Once you have appointed the research agency or consultant, the programme of research should be formulated and agreed with you before any activity takes place. A benchmark for expenditure on commissioned marketing research is that the benefits to your company should be worth 70 times the cost of the research."

 

My favoured option is to visit a dedicated business book shop and find a book that matches my capability and therefore one I can understand: the books 'Idiot's Guide to…', and '… for Dummies' are a great way to understand a subject and are intended for those who are good at making their product, but struggle with the essential areas of running a business. So look for something along the lines of 'Idiots Guide to Market Research'.

Choosing a book is a personal thing. What one person thinks is a great book at explaining marketing, another will think baffling. If you are not sure what you are looking for you should start at the beginning and get a book that simply (as far as you are concerned) explains the big picture: in my opinion, it is not advisable to buy a book on-line based on a few words (probably written by the author) and possibly no use to you.

 

You can gather information from the public (high-street surveys), from potential customers (telemarketing & mail-shot surveys - don't try to sell at the same time), from company employees (that you know), off-line market research services. If you are an established business and you are conducting market research for a new/altered product it would be sacrilegious not to ask your current customers: they would love to tell you what they really want and will discount any concern about product development cost.

 

If you have a main city library the amount and quality of free information is usually huge with many libraries now having business sections coupled with staff that are extremely knowledgeable. Some libraries will actually allow you to book appointments with their business staff and should arguably be a starting point for all entrepreneurs as spending time and money on market research just to find out something that had already been established and written in a book, a web page or cheaply available from a marketing agency is a lost opportunity to find out something new, and possibly valuable.

 

Using the Internet is always recommended where you will find articles like this one and possibly an article specific to your industry's marketing peculiarities. There are a number of on-line market research agencies who will take your money irrespective of their knowledge in your industry. My other comment about on-line market research services is that unless you spend a lot of money the research is unlikely to involve anyone expending shoe-leather in your target location: if that is relevant to your needs. However, they will probably have general information that will save you a lot of time and therefore money.

 

Finally. If you correctly conduct market research and you do not like your findings it would be foolish to ignore your results if they are not as positive as you wanted. After all, if your research shows you that your product is not viable and you cannot adjust cost or quality then your market research HAS been successful.