Market research for start-ups
A few weeks ago, I worked with Decima Research to help with some focus groups. This critical primary research captured customers’ opinions of innovative mobile technology. You may be familiar with Decima through their published political polls. But beyond politics, many technology companies rely on research specialists like Decima to conduct objective, proprietary research.
Conducting full-blown focus groups, or large quantitative studies can be expensive though – usually outside the budgets of startups. But there are many services offered by research firms that would be of great benefit to startups – especially in support of a business plan or to test a new product.
One service offered by Decima is targeted recruiting of research participants. The quality of the data you get from focus groups is Dependant on how close your participants are to the actual customers you are targeting. For example, the TrueContext groups required people who conduct a good part of their business away from their office, and have a high need for mobile data communications. By using a stringent screening criteria, they were able to recruit a wide range of mobile professional that perfectly matched our requirements. You can save money by designing and conducting your own research, but it is worthwhile to outsource the recruiting part!
Another cost-effective option is to conduct web-based focus groups or web-based surveys. This gives you access to wide range of participants without the restrictions of geography, or the added cost of facilities rental. Decima offers various services for this including E-Vox, and E-Groups.
If you’re not quite ready to conduct primary research, consider subscribing to secondary research. Decima, and other firms target certain industries to develop market expertise for those segments. Some of their regular reports include Wireless, NewMedia, and TeleManagement. In fact, the current issue of TeleManagement includes an interview with “yours truly” – talking about the importance of the user experience in the adoption of mobile data services. If you want to know more about the feasability of market research for your startup, send Peter Hill a message at phill@decima.com
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