customer research definition

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Customer Research

What is customer research.

Customer research is conducted so as to identify customer segments, needs, and behaviors. It can be carried out as part of market research, user research, or design research. Even so, it always focuses on researching current or potential customers of a specific brand or product in order to identify unmet customer needs and/or opportunities for business growth.

Customer research can focus on simple demographics of an existing or potential customer group (such as age, gender, and income level). Indeed, these considerations are vital determinants of a product’s target audience. However, such research also often seeks to understand various behaviors and motivators —factors which place a product’s use and potential on a higher level of study. Thus, the goal of such research is to expose clear details about who is—or will be—using a product as well as the reasons behind their doing so and how they go about using it (including the contextual areas of “where” and “when”). Customer research may be conducted via a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic field studies. It also commonly involves doing desk research of online reviews, forums, and social media to explore what customers are saying about a product.

While customer research is usually conducted as part of a design project, it is also often conducted in other departments of an organization. In some cases, customer research is part of marketing—for instance, to ensure that marketing campaigns have the right focus. In other cases, it can be carried out as part of concept development or ideation so as to identify opportunities for future products, services, or features. In any case, such research is an essential ingredient in keeping the end users in clear sight long before the end of any design phase.

Literature on Customer Research

Here’s the entire UX literature on Customer Research by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Customer Research

Take a deep dive into Customer Research with our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

How do you plan to design a product or service that your users will love , if you don't know what they want in the first place? As a user experience designer, you shouldn't leave it to chance to design something outstanding; you should make the effort to understand your users and build on that knowledge from the outset. User research is the way to do this, and it can therefore be thought of as the largest part of user experience design .

In fact, user research is often the first step of a UX design process—after all, you cannot begin to design a product or service without first understanding what your users want! As you gain the skills required, and learn about the best practices in user research, you’ll get first-hand knowledge of your users and be able to design the optimal product—one that’s truly relevant for your users and, subsequently, outperforms your competitors’ .

This course will give you insights into the most essential qualitative research methods around and will teach you how to put them into practice in your design work. You’ll also have the opportunity to embark on three practical projects where you can apply what you’ve learned to carry out user research in the real world . You’ll learn details about how to plan user research projects and fit them into your own work processes in a way that maximizes the impact your research can have on your designs. On top of that, you’ll gain practice with different methods that will help you analyze the results of your research and communicate your findings to your clients and stakeholders—workshops, user journeys and personas, just to name a few!

By the end of the course, you’ll have not only a Course Certificate but also three case studies to add to your portfolio. And remember, a portfolio with engaging case studies is invaluable if you are looking to break into a career in UX design or user research!

We believe you should learn from the best, so we’ve gathered a team of experts to help teach this course alongside our own course instructors. That means you’ll meet a new instructor in each of the lessons on research methods who is an expert in their field—we hope you enjoy what they have in store for you!

All open-source articles on Customer Research

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Customer Research 101: Definition, Types, and Methods

Last Updated:  

30 May 2024

Table Of Contents

What is Customer Research?

Why is customer research important, types of customer research.

• 6 Customer Research Methods
• How SurveySparrow Can Help

Do you want to improve your marketing or product? Then, customer research can help.

Your customer is at the heart of all your business decisions. In fact, everything revolves around a customer. A business is about having a paying customer, and it wouldn’t exist without one.

The effectiveness of your product or marketing depends on how well you know your customers. When you know your customers better, you can make better product or marketing decisions.

In this article, we break down:

• What customer research is
• Why it’s valuable for your business
• Different types of customer research
• Six customer research methods you can use to refine and grow your business

Customer research (or consumer research ) is a set of techniques used to identify the needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations of your current or potential customers.

Simply put, the consumer research process is a way for businesses to collect information and learn from their customers so they can serve them better.

Businesses typically conduct customer research to uncover new insights on their customers. They then use these newly uncovered insights to improve their product, craft an effective marketing strategy, and more.

Here are 2 key questions customer research helps you answer:

• Who are my ideal customers? Who is the best fit (or worst fit) for our product?
• What channels can I use to find and communicate with my ideal customers?

Online survey tools like SurveySparrow can help you answer these questions. With omnichannel survey distribution, snazzy data visualization, and 1,500+ integrations with your favorite tools, SurveySparrow simplifies customer research for your GTM and product teams.

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A. How well do you know your customers? Not knowing enough about your customers can cost you time and money.

For example, a recent survey revealed that 46% of customers broke up with a brand because they received irrelevant content pushes.

Successful marketers realize that research is necessary to understand and cater to the ever-changing needs of today’s customers. According to a study by Coschedule:

• Successful marketers are 242% more likely to conduct audience research at least once every quarter.
• 56% of the study’s most elite marketers research at least once a month.

B. You shouldn’t make assumptions about your customers’ preferences or needs. You have to go out there and get opinions from real customers.

C. You need to go beyond your general idea about your customers. The more you understand your customers, the better you’ll be able to serve them with your product or service.

D. If you want to make your product the best in the market, you need to identify any unmet needs and learn how well your product serves the needs of your current customers.

E. Customer research helps you learn more about your customers, both the potential and existing ones. Serving your customers better than the alternatives starts with understanding them better and more deeply.

F. Here are other key reasons why you should research customers:

• Know the Why : Your analytics dashboard merely tells you what your customers do. Only research can help you understand why they do that.
• Validate Assumptions and Best Practices : In most cases, guesswork leads to terrible decisions. Your customers might not need what you think they need. And what works for most businesses might not work for you. The only real way to know is to talk to your customers.

Customer research can be done in two distinct ways: primary and secondary.

Primary research

Primary research is research you conduct yourself. In other words, in primary research, you collect the data yourself. Some examples of primary research are face-to-face interviews, surveys, and social media interactions.

Secondary research

Secondary research (or desk research ) is done by someone else. In secondary research, you make use of data that’s been collected by other people. A few examples of secondary research are forums or communities, industry reports, and online databases.

Primary and secondary research can be further broken down into two kinds of data: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative data

Qualitative data is descriptive and conceptual. And the nature of the data makes it subjective and interpretive. Examples of qualitative data include descriptions of certain attributes, such as blue eyes or chocolate-flavored ice cream .

Quantitative data

Quantitative data can be expressed using numbers, which means it can be counted or measured. As opposed to qualitative data, it’s objective and conclusive. Examples of quantitative data include numerical values such as measurements , length , cost , or weight .

Customer Research Methods that Work in 2024 (and Beyond)

Now that you know what customer research is and why it’s important, read on to learn the different consumer research methods you can use to make the most of it.

In a survey, you ask a series of questions to your customers regarding a subject or concept.

You can conduct a survey in person, over the phone, through emails, or online forms.

Here are some advantages of conducting customer research through surveys:

• Quickly collect a ton of insightful data without the high costs.
• The data you collect using surveys is simple to analyze.
• You can ask various questions since you get a wide range of question formats.

When it comes to surveys, it’s all about how you ask. Clear and concise questions can help you get reliable information.

An online survey tool is your best bet for quickly gathering customer information. All you need to do is create a survey with a ready-to-use template and send your customers a link to take it.

If you’re in need of a cost-free and easy-to-use solution for conducting customer research surveys and beyond, consider exploring SurveySparrow . This tool aids in gathering essential data by enabling you to conduct thorough data analysis via its user-friendly and conversational survey format.

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In an interview, you speak directly to your customers and ask them open-ended questions.

• Interviews allow you to have deep, one-on-one conversations with your customers and explore a topic in-depth.
• You can go into the details, obtain data beyond surface-level information, and gather deeper insights.

While interviews allow you to probe deeper into a subject, success depends on the expertise and skills of the researcher (or interviewer) conducting the interviews.

Conducting interviews isn’t easy. It’s time-consuming and costly. However, the information you collect can be invaluable for your company’s growth.

You can meet your customers in person to conduct your interviews. Or you can use video conferencing tools such as Google Meet or Zoom to converse with your customers online.

Your analytics dashboard lets you in on your customers’ actions within your product.

Just a glance at it and you’ll know what your customers do and how they engage with your product.

The irony is that customers don’t know what they want or why. They might think they need something but that might not be the case.

What they say they need doesn’t equate to what they do.

The point is that customer-reported behavior is different from actual behavior. That’s why it pays to track and observe your customers’ behavior.

You can use heatmaps, click tracking, scroll mapping, and user-recorded sessions to gain insights into your users’ actions and behavior.

Focus Groups

In this method, you combine a small group based on certain criteria such as demographic, firmographic, or behavioral attributes.

And you ask this group about whatever topic or concept. It could be about your product, marketing message, or something else that’s related to your customers or business.

The idea is to get them to talk to each other and have meaningful conversations.

A moderator helps facilitate the conversations between the individuals in this group. The moderator will try to draw meaningful insights from these conversations and discussions.

You mainly use this technique to understand a certain topic or subject better.

Competitive Analysis

Studying your competitors’ strategies and tactics is a great way to learn more about the target market and the existing solutions.

You can analyze both your direct and indirect competitors depending on the needs you address and the customers you cater to.

You can conduct a competitive analysis from a marketing or product perspective.

If you conduct your analysis from a marketing perspective, you study your competition’s SEO strategy , landing page copy, blog content, PR coverage, social media presence, etc.

You can also conduct your competitive analysis from a product perspective and analyze your competitors’ user experience, features, pricing structure, etc.

Review Mining

The reviews of you and your competitors are another great way to get inside your customer’s head. This method can be especially valuable if you are a SAAS company.

It helps you better understand your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses as well as your own. This understanding helps you improve your own products and better address the needs of your ideal customers.

This kind of data is easy to acquire as it’s publicly available, and you can get them on:

• Review sites such as G2Crowd and Capterra.
• Forums and niche communities such as ProductHunt, Reddit, Quora, etc.

Why SurveySparrow is the Best Customer Research Tool

SurveySparrow facilitates comprehensive customer research by enabling businesses to efficiently collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback, leading to better informed and customer-centric decisions.

• Collect Feedback Easily : Create simple surveys to find out what customers think about your products or services.
• Understand Satisfaction : Use surveys to figure out how happy customers are with what you offer.
• Learn Buying Habits : Find out why customers buy certain products, which helps in planning what to sell.
• Get Product Opinions : Ask customers what they like or don’t like about your products to make improvements.
• See How People View Your Brand : Understand how customers see your brand, which is important for your marketing.
• Keep Up with Trends : Regular surveys help you stay updated on what your customers want or need.
• Group Customers : Identify different types of customers to target them more effectively with your marketing.
• Improve Customer Experience : Learn where you can make the buying process better for your customers.
• Test New Ideas : Before launching new products, check if your customers would be interested.
• Check Customer Loyalty : Find out if customers would keep using your products or recommend them to others.

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Final thoughts.

Businesses that deeply understand their customers have a huge advantage over the ones that don’t. Period.

Whatever you’re looking to learn or achieve, it becomes a lot clearer with a little research.

When done right, customer research can be your competitive advantage.

Be sure to pick a method that’s right for your situation. What are you looking to learn and achieve? Think through each research method carefully and pick the one that works best for you.

Have you conducted customer research? What did you learn? And how did it go? Tell us about that in the comment section below.

And if you’re looking to conduct customer research through surveys, feel free to check out SurveySparrow .

I'm a developer turned marketer, working as a Product Marketer at SurveySparrow — A survey tool that lets anyone create beautiful, conversational surveys people love to answer.

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• What is customer research?

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Designing products that both delight customers and solve their problems is essential in a competitive landscape!

But how do you identify what your customers want and need, let alone who your customers really are?

Customer research enables you to learn more about your customers, understand their motivations, and get to grips with their behavior on a deeper level. You can use all this knowledge to create truly user-centric products.

Customer research is how you understand your customers—their needs, pain points, and demographics.

It also allows you to dive into key aspects of customers’ motivations and behaviors. It’s about learning how customers act and what will encourage them to take certain actions.

This is important when developing products. Deeply understanding your customers helps you deliver products that are easy to use, satisfying, and better at solving problems.

You’ll keep designing products that fall short if you don’t know your customers well and can’t see things from their point of view.

• What’s the difference between customer research, market research, and user research

You may have heard the terms customer research, market research, and user research. They might sound similar and have some related functions, but they are distinct types of research.

Market research is generally conducted in the early stages of product creation. Its role is to generate an understanding of the whole market, including what people need and want from products. This type of research typically identifies market readiness, size, competition, and demographics.

While market research is broad, customer research is more specific. It’s a process by which data and information collected during market research are analyzed, grouped, and evaluated. You can think of it as an extension of market research, though some organizations may perform these functions simultaneously.

The focus of user research is generally on understanding what is and isn’t working with current products and where helpful innovation can occur.

• Types of customer research

Primary and secondary research are some of the main types of customer research.

