Are You Ready To Research Your Market?

Are You Ready To Research Your Market?
by Dan J. Fry, c. 2003-2004, All rights reserved.

Picture this. You develop some product or service, spend
countless hours making sure everything is just right, set up a
beautiful web site, make sure the ecommerce end is secure, and
then release what you know will be of utmost benefit to others.

Do you really know this? How do you know it? Gut feeling? Someone
else told you so?

In the world of online ventures, researching the currently
defined marketplace can be even more important than in the
offline world. Why? Things change so incredibly fast. Web sites
and services start and end with the blink of an eye. In part this
is because of the nature of the internet, and most are able to
survive these types of massive fluctuations. But the ones who
succeed and stay near the top, releasing of product after product
are the ones who initially conduct market research and do so on a
regular basis.

Now, don't let the term intimidate you. Market research is simply
about getting to know what others are doing, what others want and
who if anyone is supplying it. Yes, in a way this is supply and
demand revisited. But, and this is important, market research is
also about predictions and expectations.

By studying and learning about what is going on not only in your
current market but in related areas, you will begin to develop a
keen sense of what is needed. Even better, you will begin to
develop a sense of innovation, possible areas that others have
not yet thought about. At this stage your brain will flair with
excitement and your online business ventures will begin to take
on a "cruise and control" nature.

Be aware that market research takes time. It must be planned out
with a clear goal in mind. Why? Market research in general
involves sampling a multi-variable parameter space. O.k. Dan, so
what does this mean?

It simply means that the question you are trying to answer
depends on more than one thing.

For instance, suppose you want to research web usage habits. This
is an enormously complex topic. It depends in part on what a
person is searching for, time of day, day of week, browser type,
computer type, dial-up connection, gender, age, etc..Do you see
how this can be very hard to understand.

So what you do is narrow the number of variables. How do you
do this? You focus your questions to areas that limit the number
of dependent parameters - smaller subsets of the entire picture.
Supposing that the question to answer is now "What percentage of
surfers are looking for cosmetics on Wednesday between the hours
of 6 and 10 pm?", we have now removed the gender, day of the
week, and hour of the day variables. The problem is now much
easier to solve.

Market research is a truly rich area. It involves people, who by
nature are complex entities to study. But, there is no way around
it. If you truly want to prosper in this field you must research
your market, and you must regularly do so. Otherwise, your
efforts will be in large part hit and miss. Take the time to add
a research aspect to your business. You won't be sorry.