-Bill McMurray, Managing Director, Asia Pacific and Japan, Qualtrics

 The rapid evolution of technologies such as mobility, data analytics, and cloud computing, is changing the way organisations gain insight into their markets. This technology is making it easier for manufacturers to accelerate business decisions through insight gained from market research platforms.

Of all the new technology making market research faster and more effective, mobility is one of the most important. Thanks to mobility, manufacturers researching their markets and products now have easier access to more detailed market feedback.

With more than half of the New Zealand public now claiming access to the internet via smartphones, according to Nielsen’s 2015 New Zealand Multi-Screen report, mobile technology can give manufacturers a broad scope for connecting with consumers.

The saturation of mobile devices also provides a useful mechanism to collect data in real-time with visual images and other multi-media content. This lets manufacturers monitor behaviour as it occurs, providing the opportunity to test or adapt products and services, marketing, and strategies instantly.

Mobility, social media, and website intercepts provide increasingly-flexible platforms to find the right engagement methodology.

Qualtrics recommends manufacturers consider six key elements of effective market research:

1. Defined objectives

Defining objectives is the first step to determining what the business wants to get out of the research, which questions to ask, and who should be involved in the process. If businesses don’t take time to work out their objectives, they may waste valuable resources without gaining any improvements.

2. Include necessary definitions

Not everybody understands certain titles and terms in the same way. To ensure all customers are on the same page and the results are accurate, businesses should include definitions at the beginning of the research survey, or attached to individual questions, depending on the layout of the survey.

3. Make surveys easily accessible

Feedback needs to be easy for respondents to provide, or else people will simply not participate, and the program will lose valuable insight. It is critical to ensure surveys are mobile device-responsive so respondents can easily complete them on their mobile devices.

4. Engage with respondents when they are engaging with you

Respondents are increasingly performing critical online research about brands before they interact with them, even in B2B research journeys. Manufacturers must take this into account and ensure they are interacting with respondents when they are engaging with their websites.

Manufacturers can use website intercept technologies to proactively assist respondents find what they are looking for and help provide a frictionless website experience.

5. Be relevant to your respondent

As people increasingly prefer to respond to surveys on mobile devices, manufacturers should be decreasing the length of the surveys to be in short bursts. Don’t ask things which are not relevant to your respondent. Manufacturers should be building profiles of their respondents so they can use embedded data fields to shorten surveys.

6. Translation

Manufacturers should have a research platform, which easily allows them to have the respondent choose the language easiest for them. This will help to increase manufacturer’s reach to respondents and increase responses.