Market Research

When you are researching you need to know what you are trying to achieve so you can be clear and focused. Market Research provides information to help create solutions and perhaps see new opportunities. You must know how in-depth you want to go.
If it is a large long-term research plan you may need to have short/medium and long-term objectives - this may be because not all information is needed at once.

Remember to decide how much time you want to put into research and also if you want to take it out house.

After you have objectives you need to decide how far you are willing to go to get research. You decide this by balancing the benefits of the information sought against the cost in terms of money, staff and time.

Where to get your data from:

In-house data. All the information that you can collect within your organisation that is relevant.
Data already collected by other sources e.g. NCVO, DSC - also see lecture on Information Sources

If you can't get what you want from 1 and 2 you will then need to move into collecting primary data yourselves through questionnaires, observation and experimentation.

Then analyse your data.

Prepare final report. If you can include tables, graphs, diagrams because these help people, including you (!) to understand your report, almost at a glance.

When researching bring in individuals/departments to get their advice and help you out e.g. the accounts department will have a lot of potential information that they may be able to break down for you into the different sources of income that come in. Often people will be sitting on information that literally requires them to push a button - the thing is they've never been asked before!

Results of research are there to help solve the initial problem and should not fall outside of what it is initially trying to do.
Market Research relies on accurate data, consistent method. This ensures as little bias as possible.

Other fact sheets in Organizational planning
Fact sheet index

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