Let’s begin by looking at a couple of the basics – first of
all, what exactly IS market research? A definition that I particularly
like is as follows:
“Market research is a systematic, objective collection and analysis
of data about your target market, competition and/or environment with the
goal being increased understanding. Through the market research process
you can take data – a variety of related or non-related facts –
and create useful information to guide your business decisions. Market
research is not an activity conducted only once; it is an ongoing study”
(http://www.onlinewbc.org/docs/market/mk_research_trad.html)
For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to break that definition down into two distinct parts and I’m going to do that by using the term ‘Market’ and ‘Research’. Both elements are required in order to be successful at what you do, and while they compliment each other they are quite different things. By ‘Market’ I mean that you need to understand who your market is – who the customers are, what they want, what they might want, their opinions on what you are already producing, demographic information and so on. This is in large part an internal exercise, and I will focus on how the Internet in all its varied forms can assist you in this. The ‘Research’ element is an external exercise, during which you discover who your competitors are, what they are doing, market trends, current affairs and how other external events may potentially affect you and your business.
In the normal course of events (and by that I mean in the real world, not the chaos of the Internet), you are able to set for yourselves to large extent the criteria which defines your market. You may see that as being people who live in a particular area, purchase a particular product or type of product, or they may be men in the late 30’s without much hair! It is then relatively easy to reach out to your target group and by conducting interviews, watching buying patterns and so on begin to get a much clearer picture of the group and its dynamics. The key point here is that YOU are selecting THEM, not the other way around. (As an aside this also plays a key element in advertising, press, publicity and so on).
The Internet does not however work in this way. Or rather it does, but exactly opposite. People come to you, because they’ve seen an advert with your URL, a link from another webpage, or perhaps via a search engine. It is possible to exert a certain amount of control over this;
Once people find your website, they’ll come and visit. Your key tasks at this point are to ensure that they stay on the site for as long as possible, they become involved with it, start interacting with you, and perhaps mostly importantly they come back in the future on a regular basis. Obviously, in order to do this, there are a variety of key skills that you need to learn, mainly in the field of web design and authorship, but I’ll leave my lecture on writing web pages for another day. At this point I want to begin by looking at the kind of information you can glean from your visitors, and how you can use it to your best advantage.
The statistical data held on your web server can be a perfect mine of information. Depending on how you set it up, and the software you use to interrogate the data (I use a product called NetIntellect from http://www.webmanage.com) you can find out information such as:
This data can also be broken down further, with an emphasis on technical issues, marketing, press/publicity and so on. Consequently, with very little effort on your part you can obtain very detailed information about your users and potential markets. The data can also be used very effectively to provide feedback on the progress of your site; it’s easy to see what your popular pages/products are, those pages which are not visited, the effectiveness of links and your positioning with different search engines. I would make one caution at this point however; you will probably end up with some useful email addresses and personal details on people – do not be tempted to use this to send unsolicited email to your visitors, since it will ensure that they think twice about coming back!
Whatever else the web is or is not, it can be interactive. Your web site has the potential for being a key way in which customers tell you about your products, make suggestions and pass on ideas. Even a simple mailto: form on your site gives people an opportunity of talking to you, but you can do a considerable amount besides this. Why not set up a mailing list that people can join? This allows you to inform them of new pages or products, seek feedback, send out announcements, run competitions and so forth. Alternatively, run a listserv, allowing customers to participate in company activities. Since email is a reasonably fast method of communication you’ll be able to get very quick feedback on ideas, new designers or projects that you may have.
