Market Research for New Product Development – Simplified!

Let's assume you are a business owner and you come up with a new interesting idea for creating a new product. As usual, you have briefed your concept to your business partner but they raised their eyebrows. So, do you think the problem is all about your concept? Actually, not at all! You have taken the wrong approach in developing the concept.

Presently, major companies take the help of market research for new product development to gain success. Yes! Market research is the thing that you missed earlier while developing your concept. When you apply the market insights in your concept, you'll have more success by launching new products.

We are in the middle of the digital age where people enjoy rapid changes in their choices. Earlier, people used to stay loyal to the brand whom they liked. But now, brand loyalty has become an outdated concept because of the choices of the new generation. Therefore, businesses need to take diverse measures to gain the loyalty of their customers. But how do they know all about this? – Simply, by conducting market research.

Therefore, "my instincts told me to go for this idea" might not help in convincing your partners to invest. While facts and figures with proper logical justification can be convincing here. With the parts of market research, you can get all the facts and figures along with insights to convince your partners.

So, market research is important for many purposes but especially for new product development. Let's explore more about market research in this comprehensive blog.

Developing a new product is a good idea because it helps businesses to diversify their product range. However, businesses have to measure various things before developing a new product. Among them, demand for the product, market visibility of the products, and other things are important. Businesses need to research these external factors for developing a new product.

On the other hand, internally, businesses need to study a lot regarding competitors, pricing, and more. Firstly, businesses have to set the target group for whom they are launching the new product. So, how businesses going to know who is the potential customer? Here, market research helps businesses with this detailed information regarding the target group.

Crucially, market research for new product development is a vital factor for product success. Positioning the product in an accurate place can make your new launch a success. Therefore, whether you are doing market research for a startup or a big multinational firm, you have to do it before every launch.

Consider two factors here; one is competitor tracking and another one is timely implementation. Proper market research will help businesses in both ways with accurate measures. With the right partner, businesses can perform market research accurately and gain success from it. That's why major businesses are relying on market research services outsourcing for their benefits.

Developing a new product and penetrating it in the market involves risk elements. Of course, the development of new products is a nice strategy for growing your audience but you need to do it accurately. You have to ensure that your audience is getting the right messages regarding the product. Therefore, they'll resonate with your thoughts and make their purchasing decision.

Therefore, to convey your messages directly to the audience, you need to do proper market research. You have to do market research for new product development to test your ideas and concepts. Thoroughly performed market research helps gain a real-time picture of the market and audience. Thus, you can understand your customers better when you perform proper market research.

As you have seen guessing games do not work in fetching market success at all. All you need here is proper data and statistics related to your new products. With the help of the right approach to market research, businesses can target the exact audience to gain success. Also, market research saves money, rather, it utilizes the money in the exact area where businesses need it.

However, stakeholders including the investors always check how businesses are doing market research. Including market research findings in the product concepts impresses investors using market research tools. Also, they want businesses to include market insights in the new launches for better coverage. Thus, when you include market research insights in product development, you'll attract more investors.

The importance of research for new product development is immense and worthy. Not only in the development of new products but also it helps in optimizing the existing products. Market research helps businesses keep a close eye on competitors and observe how they are behaving. Besides this, market research also includes reading online reviews and checking how customers are reacting. But, you need to choose the correct type of market research for that.

Therefore, market research aware businesses of what is happening around the market. Therefore, businesses can take accurate measures to gain success in the market with their products. In short, market research for a startup is all about stepping outside of the organization and observing the situation. By observing the market, businesses can develop ideas to launch new products. Because they will have all the key information regarding the demand and supply metrics.

Conducting market research for new product development accurately not only helps businesses to generate new ideas. But also, it helps businesses to create a place in the market for their products. With the help of market research, businesses can frame sales strategies and work accordingly.

Remember that, developing a marketing mix plays an important role in gaining success in new launches. Businesses can develop a marketing mix accurately with the help of market research. With this, businesses can position their products for the right people and make them convert into customers. Also, it helps businesses to understand customers' journeys and facilitate them for betterment.