Quantitative and qualitative data are two types of data.

It’s helpful to know the difference between these groups to ensure you collect the right data and information for your project.

Primary vs. secondary research

Primary research is data collected directly by the organization from customers. It is obtained through research methods like surveys, focus groups, or analytics.

The advantage of primary research is having the power to obtain the data that’s most relevant for you. Knowing exactly what data has been collected and how to collate that information into meaningful insights is also more simple.

Secondary research is data collected by external sources, such as research groups, governments, and other companies. You can use it to discover more about customers.

Using data collected by other sources gives you less control, but it can save you money.

Ideally, a combination of both primary and secondary research will help you build a true picture of who your customers are.

Qualitative vs. quantitative data

You also need to understand which type of data will be most helpful for the relevant project.

Qualitative data is obtained directly from users, usually through methods such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, usability testing, and field studies.

This type of data can help designers understand why users do things and gain insights into how to solve their issues.

Quantitative data consists of numeral value measurements gained indirectly from users.

This type of data usually involves measurements like how much, how many, and how many times. Surveys, metrics, and user tests are some of the methods through which it can be collated.

• The best customer research methods

The best customer research method will be the one that’s most relevant and useful for your project. So, what works for one product may not be the best match for another. 

Before deciding on a customer research method, asking the following questions can be helpful:

What do we most need to know about our customers?

What do we not know about our customers?

Are we satisfied that our product has a market?

Do we truly understand our competitors?

Do we deeply understand our target market?

Is our product solving a real-world issue for people? Do we have data to back that up?

Is this product the best possible solution for our customers?

These questions can act as a starting point to discover knowledge gaps. They can also help your team choose the research methods that can plug any of these holes.

Customer surveys

Surveys involve asking customers a series of targeted questions. They’re a popular research method because they can be conducted in several ways, such as with an online questionnaire, phone call, or email.

Surveys can help organizations quickly discover large amounts of useful information. They are also relatively inexpensive, as many free templates are available online.

Keep in mind that a survey is only as good as its questions. Ensure that you’re asking questions that will help you discover the most relevant and helpful data about your customers.

Surveys that follow best practices include the following:

Open-ended questions to get the most information from customers

Consistent ranking scales to avoid ambiguity

Questions that are relevant to the team’s end goal

A short series of questions to avoid overwhelming participants

Customer interviews

Interviewing customers is one of the most straightforward and helpful ways to discover their views, wants, and needs.

Customer interviews include a team member or neutral party having a discussion with a customer. They offer the chance to discover new insights that might not otherwise have been uncovered.

This technique won’t enable you to gather quantitative data, but you will gain new insights into how your customers think and perceive products.

Here are some best practices to follow when conducting customer interviews:

Clarify answers. If there’s any ambiguity in what a customer said, make sure you follow up with further questions to aid true understanding.

Challenge your assumptions. Don’t bring any assumptions to the table. Instead, ask customers how they really think and feel. Having a neutral moderator can help remove any bias the team may bring.

Keep things open. Asking open-ended questions and offering a safe space to share answers are essential steps. Doing so will help you gain real thoughts, not hear what participants think they should say.

The benefit of real data should never be overlooked when it comes to customers. People might say they act in certain ways, but their behavior can show otherwise.

Analytics (in a product dashboard or other data collection method, for example) will reveal a great deal of information about customer behavior. It can help streamline your business, remove areas of friction, and improve the overall customer experience .

Metrics like heat maps, time spent, click tracking, and number of sessions can help you build a picture of your customer’s behavior.

Are customers failing to complete their payment information? Are people landing on your page and immediately clicking away? Is a particular aspect of your experience retaining your customers’ attention? These are just a few useful questions you can ask as you go through your analytics.

Focus groups

Focus groups are a well-known and popular research method. They help teams discover a large amount of information in a short time period.

In a focus group, a small number of people—usually eight or fewer—gather together to discuss products, pain points, preferences, and how they might engage with products.

Focus groups are run by a moderator or a person from the organization who can act neutrally. The moderator will set out a series of questions or topics for the group to discuss.

The benefits of focus groups include the following:

Gaining insights into how users perceive your product

Spontaneous responses you may not have discovered otherwise

Information about key problems and pain points

An understanding of what your users want from a solution

However, focus groups also present some challenges. Louder voices in a group may sway others to agree with the consensus rather than share their real opinions. To combat this, offer all members of the group a safe space to share their thoughts. Encourage varying responses.

Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis helps you dive into what the market is currently offering. It shows what competitors are doing well and what could be done better. This helps you create new products that solve your customers’ problems more effectively.

The following are best practices for conducting competitor analysis

Be clear on who your competitors are

Identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses

Clarify who holds the largest market share and why

Analyze online presence, reviews, and product information

Speak to competitors’ customers

Competitor analysis isn’t just about discovering information about your competitors; another goal is to turn information into action. You’ll ideally want to improve on what a competitor currently offers and provide a product that’s more satisfying for customers.

• How to conduct customer research

The following key steps will enable you to conduct useful customer research.

Set clear objectives

There’s a broad range of data and information that can be collected with customer research. However, not all of it will be relevant to your specific project. 

That’s why setting clear objectives from the outset is critical. All methods and data should lead back to these objectives.

Use multiple methods

One research method is unlikely to gather enough information for your project. And no one method is perfect.

Conducting multiple forms of research ensures you discover more about your customers and that your team gathers enough helpful data.

Find the right people

Your research won’t be effective if you’re talking to the wrong customer group. But how do you find the right people?

If you already have a product, it would be enormously beneficial to speak to your current customers . They have proven that they’re in your target audience.

Forums, advertising, local groups, and organizations are good ways to identify potential customers to participate.

Let’s say you’re designing a dog-sitting app. In this case, you’ll need to speak to dog owners who would like more flexibility to travel. You could find these people in online groups, through a local meeting, or even at a park that’s popular for dog walking.

Consider incentives

It’s also worth considering incentives. These can encourage the right people to get on board. For example, you might offer participants the chance to win a voucher or give them a small amount of cash to participate.

Ensure any incentives are meaningful for your target audience.

Develop meaningful insights

Collecting a range of data and information from multiple methods is helpful. However, it’s ultimately meaningless if that data isn’t collated into useful insights .

Ensure that data is accurately grouped and represented clearly and concisely so that the entire business can benefit from the learnings. You might need to hire a data analyst.

• Surprise and delight your customers

Keeping customers at the center of what you do is the only way to create products that are helpful for people.

All products should help customers, whether that’s by solving a problem, making their life a little bit easier, or entertaining them in some way. Customers should want to use your product and enjoy the process.

By researching your customers, you can truly understand how they feel , where their pain points are, how they behave in real-life situations, and what solutions would please them. Ultimately, all this helps you better serve your customers.

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Consumer Research: Examples, Process and Scope

What is Consumer Research?

Consumer research is a part of market research in which inclination, motivation and purchase behavior of the targeted customers are identified. Consumer research helps businesses or organizations understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles.

It uses research techniques to provide systematic information about what customers need. Using this information brands can make changes in their products and services, making them more customer-centric thereby increasing customer satisfaction. This will in turn help to boost business.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

An organization that has an in-depth understanding about the customer decision-making process, is most likely to design a product, put a certain price tag to it, establish distribution centers and promote a product based on consumer research insights such that it produces increased consumer interest and purchases.

For example, A consumer electronics company wants to understand, thought process of a consumer when purchasing an electronic device, which can help a company to launch new products, manage the supply of the stock, etc. Carrying out a Consumer electronics survey can be useful to understand the market demand, understand the flaws in their product and also find out research problems in the various processes that influence the purchase of their goods. A consumer electronics survey can be helpful to gather information about the shopping experiences of consumers when purchasing electronics. which can enable a company to make well-informed and wise decisions regarding their products and services.

LEARN ABOUT:  Test Market Demand

Consumer Research Objectives

When a brand is developing a new product, consumer research is conducted to understand what consumers want or need in a product, what attributes are missing and what are they looking for? An efficient survey software really makes it easy for organizations to conduct efficient research.

Consumer research is conducted to improve brand equity. A brand needs to know what consumers think when buying a product or service offered by a brand. Every good business idea needs efficient consumer research for it to be successful. Consumer insights are essential to determine brand positioning among consumers.

Consumer research is conducted to boost sales. The objective of consumer research is to look into various territories of consumer psychology and understand their buying pattern, what kind of packaging they like and other similar attributes that help brands to sell their products and services better.

LEARN ABOUT: Brand health

Consumer Research Model

According to a study conducted, till a decade ago, researchers thought differently about the consumer psychology, where little or no emphasis was put on emotions, mood or the situation that could influence a customer’s buying decision.

Many believed marketing was applied economics. Consumers always took decisions based on statistics and math and evaluated goods and services rationally and then selected items from those brands that gave them the highest customer satisfaction at the lowest cost.

However, this is no longer the situation. Consumers are very well aware of brands and their competitors. A loyal customer is the one who would not only return to repeatedly purchase from a brand but also, recommend his/her family and friends to buy from the same brand even if the prices are slightly higher but provides an exceptional customer service for products purchased or services offered.

Here is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS) helps brands identify brand loyalty and customer satisfaction with their consumers. Net Promoter Score consumer survey uses a single question that is sent to customers to identify their brand loyalty and level of customer satisfaction. Response to this question is measured on a scale between 0-10 and based on this consumers can be identified as:

Detractors: Who have given a score between 0-6.

Passives: Who have given a score between 7-8.

Promoters: Who have given a score between 9-10.

Consumer market research is based on two types of research method:

1. Qualitative Consumer Research

Qualitative research  is descriptive in nature, It’s a method that uses open-ended questions , to gain meaningful insights from respondents and heavily relies on the following market research methods:

Focus Groups: Focus groups as the name suggests is a small group of highly validated subject experts who come together to analyze a product or service. Focus group comprises of 6-10 respondents. A moderator is assigned to the focus group, who helps facilitate discussions among the members to draw meaningful insights

One-to-one Interview: This is a more conversational method, where the researcher asks open-ended questions to collect data from the respondents. This method heavily depends on the expertise of the researcher. How much the researcher is able to probe with relevant questions to get maximum insights. This is a time-consuming method and can take more than one attempt to gain the desired insights.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

Content/ Text Analysis: Text analysis is a qualitative research method where researchers analyze social life by decoding words and images from the documents available. Researchers analyze the context in which the images are used and draw conclusions from them. Social media is an example of text analysis. In the last decade or so, inferences are drawn based on consumer behavior on social media.

Learn More: How to conduct Qualitative Research  

2.Quantitative Consumer Research

In the age of technology and information, meaningful data is more precious than platinum. Billion dollar companies have risen and fallen on how well they have been able to collect and analyze data, to draw validated insights.

Quantitative research is all about numbers and statistics. An evolved consumer who purchases regularly can vouch for how customer-centric businesses have become today. It’s all about customer satisfaction , to gain loyal customers. With just one questions companies are able to collect data, that has the power to make or break a company. Net Promoter Score question , “On a scale from 0-10 how likely are you to recommend our brand to your family or friends?”

How organic word-of-mouth is influencing consumer behavior and how they need to spend less on advertising and invest their time and resources to make sure they provide exceptional customer service.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Targeting

Online surveys , questionnaires , and polls are the preferred data collection tools. Data that is obtained from consumers is then statistically, mathematically and numerically evaluated to understand consumer preference.

Learn more: How to carry out Quantitative Research

Consumer Research Process

The process of consumer research started as an extension of the process of market research . As the findings of market research is used to improve the decision-making capacity of an organization or business, similar is with consumer research.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market research industry

The consumer research process can be broken down into the following steps:

• Develop research objectives: The first step to the consumer research process is to clearly define the research objective, the purpose of research, why is the research being conducted, to understand what? A clear statement of purpose can help emphasize the purpose.
• Collect Secondary data: Collect secondary data first, it helps in understanding if research has been conducted earlier and if there are any pieces of evidence related to the subject matter that can be used by an organization to make informed decisions regarding consumers.
• Primary Research: In primary research organizations or businesses collect their own data or employ a third party to collect data on their behalf. This research makes use of various data collection methods ( qualitative and quantitative ) that helps researchers collect data first hand.

LEARN ABOUT: Best Data Collection Tools

• Collect and analyze data: Data is collected and analyzed and inference is drawn to understand consumer behavior and purchase pattern.
• Prepare report: Finally, a report is prepared for all the findings by analyzing data collected so that organizations are able to make informed decisions and think of all probabilities related to consumer behavior. By putting the study into practice, organizations can become customer-centric and manufacture products or render services that will help them achieve excellent customer satisfaction.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

After Consumer Research Process

Once you have been able to successfully carry out the consumer research process , investigate and break paradigms. What consumers need should be a part of market research design and should be carried out regularly. Consumer research provides more in-depth information about the needs, wants, expectations and behavior analytics of clients.  