Alternatively, you may decide that you want to go one better, and establish a survey on your website. Such a survey can take almost any form that you can imagine –
These are not difficult to set up; you could either use a ready made CGI script from a website such as http://www.cgi-resources.com or create your own poll using the services of a company such as InfoPoll, located at http://www.infopoll.com
Of course, the inherent problem of market research data of this nature is that you are only obtaining information on a self selecting group, and consequently this has to be taken into account. A random sample of Internet users will probably be male, 20’s, computer literate, reasonably well off and living in Europe or the United States. Consequently, it is useful to have some information about the demography of Internet users, and this can be obtained by visiting sites such as Bluesky at http://www.blueskyinc.com/ This site contains some very interesting data indeed: they suggest that the total number of worldwide online households will grow to almost 67 million from just 23.4 million today. About 29 million, or 43%, of those households will be located outside of North America compared to roughly 32%, or 7.5 million, today. (http://www.blueskyinc.com/statgraf.htm)
GVU run a series of reports on Internet growth and demographics and
their executive survey of April/May this year at
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/#exec
concludes that “the general demographics of the user population
moved closer to the characteristics of the general population with a
continued increase in the proportion of female users (38.7%), a decrease
in the average income ($52,000 in the US), slightly lower level of
educational attainment (50.1% college or more), and a diversification of
occupations away from the domination of computer and education-related
fields. This new diversity among WWW users is brought about by a group of
new users (less than a year on the Net) that is mostly female (51.7%) and
more likely to be under 20 or over 50 years old than in their middle
years. This process is not yet as noticeable in Europe where the shape of
the age profile curve for this year is almost identical to the general
profile in 1994.”
Jupiter Communications are also predicting that online shopping in
France, Germany and the UK will increase 35 - 40 percent over the next
five years (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?service=view_survey&survey_number=1038&rel=no)
Finally, if you want to know how many people are currently using the
Internet Jupiter Communications estimate that the figure for September of
this year is 148 million worldwide. (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html)
with 7.2 million of those based in Great Britain (though that figure is
only accurate to December last year).
Let us now turn briefly to have a look at your competition what are they doing, who is visiting them, how many people link into their services and so on. A very useful resource that can be used here is an Intelligent Agent called Alexa, which is available from http://www.alexa.com. Basically, it is a piece of software that you download onto your machine and when youre using the Internet it is constantly talking to its home base to find out information about the site that you are visiting. You can use it to find out how many other Alexa users visit the site in question, who the site is registered to, how large the site is and how often it is updated. Admittedly, this is not indepth information, and you could get most of it from other sources, but its a quick and easy start. Interestingly, you can also view statistics of other Alexa viewers (anonymously, of course), to see who likes and dislikes a site. This can be very useful information when you are planning your own, of course! Finally, you can also use Alexa to give you an indication of where people go to when they leave that particular site, so it is reasonably easy to build up a picture of the browsing habits of their users.
Of course, you can go further than that, and visit a few search engines yourself to see who is linking to a site AltaVista for example has a useful switch called link:<site name> which allows you to see how many people are linking to a particular site. This again can prove to be a useful basis for obtaining valuable information about your competitors how seriously they take the Internet, and how seriously they are taken by other people.
Moving onto the second section of my talk, Id like to focus on useful web resources that you can make use of in order to do market research in different areas so now were moving onto the research element of the equation. I have concentrated on sources on the Internet which can be used for desk research; although there have been some attempts to use email on the web for conducting primary market research this use is still in its infancy. It will require a great deal of care and consideration before this is a viable data collection method. There is a paper on this subject available on the SGA web site http://www.sga.co.uk/ which is by Pete Comley, 'The Use of the Internet as a Data Collection Method' and it describes the results of one of the first commercial surveys to be conducted in the UK over the Internet.
Within the area of desk research the Internet has both strengths and weaknesses and it is understanding this which is key to the profitable use of this resource. The Internet is very high in the serendipity factor with the most unexpected subjects receiving good coverage and equally surprising omissions. This means that it is always worth a quick look but if you don't find a useful site fairly quickly it may well be more effective to turn to more traditional resources.
While the points included here are concentrated on the World Wide Web it is worth remembering that there are other parts of the Internet which can be useful sources of information. Mailing lists and newsgroups enable quick and easy communication between peer groups and even if your search has been fruitless using the web you may find posting your question will get results.
