How Much Does Market Research Cost?

By Author: Philomath Research
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Annual market research is like ploughing the field before planting. It prepares you for upcoming seasons and changes so that your farmland stays fertile, and you can have a successful harvest. You need quality research to make go-to-market decisions, as these critical components build your line-up of products, as well as identify opportunities and threats to your business overall – it’s essentially an all-in-one strategy for ensuring you stay competitive and profitable. However, if the agency you choose does not produce high quality data that’s relevant and timely, then much of the work may be for naught since many relies on research to help make key decisions about what to offer customers (along with pricing), especially if you’re still in start-up phase.

Approximately how much custom market research cost?
Nailing down an accurate price estimate for market research can be intimidating, because there is no one-size-fits all model that accommodates every company or every project. The costs of market research vary based on numerous factors, including what you want to accomplish, who will be involved, time ...
... it takes to collect data, and the type of methodology or technology you implement in the process. Some methodologies are simpler and less costly than others, but they might not provide as much value to you.

There are two main classifications of tertiary data that will help your business make informed decisions. Secondary Research are off-the-shelf reports that are readily available, free or often a low price point and available to everyone. Secondary Research is ideal for providing you with an overview on the market and consumer behavior over the past month or in the past decade for example. Primary Research can be obtained in several ways through interviews, online surveys, focus groups and telephone poles; it’s more high-level research which is often divided up into several categories: Conventional, Phone, Online and Virtual as well as being further segmented into Demographics & Psychographics by gender, age range etc. It’s generally more detailed but costs more than secondary research due to a small sample size and longer lead time required to finalize findings based on a well-researched question set by your company’s marketing department (usually there are 20 to 30 questions).

There are many factors that contribute to the cost of a market research project, and it will be different from company to company. Please consult with your consultant for the exact amount, but in general expect to spend around $15000 – $25000 for a qualitative or quantitative custom market research project. *For any market research projects completed by a specialist firm within your industry niche, you can plan on spending at least $30000 as this is primarily due to the cumulative value-add their team brings to the table with the proper interpretation of data, ability to save time up front, and enhanced design choices based on prior industry experiences.

You can also benefit from combining several of our services together to maximize your results and get tailored insights that will help you succeed in your industry. For example, if you want to conduct research but are having a hard time getting quality participants, we can help with quality sourcing, so you don’t have to sift through unreliable sources or low-quality participants. Or if you need research to be carried out via various channels like phone or online surveys, or even an experimental design method such as A/B testing, then we can take care of all these things too as part of one complete package!

Factors that influence Market Research cost
To calculate research costs, consider these key variables impacting project costs:

Methodology Used (Primary vs. Secondary and Qualitative vs. Quantitative)

Sample Size

Incidence

Survey Length

Companies will conduct focus groups and surveys to measure a variety of things including pricing in cases where the company is worried a particular price point may have negative connotations. An example of this could be if your organization had been known for providing poor service to clients.

When it comes to gaining reliable findings and data, you want to make sure that you aren’t jumping to any solid conclusions too soon. It’s important to get an accurate idea of the market size to inform your plans and strategy. Depending on what kinds of information you seek (qualitative or quantitative), it’s crucial that you limit your sample size to around 5-10 participants for each group or demographic that you’re interested in evaluating. As far as a larger audience goes, remember that 100 contractors are going to yield very different results from 1,000 DIYers!

Incidence is a term used to describe how the individuals you’ve identified to participate in your study fit those pre-set requirements, that is, how many of them meet those pre-set criteria. Market research projects can sometimes be more costly depending on how difficult it is to find people who match your specified target audience. It is therefore recommended to be as clear about what characteristics make an individual eligible for your study up front, as this will also give you better control over costs and help you avoid nasty surprises down the line. Additionally, writing out a plan with exact targets will also allow you to keep track of the success or failure of your efforts in finding qualified respondents and this will eventually contribute towards implementing or dropping some ideas or techniques. You should also always have a rough idea of how many questions you would need to ask as this will impact what insurance policies are required too.

Setting your Market Research budget
The best way to create a detailed budget for your upcoming market research project is by consulting with the company who will be collecting your research. They can give you an estimate on how much your research project will cost, based on what services you require, and any variables related to your objectives or other requirements specific to your industry.

Following are the stages that determine the cost of your research project:

Design and scope of the project

Design of the questionnaire

How to program the questionnaire

Respondent sampling and fielding

Cleaning up data

Tabulating and coding the data

Providing insight and recommendations through reporting and analysis.

What is the value of Market Research?
Quality custom market research is critical for your company, but like most investments it requires you to pay up. However, in this case it will allow you to take advantage of a heap of highly customized data which will inform you about customer opinions and feedback on certain brands and their usability. This platform provides vital analytics information that gives insight into market sizing, usage statistics, behaviour analysis and much more so that departments within your organization may make educated predictions to properly guide themselves in the right direction.

We want to remind you again about how important it is for you, as an entrepreneur, to make sure that you anticipate what’s going to be needed from the team by using primary market research. It can really help take care of all the little details that, when overlooked, could mean losing a lot in terms of customers. Maybe your business has been expanding lately and there have been many new opportunities you’ve been considering in recent months. However, there are so many ways these decisions could affect your company’s bottom line financially, and this is why learning and adapting based on prior experiences with these products or services (internal and external test marketing) is so vital during this stage of product development. This kind of knowledge will help with future planning should you decide to expand into different markets. Your profit margins could end up suffering otherwise.

These aren’t the types of coups that one can approach without first compiling a solid base of objective data. Without first developing strategies and spending money on more options than you know what to do with, you risk pouring thousands or even millions of dollars into new strategies or products that don’t appeal to the target audience, don’t accommodate path to purchase behaviours or fail to account for key market influences. Be particularly careful when it comes down to spending money on either planning a coup or carrying out one because this could be what does your business in specifically if you’re not careful about the facts surrounding it.

Selecting the right firm for your Market Research
At Philomath Research, our team of expert analysts has several years of experience within the building products industry specifically and can help you design a tailored research initiative that provides top-of-the-line data backed by high quality insight that can be put right to use as soon as it’s in your hands.

Visit us at www.philomathresearch.com for further queries.