Ace your Market Research Assessment Like a Pro!

A market analysis can be defined as learning who the potential customers of the business and market being analysed are, what the shopping and buying habits of those customers are, how much they can pay or will pay, who the competitors are, and what have been their successes and challenges.

Carrying out market research might sound overly formal and daunting, however, do not be scared. As a market research student or professional, it is important for you to write a market research assessment from time to time, but not that complex.

Market research is among the key parts of any business strategy. Conducted market research can help minimise risk if it is used to devise an effective market strategy and understand market conditions and potential customers well. An effective market analysis or research will help you develop a great market research assessment.

To help you guide through your journey of completing your market research assignment, our market research experts have rounded up a list of seven market analysis steps to make it everything easy for you. You should begin with determining the purpose and the main goal of your research study and understanding all aspects of it, look at the outlook of the industry that you are picking up, gather as much additional data as you can, carefully analyse your findings and put all your findings into action.

Here’s all that you must include in your market research assessment:

1. Industry outlook and description: This should include detailed statistics and additional information that describes the chosen industry including the trends in it, growth rate, size and outlook.
2. Description of the target market: In this section, you should define who your target customer or client is. You should include in this section the demographics of the target market or group including their lifestyle preferences, income level, gender and age. The size of the target market, motivations of the target group, the purchase potential, and how you intend to reach the target market.
3. Market analysis findings: In this section, you should include the findings of your market research and all the factors that your initial investigation into the industry or market helped you understand. It should present supporting statistics and details of your analysis process in the appendix.
4. Competitive Analysis: This is where you should define your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and the potential obstacles that may prevent you from making an entry into the market.

Here are a few tips you must follow if you want to develop an effective market research assessment:

1. Be the customer: Put yourself in a place of your target customer to understand the opportunity within your target market, the issues that need to be resolved, competitor strategies, and different ways in which you can resolve the identified issues.
2. Use the internet: This will help you gain extensive raw data and build up your assessment.
3. Be concise: Only include the most important data in your market research assessment and put statistics and support documentation in the appendix.
4. Relate back to your business: relate back all the data you incorporate in your research to the chosen business, industry, product or service.