In 2024, businesses will face another challenging year. To stay close to customers and ahead of competitors effective market research is a must. The following post provides six tips for conducting better market research in 2024.
Avoid the chaos
2023 was a chaotic year. One that will be remembered negatively for a whole host of issues – environmental lows, the cost of living crisis, wars, political unrest, human rights challenges, and much more. It will also be noted as a year of major technological change – TikTok’s meteoric rise contrasted with Twitter’s (X) collapse and the emergence of AI, everywhere, all the time.
While it is easy to think of the negatives, there were also lots of positives – COP28’s landmark environmental agreement, the rise of female empowerment evidenced by the success of the Women’s World Cup and the entertainment dominance of superstars like Taytay, and the innovations powering the ‘golden age of medicine’ that offer new hope for preventing and treating diseases.
Reflecting on 2023, one thing is certain – it was a year of massive economic, social, and technological change that affected everyone.
For businesses, it was an especially tough year. The bounce-back from the COVID-19 pandemic stalled in major markets, and tough economic conditions saw belt-tightening across all sectors and widespread layoffs in many markets and industries. That made it difficult for many businesses to survive, let alone thrive, and has created a negative knock-on effect on employee engagement and customer satisfaction that will impact many businesses through 2024.
This year will be another tough one for many businesses. One in which cost-controls will remain, risk will be avoided, and growth will be sought but not expected. Investment in innovation will be evaluated aggressively to avoid risk while keeping current customers happy will be the name of the game.
Success in 2024 will require staying close to your customers, ahead of your competitors, and on top of the trends that will impact your growth.
That’s where market research can help. Good insights power good decisions that will help your business safely and successfully navigate the choppy waters of 2024.
6 tips for better market research in 2024
Here are 6 simple tips on how to use market research effectively this year:
1. Context is king: monitor market dynamics
How is the cost of living crisis impacting your key customers and prospects? How are they researching, shopping, and buying now versus 6 months ago? How has that impacted appeal versus competitors?
These are simple questions that reflect the market context in which businesses are operating; do you know the answers? If not, you need a new cadence for your assessment of market dynamics and competitive activity.
Rather than investing in research for once-yearly strategic planning, consider more frequent but focused usage & attitude dips and brand health checks. The former will ensure you identify changing sentiments and behavior so you can get ahead of it. The latter will enable you to assess the impact of your marketing and prevent competitors from stealing hard-won share of mind and market before you can respond.
Research platforms like Glow can help with both of these use cases. Structured kits can ensure U&A dips are consistent and comparable across time whilst also making research more cost-effective. Regular brand dips or continuous brand tracking are important to stay on top of brand health and key funnel metrics like awareness, consideration, and preference and to assess the ROI of marketing efforts.
For example, in the midst of 2022’s supply chain challenges, e-commerce agency The Stable used Glow to quickly understand consumer responses to out-of-stock so they could help a client minimize sales impacts from changing consumer behavior.
2. Implement an agile approach
Are my customer service staffing cuts from last year still impacting customer satisfaction? Are customers aware of my new product launch? Which of these new advertising messages will work better?
In today’s dynamic environment, businesses have a lot of questions to answer. And no one can afford to get the answers wrong. That’s where an agile approach to insights can help. Doing quick-turn mini-research projects can provide robust data quickly to satisfy important board, product, and marketing questions in a timely and cost-effective manner.
When the market is moving fast, capturing regular feedback from customers is the only way to stay one step ahead.
Here’s a list of some of the top online research platforms and their capabilities so you can identify one that suits your needs.
3. Test before you invest
The cost of market research is normally less than 5% of the cost of a new product launch or major marketing campaign.
Would you pay 5% to ensure the remaining 95% of your investment is a success?
If you answered yes, you should include concept testing for every new product launch and communications testing for major marketing efforts. Concept testing research will de-risk new product development (NPD), uncover product-market fit, and ensure NPD works. You can also discover which customer segments like your product or service the most, then refine your communications to best reach this market.
Learn how Brita tested a new product and associated communications to ensure a successful launch or how Reckitt was able to pre-test communications across multiple markets in record time.
Quality research platforms like Glow can access large audiences of consumers, ensuring you can reach any audience, anywhere – so there’s no excuse not to test before you invest.
4. Iterate everything
Continuous testing drives continuous improvement, so the best way to drive incremental returns is to iterate everything. Get feedback continuously through quick employee, customer, or prospect surveys within hours so you can tweak your products or service experience, evolve your retail relationships, and refresh your communications.
Drive effectiveness by design.
Iteration needn’t cost the earth. Many platforms enable you to bring your own audience, so you can quickly and cost-effectively interrogate current customers or prospects from your CRM.
Some research platforms can provide robust answers very quickly; for example, 90% of surveys fielded via Glow’s platform start capturing results within the first hour of going live!
The best platforms also make it easy to access, interrogate, and share your insights with all stakeholders to encourage collaboration around the data.
5. Identify key decision drivers
Two in three consumers say that a brand’s social and environmental behavior influences their purchase decisions, and despite the cost-of-living crisis, sustainability concerns are on the rise. Recent data from NIQ highlights that seven in ten US consumers felt sustainability was more important to them now than two years ago.
Sustainability clearly does not override all other considerations. Price and quality remain dominant decision drivers for most consumers, but sustainability is in the top 3 decision criteria for 1 in 5 consumers and even more important for younger people. Consumers won’t choose an inferior, overpriced, or inconvenient product just because it’s sustainable, but they are increasingly choosing brands they see as more sustainable when other factors are comparable.
The implication? It is critical to understand the decision hierarchy for your product and how sustainability fits into that process. Your company is probably already investing in ESG or sustainability initiatives, but do you know whether you are getting the return on your sustainability efforts you deserve? If not, you could be leaking revenue or the opposite, leaving money on the table. Identifying your risk or opportunity starts with assessing what consumers think of your efforts.
Sustainability concerns influence more than just consumer behavior, they also influence a company’s appeal as an employer, especially to younger people.
A recent study by Glow identified that people who rated their employer highly on ESG performance were 25% more likely to claim they would stay with their current employer for at least the next 12 months, compared to those who rated their employer poorly. In addition, those who rated their employer highly were also ten times more likely than those with a poor perception to recommend their employer to family and friends (measured via a net promoter score of 9 or 10).
Failing to meet sustainability expectations can result in a loss of both customers and employees, so there is a clear remit for research to track stakeholder perception in this key area.
6. Own your insights
The speed of change we’re seeing today is challenging the traditional agency-based approach to market research, wherein speed and access to data are controlled by the research agency. That’s why many brands are now turning to DIY+ research platforms. These platforms allow brands to speed up the research process for specific types of studies and also enable businesses to manage their own research data/IP. While not suitable for every business, there are clear benefits in terms of cost, speed, and control to be gained from taking research in-house. Learn more about whether this approach is right for your business.
Better decisions drive success
When you have critical business decisions that require insights from your customers, prospects or employees, there’s no longer any reason not to ask them. Research platforms make quality research more accessible and affordable. Some, like Glow, have a low cost of entry to use, allowing you to test capability without needing to make heavy upfront investments.
It’s easy to use the Glow platform to deploy a quick-turnaround study, gaining scaled feedback you can trust within hours, that you can take into boardroom decision-making. View a platform functionality overview video.
Reduce the chaos in 2024. Power your decisions with quality research data. Learn how in a 20-minute meeting with the friendly Glow team. Book an intro call today.