Market size figures not usually available
Penetration figures and demographics not usually available
Strong US bias
Patchy coverage
Often there is lack of authority
Nobody is in control which causes lack of consistency
Lots of student and recreational sites with little useful content
Access is cheap and information is often free
Some subjects very well covered
Good for background information
Speed of obtaining information
Wide geographic scope
Rapidly increasing coverage
More companies adding own web pages
These are the key to using the Internet for any kind of research. Bookmarks are useful for frequently accessed sites but spending large amounts of time compiling an extensive collection of bookmarks can be counterproductive. The Internet changes so fast that keeping your bookmarks current is like painting the Forth Bridge, a never-ending task, so that it seems to me to be more sensible to use the resources somebody else has produced.
I often use this for new subject areas before I have bookmarks set up, it coverage is excellent so it is good for broad searching and for offbeat subjects but you can be overwhelmed by too many hits. There is a strong US bias but you can restrict your search to domain:uk, Altavista allows some structured searching, searchcapabilities are still fairly primitive compared to online and CD ROM systems but this search engine allows a more sophisticated search than most of the other engines currently available..
Metaplus is a listing or launchpad of sites by subject area, it is pretty good if it covers your subject area.
Allows local search in UK, France, Germany or Europe sites it gives percentage to the relevance ranking which can also be useful.
This search engine sets up custom folders which categorise your search results and enable you to refine your search more easily.
Covers Europe and also allows search by individual country, the elimination of US material can be useful but I find the coverage has a very academic bias with virtually no commercial sites included.
This is the old staple and it is still a useful source, it is structured into subject areas but also allows keyword searching across categories, as always there is a strong US bias.
This is a version of Yahoo which allows searches to be restricted to sites based in UK and Ireland only. Very useful for restricting hits to relevant areas.
Image Surfer, this is part of Yahoo and allows searching for images by keyword. Coverage is not very comprehensive but it is worth a try, I found it most useful when I wanted typical photographs of capital cities.
Not bad, gives percentage to the relevance ranking which can be useful.
Structured subject listings or search by keyword, also allows search for image or sounds.
Links to over 300 search engines, is very useful for the more obscure subjects.
US bias but quite wide coverage, gives percentage relevance rankings.
FTP site locator, very useful for finding company sites.
Multi search engine, it uses several other search engines at the same time using your keywords.
Use for searching newsgroups.
List of UK sites, is not at all comprehensive but does allow a quick way to check if UK information is available.
A launch pad for UK sites, this had a leisure and recreational bias.
There are business telephone directories available on the Internet and a
smaller selection of residential directories also. These are the online
equivalent to the yellow pages or the national telephone books. Some of
the most obscure countries are available but there are also surprising
gaps so you need to check for the specific country required.
Some have English versions of the search screen but many are only in the
original language and the level of searching and ease of use varies
considerably. The coverage of the lists below overlap to a large extent
but not identical so it is worth searching around.
UK business telephone directory (yellow pages) searchable by; location, subject category or company name, results are listed alphabetically 10 to a page with a random start letter.
List of links to telephone directories mostly business (yellow pages) available on the Internet, coverage is worldwide and some of the most surprising countries are available. Search capabilities are variable as is English language availability.
List of links to European telephone directories mostly business (yellow pages) available on the Internet. Search capabilities are variable as is English language availability.
List of links to telephone directories mostly business (yellow pages) available on the Internet, coverage is worldwide and some of the most surprising countries are available. Search capabilities are variable as is English language availability.
World telephone numbering guide to country and area codes, this site also offers up to date information regarding major telephone numbering system changes worldwide.
Don't expect to find much free market research data on the Internet, it is labour intensive and expensive to product and no company whose business is selling data can afford to give it away free. However many of the market research publishers now have web pages so that the Internet can be a good place for checking availability of published research and a lot of them will offer free samples from some of their more recent reports.
MAID http://www.maid-plc.com/
MAID is a host or supplier rather than a publisher, it therefore offers
access to a very wide range of material worldwide but the subscription
charges are very high indeed.
Mintel http://www.mintel.co.uk/
Mintel is well known for their published market research reports, they
specialize in the UK consumer and retail markets and this site lists their
available reports, with ordering and pricing information.
Euromonitor http://www.euromonitor.com/index.html
Euromonitor is a well established and respected market research publisher,
this site lists their available reports, with ordering and pricing
information.
