Market Research & Consulting: The Quintessential Success Formula for the Technology Sector
Market research has been considered an underwhelming activity often ignored by business enterprises. It is perceived as a cost incurring service with limited growth benefits for the companies. Many companies especially SMEs and start-ups are reluctant to allocate a share to market research in their annual budgets. However, in the current competitive scenario to stay relevant, companies must be able to differentiate themselves from the flock. Market research is the necessary enabler which helps the companies identify their differentiating factors to stay ahead of the competition.
In the technology vertical, market research is often centered around gathering and analyzing statistical data related to software products, solutions, and services. Similar to other industries, in the technology industry too, market research is targeted at analyzing customers’ understanding, needs and wants and the company’s potential to meet their requirements. In this process, it collects data about the customers, marketing strategy, competitors, and other forces in the technology space. However, the one aspect which differentiates technology companies from companies in other industries is their quest for innovation. Given the short lifecycle of different technologies, they need to respond quickly to changes in competition, market demands, and advances in engineering. Thus continuous access to market data carries an urgency not found in other sectors. Market research comes into the foray in such a scenario. Following are some of the key areas where tech firms can leverage the use of market research services.
New Product and Service Development: The tech world is evolving rapidly with the launch of new software products and applications every now and then. There often arise situations wherein companies plan to launch related or similar offerings to those launched by their competitors. Market research helps in substantiating whether there is a demand for these offerings among the customers and whether the new launch will be a success. This often helps in the right decision making and substantial cost saving for companies. For instance, Mixpanel, a user analytics firm, realized that it was building and launching products faster than its interface could handle. It conducted a market research on its 1,000 users to ultimately find out that there was a problem with its UX. By customer involvement and right market research initiatives, it was able to redesign the UX to attain long-term scalability and success of the product.
Understanding Competitors: Competitive landscaping and benchmarking are the necessary components of market research services. They help the company to assess marketing networks, customer strategy, product portfolio, and partner network of the competitors. It ultimately helps them identify the areas where they are lagging and understand their market positioning and capabilities with respect to their competitors.
Market Forecasting: Market forecasting is a potent tool in the technology industry which helps the companies devise their course of action for a particular technology. Technology research firms like Gartner, Forrester, and IDC regularly track the hot and upcoming technologies and publish annual reports with forecasts up to 5 years, which helps the C-level executives of technology companies in making informed decisions pertaining to those technologies.
New Market Entry & Geographic Expansion: After gaining a stronghold in its own territory, geographic expansion is the aspiration of every tech firm for a sustainable growth in the long run. Market research helps the companies to assess myriad of aspects responsible for geographic expansion such as potential market size, competitive landscape, partner ecosystem, political, social, economic, & legal environment. It also helps them identify the possible market entry barriers and challenges for the firms. Recently, Pinterest conducted market research for expansion in India with a focus to tap the South and Southeast Asian markets. Through the research, it realized that localization is the key to success in this region. Accordingly, it introduced the Hindi language on its platform and started recommending more “personal” and “useful” ideas like local recipes to users in India.
Strategic Decision Making: The insights generated through market research help solidify strategic decisions of senior leadership in tech firms. These aid in achieving exceptional results against their mission-critical priorities through advice on digital acceleration, enterprise enablement, cost optimization, and security & risk management. Research done in the right direction also helps the strategic decision makers make decisions about the organic and inorganic growth of the organization like acquisitions, and new partnerships and alliances.
As the testimony of how critical market research is for tech companies, Research Now and Lawless Research surveyed 300 US technology company professionals who had conducted or commissioned a market research survey in the past 12 months. The majority of individuals surveyed (83%) said market research derives insights that are critical to their business success. Eight out of 10 companies said market research had led to greater levels of customer satisfaction and better strategic decisions. By leveraging our research processes and proprietary methodologies we at Grazitti generate bankable insights, guidance, and solutions which help the technology firms to gain competitive advantage, operate more efficiently, reduce risk, drive results, and achieve success.
Here is the portfolio of our market research and consulting services and an illustration of our capabilities.