Market research and market reports

Customer research: what you need to know

Undertaking customer research on loyalty, satisfaction and service can make a big difference to your business. You should focus your efforts on finding out as much as you can about existing and potential customers. If you can work out how they make their buying decisions, you can adapt your sales methods and techniques to fit your customers' needs.

For business customers, you'll want to know how big their businesses are, what sectors they're in, and who would make the decision to buy your product or service.

If you're targeting individual consumers, it may be useful to know such things as their gender, age, occupation, income, lifestyle, or attitudes.

Existing customers

For your existing customers, try to find out:

• what they think about your products or services
• why they need your product or service - this may be different from what you believe
• why they buy from you and not your competitors
• what they think of your prices
• what they expect from you, eg reliable delivery
• how they rate your customer service
• how they think you could develop or refine your products or services

Potential customers

For your potential customers, try to find out:

• who your potential customers are and what groups they fall into
• how many potential customers there are
• how much of your kind of product or service they already buy from your competitors
• the criteria on which they make buying decisions
• what it would take to get them to buy from you
• what developments they expect in your product or service
• when and where they prefer to buy

See our guide on how to know your customers' needs.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Customer research: what you need to know
• Information on market trends and competitor intelligence
• Using market reports and other data
• Interpreting market information
• The basics of quantitative and qualitative field research
• Planning field research
• Tips for successful field research
• Should I use a market research agency?
• Here's how I made the most of market research

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