Datamonitor http://www.datamonitor.com/
Datamonitor is a well established and respected market research publisher,
this site lists their available reports, with ordering and pricing
information
Keynote http://www.keynote.co.uk/
Keynote is a well established and respected market research publisher
whose reports cover a wide variety of UK product sectors, this site lists
their available reports, with ordering and pricing information.
Romtec http://www.romtec.co.uk
Publisher of market research, specifically in the IT area
Juniper Communications http://www.jup.com/
Juniper Communications is a market research publisher which specialises in
technology and especially in research about the internet and online
markets.
Killen http://killen.com
Market research publisher whose subject specialities include, IT, banking
and financial services and telecomms.
PR Guide http://www.prgguide.com/reports/
Market research publisher covering a wide range of subject areas
including; IT, internet, telecomms, healthcare, financial services and
industrial sectors.
Frost and Sullivan http://www.frost.com
Frost and Sullivan are a very well known company who do consultancy and
also publish market research, they cover aall the major business to
business sectors and conduct research in the Asia/Pacific area as well as
Europe.
Coopers and Lybrand http://www.coopers.co.uk/
Coopers and Lybrand site, this site has a nicely organised launch pad page
which lists 450 useful sites.
SGA http://www.sga.co.uk/
SGA do commissioned research rather than published reports but this site
is interesting for two reasons. Firstly SGA have an online costing option
which allows you to fill in your requirements then you are emailed with a
quote for your project, I don't know how well this works but it is an
interesting development. Secondly, on their site is posted an article by
Pete Comley, 'The Use of the Internet as a Data Collection Method' which
describes the results of one of the first commercial surveys to be
conducted in the UK over the Internet.
Sofres http://www.sofres.com/
Sofres worldwide market research group web site, under development still
at early stage.
Taylor Nelson http://www.tnagb.com/
Taylor Nelson AGB web site, this company has just completed a merger with
Sofres.
CM&R http://www.cmrgroup.com/
CM&R Consultancy Group web page.
MORI http://www.mori.com/
MORI is best known for their election coverage but their main business is
commissioned research for industry, this home page is their Internet
showcase.
Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence Ltd http://www.pbirg.com/
Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence Ltd, research and consultancy
company.
AMSO http://www.amso.co.uk/
AMSO is the trade association for the major UK market research companies
this is a good site for market research buyers to check before
commissioning work.
ESOMAR http://www.esomar.nl/
ESOMAR is the European professional body for market research companies
this is a good site for market research buyers to check before
commissioning work from overseas agencies.
Zarden http://zarden.com/
List of market research companies in USA
ASI http://www.asiresearch.com/mri/mri.htm
ASI is a US market research company
Marketing Week http://www.news-review.co.uk/mw0001/mres.html
Marketing Week's online market research contact directory
http://www.news-review.co.uk/mw0001/news.html
Marketing Week's online news section
http://blueskyinc.com/ Site contains statistics on internet users and usage
http://www.geoweb.co.uk/
Business Geographic, this is the web site which produces geographic and
other cluster analysis based on the UK census data, postcode data, Acorn
etc.
http://www.alcd.soton.ac.uk/cass/newsletter1.html
Centre for Applied Social Surveys, this is a UK academic/government
initiative which aims to set up a question bank , it is still under
development and is not updated very frequently at present.
http://www.knauffiberglass.com/commons.html
Home site for a construction company this gives some very up to date
market statistics on the construction industry and forecasts.
http://www.usembassy.org.uk/ukfcsmrr.html
http://www.worldopinion.com/home.taf
The pharmaceutical and medical areas are well represented on the
Internet as with most subject areas market research reports are not freely
available but there is an enormous wealth of background material. Most of
the major drug manufacturers have web sites which include annual reports
and information on their products, also many of the special interest
groups for sufferers of various complaints have an active Internet
presence.
