By Nathalia Tavares
It’s happened before: you come up with a crazy idea for a product or campaign that has got you all pumped up. You cannot wait to share it with your friends and your boss. But then you hear, “That sounds just like what [insert name of a company] did a couple of years ago”. And the inspirational music you were playing in your hand abruptly stops and your heart sinks.
When coming up with new pitches and ideas, it is always important to know what has been done in the area before so that you don’t make the same projects – and, potentially, mistakes – that others have made. Thus, market research is pivotal for brainstorming effective new ideas.
Over the summer, I interned as a market researcher at Pontomobi, a Brazilian mobile marketing company. For three months, I researched m-health solutions in the market and what needs they were attending.
Based on my experience and a bit of research, here are a few tips for running your own market research:
Skim at first
It is hard to make an effective research plan if you don’t even know what the possibilities are to begin with. So start your research by Googling key terms and seeing what shows up – nothing too thorough, just casual exploring. For example, if you would like to know if a music nonprofit organization exists, just look up “music nonprofit” or something along those lines. Once you have an idea of what is out there, you can dive deeper into research.
Expand on a problem you want to solve
Now that you have skimmed the Internet, it is time to get more specific. When you are trying to come up with a new idea, it is often because you want to solve a specific problem or facilitate a procedure. What is the step-by-step process to solving the problem you want to solve? What are the different parts of the procedure? For grocery shopping, for example, the step-by-step procedure would be something along these lines:
– feeling the desire/need for a certain food,
– finding out that food does not exist in your house,
– making a list of things you need/want,
– travelling to the supermarket,
– finding items in your grocery list,
– paying for the products,
– returning to the house,
– placing products in the right places,
– and consuming those products – and the cycle repeats.
By figuring out the step-by-step process in solving a problem you would like to solve, you will get a better understanding of what kinds of services or incentives people want.
Define clear concepts – quantitatively
I cannot stress this enough. Going about research without defining concepts and their quantities is like playing a game without knowing the rules: you will just feel completely lost and get nothing out of it. Make sure to find out what kind of concepts you need to look for in your sources, and to quantify them so they can be compared to each other. In other words, define your variables and add specific score scales to each of them.
Reread your results as often as possible
While working on my research, there was this one time where I thought my quantified averages were weirdly low. I then realized I had used the wrong scoring – for three days. As a result, I had to work for hours re-scoring my variables. Moral of the story: reread your results first thing in the morning. Every. Single. Day.
Analyze, finalize, and realize
Your research work means nothing without analysis and the next steps. After you feel like you have gathered enough data, make sure to analyze your results to find common themes. Then, figure out the common “so what?”. What do your results mean? What problem do your need to solve? After all this, you are finally allowed to ideate and develop a solution.
I hope these suggestions are helpful to you! If you would like to find out more specifics about market research, I would recommend the book Market Research Toolbox by McQuarrie.
Research On!
