Maximize Your Market Research ROI

Is Your Market Research ROI Positive?

The budgets and the personnel devoted to the generation of customer insight are shrinking, putting more pressure on market research functions to deliver value supportive of business priorities. Today, many companies are starting to question the value of their entire market research function, striving to define stronger accountability and looking for ways to change the traditional model.

The industry spends a lot on market research, but researchers need to do a better job of challenging whether there is a direct link between the key business issues and the need for incremental insight. There are a handful of questions that can guide researchers to wisely invest their scarce resources:

• What is the specific business problem motivating the market research?
• What do we already know?
• Is there existing insight that addresses our question?
• Can we leverage secondary data?
• How will additional research change the decision we would make today?

These questions are a start. It's about having a process inherent within the market research function to take the data and knowledge gathered and synthesizing this into customer insight. This is an iterative process that takes time and commitment, but is essential to solving business problems – and to justifying the research. Too often market research functions generate data, but then fall short in extracting insights that drive the business and deliver a financial return.

To learn more about how we help companies maximize the value of market research, click here.