The importance of market research cannot be ignored. A precise and comprehensive market research has no substitute. Market research can do wonders, if carefully executed. Owing to the major part, it plays in the execution of a business process, and it cannot be ignored. There are many ways to do market research like focus groups, surveys, questionnaire etc .However sometimes due to the limitations of budget, the options available get limited. But there are many inexpensive ways to carry out market research.
There are many inexpensive ways go great miles in helping out a small entrepreneur with limited budget to make the most from his resources and get best output.
The cost efficient starts by carefully identifying the prospective potential buyers of the products and services, determine how many customers exist, what their profile is, what their buying habits are and what are their preferences and demands.
Following are a few inexpensive techniques:
1) Cross-promotion with a complementary business. If you are running two businesses, then you can promote one with another by giving free voucher for the other.
2) Make a Personalised business card: Any personal or business bills you are paying should be enclosed with your business card or flyer. It would be real good for your business if you could hand write a short note offering an introductory discount. 3) Telephonic Network: It is great idea to call current and past clients to let them know of new services, classes or products that you offer. 4) Co-operative mailing. Postage and telephonic networking can be costly; to save on postage and� gain a wider audience it’s good to join with someone else's mailing list.
5) Online Survey tools: Online survey tools are easily available to small businesses at a reasonable cost that provide survey templates that can be customised to fit your business specifically.
6) Add polling to your website: Many websites have polling windows that poll the reader about their thoughts on a specific situation. Even one question asked through these polls can provide important information to you about your customers.
7) Link to a coupon on your website. The websites can be linked with coupons. When the customer clicks on the coupon, they are linked to a brief customer survey (no more than 10-15 questions) in order to redeem the coupon; the visitors have to complete the survey. Multiple choice responses are the best option to be set up in such a survey.
Printed questionnaire is nothing but hard copy of objective type questions whose answers have to be filled in by the respondent by shading the bubble or ticking against the choice they find most suitable. The technique is most accurate as it is precisely able to distinguish a mark from erasure .Apart from being user friendly it is also the fastest and the most efficient data collection technology
They are vastly used in market research to collect data about those aspects of business venture that are critical in nature. The result obtained through questionnaires is very important for the success of any business as the data collected is very specific. Of course, questionnaires gather and provide such information that cannot be availed from other sources like, books, newspapers and Internet resources. The information obtained from questionnaire is unique, fresh, crisp and too the point.
Businesses questionnaires are very important tools as they are representative of the opinions of the customers about the existing and/or proposed products or services which can be analyzed to estimate likely performance of a product/service pre-emptively.
The questionnaires are very successful in estimating the following points:
The buying behaviour of prospective consumers.
The attitude of consumer towards existing or proposed products
The awareness amongst consumers about the product/service/business
Owing to above reasons questionnaires can be called the cornerstone for market research. The quality as well as the structure of the questionnaire determines the effectiveness of the questions contained therein. If a questionnaire is improperly structured, the results so obtained may be irrelevant, inaccurate and even inconclusive.
Following points should be kept in mind while structuring a questionnaire.
The data in the questionnaires should be randomized.
The questions should not try to force out answers from the participants but should rather seek natural answers from them
Length of a questionnaire should not be more than ten questions, so that participant’s interest and enthusiasm lasts till the very last question.
The venue of conducting a questionnaire should be properly chosen. For example the survey for a washing powder should be conducted in a residential society and not in a football play ground.
In order to attract the participants and make them participate, it is important that they are approached nicely and feel comfortable about it. The participants should be thanked in the end and a proper explanation should be given to them regarding the outcome of the questionnaire.
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