Typical Market Research Mistakes

1.1       Ad Hoc: done at the last minute, such as trying to determine the price of the product

1.2.      Seller Perspective rather than the buyer’s: research done from the seller’s perspective of the market. If that perspective is right, then the research might help. But if the perspective is incorrect, the results of the research will be suspect. This happens in sales-driven companies.

1.3.      Research held close at hand: many departments need access to the market research that has been conducted in order to do their job.

1.4.      Not done in a timely fashion: frequently, departments request their central market research organization to do a study, but since it was not budgeted for in that year, the research can’t be done and completed for another 18 months. This is far beyond when the information would be useful, and results in doing “seat of the pants” decision-making, because the research that was needed is not available.

1.5.      Doing the research by not understanding what the people being interviewed will get out of participating: simply saying “take my survey” will not give you the projectable results you will need, and neither will offering a gift to be given away at a raffle. Those agreeing to take the survey may be only interested in the prize, not your product.

1.6.      Asking irrelevant questions: this might cause the person being surveyed to not finish the survey.

1.7.      Having too many, detailed questions: such asasking the person to rank something on a scale of one to ten across dozens of characteristics.

1.8.      Using polls, quizzes and surveys as a way to generate leads: those who do respond out of the goodness of their hearts will quickly discover you tricked them into wasting their time, which is not the way to build a positive brand image or affinity.

2.         If you just ask three questions, you will frequently learn everything you need from the user type:

2.1.      What do you like?

2.2.      What do you not like?

2.3.      Any comments/suggestions?

3.         While it will be more time consuming to categorize open-ended questions, they do help discover things you may never have thought about.