How2Day: Research Techniques for New Businesses

When businesses first begin, they need ways of gathering information about their industry and their specific value offering. Without information, the business is just taking a shot in the dark with their product or service. Even worse, once a business begins, it needs proper research techniques in place to find ways to improve value and relationships with customers. Without these necessary research techniques, businesses have a much greater risk of failure.

Customer data collection refers to all the market research that is done before a product or service is created. A creative business leader can create a product that has great appeal to consumers, but businesses will never know what consumers really think until they ask. By using polls, focus groups and controlled experimentation, businesses can find out what consumers are interested in and what they like or dislike about the business before mass production or full operation begins.

Just as businesses need to know what consumers are thinking, they also need to know what competitors are doing. New businesses can compete much more effectively if they know what prices their competitors are charging, what discounts they are giving and at what costs they are getting their supplies. Some types of information can be difficult to find or even illegal to access, but other types, like prices and marketing techniques, are easily gathered.

Analytics is a general term for business analysis systems that break down data from employees and industries, creating useful graphs and charts that the business can use. Analytics is a secondary type of research that is typically necessary for new businesses to be able to draw useful conclusions. As the business grows, it can develop more complicated analytic programs to produce more specific types of results.

Once the business has created its product or service, it needs feedback on how it is performing. Businesses can gather this feedback through surveys, polls and customer service activities. The follow-up step is actual improvement of the business process. While researching effects is important, it is ultimately useless unless the business takes action.

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