By identifying this information successfully, strategies that are used to attract consumers can be made better and businesses can make a profit by knowing what consumers want exactly. It is also important to understand and know thoroughly the buying behavior of consumers to know their attitude towards brands and products.

The identification of consumer needs, as well as their preferences, allows a business to adapt to new business and develop a detailed marketing plan that will surely work. The following pointers can help. Completing this process will help you:

• Attract more customers  
• Set the best price for your products  
• Create the right marketing message  
• Increase the quantity that satisfies the demand of its clients  
• Increase the frequency of visits to their clients  
• Increase your sales  
• Reduce costs  
• Refine your approach to the customer service process .

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research

Consumer Research Methods

Consumers are the reason for a business to run and flourish. Gathering enough information about consumers is never going to hurt any business, in fact, it will only add up to the information a business would need to associate with its consumers and manufacture products that will help their business refine and grow.

Following are consumer research methods that ensure you are in tandem with the consumers and understand their needs:

The studies of customer satisfaction

One can determine the degree of satisfaction of consumers in relation to the quality of products through:

• Informal methods such as conversations with staff about products and services according to the dashboards.   
• Past and present questionnaires/ surveys that consumers might have filled that identify their needs.   

T he investigation of the consumer decision process

It is very interesting to know the consumer’s needs, what motivates them to buy, and how is the decision-making process carried out, though:

• Deploying relevant surveys and receiving responses from a target intended audience .

Proof of concept

Businesses can test how well accepted their marketing ideas are by:

• The use of surveys to find out if current or potential consumer see your products as a rational and useful benefit.  
• Conducting personal interviews or focus group sessions with clients to understand how they respond to marketing ideas.

Knowing your market position

You can find out how your current and potential consumers see your products, and how they compare it with your competitors by:

• Sales figures talk louder than any other aspect, once you get to know the comparison in the sales figures it is easy to understand your market position within the market segment.
• Attitudes of consumers while making a purchase also helps in understanding the market hold.      

Branding tests and user experience

You can determine how your customers feel with their brands and product names by:

• The use of focus groups and surveys designed to assess emotional responses to your products and brands.  
• The participation of researchers to study the performance of their brand in the market through existing and available brand measurement research.   

Price changes

You can investigate how your customers accept or not the price changes by using formulas that measure the revenue – multiplying the number of items you sold, by the price of each item. These tests allow you to calculate if your total income increases or decreases after making the price changes by:

• Calculation of changes in the quantities of products demanded by their customers, together with changes in the price of the product.   
• Measure the impact of the price on the demand of the product according to the needs of the client.   

Social media monitoring

Another way to measure feedback and your customer service is by controlling your commitment to social media and feedback. Social networks (especially Facebook) are becoming a common element of the commercialization of many businesses and are increasingly used by their customers to provide information on customer needs, service experiences, share and file customer complaints . It can also be used to run surveys and test concepts. If handled well, it can be one of the most powerful research tools of the client management . I also recommend reading: How to conduct market research through social networks.

Customer Research Questions

Asking the right question is the most important part of conducting research. Moreover, if it’s consumer research, questions should be asked in a manner to gather maximum insights from consumers. Here are some consumer research questions for your next research:

• Who in your household takes purchasing decisions?
• Where do you go looking for ______________ (product)?
• How long does it take you to make a buying decision?
• How far are you willing to travel to buy ___________(product)?
• What features do you look for when you purchase ____________ (product)?
• What motivates you to buy_____________ (product)?

See more consumer research survey questions:

Customer satisfaction surveys

Voice of customer surveys

Product surveys

Service evaluation surveys

Mortgage Survey Questions

Importance of Consumer Research

Launching a product or offering new services can be quite an exciting time for a brand. However, there are a lot of aspects that need to be taken into consideration while a band has something new to offer to consumers.

LEARN ABOUT: User Experience Research

Here is where consumer research plays a pivotal role. The importance of consumer research cannot be emphasized more. Following points summarizes the importance of consumer research:

• To understand market readiness: However good a product or service may be, consumers have to be ready to accept it. Creating a product requires investments which in return expect ROI from product or service purchases. However, if a market is mature enough to accept this utility, it has a low chance of succeeding by tapping into market potential . Therefore, before launching a product or service, organizations need to conduct consumer research, to understand if people are ready to spend on the utility it provides.
• Identify target consumers: By conducting consumer research, brands and organizations can understand their target market based on geographic segmentation and know who exactly is interested in buying their products. According to the data or feedback received from the consumer, research brands can even customize their marketing and branding approach to better appeal to the specific consumer segment.

LEARN ABOUT: Marketing Insight

• Product/Service updates through feedback: Conducting consumer research, provides valuable feedback from consumers about the attributes and features of products and services. This feedback enables organizations to understand consumer perception and provide a more suitable solution based on actual market needs which helps them tweak their offering to perfection.

Explore more: 300 + FREE survey templates to use for your research

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Customer Research 101: A Complete Guide! (Importance & Types)

Know your customers or perish – over 90% of startups fail due to a lack of market need. Ouch! But fear not, customer research is here to save the day. By truly understanding your target audience, you can create products and messaging that resonate.

In this ultimate guide, we’ll explore the what, why, and how of effective customer research. You’ll learn both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover real insights from potential and current customers. With the right research game plan, you can identify customer pain points, behaviors, and needs to drive innovation and loyalty.

We’ll cover essential techniques like surveys, interviews, focus groups, and user testing. Whether you’re an enterprise or a scrappy startup, you’ll find proven ways to maximize research on any budget. Ready to get inside the minds and hearts of customers? Let’s dive into the importance of research for business success! This comprehensive guide will equip you with the tools to avoid failure and align your offerings with what buyers want.

What is Customer Research?

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at your favorite companies? The reality is, they spend a lot of time trying to get inside their customers’ heads. Conducting customer research is like doing a deep dive into what real people really want.

Businesses use research tools like surveys, interviews and focus groups to literally ask customers questions.

• “What matters most to you?”
• “Which parts of our product could use improvement?” and
• “What do you hope to see in the future?”

Market research helps too – keeping an ear to the ground on changes happening outside helps adjust to new customer needs. Testing things out with a small group of people before huge launches also saves companies from potential embarrassment!

All this valuable input guides important choices about everything from how things are designed to how customers learn about brands. It’s basically like a customer think-tank to solve problems and fuel innovation.

At the end of the day, customer research is about genuinely understanding perspectives from the user side. It’s how businesses stay in sync with real human desires and build genuine connections worth sticking around for. So speak up – your honest feedback is what keeps brands on their toes!

Now that we’ve covered what customer research entails, the next section will explore why it is so critically important for businesses to conduct thorough customer research on a regular basis.

Why is Customer Research Important?

To truly succeed in business, you need to understand the perspectives and priorities of your customers. Regular customer research provides invaluable insights that can guide strategic decision making. By learning directly from the people you serve, you gain a deeper understanding of their true needs and priorities. Here are 5 key reasons why actively researching customers is so critical:

1. Product Development

Customer feedback is a treasure trove of information that can drive product development . By actively seeking out customer opinions, you can pinpoint the exact features, functionalities, or improvements they desire. This is a more targeted approach than simply guessing what customers might want. Such a strategy can lead to products and services that not only satisfy existing customer needs but also attract new customers. It lowers the risk of product failure and increases the likelihood of customer loyalty and repeat purchases.

2. Identify Market Trends

Market trends can shape the success or failure of a business. Through customer research, you can spot emerging patterns in consumer behavior, preferences, and decision-making processes. This can include shifts in preferences for digital shopping, desire for sustainable products, or emerging technologies. Being able to identify these trends before they become mainstream gives you a competitive edge. You can swiftly adapt your offerings to meet changing demands, thus staying relevant in the market.

Read More:  Market Research 101: How To Conduct Research Like A Pro!

3. Pricing Strategy

Pricing is more than just a cost-recovery mechanism; it’s a powerful tool for communicating a product’s value. Customer research can reveal how much customers are willing to pay for your product and the factors influencing their perception of its value. With this information, you can develop a pricing strategy that maximizes profit while ensuring your product or service still appears attractive to customers. This can involve techniques like value-based pricing, psychological pricing, or price skimming, depending on your findings.

4. Effective Marketing

Understanding your customers’ preferences, habits, and motivations allows you to create more effective marketing campaigns. Knowing which channels your customers prefer (e.g., email, social media, print, etc.) helps you reach them more efficiently. Additionally, knowing their motivations and pain points allows you to craft messages that resonate more deeply with them. This increases the chances of converting prospects into customers and improves the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts.

5. Customer Retention

Acquiring new customers is often more costly than retaining existing ones. Therefore, understanding what keeps customers loyal to your brand is crucial. Regular customer research can uncover the key drivers of satisfaction and loyalty, as well as reasons for customer churn. This can include factors like product quality, customer service, pricing, or brand reputation. By addressing any issues and continually meeting customers’ needs , you can increase customer lifetime value (CLV), which in turn boosts profitability. Regular research keeps you in touch with customer sentiment and helps you maintain strong, lasting relationships with your customers.

Read More:  Customer Loyalty Program: What is it & What are the Benefits? [Examples]

By gaining real customer perspectives, businesses can make more informed decisions to better serve their audiences now and into the future.

Understanding the importance of customer research is key, and there are various methods used to collect important customer data. In the next section, we will explore the different types of customer research that can be conducted.

Types of Customer Research

Customer research is a cornerstone of successful business strategy. It empowers organizations to gain insights into their target audience, understand their needs, preferences, and behaviors, and make informed decisions to improve products, services, and overall customer satisfaction. Four primary types of customer research play pivotal roles in this process: qualitative, quantitative, primary, and secondary research. In this section, we will delve into these four types of customer research, shedding light on their significance and how they can be effectively applied.

1. Qualitative Research

Qualitative research involves gathering non-numerical data and insights. This method includes techniques such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic research. Qualitative research is ideal for uncovering underlying motivations, emotions, and opinions of customers. It provides rich, descriptive information that helps businesses understand the “why” behind customer actions and preferences, allowing for more targeted decision-making.

2. Quantitative Research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis. Surveys, questionnaires, and experiments are common quantitative research tools. This approach is essential for collecting data on customer behaviors, preferences, and trends at scale. It provides quantifiable metrics and enables businesses to make data-driven decisions, such as product feature prioritization and pricing strategies.

Read More:  Data-driven Marketing: Steps, Best Practices, Challenges & More!

3. Primary Research

Primary research involves collecting firsthand data specifically for a company’s unique needs. This can be achieved through surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments conducted directly by the business. Primary research is highly tailored and provides up-to-date, relevant information tailored to a company’s specific goals and objectives. It is particularly useful when seeking insights into niche markets or when addressing specific business challenges.

4. Secondary Research

Secondary research involves gathering and analyzing existing data and information from external sources such as industry reports, academic studies, and market research published by others. This cost-effective approach helps companies stay informed about industry trends, competitor strategies, and customer demographics without conducting new research from scratch. Secondary research is valuable for benchmarking, trend analysis, and validating primary research findings.

By employing various types of customer research, including qualitative, quantitative, primary, and secondary research, companies can gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers, markets, and competitors. Armed with these insights, businesses can fine-tune their strategies, create more customer-centric products and services, and ultimately thrive in today’s dynamic and competitive business landscape.

Now that we’ve explored the different types of customer research, the next section will cover effective ways to actually conduct this research.

Effective Ways To Conduct Customer Research

Conducting effective customer research is crucial for businesses looking to understand their target audience, improve their products or services, and ultimately, boost their bottom line. By gaining insights into customer preferences, pain points, and behavior, companies can make informed decisions that drive growth and customer satisfaction. In this section, we will explore 7 effective ways to conduct customer research.

1. Surveys and Questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are versatile tools for gathering valuable customer insights. They allow you to collect structured data on a wide range of topics, from product satisfaction to demographic information. Ensure that your surveys are concise, well-designed, and easy to complete to maximize response rates. Online survey platforms like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms make it simple to create and distribute surveys to your target audience.

2. Customer Interviews

One-on-one interviews provide an in-depth understanding of your customers’ thoughts and feelings. Conduct both structured and unstructured interviews to dig deeper into specific issues or to uncover unexpected insights. Make sure to create an open and non-judgmental environment where customers feel comfortable sharing their opinions. These interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or via video conferencing.

3. Social Media Monitoring

Social media platforms are treasure troves of customer feedback and sentiment. Use social media listening tools to track mentions, comments, and reviews related to your brand or industry. Analyzing this data can reveal emerging trends, customer concerns, and opportunities for engagement. Engage with your audience on social media to build rapport and gain more insights organically.

