Market research is considered the most important element for the development of marketing strategies within a company or organization. Broadly speaking, we could define it as an organized effort to gather information about the needs and desires of consumers, trends and, of course, the competition. Although there are many ways to do it, the two best options are focus groups and online research surveys.
Companies use market research as a vehicle to achieve success, thanks to it, they can make decisions that, when applied correctly, generate a return on investment (ROI).
The two most popular methods of market research are research surveys and focus groups. Both methods have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Research Survey: Surveys are considered the most cost-effective method of conducting research as they provide quantifiable and easy-to-analyze data. The only significant disadvantage is that they are less personal and sometimes less interactive (this depends on the questionnaire, something you can avoid by using online surveys).
Focus Groups: Focus groups have the advantage of fostering good conversations, however, they are more expensive, slower, and provide qualitative data that is so difficult to analyze.
Did you know you can use Google Hangouts as a focus group?
Reliability is a key factor in market research for decision making. No matter portugal phone number method is used, companies will always want to ensure that the information collected is accurate and reliable in order to make the necessary changes to achieve successful campaigns.
So, which one is more reliable? Let's take a closer look at both methods:
Research Survey:
Market researchers use survey research to collect as much data as possible, they just need to have a database with a representative sample of the population, this allows them to collect accurate quantitative data. Surveys allow companies to:
Get more honest answers
Send surveys simultaneously
Store data that can be compared with future survey results.
Focus groups:
Market researchers use focus groups to collect data, these groups tend to be conducted with a much smaller sample in a group setting, everything is more interactive. While focus groups are very useful for sharing ideas and expressing opinions and attitudes that ultimately produce qualitative data that needs to be interpreted, here are some factors you will need to take into account.