Practical Market Research Planning Considerations

(part of Chapter 1: Know Your Goals)

 

Prior to conducting any project, it’s necessary to decide if custom market research is truly the best choice. If custom MR turns out to be the best option for your project, the next step is to think precisely about defining project goals.

Market research is truly a garbage in/garbage out process; start with clear goals, and your chances for market research success are excellent.

 

Go vs. No Go. Or, Are My Goals Best Met Through Custom MR?

Once you identify the key goals, it is time to step back, take a good, hard look at them, and ask yourself this:

What is the best way to meet these goals? Is it, in fact, through custom MR? Or does the information, perhaps, already exist? Maybe it exists in an off-the-shelf research report, a syndicated service, or another source completely.

Many information sources exist and may be readily available with a little detective work. Here are some common places to check for existing information:

• Industry associations
• Company library/internal website
• Company consultants
• Internal market research department
• Other agencies (ad agency, PR agency)
• Trade magazines

 

Conducting MR In-house

Should you decide you do need primary market research, the next question becomes: can we do it ourselves, or should we hire an agency? Thanks to great online tools like SurveyGizmo, SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang, DIY is certainly an option. DIY is best used when the following conditions are met:

• You feel comfortable that you can write a questionnaire such that it will capture information objectively (and this may very well be the case if you are tackling a narrow topic and you really only need to ask, for example, eight to ten questions)
• You have time to do the project management in-house
• You have the skills in-house to clean the collected data and analyze it
• You have resources in-house that can analyze and report the findings in a way that will be credible to your internal colleagues
• You have access to a truly, high quality sample source
• You don’t need the research to be blind (you are willing to reveal your company as the sponsor)

 

Goals Define the MR RFP’s Scope

Assuming that you do decide custom MR is the best path, how will having these goals be used to start designing an RFP? First, it allows you to state very precisely what you need from this research—what the exact scope of this project is.

Always put project goals, clearly stated, on the first page of the RFP. Don’t bury them on Page 5. Let the agencies bidding on your work know right away if (a) this is a project for which they are qualified, and (b) how complex the project will be.

In addition, clear thinking early on about your goals can help you to provide even more detail about your project’s scope. Consider the following:

• Are you more likely to be writing an RFP that would be seeking qualitative research expertise (in-depth interviews, focus groups, etc.) or quantitative approaches (statistical analyses, questionnaire design)?
• Or, are you looking for the research firms to recommend an approach? You can either request an approach or ask for their advice; either way is fine. If you do want them to recommend an approach, be sure that is clear in the RFP.

 

Goals = Agency Selection Criteria

Now that you know your goals, you can start identifying potential MR suppliers. Which research agencies have a proven track record with this specific type of project? Which agencies have written relevant articles or posted relevant blogs?

There are hundreds of research agencies that provide custom research services, but most have areas of specialty. Even those that present themselves as being able to do everything usually have some primary focus in reality. Knowing what you need from the project will help you identify a list of suitable agencies to which you can send your RFP.

 

Goals = Success Criteria

With clearly stated goals in hand, you also are prepared to easily document the criteria you will use to judge project success. As with any kind of project management, that’s a key step for gaining clarity and generating buy-in and interest. For example, if your goal is to measure brand awareness, a logical success criterion could be, “Upon project conclusion, we will have measures of brand awareness for each of our top 20 geographic markets.”

 

This is an excerpt from the book, "How to Hire & Manage Market Research Agencies," which is available on Amazon. Published by Research Rockstar LLC. Copyright © by Kathryn Korostoff. All rights reserved.