4. Customer Analytics

Leverage web analytics tools like Google Analytics or customer relationship management (CRM) systems to track user behavior on your website or within your product. Analyze metrics such as click-through rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates to identify pain points and areas for improvement. By understanding how customers interact with your online presence, you can optimize their experience and increase conversion rates.

5. Online Forums and Communities

Online forums and communities dedicated to your industry or niche can provide a wealth of information. Participate in these communities or simply observe discussions to identify common challenges, desires, and preferences among your target audience. Platforms like Reddit, Quora, and specialized industry forums are excellent places to start.

6. Competitor Analysis

Analyzing your competitors can offer valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences. Study their customer reviews, social media engagement, and market positioning to identify gaps in the market or areas where you can differentiate your offering. Understanding why customers choose your competitors over you can help you refine your strategy.

7. A/B Testing

A/B testing involves comparing two or more variations of a webpage, email, or advertisement to determine which one performs better with your target audience. By systematically testing different elements like headlines, images, or call-to-action buttons, you can make data-driven improvements to optimize customer engagement and conversion rates.

By using surveys, interviews, social media monitoring, analytics, online communities, competitor analysis, and A/B testing, you can gain a 360-degree view of your customers’ preferences and behaviors. This knowledge will enable you to make informed decisions, enhance your products or services, and ultimately, build stronger, lasting customer relationships. Remember that customer research is an ongoing process; regularly revisit these methods to stay attuned to evolving customer needs and market dynamics.

And there you have it – the complete lowdown on customer research! We covered what it is, why bothering to listen to your patrons is pivotal, different ways to gather intel, and tips for doing it well.

While digging deep into customer minds may sound tedious, we hope this guide showed how fascinating and fruitful the process can be. Staying curious about your crew keeps your finger on the pulse of what truly fuels their passions.

So don’t be afraid to spy on them in action, quiz big crowds, chat one-on-one, or analyze clues hidden in the numbers. Customers have a story to share if you make the effort to understand their perspective.

Turning feedback into slick new perks or smoother experiences will wow existing fans and catch the eyes of potential newbies. With an open ear, you can design offerings that resonate authentically instead of going rogue on assumptions alone.

Research may require dedication, but the rewards of truly knowing your people makes it a total blast. Now get out there and start some conversational focus circles, surveys, observations – whatever fire sparks your customer curiosity! The more you explore what makes them tick, the more success you’ll attract.

Further Reads:

What is Customer Delight? Learn More!

Customer Touch Points & How To Identify Them? (Examples & Tips)

AIDA Model: How To Connect & Engage With Your Customers?

Customer Journey Map: Definition, Importance, and Process!

User Persona: What is it & How to Create it?

What is Diversity & Inclusion in The Workplace? (Definition & Benefits)

Social Media Skills: A Quick Guide To Improve Them! (Types & Examples)

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A 6-step guide to customer research (and profiting from it)

This post was a collaboration between

Lawrence Chapman , Amelia Wilson

Lawrence Chapman

Lawrence is our Copywriter here at PMA who loves crafting content to keep readers informed, entertained, and enthralled. He's always open to feedback and would be thrilled to hear from you!

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Amelia Wilson

Amelia is a Content Executive at The Alliance. She’d love to ghostwrite your next article, so get in touch!

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As a competitive intelligence pro, you’re likely hyper-aware of what’s going on in the market, but are you missing a crucial piece of the puzzle? Analyzing your competitors is key, but understanding your customers' needs, behaviors, and motivations is arguably even more crucial.

After all, it’s the target audience that’s informing your competitors’ strategies. Just like you, they’re trying to win the hearts, minds, and wallets of their chosen market. If you can understand customers’ motivations better than your competitors, you’ll be well-placed to deliver stronger solutions to their pain points and win market share away from your rivals.

To that end, your customer research is the key to delighting your audience and outmaneuvering the competition.

Let us show you how. 🤿

What is customer research?

Customer research aims to learn more about the needs and behaviors of customers and to use that information to create products, features, and messaging that resonate with them. In other words, customer research helps you sell your products by tailoring your approach to the needs of your customers.

Customer research typically involves more qualitative approaches like in-depth interviews, ethnographies, usability testing, social listening, and feedback surveys. The goal is to gain specific insights into the end-user experience with a company's brand, products, services, and communications. 

While market research and customer research are often spoken about in the same breath, they’re not the same. Market research explores the wider marketplace, while customer research focuses on:

(i) Your customers themselves, and

(ii) Your interactions with them. 

Key questions customer research can answer include:

• Who are your customers and ideal buyer personas?
• What are their daily challenges, needs, and desires?
• How do they feel about your company and its competitors?
• What excites them or frustrates them?
• How can you improve your customer experience?

The advantages of customer research

While market research works top-down to size up opportunities, customer research works bottom-up to optimize the customer experience. Its strategic power comes from providing a detailed view of real people that market data alone often misses.

Armed with this granular feedback, businesses can:

• Fine-tune their buyer personas
• Create tailored marketing campaigns
• Drive referrals and boost loyalty
• Develop customer-focused products
• Identify new opportunities
• Guide business decisions

Let’s explore how.

Fine-tuning buyer personas

Buyer personas represent different consumer groups that make up your broader target audience. They include details on demographics, attitudes, behaviors, pain points, and brand perceptions.

This data comes straight from talking to living, breathing customers through interviews, focus groups, and surveys. Vivid personas should guide product design and all marketing decisions.

Crafting tailored messaging

Communicating effectively starts with understanding motivations. Customer interviews and focus groups provide context on why people buy certain products and what messaging best resonates with their needs or desires.

These perspectives enable your teams to craft relevant, compelling messaging and campaigns that get results by appealing to prospects' core desires, and tying features back to emotional benefits . They also reveal how customers describe your products in their own words, which can be integrated into selling points.

Driving referrals and loyalty

Loyal customers spend more and refer others. But you can’t engender true loyalty without delighting people with outstanding products, services, and support.

In-depth customer feedback exposes pain points and unmet needs you can address to boost satisfaction. It also uncovers potential new offerings or upgrades to make customers raving fans.

Improving products and services

Usability testing and customer co-creation sessions help optimize every aspect of your offerings. Seeing real people interact with products provides insights that lead engineers, designers, and product marketers would never uncover on their own.

Identifying new opportunities

Customer research also illuminates latent needs and new product ideas you may never have considered. These seeds often sprout into disruptive innovations or entirely new lines of business.

Guiding business decisions

Customer perspectives provide tangible guidance on where to invest resources versus where to cut your losses. Their feedback should steer everything from new market entry to brand repositioning.

No product is created in a vacuum

The Competitive Positioning Playbook teaches you...

👷 How to blend CI and customer research for a rock-solid positioning strategy.

🙅‍♀️ The three steps you must not skip in crafting competitive positioning.

🪛 A top-to-bottom tear down of the positioning process, and how CI fits in.

🏹 How to use competitive positioning to shatter your org’s revenue ceiling.

Interested? Click the button right now to check it out.

How to conduct effective customer research

So, we know customer research is important, but how exactly do you carry it out? Here’s a six-step guide to uncovering those all-important insights:

1) Define your goals

First, pinpoint the questions you need to answer. Is it about improving customer retention? Identifying new product opportunities? Optimizing pricing? Defining your goals upfront is crucial to gathering the right kind of data.

2) Choose your research methods

Select techniques that best provide the insights you need. Some possibilities include interviews, focus groups, surveys, usability testing, ethnographies, and social listening.

Why not mix quantitative surveys with qualitative insights? Surveys easily gather wide-ranging feedback from many customers, while open-ended interviews and ethnographies provide the understanding needed to transform findings into human-centered insights. Balance both for a holistic perspective.

3) Ask the right questions

Craft questions that will guide upcoming strategic decisions. For interviews, focus groups, and usability tests, prepare open-ended questions that support your research goals. And be sure to avoid jargon and keep your language conversational.

4) Define your sample

It’s essential to gather the opinions of those who matter, i.e. people who match your buyer personas. To get a good sample, here are some guidelines we recommend you follow:

• Aim for 10 participants per buyer persona : Depending on your audience, you may need to target multiple personas. Be sure to source separate sample groups and include roughly 10 people in each.
• Search recent surveys : If you’ve carried out a survey recently, use it to your advantage. Those participants have recently interacted with your company, so their recollections may be more reliable.
• Mix it up: While a sample formed entirely of your loyal fan base may massage your ego, it’ll compromise the quality of your market research. So, mix it up a little, and seek a variety of opinions. Include people who’ve purchased your product, people who opted for your competitors, and people who may be on the fence. Get out of your comfort zone, put on your hard hat, and prepare for a mixed response; criticism is your friend, not your enemy.

5) Engage your participants

Market research firms have catalogs of potential participants at their fingertips, but not every company has the same luxury – meaning you need to get your hands dirty and find people yourself.

That may sound like a hassle, but don’t worry – here are some tips to make recruiting participants easier:

• Use incentives: People like to be compensated for their time, and a small incentive will make them more likely to take part in your research. Whether it’s a small cash payment or a shopping voucher, it’s a small price to pay to get your study over the line. If you can’t afford to offer incentives, give them access to exclusive content, or discounts on future purchases.
• Be social: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn have one thing in common: they bring together your fans and followers in one place, meaning you can send a blanket rallying call asking for support – piece of cake!
• Use your CRM: Your CRM system should be your best friend when it comes to picking a sample. With the click of a button, you can filter your customers by time period, company size, account type, etc., and contact the relevant people for your study. Also, be sure to liaise with sales teams if you need help accessing accounts.
• Spread the word: Whether it’s your family members, friends, or colleagues, tell everyone you can think of you’re conducting a study and need help. Share posts on LinkedIn and ask others to like and share, and before you know it, your initial post will reach thousands of prospective respondents. The more creative you are, the more people you’ll attract.

6) Analyze and share your findings 

Don’t silo research within a single department – be generous with your knowledge! Make sure all teams apply insights to enhance products, services, and experiences. Look for key themes, insights, and representative quotes. Produce an executive summary, then disseminate learnings across all teams to drive solutions.

Let’s wrap up with a quick recap of our top tips for successful customer research:

• Mix quantitative surveys with qualitative techniques for comprehensive data.
• Engage both current and potential customers to avoid confirmation bias.
• Observe real customer behaviors as well as soliciting opinions.
• Keep an open mind to learn something new rather than validating assumptions.
• Make the research experience positive to build goodwill.
• Follow up with participants to share how their feedback impacted business decisions.

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A guide to customer research

Customer research is a term that can mean a lot of different things depending on your perspective. We believe customer research is the foundation of a successful organization, especially a product-led organization. The basic premise of customer research is that teams conduct research with their customer base to understand their perspective, pains, successes, and requests. It is through that understanding of customer needs that organizations thrive.

Building a customer research program makes your customers feel heard and valued, leading to long-term partnerships (read: larger CLV ). It leads to faster development cycles (nothing says fix me fast like a painful customer interview shared across teams) and more aligned priorities (if most customers have requested this feature, it’s easy to prioritize). Better messaging leads to increased revenue (using words that customers use and describing how you can fix their problem makes it easier to purchase). Those are just a few ways that customer research helps organizations succeed.

In this article, we outline exactly what customer research is, why it's important, who should do it, how it should be done and how to select the right research tools to make it easy. Let’s begin.

What is customer research?

Customer research is the ongoing process of identifying customer needs, preferences, and motivations. Customer research can be used at every stage of the customer lifecycle, from awareness to selection and through customer advocacy. It can help determine what motivates your current or potential customers to buy from you. After customers have purchased from you, you can collect insights by reading customer reviews, and conducting continuous customer research via customer interviews. . Think of customer research as a way to collect insights from your customers throughout the customer lifecycle.

Customer research can take place in the form of focus groups , surveys, or even 1:1 customer calls. For instance, you can decide to set up monthly check-in calls with your SaaS customers and get their feedback on your products and services.

Armed with these insights, you can find ways to improve your product offerings, expand your customer base and remodel your marketing strategy. You may find out that your product messaging is wrong and you need to make adjustments to your marketing segments.

With well-thought-out customer research, here are 3 key questions that you can answer:

• Who are my ideal customers? Which customers will validate my startup achieving product market fit?
• What channels should I use to find and communicate with my customers?
• What price point are customers willing to pay for my product?

Customer research is not consumer research

There tends to be a misconception that customer research and consumer research are the same things. They’re quite different and shouldn’t be confused. To understand the difference between the two types of research, let’s take a closer look at the difference between a customer and a consumer. A customer is a person or company that buys the product or service. A consumer is a person or company that uses the product or service.

For instance, Microsoft sells Office 365 packages to enterprises and educational bodies that will be used by employees and students. The enterprises and educational bodies are the  customers  but   the employees and students are the  consumers .

