Why Is Market Research Important for Customer Insight?

Market research and the opinions and perceptions of your target clients about your business may teach you a lot. But why are customer insights and market research so dissimilar? What's more, how might each of these informational resources assist you in enhancing your brand? 

Market research and consumer insights are words that are frequently used interchangeably by businesses. Both are rich sources of knowledge that can guide your business decisions. The two frequently overlap in terms of how they can support your brand. 

But the truth remains that each has a certain function. Knowing whether to depend on both and how to make the most of both may be determined by clearly defining the difference between market research and customer insights. 

Defining Customer Insights 

Customer Insights has been in action if you've ever conducted focus groups, asked for online reviews, or distributed surveys to your consumers. By definition, customer insights are ideas, viewpoints, and experiences that individuals communicate and that businesses analyze to better understand what their thoughts, feelings, and requirements are. 

These perceptions can take a variety of forms, such as: 

• Review sites
• Customer feedback 
• Social media appearance 
• Forum entries 
• Discussion forums or panels 
• Consumer testing research 

Any platform that allows customers to provide feedback to a business or brand is considered to be a part of the consumer insight process. Customers' insights can be gathered by businesses professionally (using a procedure like an organized, solicited feedback collection) or informally (such as scanning your social media profiles for user comments). 

The ultimate objective remains the same: to understand customers' thinking so that data may be used to draw precise, useful judgments about what to do next. 

Defining Market Research 

It is the process of gathering information about the market, typically in the form of direct inquiries. 

These details might comprise, but are not restricted to: 

• Size of a market that can be served 
• Marketing encroachment 
• Demand for a certain sector, product, or service 
• Age-related, socioeconomic, and educational statistics 
• Rival brands 
• Gap or needs in the market 

A high-level perspective of a customer demographic is provided by general market research data. This information is used by brands for a variety of reasons, including selecting which markets to pursue and what goods to create next. 

The market research sector as a whole is currently projected to be worth $73.4 billion. Many times, specialized market research agencies carry out investigations and studies on behalf of businesses. News outlets are one example of an additional information source that might provide insights into a certain industry. 

The Intersection of Market Research & Customer Insights 

What market research is to a whole sector, region, or population, customer insights are to a single customer. 

To make wise judgments and choose how to best utilize resources, market research and customer insights, both rely on precise and useful data. Both endeavor to understand customer behavior and its causes through penetrating their thoughts. This is an important segment of consideration, especially when you partner with clients for digital transformation solutions. Additionally, both may assist you in determining how your company now stands in the market and what you need to do in order to keep or improve that position. 

Despite having distinct functions, market research and customer insights don't necessarily fit into separate categories. In order to assist provide market data perspective, customer insights are frequently conducted after market research initiatives. 

Broadening Your Market Research Net 

Consider that you are introducing a new range of cookware and equipment. You choose to do market research and choose the ideal locations to introduce your brand since you are aware that the industry is extremely competitive. 

At this point, your market research may involve identifying possible rivals in the industry and analyzing long-term trends in home cooking and nutrition. You might also want to listen in on talks about doing your own cooking at home to observe who is speaking and what is being said. See which retailers are most frequently cited. Increase your focus on certain kitchen categories. View the real purchases made by consumers. Your marketing and product development can be guided by this study. 

At this point, your best chance for market research and pertinent studies to examine the market and behavioral consumer data is to choose a company that is renowned for providing the top digital transformation services in Singapore. 

Support Market Data with Customer Insights 

Next, you should use micro level customer insights to supplement your macro level market research. Creating buyer personas, for instance, based on the influences or discussions you found throughout your market research, can fall under this category. Learn about your target market's culinary preferences and demands, as well as their disposable money, level of expectation for quality, and other relevant information. 

You could delve deeper into discussions like food planning, grocery budgeting, and even cooking at home. What patterns do you notice? Are there more home cooks now? Do they require instruments that make cooking quicker, simpler, or at the very least, easier to clean up since they have less time? 

You may concentrate on intelligence by isolating these chats. Use it to develop your messaging and pick the things you want to sell to your audience. 

Understanding the numerous variables that might impact on your customer insights is the challenging aspect of this procedure. A complex ecosystem of customer perceptions of your brand or category exists across genders, age, professions, hobbies, and experiences. It's not simple to develop a precise client profile that takes all these factors into consideration, but businesses must succeed in doing so. As one of the best digital transformation companies in Singapore, TransformHub guides the clients with the right approach towards market research.  

The Value of Market Research for Customer Insight 

Your client records may contain a variety of data, including buying patterns, the most popular services among various demographic groups, etc. You may evaluate significant trends with the use of market research to foresee potential market changes. It is an essential stage in determining your target market, creating new goods, and discovering new market segments. 

Well-done market research for your company aids in the planning of your strategy. Even if your business is well-established, you still need to stay on top of industry trends, your rivals, and your consumers' demands. You may obtain speedier, quicker, and more efficient research insights that matter by including an insights repository into your market research process. 