You can use one of the search engines to find information on specific
companies, drugs or diseases and there are also some very good general
sites (almost all US based), these are the ones I find most useful.
http://www.pslgroup.com/
This is the Doctors Guide to the Internet (Patient version), organised by
disease this source is aimed at the intelligent layman, it contains good
general articles, drug information, discussion groups and related site
lists.
http://www.centerwatch.com/
This site includes a listing of drug therapies which are newly approved by
the US Food and Drink Administration, there is a short article on each of
the drugs listed. It also has lists of clinical trials currently running.
http://www.phrma.org/webdb/help.htm
Produced by PhRMA the association of America's pharmaceutical companies
this lists drugs currently under development searchable by disease,
indication or drug.
http://www.nicl.com/
Home page of NICL Laboratories, this is a US hospital services company and
their page contains clinical laboratories information and links.
http://www.medscape.com/
This site gives access to Medline which contains abstracts for 8 million
medical references. You do need to subscribe in order to use this service
but subscription is currently free and requires no time lag for setup.
Once you have subscribed you can search Medline or the full text sections
of the site and you also get emailed with news of updates. The searching
is obviously much more primitive than is available with paid services but
for a light or occasional user this is a very useful service.
http://www.ccm.lsumc.edu/bugbytes/
A biweekly online journal containing articles about infectious diseases,
this is produced by the Infectious Disease Section of the Louisiana State
University Medical Center.
http://www.asge.org/
The site of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy
http://www.bhia.org/
The British Healthcare Internet Association has been set up to promote the
use of the internet in the UK to assist patient's access to information
sources.
http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov/
Site which contains masses of information and links relating to cancer and
its treatment.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
The National Library of Medicine site which offers access to the famous
Medline database.
http://www.gretmar.com/webdoctor/home.html
Webdoctor, this site is US based and offers a medical virtual library, it
is aimed at physicians and produced by them also.
http://www.biomednet.com
Site containing good data and links in the biomedical area.
http://www.omni.ac.uk
UK gateway to biomedical resources.
This is an area where Internet coverage is patchy and it is often easier
to search for a specific subset within the retail area rather than use the
broad category itself. Individual companies also vary in their level of
Internet visibility, some are very net aware, Tesco for example are
offering some sales services via the Internet, while others have no net
presence at all. One thing to watch out for is that some of the retail
company sites can be very slow to download due to containing many pictures
of their products.
As always market research statistics on the retail industry are not
available free on the Internet but listed below are some of the sites I
find most useful.
http://www.businesspark.demon.co.uk
UK Business Park, Retail Section, This has one or two line abstracts of
current news stories in this sector, stories go back for one year and you
can search by company name.
http://www.mintel.co.uk/
Alphabetical list of Mintel reports available in the retail sector, you
can see section headings of report and ordering details.
http://www.rbrldn.demon.co.uk/
Retail Banking Research Ltd, this is a research and consultancy company
who specialise in banking technology and payment systems across western
and eastern Europe.
http://www.sjb.co.uk/index.html
Publishers of the Customer Loyalty Report and reports on smart cards and
biometrics, their reports can be ordered via the net.
http://www.eagle.co.uk/retail.html
This launchpad links to various home shopping services available over the
Internet.
http://www.mheurope.co.uk
Management Horizons Europe, a consultancy specialising in corporate
strategy for the retail industry.
http://www.ac.com/aboutus/products/retail/au_frretail_1.html
Andersen Consulting retail division.
http://www.ey.com/consumer/default.htm
Ernst and Young retail and consumer division.
http://www.naa.org/marketscope/analysis/retail/
Market Horizens this links to an article on the retail sector which iself
includes some useful links
http://www.listbroker.com
This is a site of a listbroker who supplies lists of all types; consumer,
business to business, mostly in the UK but there are some overseas. All
list details including prices available on this site.
http://www.ssisamples.com/ssi.x2o$ssi_gen.home
US company who provide sample lists with and without telephone numbers
specifically targetted at MR companies.