So while the employees and students are the end-users of the product, they’re not the target customers. The enterprise and educational bodies are. Your marketing efforts need to be directed to the customers and to do that, you need to carry out customer research. 

Why is customer research important?

When done correctly, customer research gives you meaningful insights that can lead you to make better business decisions. With well-crafted, thorough research, you’ll be able to understand what your customers really want. You can then iterate your products and services to make sure you’re meeting your customer’s needs. Customer research can help you:

Improve customer experience

When you sit down and talk to your customers, you’ll be able to find out their pain points and (hopefully) fix these pain points. This can lead to a better customer experience.  86%  of buyers are willing to spend more money for a great customer experience. Happy customers mean more revenue for your business. Also, focusing on creating a great customer experience can lead to lower customer churn .

Increase customer satisfaction

Researching customers and talking with your customers allows you to identify specific issues relating to your customers, which you can then fix. This will make your customers feel valued and heard and increase customer satisfaction. Irrespective of how amazing your product is if customers aren’t happy they’re not going to stick around for long. It’s important to keep taking the temperature of your existing customers as you can increase customer retention  and lower customer acquisition costs  (CAC). It’s important to keep taking the temperature of your existing customers.

Build better products

You can’t build products without doing research, your product needs to be aligned with what your customers want. The first thing you should do is conduct customer research to build products that meet the expectations of your customers and then continue carrying out customer research to iterate and build better products. By conducting customer surveys, you can get an idea of the kind of features your customers are hoping for. You can put these feature requests on your product roadmap with the hope to implement this or you might find that there’s a demand for a new product that doesn’t already exist.

Who should do customer research?

Everyone should do customer research. In addition to support and customer success teams who speak to customers as part of their day-to-day jobs, UX researchers, designers, product managers and marketers should all be speaking with customers regularly, with a focus on research topics.

UX researchers 

It goes without saying that UX researchers already do a type of research — user experience research. But UX researchers should also carry out customer research. UX research looks at people’s behavior and interaction with a product or service whereas customer research looks at people’s attitudes and reactions to the product or service. 

A combination of UX research and customer research will lead to great product development. If customers are leaving or aren’t using the product, a UX researcher can figure out why via customer research and highlight opportunities to fix the product through UX research. 

At the recent UXR Conference in 2022, we heard from Claudia Natasia from Highspot who stated:

“On average the first UX researcher is brought on when the company has 800 employees”.

Not everyone has a UX researcher, but if you are lucky enough to have one, encourage your  UX researcher to carry out customer research .

Product managers 

Product managers should carry out research to make sure that the product vision is aligned with the customer’s expectations and objectives. Sometimes, product managers rely on  confirmation bias  to justify product plans. Research removes that bias by giving product managers customer data sets that can be used for product improvement.

Oftentimes, product managers receive product feedback heard from sales development representatives (SDRs) and Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and not the customers themselves. This leads to a few problems:

• Potential miscommunication in feedback communicated . The best way to receive feedback is for the feedback to be communicated by customers directly. This reduces the chance of miscommunication.
• You only hear from the most vocal customers.  Some customers might not express their product frustrations yet you are only hearing from the ones that do. So if you introduce product changes based on the feedback, you’re only meeting a small number of customers’ needs. There’s a whole subsection of customers who aren’t being considered.
• Recency bias  affects product development . Sales and customer success teams may only remember to communicate the most recent feedback they’ve heard which could lead product managers to release features only targeted at a specific subset of customers.

Research ensures product managers can keep the product development focused on the customer.

Product designers 

Customer design research is integral to successful product development. You know how the saying goes—great product design keeps the end user in mind. One of the most important aspects of product design is creating a product your customer will love. How do you find out if your customer loves your product?  Research.

Prototype testing  is a great way to research how customers feel about your designs. You can get real-time feedback before your product goes to market so you know how the product will perform. You can also research your customer’s usability of your product throughout the whole product development cycle with usability testing.

Marketers need to carry out customer research because marketers are often in close contact with customers (directly or indirectly) and as a marketer, you must know how to reach customers. To know how to reach your customers, you need to research your customers. 

Typically, marketers carry out market research, but as a marketer, you should also carry out customer research. Both types of research are influenced by each other, market research helps marketers identify the economic trends in the market and whether there’s an economic ability for the target market to pay for the product. 

Customer research helps marketers understand what customers are looking for and which marketing strategies to employ. You can do a  brand awareness survey  to find out whether your brand is resonating with your target audience and if it isn’t, you can adapt your strategy.

 Customer research can also help you get ahead of your competitors. If you’re conducting research specific to the audience you’re trying to reach and iterate your products based on the feedback, you’re already one step ahead. Plus, you can also carry out  competitor benchmark surveys  with  competitive evaluation reviews  to know exactly what your customers think about your competitors. 

Types of customer research

The main types of research fall into four categories: primary, secondary, qualitative and quantitative. But these categories aren’t mutually exclusive, it’s helpful to view these types of research along a 2-dimensional framework with the following axes:

• Primary and secondary on the Y axis 
• Qualitative and quantitative on the X axis.

As you can see, primary research can be qualitative or quantitative and secondary research can be qualitative or quantitative.

Primary research vs. secondary research

Primary research is research that is collected directly by you. For example, if you went into the street with a pen and clipboard in hand and asked people what their favorite clothing brand is. That’s primary research.

However, these days most research takes place online, like online surveys rather than stopping customers on the street. Secondary research is research that isn’t collected directly by you.

For example, sifting through online customer reviews or forums to find out how customers feel about a product or service. YELP or Google Reviews are a great example of secondary research. Businesses can view how customers feel about different brands and services.

Quantitative research vs. qualitative research

Quantitative research is all about numbers. It’s the process of collecting and analyzing numerical data. Collecting and analyzing numerical data like average order value (AOV) is an example of quantitive research. Quantitative data is often objective and can be quicker to analyze and present your findings, especially with visual dashboards.

Qualitative research is all about words. It’s the process of collecting and analyzing non-numerical data. Asking customers open-ended questions like “what would you describe the onboarding process like?” is an example of qualitative research. Qualitative data tends to come from smaller sample sizes, like focus groups and in-depth interviews.

Customer research methods 

Now that you know all about the benefits of research, how do you go about gathering your research? Here are a few methods to research your customers.

Surveys are used to gather customer responses to specific questions. For example, a net promoter score (NPS) survey measures customer experience. NPS surveys typically ask respondents if they would recommend your services or product to a friend or colleague.

Customer interviews

‍ Customer interviews are a form of qualitative research that take place between businesses and past, present or future customers about their challenges, goals or feedback on your product. The goal is to use the feedback to iterate on products and services. Customer exit interviews explore why a customer stopped using your product or service.

Prototype testing ‍

Prototype testing involves sharing an early stage prototype or wireframe with your target audience on a device they would use. The purpose is to assess the viability of your product concept. An effective way to do prototype testing is as a video-based study. You can watch your participants use the product live and pair the video recording with product tracking. Watch this webinar to learn more about video-based prototype testing.

Usability testing ‍

Usability testing is used to uncover any potential issues with the product design. There are two types, unmoderated and moderated usability testing . Usability testing involves the participant using the product or service in real-time. For example, a fintech app might ask a group of participants to use the app to see how the payment functions are working.

Related read: The complete guide to UX research methods

How to conduct customer research

Now it’s time to learn how to conduct your research. Here are the four steps you need to follow:

Identify what you want to research 

The first step is identifying what you want to research. When you know what you want to research, you’ll know which methods and which types of research you’re going to need. Let’s say you’re a Product Manager at a Health and Wellness brand and you want to launch a new feature. You want to research how your existing customers would feel about this feature addition. 

Once you’ve identified what you want to research, you can go ahead and choose your research method.

Choose your research method 

Choosing your research method is largely dependent on what type of research you’re doing. So in this case, you want to find out how existing users feel about a potential new feature. This means that you’re looking for primary qualitative research. You’re looking for customers to express themselves with words. However, you still need to choose the exact method. 

A survey might not be the best method to use because you’re not exactly looking for answers to a specific set of questions but more of a conversation. A validation interview is a great way to have a conversation with your customers about their thoughts on a potential feature release.

So you know you want to collect primary qualitative research, and you know you want to conduct a validation interview. Now you need to pinpoint how you’re going to do this. We’ve long passed the days of face-to-face interviews, so chances are, it’s going to be virtual. You’re also targeting existing customers. 

Now you’ve got your research method ready, let’s get your research tools ready.

Get your customer research tools ready

You’ve probably heard the famous expression “one is as good as their tools”, well the same applies to research. Your research can only be as good as your tools. You need the right tools to kickstart your research. There are a lot of bases to cover. You need to:

• Build a panel: You’re looking for existing customers. So you probably need to dig into your CRM tool and pull up a list of existing customers. 
• ‍ Start participant outreach : Once you’ve got your list of existing customers, you need to reach out to see who is interested in participating in your research. 
• Schedule interviews : Once you’ve managed to find participants to agree to take part in your research, you need to go ahead and schedule interviews. Sending out individual emails, and messaging back and forth for availability is very time-consuming. Then you need to make sure you’ve added the interviews to your calendar.
• ‍ Host your interviews : Zoom or Google Meet? You need to choose where you want your interviews to take place.
• ‍ Take interview notes : As the interview is going on, you’ll want to take notes. You can do it the old-fashioned way, by hand or you can use a note-taking app like Notion.
• ‍ Offer incentives : You’ll want to send a small token to your participants for their time. This could either be product discounts, a cash gift card or even a charitable donation.

As you can see, there are a lot of tools you need for customer research. The good thing is that it doesn’t have to be this way. You can have one customer research tool that keeps all your research operations in one place. 

Make use of Great Question for your customer research. The all-in-one research platform. You don’t have to worry about a lot of tabs open and clicking between different applications. You can build a panel , set your eligibility parameters for your research (targeting a certain demographic) and do your participant outreach with custom landing pages and emails. Speed up your research process by taking advantage of research templates .

If you want to schedule your interviews, you can use the calendar built for researchers . You can schedule group interviews or individual interviews. Interview scheduling comes with Zoom or Google Meet integrated, you choose which one you prefer. 

You can also offer incentives immediately after the interviews, all from the platform. So you don’t have to worry about chasing vendors or putting gift card requests to the Finance team.

Synthesize your data

Once you’ve conducted the studies and have a bunch of content, synthesizing takes the most time. You need to include the context and insights about the customers and organize findings into themes or topics. Using spreadsheets can get confusing. You want your research to be stored in one place, like a repository . You can review transcripts or survey results. Ideally, you should review customer feedback and start a list of themes or topics that help structure the feedback. Once you have the themes, include specific examples of the topics from customer responses. Having real-world examples from customers can help build compelling insights for your stakeholders. 

Share your insights

Keeping good research in a silo should be a crime. There’s nothing worse than an insight being stuck in a repository with no one to hear or read it. As you build themes and include data from customers that back up a theme, include links to docs or slides that include these topics. Use this time to form an opinion on the findings and share it to get their feedback.

Sharing can happen asynchronously or synchronously. Just make sure you leave room for feedback or questions. This dialogue is an important part of determining action items and the subsequent impact of customer research. 

Customer research is a continuous journey

Customer research doesn’t stop after the first interview, it’s a continuous process that you should do frequently. Especially if you’re after product-led growth. You’ll want to keep hearing from your customers and improving on your products. One of the best ways to ensure that is to have a customer research platform that will enable you to do so. If you’re ready to get started with your customer journey research, speak to one of us today .

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Megan Johnson

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Home » What Is Customer Research? Definition and Process

What Is Customer Research? Definition and Process

August 1, 2023 max 5min read.

This article contains,

What Is Customer Research?

Benefits of customer research, types of customer research, how to do customer research.

Customer Research Definition: Customer research systematically gathers and analyzes customer data to gain insights into their needs, preferences, behaviors, and opinions. It involves various research methods, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and data analysis, to understand customers better and make informed business decisions.

By conducting customer research, businesses can identify market trends, uncover pain points , and discover opportunities to effectively tailor their products, services, and marketing strategies to meet customer demands. Customer research is vital in developing customer-centric solutions, enhancing customer satisfaction, and ultimately driving business success.

Now that we know that Customer research is the process of gathering and analyzing information about customers to understand their needs, wants, and behaviors. This information can be used to improve products and services, develop marketing campaigns, and make better business decisions.

Customer research can provide several benefits for businesses, including:

• Improved product and service design: By understanding the needs and wants of customers, businesses can design products and services that are more likely to meet those needs. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• More effective marketing campaigns: By understanding the target market, businesses can develop campaigns more likely to reach and persuade potential customers. This can lead to increased sales and revenue.
• Better business decisions: By understanding the competitive landscape, businesses can make better decisions about product development, pricing, and distribution. This can help businesses to stay ahead of the competition.
• Reduced risk: Customer research can help businesses reduce the risk of launching products or services that are not well-received by customers.
• Increased innovation: Customer research can help businesses to identify new opportunities for innovation by understanding the needs and wants of customers.
• A better understanding of the competitive landscape: Customer research can help businesses better to understand their competitors and their strengths and weaknesses. This can help companies to develop strategies to compete more effectively.

