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How do you use market research in your business

Marketing research is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding
the behaviours, whims and preferences, of consumers in a market-based economy,
and aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns.

Product research - This looks at what products can be produced with available technology,
and what new product innovations near-future technology can develop

Advertising research - is a specialized form of marketing research conducted to improve the
efficacy of advertising.

LUCKIEST

Here's two examples of how I used it.

FIRST
In 1977, when I owned a photography studio (in a resort area) with an in-house color processing lab (for my own studio work, only); I was considering whether it might be worth adding more machinery and employees so I could have my color lab process film and prints for the public. At the time, there was no such business in town. All film processing had to be sent out of town. The fastest processing was two days, and most oif it was a week.

I had a survey created to determine (especially tourists) if such a service would be something they might be interested in utilizing. The results were positive. Based on that I expanded and had a successful operation.

SECOND

In creating a sales letter, I was undecided between two headlines, as to which would be more effective with the recipients. I created several hundred with one headline and the same amount with the other, and randomly mixed them and sent them out as a "test market". The results from those helped me deteremine which headline seemed to be more effective. I then created all the rest with the "winning" headline.

Thanks for sharing your stories Uncle Leon! This seems like a great application of research. I often wonder whether small businesses should do more research like this. My feeling is that research helps us mitigate risk and identify new growth opportunities. That seems especially important in today's economy.

Here's an example of how I recently used research to guide my business decisions: After conducting and reviewing several studies on the sustainability and health and wellness trends for a white paper designed to help Nutrition Professionals build their businesses, I worked with the Director of a small local college to develop a concept for a new website: Sustainable-Nutrition.com. We have yet to launch the site but the process of studying some key trends in the US has been quite useful in helping us define the concept. I'm sure we'll be doing more research in this area as the project progresses and feel equally certain that the research process will help us create an offering that people want and need.

In case you're curious, here's a page I put together that describes some of our work on Sustainable Nutrition: http://researchsight.com/Sustainable_Nutr
ition.html