http://europa.eu.int/en/comm/eurostat/serven/part6/6theme.htm
Site of Eurostat which is the EEC statistical organisation
gopher://gopher.undp.org:70/11/ungophers/popin/wdtrends
United Nations World Population Figures
http://www.ons.gov.uk/
UK Office for National Statistics
http://www.emap.com/ons/links.htm
Launch pad page with list of useful CSO statistical data links
http://www.oanda.com/cgi-bin/ncc
164 currency converter
http://www.devon-cc.gov.uk/dris/economic/retprice
Retail Price Index information, this Devon public library service has some
Suprisingly useful links.
http://stats.bls.gov/
US site of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this contains lots of
statistical material on the American economy and labor force.
http://www.insee.fr/va/keyfigur/index.htm
French National Statistics Organisation.
http://www.statistik-bund.de/e_home.htm
German National Statistics Organisation.
http://petra.istat.it/
Italian National Statistics Organisation.
http://www.polishbusiness.com/_news/OCT/1006.htm
Statistics on various Polish sectors
http://www.stat.fi/tk/home.html
Statistics on Finland
http://www.ons.gov.uk/
UK Office of National Statistics
http://www.businesspark.demon.co.uk
UK business park, one years worth of business news items condensed to one
or two line abstracts, news is arranged by industry sector but is also
searchable by company name.
http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Web site of the Times Newspaper including some archived material, you need
to subscribe to gain access to this site but currently subscription is
free.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/login.html
Web site of the Telegraph Newspaper including some archived material, you
need to subscribe to gain access to this site but currently subscription
is free.
http://www.pr-wire.com/
PRN News Wire is a company which specialises in electronic distribution of
full text news to the media and finance industries. Available free on this
website is one years worth of brief news abstracts searchable by industry
or company name, press releases from participating companies are also
available.
http://www.briefing.reuters.com/
Commercial database of news items worldwide taken from newspapers and
periodicals. Paid subscription required, and quite expensive.
http://www.dbeuro.com/
Dun and Bradstreet European Company information.
http://www.britishexports.com/
Kompass UK company directory.
http://www.thomasregister.com/index.html
155000 US and Canadian manufacturing companies, searching is primitive,
access is free but you do need to register.
http://www.tdc.org.hk/main/
Hong Kong Trade Development Council home page, information on Hong Kong,
China and the rest of Asia.
http://wwwodci.gov/cia/publications/nsolo/wfb-all.htm
http://www.dis.strath.ac.uk/business/index.html
http://www.za.uni-koeln.de/data/en/eurobarometer/
http://europa.eu.int/en/comm/eurostat/press/index.htm
http://lucas.dfl.doc.ca/shantnu/links/gov/eugov.html
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pub/html/index.html
http://www.thebiz.co.uk/gennoi.htm
http://www.the-stationery-office.co.uk/
http://www.businesspark.demon.co.uk
UK Business Park, Automotive Section, This has one or two line abstracts
of current news stories in this sector, stories go back for one year and
you can search by company name
http://www.automotive.co.uk/fleetnews/START.HTM
http://www.bbi..co.uk/vehicle/info
http://www.ita.doc.gov/industry/basic/
http://info.anu.edu.au/elisa/elibrary/subjects/EastAsia/Gen/bus.html
http://www.chinabig.com/cbig/home.html?Language=2
http://www.voicendata.com
Indian telecomms
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/
http://www.mbendi.co.za/index.htm
Lots of useful and interesting information on Africa, including some
company directory type information
http://www.blueskyinc.com/webpop.htm
http://www.idcresearch.com
MR publisher specialising in IT and computer technology sometimes gives
top line results on new studies.
http://www.thedirectory.org/rqzyotqm.htm
Worldwide list of all Internet Providers, including telephone numbers
http://www.romtec.co.uk
MR publisher specialising in IT and computer technology.
http://frame1.cerbernet.co.uk/haywire/ukinternet.html
http://www.redsquare.co.uk/survey/links.htm
This is, of course, just a small selection of the potential resources available to market researchers, and it does depend very much on the subject area that interests you. However, just by taking a few example subjects it is quite easy to demonstrate that there is a huge wealth of detail available to you, if you know where to look for it.
There is no doubt in my mind at least, that the Internet is going to become an indispensable tool for the market researcher if indeed it has not already become one.