Overall, customer research is a valuable tool that can help businesses to improve their products and services, develop more effective marketing campaigns, make better business decisions, and reduce risk.

Understanding your customers is crucial for business success. Explore various types of customer research that provide valuable insights into customer preferences, behaviors, and needs.

• Surveys: Utilize structured questionnaires to gather quantitative data on customer opinions, satisfaction levels, and preferences. Surveys are scalable and efficient for reaching a broad audience.
• Interviews: Conduct one-on-one or group interviews to gain in-depth qualitative insights into customers’ experiences, motivations, and pain points. Interviews allow for detailed exploration and clarification of responses.
• Focus Groups: Bring a small group of customers to engage in interactive discussions on specific topics or products. Focus groups offer valuable feedback and real-time reactions.
• Observational Studies: Observe and record customer behaviors in real-life settings to understand how they interact with products or services. Observational studies provide valuable insights into actual usage patterns.
• Customer Feedback and Reviews: Analyze customer feedback, comments, and online reviews to identify common trends and sentiments. This type of research offers direct insights into customer satisfaction.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measure customer loyalty and willingness to recommend your brand using NPS surveys. This standardized metric helps assess overall customer sentiment.
• Online Analytics: Analyze website and app data, including click-through rates, conversion rates, and browsing behavior. Online analytics offer insights into customer interactions with digital platforms.
• Social Media Listening: Monitor social media platforms to understand customer conversations and sentiments about your brand. Social media listening helps identify emerging trends and brand perceptions.
• Customer Journey Mapping: Visualize the customer’s end-to-end experience with your brand to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Customer journey mapping helps enhance the overall customer experience.
• A/B Testing: Conduct controlled experiments to compare two different product or marketing campaign versions. A/B testing helps optimize offerings based on customer preferences.

By employing these diverse customer research methods, businesses gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers, enabling them to tailor products, services, and marketing strategies to meet customer needs effectively and build long-lasting customer relationships.

Customer research can be daunting, but it is essential for businesses that want to succeed. By following these steps, companies can conduct customer research that is effective and informative.

There are many different ways to conduct customer research. The best method for a particular business will depend on the specific goals of the study. However, there are some general steps that all companies should follow when conducting customer research.

Step 1: Define your goals.

What do you hope to achieve with your customer research? Do you want to improve your product? Develop a new marketing campaign? Understand your target market? Once you know your goals, you can tailor your research accordingly.

Step 2: Choose your methods.

Many customer research methods exist, including surveys, interviews, focus groups, and usability testing. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages, so you will need to choose the ones that are most appropriate for your goals.

Step 3: Collect your data.

Once you have chosen your methods, you must collect your data. This may involve sending surveys, conducting interviews, or hosting focus groups. Collecting data from a representative sample of your target market is essential.

Step 4: Analyze your data.

Once you have collected your data, you will need to analyze it. This may involve using statistical software or simply looking at the data and drawing conclusions. It is essential to be objective when analyzing your data.

Step 5: Take action.

The final step is to take action based on your findings. This may involve changing your product, developing a new marketing campaign, or understanding your target market better. It is essential to use your results to improve your business.

By following these steps, businesses can conduct customer research that is effective and informative. Customer research is an essential tool for businesses that want to succeed. Companies can make better decisions to increase profits and customer satisfaction by understanding their customers.

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An example of customer research is conducting interviews with customers to understand their pain points and preferences regarding a new mobile app, helping improve its usability and features.

The methods of customer research include surveys, interviews, focus groups, observational studies, customer feedback analysis, online analytics, social media listening, customer journey mapping, NPS surveys, and A/B testing. Each method provides unique insights into customer behavior and helps businesses make informed decisions.

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Customer Research: Types of Customer Research, Methods, and Best Practices.

In the ever-evolving landscape of business, understanding your customers is the key to success. Customer research, a systematic process of gathering and analyzing information about customers, plays a pivotal role in making informed business decisions and developing effective strategies. In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the types of customer research, the methodologies involved, and best practices for optimal results.

Comprehensive Guide to Customer Research: Types, Methods, and Best Practices

What is customer research.

Customer research involves the systematic exploration of customer behaviors, needs, preferences, and experiences. It combines qualitative and quantitative studies to gain insights into the target audience, facilitating informed decision-making and the development of strategies to meet customer expectations. The essential components of customer research include:

1. Research Objectives

Clearly defining research objectives is paramount. It involves determining the specific information or insights the organization aims to gather, ensuring the collected data aligns with organizational needs.

2. Target Audience Definition

Identifying the target audience is crucial, representing the group the research focuses on. This audience should mirror the organization’s customer base or intended market.

3. Research Methodology

Choosing appropriate research methods is vital. Whether surveys, interviews, focus groups, or data analytics, the methods should align with objectives, providing desired depth and breadth of insights.

4. Data Collection

Conducting data collection activities is core to customer research. Proper techniques, such as surveys, interviews, or data analysis, ensure the accuracy and reliability of gathered information.

5. Data Analysis

Organizing, categorizing, and interpreting collected data is essential. From quantitative techniques to qualitative research, the goal is to derive actionable insights that inform decision-making.

6. Findings and Insights

Effectively communicating research findings involves summarizing and presenting results. Visualizations, reports, and dashboards convey information clearly and understandably.

7. Recommendations

Based on findings, practical and actionable recommendations guide business decisions, whether for product improvements, marketing strategies, or customer experience enhancements.

8. Iteration and Continuous Improvement

Customer research is an iterative process. Regularly incorporating insights into strategies ensures organizations remain responsive to customer expectations and market changes.

Types of Customer Research

Understanding the various types of customer research is crucial for tailoring approaches to specific objectives. Some common types include:

1. Customer Satisfaction Research

Definition:.

Customer satisfaction research revolves around measuring and analyzing how satisfied customers are with a product or service. It helps in identifying areas for improvement and gauges overall customer contentment.

Key Elements:

• Surveys and Feedback Forms: Use structured surveys or feedback forms to quantify satisfaction levels.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures the likelihood of customers recommending a product or service.

Implementation:

Regularly conduct surveys and analyze feedback to gauge customer sentiment, focusing on enhancing areas with lower satisfaction.

2. Customer Needs and Preferences Research

This type of research aims to uncover the underlying needs, desires, and preferences of customers. It provides insights into what customers are looking for in a product or service.

• In-depth Interviews: Engage in one-on-one interviews to delve into the motivations and preferences of customers.
• Observational Studies: Observe customer behavior in real-life scenarios to identify unmet needs.

Conduct qualitative research through interviews and observational studies to gain a deep understanding of customer needs, informing product development.

3. Customer Experience (CX) Research

CX research focuses on understanding and optimizing the overall customer journey, identifying pain points, and ensuring a seamless and satisfying experience.

• Customer Journey Mapping: Visualize the entire customer experience, from initial interaction to post-purchase.
• Usability Testing: Evaluate the ease with which customers navigate through products or services.

Create detailed customer journey maps, conduct usability tests, and analyze customer interactions to enhance overall experience.

4. Brand Perception Research

This research assesses how customers perceive a brand, including awareness, image, associations, and loyalty. It helps in shaping and maintaining a positive brand identity.

• Brand Surveys: Measure brand awareness, associations, and loyalty.
• Competitor Analysis: Understand how the brand compares to competitors.

Regularly conduct brand perception surveys and analyze competitor strategies to maintain a positive brand image.

5. Customer Segmentation Research

Customer segmentation involves categorizing customers based on shared characteristics, behaviors, or needs. It enables targeted marketing strategies.

• Demographic Segmentation: Grouping customers based on age, gender, income, etc.
• Behavioral Segmentation: Segmenting based on purchasing behavior or product usage.

Analyze customer data to identify commonalities, enabling personalized marketing strategies for different segments.

6. Competitive Research

Competitive research involves analyzing competitors’ strategies, products, and customer experiences to identify opportunities for differentiation.

• Competitor Product Analysis: Evaluate features, pricing, and positioning of competitors’ products.
• Social Media Monitoring: Track customer sentiments regarding competitors on social media.

Regularly monitor competitors, analyze product offerings, and gather customer feedback to identify areas for improvement and differentiation.

7. Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping visualizes the end-to-end customer experience, identifying touchpoints, emotions, and areas for improvement.

• Customer Touchpoints: Identify and analyze all the touchpoints a customer has with the brand.
• Emotion Analysis: Understand customer emotions at each stage of the journey.

Create detailed customer journey maps, incorporating feedback from various touchpoints to enhance the overall journey.

These types of customer research provide organizations with a holistic view of their customers, enabling them to make informed decisions, improve products and services, and stay ahead in a competitive market. Each type serves a unique purpose, and a combination of these approaches ensures a comprehensive understanding of customer behaviors and preferences.

How to Conduct Customer Research: 10 Key Steps

Conducting effective customer research involves a systematic approach:

1. Define Research Objectives

Clearly define specific objectives to guide the research process and focus on relevant questions.

2. Identify Target Audience

Determine the specific target audience or customer segment that aligns with research goals.

3. Choose Research Methods

Select appropriate research methods and techniques, considering advantages, limitations, and resource requirements.

4. Develop Research Instruments

Design clear, concise research instruments such as survey questionnaires or interview guides.

5. Recruit Participants

Recruit participants matching the target audience criteria through various channels, ensuring communication clarity.

6. Conduct Data Collection

Implement chosen research methods, maintaining ethical guidelines, privacy, and data confidentiality.

7. Analyze Data

Use appropriate analysis techniques, whether quantitative or qualitative, ensuring rigor and alignment with research objectives.

8. Interpret Findings

Analyze patterns, trends, and relationships in data to gain insights into customer behaviors, preferences, or needs.

9. Communicate Results

Present findings clearly through reports, presentations, or visualizations, tailored to the target audience.

10. Apply Insights

Apply insights to inform business decisions, enhancing product development, marketing, and customer experiences.

Customer research is iterative; monitor outcomes, conduct follow-up research, and stay responsive to evolving customer needs.

Examples of Customer Research Questions

Crafting effective customer research questions is essential. Examples include:

• What factors influenced your decision to purchase our product/service?
• How did you first hear about our company?
• What specific features or aspects of our product/service do you find most valuable?
• What improvements or enhancements would you like to see in our product/service?
• How likely are you to recommend our product/service to others? Why?
• What obstacles or challenges did you encounter when using our product/service?
• How does our product/service compare to competitors in the market?
• How satisfied are you with the level of customer support you received?
• What are your expectations for pricing and value in relation to our product/service?
• How frequently do you use our product/service, and for what purposes?

Tailoring questions to the industry or service being researched ensures gathering relevant information.

Best Practices for Customer Research

Following best practices is essential for accurate and valuable insights:

1. Clearly Define Research Objectives

Identify specific goals and objectives to guide research, focusing on relevant questions and areas of investigation.

2. Use a Mix of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

Combine qualitative and quantitative research methods for a comprehensive understanding of customers.

3. Identify Your Target Audience

Clearly define the characteristics and demographics of the target audience for accurate representation.

4. Create Unbiased and Neutral Questions

Formulate clear, unbiased, and neutral questions to avoid leading or influencing participant responses.

5. Use a Variety of Data Collection Methods

Explore various data collection methods, including surveys, interviews, focus groups, and social media listening.

6. Engage With Customers at Different Touchpoints

Interact with customers at different stages, from pre-purchase to post-purchase, to understand the entire customer journey.

7. Maintain Confidentiality and Anonymity

Assure participants of confidentiality and anonymity to encourage honest and unbiased feedback.

8. Analyze and Interpret Data Systematically

Systematically analyze data using appropriate techniques, identifying patterns and key insights.

9. Continuously Iterate and Improve

Regularly revisit research objectives, update methods, and gather feedback for continuous improvement.

10. Communicate Findings and Take Action

Present research findings to stakeholders, using insights to inform strategic decisions, product development, and marketing.

By following these best practices, organizations can conduct effective customer research, gaining valuable insights into customer behaviors and preferences.

Enhance Your Research with IdeaScale

IdeaScale is an innovation management solution that inspires people to take action on their ideas. With features like community whiteboards, services for government and nonprofits, and extensive resources, IdeaScale elevates research and

Empowering Businesses Globally: A Comprehensive Guide to Customer Research by Arensic

Welcome to the realm of Arensic International , your strategic partner in unlocking the full potential of businesses on the global stage. As a leading international market research and management consulting firm, Arensic transcends boundaries to deliver strategic solutions that drive informed decisions and foster sustainable growth.

