10. E – Market Research

In our last session, we have seen web-advertising in order to start web-advertising we need to have knowledge about the market and that knowledge can be obtained by market research.

Market research includes, gathering information about: industry, products, pricing, competition, products and consumer purchasing behaviour. Initially, market research was used for Economics purpose but due to increase in competition and to enable wide area marketing different aspects of market research is being used.

The main focus of market research for E-Commerce is to focus on consumer purchasing behaviour and turn browsers into buyers. The market research includes understanding purchase patterns for individuals and groups, factors that encourage online purchasing, how individuals do navigate and the optimal web design which promotes sales or encourages consumers to purchase.

Web-based surveys, online focus groups, hearing directly from customers, customer’s scenarios and tracking customers movements are all different methods of online market research.

• Web-Based surveys: The survey is based on feedbacks from website users; the focus here is to find qualities and drawbacks of website in order to promote sales in an efficient way.
• Online focus groups: The organisations gets connected with different groups online mainly executives at regular intervals to find out there views and opinions for sales improvement.
• Hearing directly from customers: The researcher establishes e-bulletins for visitors to comment on products and services and also provides to see others comments. This is mainly done in the form of forums or in chartrooms.
• Customer scenarios: Getting information from customers by giving different options in order to find their preferences for future product developments.
• Tracking customer’s movements: This method uses the “tracking cookies” which observes the movements of customers (from which website the customer is coming and to which website is he going).

Internet market research methods are much faster, efficient, geographically diverse and most importantly much cheaper compared to other methods, but there are some limitations which hinder its effectiveness like too much data available which may lead to time consumption for organising, editing and summarising. Online market research lacks eye contact which may not recognise important data, difficult to judge the accuracy of data, equipment failure may lead to lost data and ethical issues relating to web tracking.

The analysis of click stream data is an important aspect of online market research as it helps to judge and understand the consumer purchasing patterns, products of interest and competitors. By analysing click steam data we will be able to know:

• What goods did the customers has either examined or purchased?
• What other items did customers looked at and purchased?
• Which ads and promotions were effective and which are not?
• Which ads generated lot of attention but few sales?
• Whether certain products are too hard to find or to expensive?

By analysing the click steam data and following different and suitable market research methods it is much easier to make market decision which improve sales and performance of the organisation.

Reflective report

In the past market research was not given much importance and it was used purely for economics purpose, but due to increase in competition and issue of market fragmentation/segmentation forced business researchers to know more about consumers and their purchasing patterns. The increase in disposable income since late 1980’s and changes in life styles has motivated researchers to gather more and more information about consumers and thus due to these reasons now a days market research is given more importance.

After attending this class it was clear to me that market research and its new techniques plays an important role indecision making and also it is clear that they help to provide a valuable information on which decision are based. Market research can be used in many stages of business developments like entering a new market, introducing a new products or even changing the product or business line. It is evident that market research has many benefits but using E-Market research alone is not adviseable because it loses the personal contact with consumers and may lose some valuable information or may lose consumers who do not use internet.

It is clear that with the profound increase in internet users E-Market research has a valuable part in future business.