What is an exploratory market survey and what are the benefits of this particular research.
Exploring is an innate instinct of human beings, as is wondering about the causes of what happens to us and the behaviors of others. Exploratory market research is based precisely on satisfying this instinct: it helps us market research agencies get answers as to why our client companies’ consumers and competitors adopt a particular behavior.
Having full knowledge in this regard is extremely beneficial for companies’ marketing decisions because it allows us to thoroughly investigate customer needs and competitors’ strategies. For this reason, those who have the opportunity should never neglect exploratory market research.
But what is the definition of these surveys, how do they support companies in making extremely wise decisions, and what is the best method for conducting exploratory research?
Read on to find out all about it.
Exploratory market research: definition and meaning.
The exploratory market survey is a qualitative research approach aimed at clarifying the scope and nature of a problem identified during a previous survey.
During exploratory research, we market analysis agencies look for emotional information that consumers experience about products, services and brands.
This approach is based on researching what feelings lead consumers in a target market to have certain needs, fine-tune specific behaviors and have well-defined preferences.
Moreover, if the study also includescompetitor analysis, it answers why the client company’s competitors adopt certain strategies, why certain tactics fail, and why others succeed based on consumer sentiment.
Usually, exploratory surveys are conducted in succession to quantitative market research, so much so that they are often configured as two consecutive phases of a market research study.
The difference is that during quantitative research we go and intercept a large amount of data and measure it statistically to get very precise reports (and thus answers) about customer behavior, needs, and preferences… Whereas with exploratory research we go to investigate the emotions that led consumers to make these certain behaviors and decisions.
Exploratory research investigates the“why” of events, quantitative research investigates “what” happened.
Read also: Price setting & marketing research: everything you need to know about it
What are the benefits of exploratory market surveys?
Exploratory market research refines the answers obtained from quantitative surveys.
Knowing customers’ feelings, thus the emotions that lead them to engage in specific behaviors, enables companies to make business decisions that work precisely on consumers’ emotions.
A strategy based on the emotional sphere of target customers has a great chance of success, especially if it is informed by reliable and irrefutable data.
If the definition of market research tells us that surveys consist of the collection, storage and analysis of data with the aim of solving marketing problems… We can say that for these problems to be solved, it is necessary for the data collected upstream to be unquestionably true.
At CMI, we want to provide certainty to our corporate clients and want to return clear and indisputable reports that lead every company to make correct and beneficial business decisions.
For this reason, we have clearly deviated from the classic methods for conducting market research (interviews, surveys, focus groups). Therefore, we decided to rely on what really returns unbiased, uncorrupted and unimpeachable answers: web listening.
Web Listening: what it is and why it is critical for conducting exploratory (and other) market research.
Web listening in market research is an innovative method of listening, i.e., tracing and analyzing in depth, public data on the web.
Such data are conversations, mentions, blog articles, reviews, posts and much more, thus opinions that consumers leave (more or less veiled) on the web about brands, products and services.
This method, when applied to exploratory research for a company, involves analyzing what consumers express, the feelings that lead them to make certain decisions and prefer one product or brand over another.
Read also: Qualitative market research: definition and meaning
All data are voluntarily expressed on the Internet and social media. They are not the result of targeted questions, but the spontaneous words and opinions of consumers who, by speaking truthfully, offer companies new opportunities for action.
Marketing strategies based on listening to the Web have enormous possibilities for success and guarantee truly useful answers that can be transformed into actions by our client companies.
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