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Types of Market Research: A Deep Dive into Types of Marketing Research

Understand customer market research: What is it and how to do it

Eve Chatfield

Customer research, when done right, can enhance every essential aspect of customer marketing. In this article, we’ll cover:

• What customer research or consumer research is,
• The difference between customer and market research,
• Types of consumer research,
• Some research strategies.

What is customer research?

Customer research or consumer research is a vital component of customer marketing’s most fundamental role: to understand and market to your chosen target audience.

Consumer research definition:

Consumer research is the act of gathering information about your customers’ needs, desires, preferences, and behaviors as it pertains to your product or service.

This type of research can be conducted on current existing customers and/or potential customers. This research seeks to understand why your customers exist in the first place, and why potential customers end up not making a purchase.

In essence, this is about understanding the motivations behind anything your customer does, being able to represent that within your marketing , and how you might be able to influence this in the future.

What is the difference between customer and market research?

Customer or consumer research is most often placed within market research, as a part of a bigger research project. Customer research can also be applied to design research or user research too.

Because customers have such a big influence on how the market, and the businesses within that market, run, it's often the case that, whatever part of the business funnel you are researching, customer research will become a part of the strategy too.

Market research will not exclusively look at your customers, but will analyze and assess the market as a whole. This will include things like competitive intelligence, and analyzing other business models to influence how your own company conducts itself within its chosen market.

Fill out the form to download Intro to Customer Research below to start better understanding your customers.

Types of consumer research

Primary research.

Primary research refers to the act of collecting data from a primary source when you conduct a variety of types of data collection and speak to your customer directly. This will include things like focus groups, surveys, social media interactions, and interviews.

Secondary research

Secondary research is carried out by someone else. Your secondary research relies on data collected by someone else. This will be things like online databases, forums, and industry reports.

Quantitative research

Both primary and secondary research comes in the form of qualitative or quantitative research, which offer different levels of information and are often used for different purposes.

Quantitative research is expressed in numerical values and presents simple yet objective facts about your data set. As a result, the data you get from this type of research is not very in-depth but it means a larger proportion of your chosen data group can be represented.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is more subjective and opinion-based. This type of research is descriptive and often comes from talking in depth to a small number of people from your data set.

Whilst qualitative research won’t represent all of your data group, it can offer insights into specific scenarios, motivations, pain points, and more.

Research strategies

In our State of Customer Marketing Report for 2022 , we found that most customer marketers spoke to their customers 2-3 times a week (22.2%) and a handful of times a month (22.2%).

Customer marketing research is impossible without this kind of regular contact. Customer marketing is a unique position where it can consistently develop relationships with customer advocates , offering them an immediate resource for qualitative research.

Interaction with your community of customers over social media or forums allows for a similar kind of relationship with a wider audience. In essence, customer marketers can have some customers whom they talk to every single week and others whom they only interact with a few times on social media.

Yet each relationship is invaluable in informing the way you work.

In the same way, your research strategies can vary in the level of contact they need with your customers. Here are a few examples below.

Customer research strategies

A/b testing.

A/B testing is an experiment where your customers are shown two different versions of a page at random. These pages are monitored to see which performs best.

A/B testing can be used to assess the effectiveness of a variety of marketing content and tone including email subject bars, headlines, social media posts, articles, and more.

This is a quantitative measure; results will show things like click-through rate and engagement rate.

• Pros: A/B testing requires very little interaction with your customers and takes very little prep and monitoring.
• Cons: Sometimes it’s difficult to understand why one headline performs better than another. If you’re looking for results that you can then implement into everyday practices, you’ll likely need to talk to customers to get a better understanding of why a chosen word or tone of voice worked better than another.

A case study is a deep dive into a specific customer’s experience with your product and/or organization. Most often, this is referring to a particular instance or instances where the customer you are interviewing interacted with your organization.

Conducting a case study should take you through each stage of the customer’s journey. It will highlight what worked well and what didn’t work well for their specific use case.

This will give you extensive qualitative feedback about specific scenarios within the customer journey which may produce answers for some unique or previously missed pain points.

• Pros: Case studies can not only be used for research but can also be syndicated into other content as testimonials promoting your product to other customers.
• Cons: This can be more time-consuming than other forms of research, and will only account for a small percentage of your audience.

Review mining

Review mining is the process of finding and extracting opinions about your organization and product from online review sites. This research will evaluate users’ sentiments and feedback about your product.

This type of research allows you to collect qualitative feedback in a way that is less intensive and time-consuming; It offers the opportunity to receive feedback without having to reach out to each of these customers individually.

• Pros: Doesn’t rely on customer availability. Could highlight certain complaints customers may not tell you about directly.
• Cons: The level of information provided by reviews can vary a lot. If you’re wanting to learn more about a specific review, you’ll have to reach out to customers individually.

Focus groups

Focus groups gather information by bringing together a small number of customers (usually 6-10) into a room to discuss your organization and product. This can involve your company as a whole, or a specific product, campaign, or concept.

This gives you the unique opportunity to watch and listen to your customers as they interact with each other. Unique qualitative insights may come up that would be missed in a survey or one-to-one interview.

• Pros: Enables you to gather a group of your customers to offer insights that you won’t get from a one-to-one interview or a survey.
• Cons: Heavily monitored type of research. Planning such a group will take more time in order to fit a large number of schedules.

Colleen Johnson goes through a fantastic example of an effective focus group in this episode of Customer Marketing Catch-up:

Personas are fictional profiles used to represent specific groups within your customer base. They will take into account personal needs and pain points, preferred messaging, offers, and products.

• Pros: Can be used as a cheat sheet for any internal persons looking to better understand your audience.
• Cons: Personas will be produced using data from other research you conduct. You will often have to revisit your personas and update them as your customer base, and your understanding of your customer base develops.

The next steps

Customer research is a topic that can be discussed endlessly. It’s always going to be a part of any marketing job, specifically customer marketing. Taking the next steps to perfect your research processes can start with CMA’s Customer Research: Masters.

This course involves:

🧠 Expert insights from a customer research connoisseur.

⏰ 3+ hours of course curriculum content.

🛠 7 tried, tested, and vetted templates that’ll streamline your practice.

🔥 Bonus footage & fireside chats to supplement your learning.

🔖 Official Customer Research certification to show off to your colleagues.

⏳ Lifetime access to all the course content.

Written by:

Eve is a Junior Copywriter at Customer Marketing Alliance. She has been writing for as long as she can remember and enjoys creating content that helps others with their career goals.

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• What other languages does the app offer? Do any of them interest you?

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What is Customer Experience (CX) Research? Definition, Methods and Best Practices

What is Customer Experience (CX) Research? 

Customer experience (CX) research is a systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting customer experience data to understand and improve the quality and effectiveness of customer interactions with a brand, product, or service. It involves using a wide range of methodologies and techniques aimed at gaining insights into the customer experience journey , identifying pain points, and enhancing overall customer satisfaction. 

Here are the 3 key attributes of CX research:

• It requires gathering customer data through various channels of interaction and feedback throughout their journey with a brand/ product or service. For example, the touchpoints can be dedicated user feedback surveys, user testing , website usability testing , UI testing , customer service interactions, sales interactions, post-purchase experience etc. These sources provide a comprehensive view of customer/ user behavior, preferences, and sentiment. By collecting data from multiple CX touchpoints, organizations can create a holistic view of the customer journey, from initial awareness to product’s user experience .
• CX research is iterative and ongoing. Successful organizations recognize that customer expectations evolve, and continuous research is necessary to stay aligned with these changes. By regularly gathering feedback and adapting strategies, companies can remain responsive to customer needs and maintain a competitive edge.
• Customer experience (CX) research is a driver of organizational change and improvement, creating a customer-centric approach. The insights gained through customer experience research inform decision-making at all levels of an organization. Whether it involves refining product features, streamlining customer support processes, or enhancing website usability, CX research empowers organizations to make data-driven decisions that lead to improved customer acquisition and increased customer loyalty, and therefore more revenue.

Key Benefits of Conducting Customer Experience (UX) Research 

CX research is important because it enables organizations to understand, measure, and improve the experiences of their customers, which allows them to deliver better customer retention, acquire new customers more easily, and therefore grow business revenue.

Here are the key benefits in detail, that make customer experience (CX) research important for businesses:

• Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: CX research helps organizations identify and address pain points in the customer journey. By resolving issues and improving the overall experience, organizations can increase customer satisfaction, leading to higher customer retention and loyalty.
• Competitive Advantage: Understanding customer preferences, expectations, and behaviors gives organizations a competitive edge. By meeting or exceeding customer expectations, companies can differentiate themselves in the market and attract more customers.
• Improved Customer Loyalty: Satisfied customers are more likely to become loyal customers who repeatedly choose your brand. Loyal customers not only generate repeat business but also serve as advocates who recommend your products or services to others. It is often more cost-effective to retain existing customers and increase the acquisition of new customers, driven by great experiences. 
• Reduced Churn and Increased CLV: CX research helps identify factors that contribute to reduced customer churn/attrition and increased customer lifetime value (CLV). By addressing CX issues and offering solutions, organizations can reduce customer turnover and reduce the associated costs of acquiring new customers.
• Data-Driven Decision-Making: CX research provides valuable quantitative and qualitative data and insights that inform strategic decisions. Organizations can use this data to prioritize initiatives, allocate resources effectively, and make informed choices that align with customer needs and expectations.
• Better Roadmaps: Customer/ user inputs gathered through CX research serve as a valuable source of input for product and service development roadmaps. Organizations can tailor their offerings to better meet customer requirements and preferences.
• Cost Savings: By pinpointing inefficiencies and areas of frustration in the customer journey, CX research can help streamline processes and reduce operational costs. Improving the customer experience can also lead to fewer support requests and complaints.
• Higher Revenue: CX research leads to better and easier customer acquisition and once converted to customers, these satisfied customers are further likely to repeat/ upgrade their purchases. It allows organizations to identify opportunities for better user acquisition, upselling, cross-selling, and creating more appealing customer-centric offers, which drive revenue growth.
• Brand Reputation: A positive customer experience contributes to a strong brand reputation, as well as better brand recall. Happy customers are more likely to share their positive experiences with others, recommend your products/ services, and therefore drives organic growth.
• Customer-Centric Culture: CX research encourages organizations to adopt a customer-centric mindset. When employees understand the importance of the customer experience and how it basically pays their salaries in the bigger picture, they are more likely to align their efforts with delivering exceptional service.
• Faster Adaptation Change: CX research helps organizations stay responsive to changing market conditions and customer preferences. It provides early warning signs of shifts in customer behavior/ preference and allows for proactive adjustments, while the rest of the market catches up.

Learn more: What is Customer Experience (CX) Design?

Customer Experience (CX) Research Methods 

Conducting customer experience (CX) research relies on various methods and techniques to gather insights into customer interactions and perceptions. Here are some common CX research methods:

• Customer/ User Tests and Surveys:

User testing and CX surveys are structured data collection tools that involve asking customers a series of predefined questions to customer/ users. They can be administered online, via email, or in person. These tests and surveys are useful for gathering quantitative and qualitative data on customer interaction and preferences and align product/ service experience to match/ exceed these expectations.

• Usability Testing:

Usability testing involves observing users as they interact with a product or website while performing specific tasks. Researchers assess ease of use, navigation, and user satisfaction. Usability testing is a critical research asset to identify user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) issues and provides insights into how customers navigate and interact with apps, websites, e-commerce portals, and SaaS products.

• In-Depth Interviews:

In-depth interviews involve one-on-one conversations with customers and product users to gather qualitative data. These interviews can be structured with specific questions or unstructured to allow for open-ended discussions. Interviews provide qualitative insights into customer experiences, allowing for a deeper understanding of motivations, pain points, and emotions.

• Focus Groups:

Focus groups involve small groups of customers/ users discussing their experiences with a moderator. It’s a qualitative method that encourages participants to share experiences across several user journey touchpoints and build on each other’s perspectives. Focus groups are helpful for exploring a range of opinions, uncovering shared sentiments, and generating ideas for customer experience improvements. Focus groups can also be used among employees to understand common CX issues across customer facing departments such as marketing, sales, account management and customer service.

• Heatmaps and Clickmaps:

Heatmaps and clickmaps are solutions to visualize user interactions with a website or app, highlighting areas of high and low activity, clicks, and scrolling behavior. These visual tools help organizations understand user engagement, identify popular content, and optimize layout and user experience design .

Learn more: What is Customer Experience (CX) Optimization?

Customer Experience (CX) Research Best Practices for 2023

Customer Experience (CX) research is crucial for understanding and improving the interactions between your customers and your organization.

