Great Market Research Objectives for Successful Market Research Projects
What makes a market research objective “good”? What makes it precise enough to guide a project such that, at the conclusion, the project will be likely to be perceived as successful? At Research Rockstar, we teach a 4-criteria model that professional market researchers can use to assess and optimize objectives.
Too often, market research projects start with vague objectives that lead to operational delays or onerous research instrument iterations. Have you ever been working with a client (whether an internal or external client) on a survey research project and had five or more iterations before getting final approval? How about 10 or more iterations? Ouch! Onerous instrument design processes are very often due to vague objectives; vague objectives mean they are open to different interpretations, and the client may be making assumptions that are not aligned with the researcher’s understanding of their priorities.
It is better to be consultative in clarifying vague objectives upfront and save yourself and your client’s heartache down the road. After all, they don’t enjoy excessive iterations either.
Crafting an objective that gets buy-in (and engages!) a specific project’s clients, stakeholders, and project team members often require some facilitation. If you are the project manager, it is your job to assess the stated objectives and lead the team to refinement if necessary.
Weak Research Objectives Create Operational Headaches
The market research project must be specific enough that you can make operational decisions based on the results. For example, consider the following (hypothetical) objective:
Our project is to determine which apps smartphone users most and least enjoy using.
It may sound fine at a glance, but it is very vague:
- Red Flag 1: “Smartphone users” is a pretty wide net, since most people currently have one; can we clarify the target audience further? Do we want to sample smartphone users in general, or should our sampling plan be more precise? We need to know so that our sampling plan is aligned with actual client needs; let’s not collect data from the “wrong” people.
- Red Flag 2: “Apps” is pretty generic too–are we talking about messaging apps, social media apps, productivity apps, video calling apps, or something else?
- Red Flag 3: The biggest hole in this objective, though, is the why. Why do we want to know which apps are most and least enjoyable to use? Will this inform application development priorities? Will this inform user experience strategies? Perhaps it will be used to find brand positioning opportunities? Knowing how the data will be used will help us when it comes to creating the research instrument (whether a questionnaire, discussion guide, or another type).
Better: To inform our 3-year competitive positioning strategy, we want to determine which non-gaming apps smartphone users most and least enjoy using.
The “better” version gives us a more precise direction for sampling, screening, methodology, and instrument content.
Enjoy Our Mini Lesson on Setting Market Research Objectives
In this Conversations for Research Rockstars episode, lead instructor Kathryn Korostoff gives a mini-lesson on all things market research objectives, from identifying bad ones to crafting ones that will yield actionable insights. Watch it on our Youtube, or listen on any of your favorite listening platforms, like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible.
This topic is also covered in our popular Market Research 101 course, so click to learn more!
