20 Market Research Questions you should ask in your Customer Survey?
What are Market Research Questions?
Market research questions is a questionnaire that is answered by customers or potential consumers, to understand their perception and opinion on a given subject, typically about a product or service feasibility, understanding consumer needs and
interests, and pricing concepts.
For example A customer survey on market research of an existing product line that
focuses on the use of specific features in a product line. Based on the
feedback received from this survey, a business can now decide which features to
invest and enhance/improve, and which features relatively
defocus/discontinue. This research, therefore, enables a business to
efficiently allocate resources based on real, data-oriented insights from their
own customers.
A similar set of market research
questions can also be sent to potential consumers of a product, to understand
market absorption capability.
The primary reason you conduct any
customer survey with market research questions is to make effective
decisions that grow your business by selling more to both existing customers,
as well as by acquiring new customers by increasing the effectiveness of your product/service
to better suit their needs. But when you take even a closer look, we’re
making these decisions because the main objective is to become the obvious choice for that ideal customer. For that to happen and to reach market research goals, you need to ask:
What Market Research Questions should I ask in
my Customer Survey?
1.
Who
is our ideal customer?
These are typically demographic market research questions such as gender, education
level, income level or location. You can expand these questions to find
out your customer’s occupation or if your ideal customer is a parent, pet
owner. Don’t skimp on demographics or psychographics. If anything, get really creative with them. You
might consider conducting a survey with nothing but profiling questions that
include where your customers shop, or where they prefer to eat. It’s critical
to know as much as possible about your ideal customer so that you can begin
focusing your marketing decisions around their preferences.
2.
What
do they struggle with?
Another root set of data that market researchers are searching for within their
ideal customer is “what they struggle with.” What are the 5 to 7
frustrations that they are dealing with when it comes to interacting with our
product or service? If you are a golf accessories company and you ask your
ideal customer what frustrates them about their golfing experience, you might
get responses such as “expensive golf clubs getting wet during a rainstorm.”
If you get enough of those responses, you may think about developing a
golf accessory that protects golf clubs in the rain.
3.
What
does your ideal customer really WANT? No
matter how you phrase the market research questions (and there are countless
creative formats) all we really want to know is what our customer will actually
purchase as a solution. What is it that they WANT? Of course, they’re NOT
going to say that they want something that doesn’t exist yet — in the 1960’s
the average person would NOT have known that they wanted a microwave. They
wanted hot food fast. One good way to get at these wants is to give your
respondents some examples of product offerings and combinations and see how
they rate them.
What
sets you apart from your competition?
For example, A survey can be conducted by either Apple or
Samsung to find out how satisfied are the customers with their products and
what are the other features that the consumer prefers from the competitive
brand. Using such data a company can incorporate features based on the demand
and can also benchmark their features which the customers prefer. An Apple vs Samsung Survey Questions template can help to achieve the data required to
compare their products with the competition and strategize accordingly.
What benefits do your customers perceive?
Because we all choose and purchase based on emotion — it’s important to
understand specifically, what emotional benefits our customers receive from our
products and services. The more we connect with our customers on an emotional
level and provide that benefit — the more likely they are to choose us. This is
an ideal place to use matrix questions that rate the degree to which customers
agree or disagree with a variety of “benefit” statements. Here is an
example “I can count on Service X to pull me out of a bind.”
5. Who is currently buying from you? A
very important research metric to track is the “who” is currently buying a
product or a service from you. Deriving a pattern from the current purchasing
population helps you target and market to a similar potential demographic.
This also is an ideal place to use demographic questions extensively but it
also helps if other factors like geographical metrics are tracked. You don’t
want to be ignoring your existing customer base and also be smart and agile in
attracting new business to your brand.
6.
Why
are other people not buying from you? Whilst
it is imperative to know who is your potential customer or map your existing
customer base, it is very important for you to find out who is not buying from
you. This information is important to understand if there are shortcomings in a
product or service and at what milestone do customers drop out of the purchasing process. This also helps to identify in the way your
business is conducted, if additional training is required to make a sale or if
your product or service lacks in quality. By understanding why people are not
buying from you also helps monitor if there is something fundamentally wrong in
what you are offering to the masses.
