My name is Dr. Carla Harris and I'll be guiding you through this module. In this video, we're going to talk about primary market research. What is primary market research? How to plan and conduct it. And how to analyze the results from your primary market research. Going through all of these steps will really help inform you about the problem you're trying to solve, and whether the problem in fact exists. And if so, is it a migraine or just a bit of a headache. Later on in the module, we'll learn more about customer personas and why they are a fundamental part of design strategy, look at some real life examples, and finish off by exploring problem definition statements. And to do all of this, we'll be doing so in a business setting starting with, you guessed it, primary market research. Let's get started. Primary market research is exactly what its name suggests, going out and talking to potential or actual customers and consumers. Primary market research allows you and your enterprise to validate its assumptions and learn more about customer's needs, wants, and limitations. And most importantly, it allows the enterprise to tailor its product or service to more accurately meet the needs of its customers and consumers. In other words, it allows you to make sure you're solving the actual problem. So let's start with planning. Properly planning your primary market research is fundamental to garnering tangible and useful data. In planning your primary market research, you want to make sure that you're collecting information from your specific market segments and validating specific functions, products, or services of your business. The first step in planning are trying to answer. Are you looking to find out about the usability of your website, if your logo is visually appealing, or how much a customer is willing to spend on your product or service, for example. The next step is to do some initial background research on your topic or question. Being informed about what information is already out there will assist you in answering some of the questions that you are asking. This research should help you distill or sharpen your topic question. Lastly, develop a research hypothesis statement. A hypothesis statement is typically an educated guess as to the relationship between factors. It serves as the basis for an experiment to test whether the relationship holds true. The hypothesis statement is formed from your background research and assumptions. Primary market research can be conducted by a few different methods: surveys and questionnaires, online by post or in person, focus groups either in person or via video-conference, and interviews either face to face, by telephone, or again, video-conference. Whether you use one, some, or all of these methods will depend on the information that you want to collect and the outcomes you're after, but more about that soon. These different methods outlined above will result in the collection of quantitative or qualitative data. Let's take a look at the difference between the two. Quantitative research results in data that can be expressed as a number or can be quantified. For instance, the number of hours it takes someone to complete a certain task at work or ranking on a scale of 1-10 how difficult it is to complete a particular task. Quantitative data is best gathered through surveys or rigid interviews. Quantitative questions generally use closed questions, check boxes, and scales to measure and objectively compare results. Quantitative research methods allow you to identify broad trends and their magnitude within the data that you can then act on. Qualitative research, on the other hand, cannot be expressed as a number and often asks for more detail. The most common examples are open text question types where respondents put their answers in their own words. This type of research is usually used in conjunction with quantitative question types as this data is more difficult to analyze, but provides specific examples and deep insights. Your approach to data collection needs to align with your hypothesis statement. Remember, that's your educated guest. Now let's talk about the different ways to collect the data we are after. As I mentioned earlier, primary market research can be conducted by a few different methods including surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Let's take a bit of a closer look at each of these. Surveys are perhaps the most widely used tool for gathering research data. Surveys can be as simple as a star rating like you see on an app that pops up, that can be someone with a clipboard waving you down in the street to ask you a few questions that you generally avoid, or those seemingly never ending online multiple choice monstrosities. Surveys should generally be short and to the point. The longer the survey, the more frustrated the recipient will become, and the lower the quality the feedback will be. And you'll also get a lower survey completion rate which nobody wants. Surveys should be used if you want to measure something objectively or you have something specific to measure. You can collect both quantitative and qualitative data through surveys. Focus groups involve gathering people together in a room or virtually using video conference tools. Depending on the purpose of the focus group, the participants will either be of one customer persona or a mix of personas. Focus groups are a great way of exploring and gathering qualitative data and taking a deep dive into exploring whether the problem you're trying to solve in fact exists. Generally, questions are open ended and participant conversation bounces off one another. It's essential to have a good moderator to ensure that each person gets to participate, that all of the questions get worked through, and that the cohort doesn't fall into group-think mentality. Interviews are similar to focus groups but generally occur one on one. Depending on the skill of the interviewer and the information being gathered, interviews can be rigid and structured, or free flowing conversation about the topics at hand. Now, let's look at analyzing the data you've collected. The most important aspect of primary market research is, of course, acting on it. While you may not be out to change everything immediately, you can make incremental improvements. Now, you have gathered all of this raw data and if it's the first time you've conducted primary market research, you are probably getting a little overwhelmed with all the results. The first step is to review the data. Make sure you have a robust framework for deciding what to do with incomplete responses, data entry errors, or questionable responses. For example, do you just exclude a single question response or disregard the entire respondent entirely? These are questions that you'll need to have an answer to before you get started. You'll also need to ensure you apply these decisions consistently so that your results are valid. Once the data is in a usable format, you can now commence your data analysis. Use the data you have gathered to validate or invalidate your hypothesis statement. You can even go further and make evidence-based forecasts for further questions. It would even be a good idea to note additional learnings that have come out of the primary market research, ones that didn't necessarily fit the original hypothesis question. This is a good way of starting the next round of your primary market research. What questions have come out of this current primary research round? By now, you should have a good understanding of what primary market research is, how to plan and conduct it, and how to analyze the results of primary market research in a business setting. After going through this process a few times, you should have a very good idea whether or not you have a problem to solve. And if you do, whether you're solving a little headache or a massive migraine. Next up, we'll look at how to identify your customers and develop customer personas. Customer personas are a key component of design strategy. They help you to really understand the problem and identify the right solution for your customers. See you then.
