Principles of marketing/PMKT102/Researching customer needs and preferences/Required reading 3

The most successful research starts with a single question or series of questions, which help define the scope of your research, as well as provides a context for marketing your particular product or service. For example, consider the following questions. How do you define your target audience? Are you planning a domestic or global reach? Who are your competitors? What is the long-term outlook? Research can be very time-consuming and expensive, so the more research you can do on your own, the quicker and cheaper your plans may come together. It takes a special mindset to enjoy conducting research—an explorer’s sense of adventure into a vast wilderness of data. If you can master basic research skills, you may considerably multiply your worth to an employer or project.