7.
Who can buy from us in the future?
It is a known fact that is about 10x more expensive to create a new customer
rather than to maintain the one you currently have. That, however, is no reason
to not aim for new business. It is therefore important to have a clear picture
of your potential future business. Targeting potential customers is a mix
of customer demographics that have purchased from you in the past and a mix of
demographics you advertise and market to. It is therefore important to have a
well-rounded product or solution. For example, since your barbecue sauces and
rubs are famous and widely used in the midwest does not mean they cannot be
bought in the Southern States.
8.
Why
do people buy from you? What value or need does it fulfil?
Customers only buy from you because of the perceived value. This value is either
what you depict to potential customers or repeat customers have been privy to
the value of your product or service. Customers also make a purchase because of
the trust they have either in the product or service or the brand or sometimes
even certain individuals. It is therefore important that you understand the
value of your brand and stick to the morals and ethics of delivering high
quality to ensure that the perceived and actual brand quotient is very high.
The other reason why customers purchase from you is if their need is fulfilled
by what you have on offer. This could either be a direct or an indirect need.
9.
What
would make you a perfect brand? No brand can be perfect! But you can surely be close to perfect. What this
means is everything about your product or service is easy to use, intuitive, is
value for money, scalable and ancillary support is impeccable. All of this is
obviously immaterial if the product does not solve a real problem or make life
easier for the customer. Having a very high customer-oriented focus gives your
brand a positive ring and becomes increasingly the go-to brand. You can use a
simple Net Promoter Score question to understand how referrable is your brand
and who are the promoters and detractors of your brand.
10.
What
single aspect about your brand makes it stand out and makes clients trust you? People
buy from you or transact with you mostly when there is a high trust factor.
Very rarely is the purchasing decision purely based on need or ease of access.
To identify and build on that one factor that makes you a preferred buying
choice over your competitors is very important. You can map preferred aspects
of your brand to age, sex, geographical location, financial limitations etc. because each of
those factors can appeal to your brand differently. It is important that you
identify and fortify those aspects of your business. Your brand can also be
preferred because of other factors like personnel, customer service, ethos and
perception amongst peers, consumers and the society alike. Abercrombie &
Fitch was a respected brand but lost a lot of market share and goodwill due to
CEO’s words in one isolated incident. It takes lots of work and time to build
trust but takes none to lose all of it!
11.
What
is the best way to communicate with the kind of people you are trying to reach
out to? What’s
caused the downfall for a lot of brands is the inability to reach out to target
customers despite their product or service being impeccable. Not knowing how to
reach your target audience or potential customer makes all your hard work go
down the drain. For example, if a new life-saving drug is making its way to the
market but medical professionals and doctors don’t know about it or how to
administer it and its benefits, about 20 years of work goes down the drain. You
need to identify the right channels and avenues to reach out to the people that
will consume your product or service.
12.
What
do customers make of your product and/or service line?
There
are a few brands that have one product or service and that rakes in the
customers and money for them because of the nature of the product or service. But
most brands aren’t this way! They would need to branch out into multiple
products or services or very often, a mix of both. It is therefore important to
understand the value of your products and/or services. It is imperative to know
if they solve a problem a customer has or make life easier for the customer or
any other such reason. This helps in consolidating the customer base.
13. What
improvements could be made to your products or services to have a wider reach? A
product or service has never achieved the maximum number of customers it can
get. There always is someone who could use your product or service; maybe not
in the form that it currently is but there is scope to scale. This makes it so
much more important to collect periodic feedback on what additions your current
customer base would like to see in your brand and what can bring in new
customers from your competitors. Chipping away at deadwood features and making
increased usability tweaks increases the adoption and use of your product and
service. For example, A retail store wants to promote the use of their
self-service checkout systems. However, a lot of customers still are not opting
for the system. There can be many reasons why the customer is choosing not
to use the system, like complex operating, no readability, or even slow speed
of the system. To understand why a Usability survey for
self-service checkouts can
be conducted. This will enable the store to gather first-hand information from
the customers and make improvements in the system accordingly.
14.