Read: 9 Market Research Tips to Get Better Business Insights

It's good that you have decided to conduct market research before you come up with any new product concept. But have you decided yet which method you'll choose for conducting your research? If not, this section will help you in finding the right method to conduct your market research.

A combination of different types is the ideal way to conduct market research. Because one method itself can complete only up to a certain level so to accomplish it completely, you've to combine. Let's start our market research for new product development with the basics first.

Quality-based market research or quantitive research always focuses on measurements. For measurement, you need to have a huge quantity of data to assess the results. Here, the quantitative method of research helps you to do so. You'll understand the figures through your marketing research if you take a quantitative approach as your correct type of market research.

For instance, you can get to know what type of product your competitors are selling and how much they're generating. You'll get all the information related to your customers like how much they're spending, how much they can spend, etc. Besides, you can get a picture of the market related to its size, growth rate, business percentage, and many more. In short, through qualitative research, you'll get all objective information regarding business, customers, and the industry.

Have you heard the phrase "quality over quantity"? If yes, then you'll understand qualitative research better. Unlike quantitive market research, this research method in market research for new product development helps in understanding the key motives. How customers will behave you can measure it through this research method.

However, gathering data from your target group is relevant when it comes to qualitative research. Businesses prefer surveying when it comes to taking qualitative data from a specific target group. Qualitative data helps businesses understand the key ideas that motivate people to buy certain products. Therefore, with an understanding of the motive, businesses can develop their product and fetch success in it.

After understanding the approach to conducting the research, now it is time to choose the method for collecting data. Businesses can have two methods of conducting market research. The first one is primary and the second one is secondary method. Primary data collection is all about gathering data from raw sources from your target audience.

For launching a new product, it's always best to collect data from primary sources. When you conduct market research for new product development through primary data sources, it increases data validation. That means you can have the raw data which you can use as the base of your search. For collecting this data, you need to apply different methods or you can do the best, which is outsourcing.

Unlike primary research, secondary research works with existing data. You need to work with the data that already are there but it helps you to gain valuable insights. All you need to do here is to connect the available sources and make it insightful. You can take the help of quantitative market research methods also.

For example, you can refer to a case study to observe the risky areas and develop a mitigation strategy. Suppose, you can learn what an organization did before to mitigate the same type of risk that you are having. Always start with competitors, because it will help you to know your competition better. Thus, the importance of market research lies in competitor assessment and product valuation.

Also Read: How to Do Market Research: Your Comprehensive Guide

The process of conducting market research would become easier when you follow certain rules. This section will dedicatedly discuss the right approaches to boost your market research for a startup. Follow the process to gain amazing insights from your research for new product development.

First of all, you need to explore what is the purpose of your research and what you want from it. Sometimes businesses face confusion in determining the goals and objectives of the research. That's where exploration helps to determine the actual aim of the research. To initiate the process. It's always best to have secondary data in hand by following a qualitative market research process.

By understanding the research intent through primary market research, businesses can frame goals. Eventually, businesses can have the idea of market research for new product development through this. This process is the best in terms of identifying the knowledge gap and making plans for its accomplishment.

Once you explore what thing you'll target through your research, then you'll have to frame the research objectives. For launching a new product, it's very important to analyze how much your product will meet market demand. Thus, you can target the right audience by introducing your product by showing all these factors.

Besides figuring out the research objectives, all you need to do is prepare the research scope. Isn't obvious that your new product will not hit the target figure even if you try harder? So, defining the scope helps you in creating a limit for your market research. Additionally, it will help you segment how much effort you have to do in which area of the research.

At this stage, you have a clear vision of what you have to do. Right? So, now you have to select tools to initiate the market research. Nowadays, various tools are freely available over the internet, which are effective for market research. But, you need to choose carefully for your research as you can find various risks there. Otherwise, you can trust a partner to conduct market research for new product development, especially the outsourcing partners.

Interestingly, how would you determine whether your market research is effective or not? That's where concept testing comes into the picture, which will provide you with an accurate picture. Testing the concept is more like a rough plan where you can make changes if you feel so. You can set parameters to determine the success factors of your market research journey.

Finally, there's an option for you to delegate the complex parts of market research to an outsourcing company. An efficient outsourcing company will follow all your instructions while dealing with market research data.