Right to reply (1 of many I hope!)

I have never professed to be an expert and my investment strategy has always been to use experts in a particular field to validate decisions I am making in an area which I do not know about. There are so many little bits of knowledge that can be helpful in transforming a business which can only be gained by understanding a sector very well. Have a look at the post I wrote about my investment in Blueback to realise the errors of not having expertise in a field.

As such I was delighted when an expert in the field of Market Research, Rupert Emerson, wrote to me in response to my Blog, Can we sell it? He gave me what I think is a very good checklist for anyone seeking to conduct Market Research. I hope you find this information useful.

Unfortunately market research has a bad name, rather like “politicians” or “the media”.

Asking your potential clients directly whether they would buy the product and if so, how much they would pay, is good, basic market research. Likewise, good market research is analysing your existing sales.

Bad market research occurs when the client is doing the research without proper thought and the researcher takes advantage of the vagueness and goes off and asks a whole lot of pointless questions in order to provide “data”. And when it comes to commissioning market research I am afraid too many research companies will simply tailor their sample and their research plan to your budget instead of designing the project to provide what you need and then telling you what it will cost.

It is true that the questions you ask and how you ask them that can lead to misleading results. However if the work is done correctly it can be very revealing. For example, opinion polls are remarkably accurate nowadays.

What a good market researcher should first do is ask:

1. What are you trying to find out?
2. Why do you want to know this?
3. What are you going to do with the information?
4. Will it lead to a business decision?
5. Will that lead to increasing the profit, sales or value of the business?
6. If not, why do you want to find out the information?

If, on the other hand, their first question is: “What is your budget?”, take care

Thank you for this Rupert – I particularly like the last two questions. I have always distinguished between data and information. Information is data with a purpose.

Make sure there is a purpose to all you do!

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