What
product or service improvements should be made to ensure a superior user
experience? Understanding
service or product stagnation and imitation serve as a perfect segway to this
question. In a “what’s new?” hungry market this is “THE” question to ask. Most
of your customers aren’t looking for out of this world, unimagined,
unforeseeable products or services. They’re looking for simple solutions that
would solve their day to day problems. Your customers will not know what next
big thing you should launch but they will know their frustrations and
struggles. It is essential to frame your survey question right, instead of
asking “what improvements can we make to our product or service?”, ask “what
is your current struggle in your business?”, “what service would improve the
quality of your business?”. Approach from a point of “what can we do for you?”
rather than “what can we do for our service or product?”. The key to bundling
service or product is adding value to your customers’ business. It’s a sure way
to deliver value, build trust and retain a loyal customer base.
Learn More: User Interface Survey Template
15.
What
is the right price to charge?
Pricing a product or service is one of the most important aspects of your business.
Pricing right can decide the revenue, brand perception, profitability and
adoption of the product or service. Pricing too slow has a negative connotation
and may increase in bringing in lower revenue. Pricing high gives the feeling
of being elite and then the profitability and revenue hinges on the factors of
per unit adoption rather than a very high adoption. Pricing just right is a
myth – what someone finds cheap, someone else could find expensive. Where
someone finds your product or service value for money, others may find it
exorbitant. Hence, it is important to collect extensive feedback from your
existing and potential customers about what they think is an ideal price to
play. It is also important to conduct due diligence of competitors to map how
they price versus the service and product features they provide. All of these
factors will help you come close to an “ideal price” to charge.
16.
What
is the vision for the brand? A
vision for a brand dictates the level the brand aspires to be and wants to
scale up to be. Apple is now a preferred phone because the vision was to be an
experience, not a device. The device is the means to ensuring that vision. They
wanted to make the ecosystem so robust that any device you use, that
familiarity and ease of use is standardized but also stonewall easy. Despite
being expensive and facing ridicule during early days due to the ecosystem
being different, they are now a one trillion behemoth, more than the GDP of
some countries, due to having a vision for the brand.
17.
What
is the way to ensure you reach that vision? A
vision is easy to have but tough to follow through on. This is because your
vision may see many roadblocks and may not be the current flavour of the market;
but it is the right thing to stick with it. Innovate in your product and
service lines by taking into consideration as to what your customers want and
need and things they themselves don’t know that they need. Despite enduring
hardships, if you stick to your vision, it is a lot easier to use that as a
launchpad for being an immaculate and preferred brand.
18.
What
should the brand branch out into to avoid stagnation or imitation?
While
launching a product or service, it’s essential to understand where your
competitors stand on the same product type or service line. How soon can they
catch up to you and imitate your service or product? Stagnation, on the other
hand, is what brings the ultimate demise of a brand, product or service line.
With little innovation and competitors saturating the market by imitating your
product or service line, you’ll soon see customer base dwindle. To ensure, your
customers don’t drop out the key question to ask is “What next?”. The best way
to innovate or bundle your product or service is to understand what your
customers struggle with and what value they are looking for. For example, Sony
is known for its PlayStations but competitors like Xbox don’t take long to
catch up to their new products. How Sony does manage to stay ahead of the
market is by constantly branching into new products and services.
19.
What
bundled service or product that you can offer in conjunction with yours? Good
partnerships are hard to come by, strategic ones are even harder. This question
tackles two of your problems, how to offer something new to your customers
and how to reduce competitors in the market. Your bundled service or product though
has to make sense to the use, should complement your brand and cannot be an
operational and logistical nightmare for your brand which then makes it
counter-productive. Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram to consolidate on
social images and short content-rich video, is a strategic initiative to
increase its customer base as well as reduce competition at the same time. The key
to building strong brand partnerships is to ensure your vision and product
values align. Summing up, offering a bundled service or product in partnership
will not only retain the existing customer base but also attract and increase new
customers.
No matter why you are conducting a
survey, you’ll find these 20 questions at the core of “WHY” you want to know.
Remember, your respondents will read or spend time with absolutely ANYTHING as
long as they are at the centre of it. Be sure to keep these 20 questions
in mind when creating your survey and everyone involved will save time,
aggravation and money.
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