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So Much Data to Collect |
Written by charen smith
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
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You just can't get away from it. This is the true backbone of any strong marketing department, and the ones who don't bother with it are going to be the people who fail to connect with their target markets. I'm referring to market research. And you can't just do it once, either. You have to constantly be paying attention to the market, constantly be asking yourself what your customers want and think, and constantly checking to see what kind of color printing will best appeal to your customers and what kind will be completely ignored. People are always changing. No matter where you live in this country new people are growing older and looking for places to shop just as more people are moving from city to city. Your market is never going to be exactly the same from one year to the next, and if you don't realize just how much things can change, you might find yourself being left behind. The question then becomes how do you go about collecting all of this necessary data? There are all sorts of different methods you can choose from. Back in the day the two most used methods were phone calls and comment cards. Both have a certain appeal and strength to them that is still effective today. A phone call allows you to gain a more detailed amount of information on what a person thinks, as well as lets you guide the questions more. Comment cards allow you to hand a person a list of set questions, which will typically have yes/no or multiple choice answer. The cost of color printing is cheap enough that comment cards are a cost effective form of gathering information. The drawback to phone calls is that many people are on lists meant to stop companies from calling them, and the issue with comment cards is that you are limited in what you can ask them. The internet has created a slew of additional methods. An email give you the chance to ask longer, more details questions than a comment card, and gives the person answering a chance to provide a more in-depth answer. Online polls allow you to ask a lot more questions than you could with a comment card, but once again you have to stick to basic answers with little room for additional information. There is also the focus group and other face-to-face forms of interviewing. These allow you probably the best level of information, but will cost you the most and force you to focus on a much smaller pool of people. And really, there are more options out there for you. Choose whichever method of market research that works best for you. No one type will work for every company, but no matter who you are, you need to do your market research. For comments and inquiries about the article visit: Color Printing Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com |
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