Here are the best practices for conducting effective CX research:

• Clearly Define Objectives and Goals: Start with a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with your CX research. Define specific objectives and goals that align with your organization’s strategic priorities.
• Segment Your Customer Base: Recognize that different customer segments may have varying needs and expectations. Segment your customer base based on demographics, behavior, or other relevant factors to tailor your research approach.
• Choose the Right Research Methods: Select research methods that align with your objectives and the nature of your customer interactions. Common methods include surveys, interviews, focus groups, usability testing, and journey mapping.
• Collect Quantitative and Qualitative Data: Quantitative data (e.g., surveys and analytics) provide statistical insights, while qualitative data (e.g., interviews and open-ended questions) offer in-depth understanding. Combining both types of data can provide a comprehensive user feedback on customer experience design .
• Align Real-Time and Periodic Feedback: Incorporate real-time feedback mechanisms, such as post-interaction surveys or chatbots, to capture immediate insights. Additionally, conduct periodic, more in-depth research to gain a holistic perspective.
• Implement Customer Journey Mapping: Create customer journey maps to visualize the end user customer experience. This helps identify pain points, opportunities for improvement, and touchpoints that matter most to customers.
• Leverage Customer Feedback Platforms: Utilize customer feedback platforms and tools to collect, analyze, and manage customer feedback efficiently. These tools often provide sentiment analysis and reporting features.
• Measure Key CX Metrics: Key CX metrics include Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES). Monitor these metrics to track changes in customer sentiment over time.
• Incorporate Employee Feedback: Employees play a critical role in delivering a positive customer experience. Collect feedback from front-line staff and others who interact with customers to identify operational challenges and training needs.
• Maintain a Customer-Centric Culture: Ensure that everyone in your organization, from leadership to front-line employees, is aligned with a customer-centric mindset. CX research findings should inform decision-making at all levels.
• Continuously Iterate and Improve: CX research is an ongoing process. Continuously gather feedback, measure performance, and refine your CX strategy based on changing customer needs and market conditions.
• Ensure Data Privacy and Security: Protect customer data and comply with privacy regulations, such as GDPR or CCPA. Use secure methods for data collection and storage.
• Benchmark Against Competitors: Compare your CX performance against industry benchmarks and competitors. 
• Share CX Insights Across the Organization: Disseminate CX research findings and insights throughout the organization to create a shared understanding of customer needs and foster collaboration in improving the customer experience.

Learn more: What is CX Management?

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Consumer Research: Definition, Methods and Benefits (+ Templates)

Nemanja Jovancic

Sep 02 2020

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Launching a new product? Considering whether you should offer new services or tweak the current ones? Such moments can be challenging both for established brands and those just trying to break into the market.

Whenever you have something new to offer to your customers, there are numerous factors to be taken into account if you want to make well-informed decisions that would increase the chances of a successful launch, instead of stumbling in the dark and hoping for the best.

This is where consumer research kicks in.

What is consumer research?

Consumer research is the aspect of market research that focuses on identifying the motivation, preferences, and purchase behavior of (potential) consumers.

Companies rely on consumer research to analyze and better understand consumer psychology so as to improve their products or services, making them more customer-oriented, and ultimately increasing customer satisfaction and the number of sales.

Having a deep understanding of consumer decision-making and purchase behavior allows brands to build products that will find their market fit more easily, put the optimal price tag onto them, and establish the right distribution and promotion channels.

Let’s say a beauty industry company wants to launch a new skincare product. In order to de-risk their production and product placement, they could launch a skincare quiz to find out what it is that their consumers actually need:

And then they could do additional market research to find out more about their ideal customer’s demographics and purchase habits. Conducting this kind of consumer research is expected to facilitate a successful launch for the new product and ensure that there’s actual demand for such a product on the market.

Before we dig any deeper into consumer research, here’s a survey template you could easily use to do your own market research.

Consumer research survey template

Just here for an easy way to conduct your own consumer research? No worries, we’ve got you covered – grab this market research template and learn more about your consumers right now.

If you would like to learn more about how and why you should conduct the research using the template above, keep on reading.

Why you should conduct consumer research

Often, people do research just because they’ve been told to do so. But if you’re looking to better understand your consumers and their needs, you need to know why you should be conducting consumer research in the first place. Even though there are plenty of benefits, here are the top three I’d like to point out:

Understand market readiness

No matter how good you think your products or services are, there’s a fair chance you’re not completely objective nor representative of your ideal target consumer.

When launching a new product, there’s a lot of investments going around and, naturally, you’d expect adequate ROI. However, if there’s not enough market potential, your investment might fail. This is where consumer research kicks in.

Identify target consumers

Another important benefit of conducting consumer research is the ability to identify and analyze your target customers. In other words, this allows you to determine who might be interested in buying your products or using your services.

For example, you can use a demographic survey  to obtain various information on your customers such as age, gender, geographic location, employment, marital status, and more. Or you can rely on different types of market segmentation  to reach your ideal customer. This would allow you to customize your marketing efforts to better appeal to particular customer sets.

Get feedback on existing products or services

Finally, consumer research can help you obtain valuable feedback on your current business offer. Such feedback can help you update or improve your current products based on the valuable information from the actual consumers.

Getting feedback is important because it helps brands and businesses better understand the consumers’ standing point and come up with an improved product that would help address the challenges they’ve been having and fully meet the actual market needs and requirements.

Main consumer research methods

There are two main types of consumer research – quantitative and qualitative . Both types rely on different research techniques that we’ll explore in more detail down below.

Quantitative consumer research

By 2025, the global data pool is expected to rise up to 175 zettabytes . That’s why meaningful data has become more valuable than ever and the way companies collect data  can either make or break their business success.

Quantitative research is a data collection method that revolves around numbers and stats. It’s an essential part of consumer research that can provide businesses with measurable data on their customers. Such data can be mathematically and statistically analyzed in order to gain more insight into consumer behavior.

The most effective and most popular techniques for obtaining quantitative data are different types of online questionnaires such as surveys and polls.

Surveys and polls

Nowadays, the easiest way to obtain consumer data is through online surveys, questionnaires, and polls. Thanks to highly-advanced and intuitive survey tools , it’s now easier than ever to create your own data collectors, either from scratch or using professionally written templates.

All the LeadQuizzes users, for example, gain free access to 78 professionally written and beautifully designed survey, quiz, and form templates. This includes market and consumer research survey templates such as the ones shown in the image below:

To access the LeadQuizzes templates, just log in to your account (or sign up for a free trial  if you don’t have an account yet) and select your preferred template from the selection of pre-made templates . You can use the templates as they are or easily customize them to meet your specific needs.

One of the easiest ways to obtain quantitative customer data is by using an NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey . This customer research technique allows you to easily evaluate the satisfaction of your current users and express it through numbers for easy analysis. With just one single question – “How likely are you to refer our business?” – you can easily measure consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

To preview (or use) an NPS survey template, just click on the image below:

Qualitative consumer research

Unlike quantitative research, which relies on numbers, qualitative consumer research is descriptive in nature. To obtain qualitative data, you need to be using open-ended questions with no predefined answer options. While this means that you can still be using online surveys to obtain qualitative data as well, there are a few more options to choose from.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a small group of people who are experts on a particular subject matter and whose job is to analyze a particular aspect of consumer research – e.g. a new update, feature, product, and so on.

Ideally, focus groups contain somewhere between 3-10 people, including an obligatory moderator. Depending on the research topic and goal, the members of a focus group should be brought together around certain common denominators.

For example, if you’re doing research on the use of birth control pills, all the members of your focus group need to be sexually active females. The remaining parameters like age, education, employment, and so on, may or may not be relevant here.

1-to-1 interviews

In most cases, this is a conversational method that presupposes an interviewer and an interviewee. During this type of consumer research, the researcher (the interviewer) asks questions (that are equivalent to the open-ended survey questions) related to products and services.

There are two main limitations to this method. Firstly, it’s very time consuming and might become overwhelming if you have to interview an excessively large number of consumers. And secondly, it very much relies on the researcher’s expertise and ability to extract the relevant information from interviewees.

Social media monitoring

This type of consumer research could also be described as content or text analysis but, in recent years, it primarily refers to the analysis of consumer behavior on social media. Here, the researchers analyze consumers’ social life by decoding their social media posts and interactions to draw inferences related to their consumer behavior and habits.

After the research

Above, we’ve introduced you to consumer research – what it is, why you need to conduct it, and what are some of the best ways to do so. Once you’ve managed to conduct your research, gather the necessary data, analyze it, and come to certain conclusions, you should have a better insight into the exact needs and pain points of your customers.

This will allow you to adapt your business, update, tweak or completely revamp your products and services, and develop a better marketing plan that would allow you to attract more consumers, determine the optimal price, increase the number of sales, and reduce costs.

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Meaning of customer research in English

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Examples of customer research

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Understanding Customer Experience

• Andre Schwager
• Chris Meyer

Anyone who has signed up for cell phone service, attempted to claim a rebate, or navigated a call center has probably suffered from a company’s apparent indifference to what should be its first concern: the customer experiences that culminate in either satisfaction or disappointment and defection.

Customer experience is the subjective response customers have to direct or indirect contact with a company. It encompasses every aspect of an offering: customer care, advertising, packaging, features, ease of use, reliability. Customer experience is shaped by customers’ expectations, which largely reflect previous experiences. Few CEOs would argue against the significance of customer experience or against measuring and analyzing it. But many don’t appreciate how those activities differ from CRM or just how illuminating the data can be. For instance, the majority of the companies in a recent survey believed they have been providing “superior” experiences to customers, but most customers disagreed.

The authors describe a customer experience management (CEM) process that involves three kinds of monitoring: past patterns (evaluating completed transactions), present patterns (tracking current relationships), and potential patterns (conducting inquiries in the hope of unveiling future opportunities). Data are collected at or about touch points through such methods as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and online forums. Companies need to involve every function in the effort, not just a single customer-facing group.

The authors go on to illustrate how a cross-functional CEM system is created. With such a system, companies can discover which customers are prospects for growth and which require immediate intervention.

Companies that systematically monitor customer experience can take important steps to improve it—and their bottom line.

Anyone who has signed up recently for cell phone service has faced a stern test in trying to figure out the cost of carry-forward minutes versus free calls within a network and how it compares with the cost of such services as push-to-talk, roaming, and messaging. Many, too, have fallen for a rebate offer only to discover that the form they must fill out rivals a home mortgage application in its detail. And then there are automated telephone systems, in which harried consumers navigate a mazelike menu in search of a real-life human being. So little confidence do consumers have in these electronic surrogates that a few weeks after the website www.gethuman.com showed how to reach a live person quickly at 10 major consumer sites, instructions for more than 400 additional companies had poured in.

• AS Andre Schwager is a former president of Seagate Enterprise Management Software and a founder of Satmetrix Systems, a customer experience software company based in Foster City, California. (Contact him at [email protected] .)
• CM Chris Meyer is the chairman of the Strategic Alignment Group, Inc., a member of the Band of Angels deal committee, and adviser/board member for several early-stage companies.

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Consumer Research - Meaning & Definition

What is consumer research.

Consumer research is the research done on consumers’ preferences, attitudes, loyalty, usage and behavior in a market. It helps in understanding customers so that the marketing campaigns can be designed accordingly.

Consumer research is a part of marketing research.

Market Research deals with processes to understand customers and end consumers which helps the marketer to build market strategy. It helps in analyzing the market using porter’s five forces which deals with the market condition. The strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats are analyzed. They help in defining the marketing goals, generate and define marketing activities, monitor them and improve performance and understanding of the market and consumers. The market research also guides the company in addressing the issues by conducting surveys and get customer opinions.

Marketing research is often partitioned into two categorical pairs

• Consumer marketing research, and

• Business-to-business (B2B) marketing research

Consumer research has two paradigms viz

• Qualitative marketing research- Text analysis

• Quantitative marketing research- Number analysis

Consumer research Process

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team . It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

Browse the definition and meaning of more similar terms. The Management Dictionary covers over 1800 business concepts from 5 categories.

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Definition of research

 (Entry 1 of 2)

Definition of research  (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb

intransitive verb

• disquisition
• examination
• exploration
• inquisition
• investigation
• delve (into)
• inquire (into)
• investigate
• look (into)

Examples of research in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'research.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle French recerche , from recercher to go about seeking, from Old French recerchier , from re- + cerchier, sercher to search — more at search

1577, in the meaning defined at sense 3

1588, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1

Phrases Containing research

• marketing research
• market research
• operations research
• oppo research

research and development

• research park
• translational research

Dictionary Entries Near research

Cite this entry.

“Research.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/research. Accessed 26 Jun. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of research.

Kids Definition of research  (Entry 2 of 2)

More from Merriam-Webster on research

Nglish: Translation of research for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of research for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about research

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