The 12 Most Powerful Market Research Types That Will Make You Master Your Market Now Using Lean Market Research

In Brief

Lean market research can have different purposes. In this post, we will be going through the major 12 Most Powerful Market Research Types that are:

1. Market size
2. Market segmentation
3. Competitive analysis
4. Opportunities
5. Social trends:
6. Use of and attitudes to products
7. Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
8. Achieve promotion effectiveness
9. Improve brand position
10. Achieve pricing effectiveness
11. Test new products
12. Enter new markets

Introduction to The 12 Most Powerful Market Research Types

Lean market research can have different purposes like studying the market size, predicting its future trends, analyzing the competitive landscape etc.

Obviously, the tools, structure and process for conducting each of these studies differs substantially.

Let’s take a look then at the different goals and types of lean market research or the 12 Most Powerful Market Research Types !

Market size

Let’s start by one of the most important type among the 12 Most Powerful Market Research Types: That is Market Size.

A very common market research goal is assessing the market size of a given industry.

It’s so common that it can be embedded systematically in any market research even if it’s not mandatory.

Assessing the market size of an industry is key because it allows assessing quantitatively the worth of the opportunity.

Assessing the market size of an industry is important, and what can be even more important when assessing the market size is evaluating the market trends.

Indeed, having a progressively progressing market with a relatively small size is way more strategic and lucrative than having an industry weighing hundreds of billions of dollars but that is declining.

Market segmentation

This is a common lean market research type. It aims at determining the main components of the market from different aspects and dimensions.

For instance, market segmentation uses criteria like the technology, geography, audience profile etc.

Marketers and strategists need this kind of research.

The Competitive landscape

Competitive analysis of lean market research aims at sketching a clear landscape regarding the main players of the studied market. This is key for determining the market strategy or the new features to be developed for a product.

Indeed, competitive landscape shows what are the market needs that the main actors cover well, it also outlines the market needs that the market players do not cover well, hence unveils the opportunities of the market.

Executives, strategists and product managers often request this type of market research.

Opportunities

This kind of research aims at defining the opportunities that a given market offers.

Opportunities correspond generally to studying the current trends, customer complaints and needs etc.

This kind of research is requested by decision makers, executives and product managers.

Social trends:

This focuses on gathering the current trends in society from the point of view of preferences, main interests, last and most recent fashion among the target market.

Use of and attitudes to products

This type of research aims at gathering the feedback and opinion of customers regarding a given product. This is often done whether at early stages of developing new products or at advanced stages in improving already existing products and services.

This kind of studies is often requested by product managers and customer success executives.

Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty

This kind of study can be seen as a mix between gathering feedback from customers and the competitive landscape.

This aims at optimizing the satisfaction of the customers by gathering accurate feedback from them, defining where a given business is doing well and where it should be improved.

Achieve promotion effectiveness

Advertisement, content marketing and media buy are promotional techniques that are efficient but costly. This type of research aims at optimizing the marketing plan and its execution by making a direct and almost real time monitoring of its efficiency among the market. 

Improve brand position

This kind of study is very similar to “improve customer satisfaction and loyalty”. The main difference is that with “Improving brand position” kind of research, the target audience is broader and encompasses the already existing customers as well as the potential ones.

This kind of research is often requested by executives and heads of marketing.

Achieve pricing effectiveness

This kind of research looks at whether the currently practiced pricing is adequate or not for a given provided product or service. The focus of the research is directed towards the study of the competition pricing strategies, the feedback of the customers regarding the current pricing, the analysis of A/B testing regarding different trials and errors on tested prices.

Indeed, it’s very important to find a good market fit for the price since being overpriced or underpriced is not optimal in both cases.

Test new products

This is a kind of study mixing market size and trends, customer feedback and pricing effectiveness. It’s the kind of research that is conducted at the start of a new product launch.

This type of research aims at defining the new product positioning, pricing, main initial features and vision.

This kind of research is often requested by product managers and global strategists.

Enter new markets

It’s a kind of study that is similar to testing new products but it’s broader. Indeed, when tackling a new market, a vital component is the new local culture. This is particularly true when the target is to open new markets overseas.

Executives, business developers and global strategists often request this kind of study.

The disruptive way of conducting market research for The 12 Most Powerful Market Research Types

Now that you know what are the typical goals of a market research, let’s dive into how to conduct efficiently a market research. This is the disruptive way of conducting market research, what we call Lean Market Research.

Now, what about lean market research ?

Lean market research aims as well at collecting intelligence by businesses and organizations for surviving and growing among their ecosystems.

Consequently the main goals are the same between market research and lean market research.

The term lean in lean market research stands for:

First, Performing the market research in an efficient / lean way.

Second, Using digital technologies heavily hence emphasizing on the (e) as electronics in L(e)an.

Third, Leverage the power of classical Market Research and avoid its limitations e.g. cost and heavy process.

Consequently, lean market research covers all what classic market research covers and adds to it the lean part.

On the other hand, in a nutshell, the tools used for lean market research are typically:

• Quantitative Research (Interviews, focus groups etc).
• Quantitative Research (Surveys, Databases etc).
• Primary Research.
• Secondary Research / Desk research.
• Data analytics & statistics.
• Reporting.

Consequently, the big picture of the used tools are similar to the classic market research one.

On the other hand, Lean market research Relies heavily on online and digital tools.

This Aims at reducing costs by keeping at least the same standards of quality and reliability.

Now let’s take a look at the typical cost of lean market research.

Regarding the duration, a lean market research lasts about 20 hours to be fully conducted.

This corresponds to a 20 times lower time cost by comparison to classic market research.

From a budgeting point of view, lean market research is billed something between $500 and $20k in services mode, typically $3k.

This is 10 to 20 times less expensive than classic market research.

On the other hand, a typical lean market research report is billed between $50 and $500 which is up to 100 times less expensive than a classic market research report.

Resources

• https://www.amazon.fr/Market-Research-Practice-Introduction-Gaining/dp/1398602825/ref=asc_df_1398602825/?tag=googshopfr-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=553572402620&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6849427466862681877&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9111608&hvtargid=pla-1366639823928&psc=1
• https://www.qualtrics.com/uk/experience-management/research/market-research-types/?rid=ip&prevsite=en&newsite=uk&geo=FR&geomatch=uk
• https://smallbusiness.chron.com/definition-market-size-65724.html
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/competitive-analysis-kit#:~:text=A%20competitive%20analysis%20is%20a,conducting%20a%20competitive%20market%20analysis.
• https://www.managementstudyguide.com/brand-image.htm
• https://www.sisinternational.com/solutions/strategy-consulting/market-entry-research/#:~:text=Firms%20entering%20a%20new%20market,your%20team%20about%20the%20project.
• https://www.driveresearch.com/market-research-company-blog/market-research-for-new-product-development/