Objective
With a marketing problem or opportunity defined,
the next step is to set objectives for your market research operations.
Your objective might be to explore the nature of a problem so you
may further define it. Or, perhaps it is to determine how many people
will buy your product packaged in a certain way and offered at a
certain price. Your objective might even be to test possible cause
and effect relationships. For example, if you lower your price by
10 percent, what increased sales volume should you expect? What
impact will this strategy have on your profit?
Budget
How much money are you willing to invest in your
market research? How much can you afford? Your market research budget
is a portion of your overall marketing budget. A method popular
with small business owners to establish a marketing budget is to
allocate a small percentage of gross sales for the most recent year.
This usually amounts to about two percent for an existing business.
However, if you are planning on launching a new product or business,
you may want to increase your budget figure, to as much as 10 percent
of your expected gross sales. Other methods used by small businesses
include analyzing and estimating the competition's budget, and calculating
your cost of marketing per sale.
Timetables
Prepare a detailed, realistic time frame to
complete all steps of the market research process. If your business
operates in cycles, establish target dates that will allow the best
accessibility to your market. For example, a holiday greeting card
business may want to conduct research before or around the holiday
season buying period, when their customers are most likely to be
thinking about their purchases.
