How to do the research to the potential customers?

As you know,we can ask the current customers to answer some questions.But for the potential customers,how to make a research about their sense to our brand,the factors affect their buying decisionsâ€¦ Do I have to ask the third party to do that?

It depends how you will use the answers. The first question I have is what will you use the answers for? New product development? Sales? Marketing? Forecasting? What kind of decisions will you make based on the research? How important is the answer and what happens if you get it right or wrong?

If the research will used to make a big decision, then I would use a 3rd party to ensure that the research is conducted accurately and with a enough documentation to develop a strong insights and recommendations.

If the research will not be used to make a big decision, you can approach prospective customers yourself or less formally. At the very minimum, you should work with someone who has experience in market research.

Approaching prospective buyers requires some insight about who is currently buying products in your industry category. You can use your sales channel to understand who might be in the market for what you sell. You can also buy lists from different organizations based on your customer profile.

Develop a questionnaire based on what you want to know. Make sure your questions make sense and give your questionnaire a dry run before you use it in front of a prospective buyer. Ensure that the questionnaire is not too long.

ask customers through survey or interview.
You can also outsource it on sites like yahoo answers and target it specifically for your task.

The answer to your question is: it depends on your situation. If you are a major company and thinking nationally or internationally then you do have to hire someone to do the research. The research companies have the resources to find the right group of people who can tell you what you need to know.

On the other hand, I have worked with many small businesses and you can do some things yourself. Just remember you are not a research expert, so spend a lot of time testing your questionnaire on friends and family before you take it to your target. The worst thing is to ask people questions and then not really get anything out of it.

Step 1 is to write out what decisions you want to make as a result of the research. Then you have a feeling for who you need to talk to (who are the potential customers? It's not everyone who doesn't buy from you now.), types of questions to ask, etc. After that, you should be able to figure out where your potential customers shop, live or work. Put together a questionnaire and the go out and talk to people. Offer a token amount for their time- even $2.00 cash is enough- and then you are off and rolling. Only those people who qualify as your target get the $2.00- so be sure you have a clear way to descriminate / you really know who you want to talk to- otherwise you will waste time and money for little gain. These are called screening questions. Examples of screening questions are: age (what age group are your target customers in), gender/sex (who makes the decision to buy your product, men/women), currently use the type of product you sell (i.e are in the market for it), etc.

This method won't be perfect, but if you take time on the questionnaire and on the way to identify who you want to talk to (the screening questions) you will be fine. Get some friends to help out and spend a few solid days gathering information and then longer than that figuring out what you learned. Shoot for at least 30-50 people - the more the better, however.

I don't know where you live so I don't know if there are some other support services you can call on to help you design and print questionnaires, tabulate the data, etc.

There are many ways in which marketers map the potential in a market and understand the potential market. I think your question needs to be asked in 2 parts

First: How do you map the market potential?

Second: Having mapped the potential of the market, how does one understand the needs, perceptions, imagery about current offerings/brands, attitudes and behaviors of the target segment

First question: Secondary data (population, consumption details, surrogate consumptions, existing databases) could be used to map the potential of the market. You could also do theoretical analysis basis the data which is available and try and estimate market sizes. There enumerable mathematical ways in which u could do the same by making certain assumptions

Second question: There are various ways again to conduct a research to understand the earlier mentioned info requirements

Before going into a full fledged research it neccessary for the researcher/marketer to understand what exactly he is looking as an outcome of the exercise? Lets assume that the marketer is looking at a fresh market and intends to find out information of the following aspects:
- Who are the consumers in this potential market?
- What is their current lifestyle? What is their daily schedule? what kind of medias they are exposed to?
- What is their demographic profile?
- What are their needs?
- What are their attitudes, beliefs, values and what is their psychographic profile?
- What is the need?
- What are the current product/services which are satisfying these needs?
- How do the consumers go about satisfying their needs?
- What is buying behavior process which they follow in the specific category which you want to offer the product or service for?
- Usage related issues like, where do they use the product? where does the need arise? when does it arise? how does the consumer interact with the product or service? What is the frequency of usage of the offering?
- What are prices which the consumers are currently paying? What would they pay for something extra? Is there a set of attributes in a product which one could offer at a particular cost which most of the consumers in the target segment would like? What is the price which they are willing to pay? Would you be able to command a premium? if yes how much and for what combination?
- What kind of after sales service the consumers expect from the company?
- How loyal are consumers?

All the above could found by the marketer by talking to a few consumers. It is advisable that before you go in for a full fledged research you talk to some consumers and sharpen your information gathering areas. It will give you a flavour of what questions to ask and how to ask them. Sometimes companies do qualitative research to understand the same and then go about doing a quantitative analysis to ascertain the same.

A marketer can do the research on his own, a 3rd party is brought into the picture when one has some special research requirements.....like sampling, getting people to talk to of the desired profile...getting people to answer. Though even that could be done by marketer himself. a 3rd party is also involved wherein marketer is not well versed with the exact execution of the research process or does not have the wherewithal to do the same. a 3rd party also does the research in an unbiased manner which is an imperative for any research to be conducted.

Each of the question listed above could become a full fledged research for a 3rd party to conduct. The key is the marketer understand that he isnt the researcher only....his priority is to get the information, who gets it is immaterial, finally its he who is going to take decisions basis the information. Also the marketer is responsible for the research design - What are ways in which the research will be conducted, where, who, what all information requirements would be fullfilled. It is advisable that the marketer put pen to paper and make a research matrix

- What is the business problem/decision problem?
- The exact problem statement?
- What all information is needed to resolve the problem?
- Whats the objective of the research?
- What are the variables which will captured with each question asked?
- What are the sources where the questions would be answered?
- What are the formats in which the answers would be available to him? What kind of data inputs would he get and how would he use it?

I'm not real savvy on this particular aspect of customer relations but the first thing that comes to mind is to create a form. If you sent your customer a form or a survey and explained to them it's to help serve them better, most would probably love to participate, especially if you offered them something FREE for their participation. Hope this helps

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