What is a Market Survey?

A market survey is a tool used by market research teams to gather data concerning a target market, product, or service. It helps organizations understand consumer buying habits, competitor landscape, and potential market risks. A market survey can be conducted via different channels including online and email, phone and field interviews, or focus group discussions.

Benefits of a Market Research Survey

A market survey can be completed online and have the advantage of the speed and reach but can be limiting in terms of deeper insights. Conducting in-person field market surveys can help uncover deeper insights but is more challenging to plan, coordinate, and execute. Conducting a market research survey can benefit the organization with the following:

• acquire feedback and critical information about consumers;

• recognize customer inclination towards the product;

• analyze customer satisfaction levels to improve the existing product; and

• provide influential data towards business changes.

Types of Market Research Survey

A marketing survey is used by companies to gather information depending on the objective of the market research. It helps marketers to understand the consumers’ need to compare their products with their competitors. The data collected is utilized to analyze different market trends to ensure the right timing to launch a product or service.

There are several types of market surveys organizations can use for their market research including the following:

• Market investigation survey – determines the vital information about the growth of the target market to perform competitor analysis.

• Customer retention survey – identify customer’s motivation in purchasing the services or products to understand customer trends on purchases and loyalty.

• New product demand survey – a statistical analysis of the product growth that leads to consumer’s appeal for a new product.

• Segmentation market survey – understanding the customer’s journey on why they have chosen the product or service.

• Customer profiling survey – a demographic analysis of the target consumers.

The 3 Main Challenges of Conducting Surveys

In-person field market surveys come with challenges that can cause difficulties in coordination, delays in execution, and strain on resources. Here are some of the challenges of conducting field marketing surveys:

1. Logistics

   • Market surveys, particularly those conducted in the field, involve sending field staff, supplies, and equipment needed for conducting market surveys.

   • Implementing changes during or after the market survey means spending more time and more resources to implement the directive in the field. This may cause delays and put a strain on the budget for the market research.

2. Data collection

   • After a market survey is conducted, the data collected will be sent to the team leader for analysis and interpretation.

   • Information collected using paper-based market surveys involves time-consuming data entry to send the information or physically sending paperwork to be manually organized and analyzed.

3. Data interpretation

   • Data gathered out in the field will need to be collected, organized, and analyzed.

   • Going through piles of paperwork and manually reviewing reports one by one will take so much time and energy. Taking into account the number of sites and the sample size, it will be burdensome to the market researcher and it will take a lot of resources to analyze and interpret data.