Tag: market research

Market Research

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Conducting market research periodically is important for commodity companies. The market intelligence provides input for course correction in the marketing strategy. Survey can be with the channel partners, influencers and end users.

Attributes of Survey

The survey questionnaire for market research may not be very detailed. It need not be one involving several hundreds of respondents. However it should be systematic, fearless and unbiased.

Systematic means that the responses should be sought on similar questions from one type of respondents. There should be enough responses on any parameter to arrive at a conclusion from market research.
Fearless means that the respondents should be able to give their opinion in a free manner. Generally avoid to ask channel partners for feedback in front of company sales personnel as often they tend to give more negative feedback so to extract more benefits from the company. Some of them do not speak for fear of losing the goodwill of the company.

Ensure to cover all types of channel partners in the sample. This makes the survey unbiased. So, seek feedback from all types of respondents from the target segment in the survey- big and small, exclusive and multi-brand, young and old promoter-driven stores.

Objectives of Market Research

Collecting market intelligence can have various objectives. It can be done to understand customer preferences priorities. It can be done to estimate the market size. It can be done to evaluate the brand health or customer satisfaction with its products. It can be done to estimate the viewership or reach of its advertisement or what has been its impact on purchasing behaviour of customer. It can be done to gather competitor information.

Then companies also need to collect some information about the channel partners. They should be regularly updating their database of the retail counters and wholesalers present in the market, potential of each, financial background, brand preferences, market potential, etc. This will help in targeting specific channel partners who can add value to the existing network.

Company can conduct market surveys through its own staff or outsource the task to an agency.

Health Focused Campaigns

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Similar to sustainability, healthy living has also become an area of interest for the consumers. A few health focused campaigns have been done by companies in which the message has been that their product causes lesser hazard to health than other products in the market.

Messages in Health Focused campaigns

Campaigns like product is dust-free or does not release any VOC (Volatile Organic compounds) or does not emit any harmful chemicals during their lifetime have caught lot of tractions among the building material manufacturers. Asian Paints ran a campaign around their paints being dust-free, which caused a lot of interest among the buyers.

With several types of diseases/ pandemics arising due to microorganisms, building materials have also done their advertisement that their products do not allow mold development or does not allow bacteria/ virus growth. One of the three benefits advertised for Supercolour was that it is Anti-fungal and it helped in attracting the end users.

Then there are other properties which build on the product being favourable to healthy life. Easy to clean, good light reflectance, and abrasion resistance are a few of the features which promote comfortable living and are used by the commodity companies in their health focused campaigns.

Health is an ever-evolving field. All health focused campaigns need to be backed with proper market research and scientific study so that the campaign does not backfire later and cause damage to the brand image.

Competitive Intelligence- 5 Buckets

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Companies need to keep a tab on the competitor activities. Market research is the act of gathering competitive intelligence and is done by a company to find its own standing against the competitors or when a company is entering a new market or industry where there are already existing players. The most fundamental question being tried to answer is what is the market share of the various companies in the market. Market share by revenue might be different from market share by volume shipped.

Types of Competitive Intelligence

Research questions for gaining competitive intelligence can be one or more among the following but not restricted to these only.

Channel PartnersNew productsConsumersMarket shareSelf-assessment/ NPS
1. What are the competitors doing to attract new channel partners?1. Have new competitors or alternative products entered any new market?1. What category of consumers are targeted by the competition? Is there a niche market serviced by competition?1. What is the market share of the major competitors or has there been recent changes in the market share of companies?1. How efficient company’s systems are in terms of accounting, complaint redressal, scheme disbursement, etc?
2. What short term and long term schemes are being run for the channel partners?2. Which innovations are the competitors bringing in their product?2. What has been the recent changes in the competitor marketing communications?2. What is the market share of the unorganized sector competitors?2. How satisfied are the customers with the company’s marketing/ supply chain activities vis-à-vis those of the competitors?
3. What are the billing and wholesale prices of competitors?3. What is the feedback on the product quality compared to competitor’s product?3. What are the consumer schemes being run by the competition?3. What activities by the company will have the highest impact to increase the market share?3. How likely are the channel partners (promoters) to recommend our product?
Market Research questions pertaining to Competitive Intelligence

Though superficially all the research questions for getting competitive intelligence look different, there are deep relationships among them and response on one question impacts the response on another.

Competitive intelligence
Competitive Intelligence