Building a good marketing strategy without information is a business risk. Remember that marketing research helps launch the products that are of interest to the audience before starting. Research is not always budget-friendly, but entering the market with the wrong product that the consumer does not want is an even greater waste of money. This article will tell you what marketing researches are and why they are important in business development.
By the way, if you need to conduct research and write a paper based on it but don’t know what to write about, you need to get some ideas. You can read these business research topics and find the one that you like the most. Also, it is important to select a topic that you have some knowledge about.
Business Development: To Build Or Buy Software
Many businesses develop further by using software. Software can help a business operate more fluently and increase its productivity. However, software can be expensive and its driven many business owners to to develop their own over the years. Developing software from the ground up isn’t easy. Deepening on what you need it for, it can be extremely difficult. However, by building your own software you can get something that suits you perfectly and is exactly what you want instead of having to buy it off the rack. When you’re looking at build vs buy software you need to weigh up all of the pros and cons. For example, how fast do you need the software? If you’re buying it ready made it’ll be ready right away, whereas building it from scratch will take time. It’s important to factor this into your eventual decision.
About the demand for marketing research
Marketing research is an extremely valuable source of information for the business. In general, we can identify two key goals that companies pursue when ordering marketing research:
- Track the effectiveness of marketing activities;
- Predict the future of something (product, service, advertising), analyzing the needs and past experiences of the consumer.
It would seem that without understanding the effectiveness of business, it is impossible to plan any activities, and without understanding the needs of the audience, based on knowledge of the consumer experience, the risks of any innovation increase to the skies. However, some companies don’t use marketing research in their activities. The main reason for not using the MR tool is often the low level of knowledge and distrust of management to research. Fortunately, the situation has recently begun to change, and more and more companies are paying attention to research resources. They are focused on simple, inexpensive research, waiting to be explained what and how it is calculated and why to do it this way and not otherwise.
Classic marketing research is well mastered by international companies, especially those operating in FMCG markets. Telecommunications and pharmaceutical companies also actively use marketing research. Large retail chains are focused on service, so most of them order Mystery Shopping services, but quantitative and qualitative research is used much less often.
About the state of the market of marketing research
The big players in the marketing research market remain leaders, consolidating their positions by merging with other research agencies. These are international companies that invest significant resources in the development of new methodologies, often brand them, and work on the principle of a black box – that is, do not disclose to the customer the principles of indicators calculation. The services of such companies are used mainly by large international brands.
But in response to the market’s need for low-cost marketing research, more and more companies have recently appeared to offer MR services for much smaller budgets.
- Research companies are cutting the cost by going online;
- Modern software allows you to avoid additional “manual” field control;
- Simple indicators allow you to spend less time on analytics and offer the client a clear result in the shortest possible time;
- Dashboard, reporting in PowerBI, and QlikView also reduces analytics costs.
About the main trends in the development of technologies and tools of marketing research in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic
The realities of life are making adjustments in business, and COVID-19 has had a strong impact on research.
First, the rapidly evolving online research over the past ten years with the advent of the pandemic has virtually supplanted other methods. This trend applies not only to quantitative but also to qualitative research. If until 2020, many researchers were skeptical about online focus groups, in 2021, they quickly adapted to new realities, mastered additional technologies, and now online FG is a completely ordinary tool in which we see a lot of advantages, in particular, the online field simplifies recruiting. Respondents are more willing to agree to online groups because they can save time.
Second, with the increase in time spent online by consumers, businesses have become even more focused on digital technologies and testing the convenience of their sites and applications, and demand for U&A and UX has increased. Preliminary testing of online services not only in terms of compliance but also in terms of ease of use will return to normal in the coming decade. Accordingly, new sound technologies for user testing of online services will be required.