Knowing the market and all its changes is an inescapable condition when marketing a good or service. If you do not have information on the market you intend to penetrate, failure will be inevitable.
How has it been proven that young people now like to wear very light and comfortable clothes? or what has been done to determine that long and wide cars are already out of fashion? These and many more conclusions have been determined with the help of proper business research. What it is and what its types are is what we will find in this article.
WHAT IS IT?
We will define commercial research as the procedure of collecting, registering and analyzing all data related to problems in the commercialization of goods and services, that is, by means of information gathering, reality is reflected in a correct and concrete way to facilitate the decisions of a company's marketers.
Through this investigation, everything is investigated about the product, its price, its distribution and the means for it to achieve an advantageous position in the market through advertising, promotion and sales force.
It should be noted that we consumers change our tastes and preferences constantly and we always look for the best for our benefit, hence commercial research must be a continuous process and a company must always have up-to-date information.
TYPES OF COMMERCIAL INVESTIGATION
According to the nature of the information: there is qualitative research in which the marketers of a company need to know our behavior as consumers, our attitudes, opinions or motivations when making a purchase or how we perceive the market as such. The technique mainly used is the individual or group survey in which the preferences, opinions or wishes of us consumers are investigated.
Second is quantitative research which, as its name indicates, is through numerical data. Therefore, it is investigated how many suppliers there are of a certain product, how many customers consume it, etc. Not only the preference of the good is investigated but some data that can be counted.
According to the origin of the information: the place where it was obtained is identified. They can be office studies where information from the interior or exterior of a company that is already prepared in advance is used; of field, that is to say, the external information that must be elaborated and, finally, mixed studies where the 2 previous ones are combined.
Day by day the thoughts and preferences of consumers change. Knowing why and where they are going, a task for a company if it wants to succeed in today's market.
According to the information collection technique: these techniques are based on the resources a company has or its own needs at the time of collecting the information. The most widely applied and well-known method is the survey, where data is collected by interviewing a certain number of people by means of a questionnaire, in which there are questions about matters that one wants to know and that must be answered with all sincerity by the interviewees.
Some situations are not alien to us, such as being approached when leaving a supermarket or shopping center and being surveyed about the products we have just purchased or one in particular. Likewise, sometimes we receive calls in which the interviewers ask us to give them a few minutes to answer some questions.
Another known method is that of observation, where data is obtained by looking at the behavior of a person. What you buy, where and how much, can be known through personal monitoring or through cameras installed in the supermarkets or consumer shopping sites. However, a major flaw is that this technique does not allow us to know the reason for the behaviors seen.
A third method is that of experimentation by creating a situation where certain real aspects of the market are simulated and information is obtained derived from the behaviors and reactions of the people who have collaborated in this fictitious situation called the test market and that will serve for a company arrive better prepared when you decide to implement the experienced aspects.
Commercial investigation. Procedure for collecting, recording and analyzing all data related to problems in the commercialization of goods and services, that is, by means of information gathering, reality is reflected in a correct and concrete way to facilitate the decisions of the marketers of a company
There are other methods to collect information and get to know the market better, however we have described the most important ones. We can conclude then that knowing, understanding and anticipating the thoughts and attitudes of consumers is an indispensable tool to achieve commercial success.