Market research may be used to gauge how well your own advertising is working. You can determine how well people are aware of your goods and services. The outcomes might inspire you to create more recognizable brand packaging and advertising. 

Market Research for Customer Insights: Why Brands Need Both 

Both a "bird's eye perspective" and a "street view" of the region are necessary when companies are introducing new goods, expanding into new areas, or making decisions that will have an influence on their customers. A high-level view provides broad information about a particular difficulty and serves as a starting point. But brands also require a thorough understanding of the details of the situation. These specifics assist businesses make better judgments by helping them understand the "why" underlying the "what" of their actions. 

It's crucial to note, though, that occasionally the findings from market research represent two switches of the same light, even though customer insights may complement what you find there. When compared to market data, customer insights may present a radically different version of the tale. This is so because the data originates from two distinct categories of sources. Instead, listening to the voice of the consumer, businesses doing market research look at broad industry data from the media and other sources. 

Businesses may reduce the amount of guesswork in decision-making by taking the time to conduct market research and obtain customer insights. Spending money on a product or service that your target market won't buy is a bad idea. Reduce the possibility that a subpar product fit would harm your brand's reputation and image. Most crucially, strike a balance between objective facts (market data) and subjective perceptions (insights) to develop a message that resonates with your target audience. 

Benefits of Consumer Insight Research 

Among the many benefits it provides, here we’ve listed the most beneficial ones.

The emphasis of efforts is ongoing consumer insight research. Knowing what motivates a customer's buying choice, when and where they shop, how they want to be addressed, and what outside circumstances influence their spending patterns all help firms develop more individualized and focused brand and marketing strategies. 

Skipping this stage might result in the waste of several marketing budgets. Laying the groundwork with sound research and insight is much preferable so that companies may find genuine answers to their consumers' concerns and interact with them in the most efficient way. In fact, 73% of businesses with above average customer experiences outperform their rivals financially, according to Forbes. Additionally, organizations that provide a good customer experience generate 5.7 times more income than their rivals that fall short. 

You've done your homework on your target markets, figured out what motivates them to make purchases, and created a marketing strategy. From this point, you have an excellent opportunity to brief everyone engaged in distributing your marketing messages.  

Knowing your design team is on the same page and has all the required consumer insights to understand and develop a marketing strategy that is genuinely built to measure is crucial. Of course, this also applies to any partners or outside vendors, not simply your organization. Less conflict amongst those engaged promotes more productivity and increases the chance of getting things properly the first time. 

It is simpler for firms to defend marketing expenditures made on certain channels and communications once you comprehend why your customers act and react in a particular way. Processes become more efficient, and time spent on speculation decreases. It goes without saying that thorough consumer insight research promotes efficiency and, when done correctly, may lead to greater ROMI and more precise attribution. 

Consumer behavior is changing, and it's changing quickly. Shopping patterns are still being impacted by technological advancements, and less responsive and agile firms quickly fall behind. Consumer insight research may account for some of these changes as patterns change quickly, better preparing businesses for adaptation and thoughtful responses to these behavioral adjustments. 

Cross-selling opportunities and even the discovery of new, untapped markets might result from a better understanding of your customers and a closer examination of them. Consumer intelligence may help determine the need for new product development, which allows for more targeted endeavors. You may launch your products (or services) after working out the bugs and providing your consumers exactly what they want by doing product testing on consumer focus groups. 

Customers like companies who make an effort to comprehend them because it makes them feel appreciated and cherished. A customer's brand experience might include highly useful consumer intelligence. Strong brand trust is developed when consumers feel as though they are participating in a two-way discussion rather than being told what to buy. 

With so many options available to consumers today, businesses that demonstrate empathy for their customers benefit from a significant competitive edge. Furthermore, according to a different PWC study, 42% of consumers would pay extra for a warm, welcome experience, and the qualities of speed, convenience, helpful staff, and pleasant service are the most important to customers, each scoring above 70%. 

TransformHub's AI-Powered Customer Insights 

Any kind of customer insights or market research study requires a substantial amount of work. Because market research asks basic, clear questions and receives simple, direct responses, it is frequently the simpler to handle of the two. However, brands cannot claim the same about customer insights. 

When using customer insights data to make choices, organizations must take into account a variety of complexities brought about by the emotional component of those insights. Different meanings can be derived from word selections and tones. Customers' manner, setting, context, and motivations must all be considered by brands in addition to what they are saying. More companies are turning to AI-powered customer insights for better clarity since context is essential in customer insights. 

Algorithms are used by AI-powered Customer Insights to comb through digital data in real time and transform it into useful and actionable knowledge. AI-powered algorithms examine a vast amount of data to identify significant insights pertinent to your company, saving you the time and effort of manually counting keywords and mentions, sorting through social media conversations, and attempting to understand the motivations behind customer opinions. Yes, it saves time, but more significantly, companies can advance more quickly and confidently because of its scalability and stability.  

TransformHub uses AI to power customer insights and new market research. If you are looking for a tailored market research solution, then contact us now and transform your business to new heights.