Market research
Do you know what your customers and prospective customers think about you and your competitors?
Focused market research can provide a powerful objective view from customers, prospective customers, suppliers and even employees. This will give you statistically reliable data, and the insight needed to make sound marketing choices and business decisions. Typically, working with an independent specialist third party will help you get the best return from your market research programme.
Market research – how to approach it
Our market research experience includes the collection of data using a range of techniques depending on our client’s specific requirement, all of which can deliver excellent information for strategic and tactical decision making. The most commonly used collection techniques we use include:
- telephone interviewing using CATI technology
- web based data collection – typically via email link to URL
- face to face for detailed executive interviews
- postal questionnaire
- focus groups
- mystery shopping
- omnibus survey
It’s not just the data that the research delivers which is important, it’s the interpretation of the data as well. The top-line results may provide a certain level of information, but understanding what the results are telling you helps you make specific decisions. Our experience in the construction and building materials industry means we understand the key industry issues and terminology and will probably already have experience in interviewing your required target audience.
Key deliverables from a market research project
The key deliverables from a market research project would depend on the requirements of the client but would typically include the following:
- Tables with raw data
- Conclusions with back up data
- Key issues and recommendations based on the analysis
The extent of our involvement could be simply to carry out the research and provide the raw data with conclusions. However, we are often asked to provide input into a client’s business strategy and planning using the findings from the market research programme. We are totally flexible and will adapt to our client’s needs.
Our experience in market research
At Leading Edge we specialise in business to business research and in particular focus on the construction, construction products and environmental industries. However, our experience does extend beyond these sectors. In particular, we believe we can offer you the best market research solution as we have
- an in-house team of telephone interviewers based at the Wokingham office
- experience in over 200 market research projects – including telephone, face to face, postal and on line
- excellent data analysis skills
- detailed knowledge of the construction and building materials industry
Keeping the interviewing in-house enables us to maintain a better control on the quality of interviews and we can instantly answer any issues that may crop up during the research. It also means our interviewers are familiar with the building materials and construction industry which improves the quality of feedback.
We pay our interviewers on an hourly rate, not per interview completed, and so our interviews are not rushed and the quality of data is maintained.
To read more about our in-house research team, click here.
Our track record
Visit the About us area to find out more about our market research experience. This includes past clients, case studies and testimonials.
To download our CPD paper on market research please login to our reports & downloads page.
John Hunt, Enterprise IrelandThank you for a great piece of research on the UK Timber sector. The quality and depth of the work by the Leading Edge team on a complex task fully vindicated my recommendation for using you at the outset. I look forward to working with you again soon.