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Be aware that market research takes time. It must be planned out with a clear goal in mind. Why? Market research in general involves sampling a multi-variable parameter space. O.k. Dan, so what does this mean?
It simply means that
question you are trying to answer depends on more than one thing.
For instance, suppose you want to research web usage habits. This is an enormously complex topic. It depends in part on what a person is searching for, time of day, day of week, browser type, computer type, dial-up connection, gender, age, etc..Do you see how this can be very hard to understand.
So what you do is narrow number of variables. How do you do this? You focus your questions to areas that limit number of dependent parameters - smaller subsets of entire picture. Supposing that question to answer is now "What percentage of surfers are looking for cosmetics on Wednesday between hours of 6 and 10 pm?", we have now removed gender, day of week, and hour of day variables. The problem is now much easier to solve.
Market research is a truly rich area. It involves people, who by nature are complex entities to study. But, there is no way around it. If you truly want to prosper in this field you must research your market, and you must regularly do so. Otherwise, your efforts will be in large part hit and miss. Take time to add a research aspect to your business. You won't be sorry.
Dan J. Fry is an independent researcher and owner of the e- Kinetic E-Zine. He has a PhD in Physics, two daughters and two cats. Subscribe to his e-zine at e- kinetic@GetResponse.com or by visiting his Online Home Based Business Infopreneur Resources site.
