If you’re in the world of business, odds are you’ve heard of market research. Gathering data about your industry, your customer, and even your competitors is a great way to make more informed decisions about your company’s strategies, operations, and future goals.

When you conduct market research you get hard data that when analyzed properly can illustrate how your customer thinks, how your industry ebbs and flows, and what really drives profits. This information is invaluable when it comes to choosing where to focus your efforts and resources to optimize growth.

At INSIGHT2PROFIT, we don’t just conduct market research for our clients. We understand that finding and compiling the data is one thing, but analyzing the results and using that information to deliver measurable profit improvement is another task entirely. That is why the experts at INSIGHT believe in providing our clients with market intelligence: market research, but more.

We work with our clients to not only identify pain points, but to also establish which methods and tools are necessary to get to the root of the problem. This collaborative approach allows us to build a custom research program tailored to our client’s specific questions and needs. We also don’t walk away when the research is over, instead, we help our customers interpret the data and build new strategies that deliver real, consistent results.

What Market Intelligence Can Provide

Market intelligence doesn’t just shed light on basic, entry-level consumer behavior or industry trends. With market intelligence, companies can gain insight on any number of topics that can inform and support different profit strategies, including:

  • Core value drivers
  • Key purchasing criteria
  • Purchasing process
  • Customer segmentation
  • Competitive supplier perceptions
  • Pain points / unmet needs
  • Emerging product trends / threats
  • Barriers to switching suppliers
  • Supply / demand balance
  • Contractual terms (e.g., payment terms, freight)

Market research gives organizations a comprehensive understanding of not just how their products and services perform, but how their audience acts, thinks, and feels as well. When performed properly, companies can walk away with an actionable understanding of their target consumer’s attitudes, opinions, wants and needs; and how its products and services are positioned relative to these needs in the context of a competitive environment.

Market Intelligence Tools

INSIGHT2PROFIT’s marketing intelligence professionals utilize two main tools or methodologies for conducting their research:

  • Qualitative Research
  • Quantitative Research

To get a truly holistic understanding of a specific market, you need both forms of data collection. Why? Qualitative research is used to first understand something, and quantitative research is then used to test something.

Qualitative Research
Qualitative Research such as interviews with topic experts, existing consumers, past consumers, and even potential prospects help build a larger narrative around not just your company and your products but your industry as a whole. Qualitative research can help explain everything from why a product may not be performing as well as you’d hoped to pain points in your retail experience that may be turning customers away. Qualitative research can also help explain why a consumer chose your product over your competitor and vice versa.

While each interviewee, whether they be an industry thought-leader or a target consumer, has their own unique experiences, researchers are able to identify patterns and reoccurring trends when they compare responses from a large enough pool of data.

These patterns can then be used to illuminate potential areas for improvement. Some examples of qualitative interview questions include:

  • How often do you switch or add suppliers? What prompts your company to do that?
  • What would it take for you to switch distributors/suppliers?
  • What factors prevent or deter you from switching suppliers?
  • Who do you view as the leading suppliers? Do you have a lot of purchasing options, or only a few that meet your needs?
  • Do you typically purchase based on long-term contracts or on a spot basis?
  • Do you largely purchase from the lowest cost supplier, or do you favor suppliers for different reasons – e.g., quality, customer service, relationship?

Responses to open-ended questions like these work to identify important operations factors such as purchasing processes, key buying factors, contractual terms, and more. In essence, qualitative research helps better understand why people make the choices and form the opinions that they do. These insights can be invaluable in identifying pockets of opportunity that can be addressed to improve your profitability.

Quantitative Research
The goal of quantitative research, like qualitative research, is to collect data in order to better identify and explain specific phenomenon. Unlike qualitative interviews which focuses on collecting thoughts and ideas, however, quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics like measurements, counts, and calculations.

When INSIGHT performs quantitative research, it often takes the form of surveys. These surveys, composed primarily of closed-ended questions, are most often used to test theories and hypotheses. The outcome is a pool of data that can then be used for statistical analysis.

Examples of quantitative data include:

  • 62% of companies mainly purchase through their primary distributor.
  • 83% of respondents saw price increases above 5% over the past 6 months.
  • 45% of respondents said they were unhappy with the price change.

You need both qualitative and quantitative data because although qualitative data brings you the details and the depth to understand something, quantitative data gives you the numbers and the statistics to prove the points of the research.

How to Use Market Intelligence to Drive Profit Improvement

With Market intelligence, companies can build a data-driven business strategy that delivers real, measurable results. INSIGHT2PROFIT’s industry experts utilize tools within data science–data engineering, proprietary analytics, market intelligence–to dig into the numbers and identify real areas for profit improvement.

Interpreting the Market Research
Market intelligence goes a long way for profit improvement and identifying growth opportunities. At INSIGHT, after the quantitative and qualitative data has been collected, our analysts then begin to interpret that data to help inform factors like willingness to pay, price elasticity, perception of value proposition and so much more.

These data-driven, proven metrics serve as anchors that in turn bring actionable knowledge and clarity to the profit improvement process.

The INSIGHT Advantage

“INSIGHT2PROFIT utilized a robust, data driven approach, while partnering with our team to uncover pricing opportunities where we initially felt none existed. Upon implementation of recommendations, appropriate controls, and ongoing measurement, we have delivered significant incremental financial benefit to the organization.” – CFO, Consumer Products Manufacturer

At INSIGHT, we embrace starting with messy, unstructured data. Why? We know that our expert data engineers, developers, and data scientists can turn it into structured, actionable knowledge. From there, our pricing consultants can quickly deliver scalable end-to-end profit growth solutions.

What sets INSIGHT apart from other market intelligence providers is that we don’t walk away once the information has been collected. Instead, we partner with our clients long-term to develop dynamic models and technology solutions tailored to their unique business needs and objectives. Want to know what INSIGHT’s market intelligence experts can do for your business? Contact us today to learn how we can make your profit goals a reality.

Learn how we can make your profit goals a reality