left out, and that would have the potential to cause future disturbances.
Designing or Improving the Customer Experience
The return of customers is an achievement for any business. Market research helps in improving customer experience & satisfaction, improves sales, and brand loyalty.
Market research help to learn several aspects of products such as customers like or dislike.
It identifies the spending behavior of the customer that helps to plan affordable services and helps the company to understand things that influence customers buying nature.
With the market growing at a faster pace, small and medium enterprises should consider adopting market research for their firm.