Market research is essential for understanding your customers, competitors, and industry. But how do you combine it with market trends, which are the changes and patterns that affect the demand, supply, and preferences of your target market? In this article, we'll show you how to use market trends and research together to create effective strategies and solutions for your business.
Market trends and research are complementary sources of information that can help you identify opportunities, threats, and gaps in your market. Market trends can give you a big picture of the external factors that influence your market, such as social, economic, technological, environmental, and political trends. Market research can provide you with more specific and actionable insights into your customers' needs, wants, behaviors, and feedback. By combining market trends and research, you can gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of your market and how to adapt to it.
My role as a Consumer Insights Manager has shown me the power of uniting market trends with consumer research to drive growth. Consider the food industry’s trend for plant based meals; through research we can discover that some consumer groups will be adopting the trend for health benefits, while others will adopt the trend for environmental reasons. By adapting a relevant approach to each group, a business can develop products/ campaigns tailored to each group, capturing market share and fostering loyalty across each group. This deepens market understanding, elevates decision-making, fuels innovation, and enhances financial performance. In today's dynamic world, interpreting trends for distinct audiences is the key to enduring success.
Combining trends analysis alongside primary market research gives you a 360-degree view and ensures you are uncovering future facing insights, while also integrating societal and cultural factors that consumers often cannot articulate themselves. Using expert interviews and speaking to early adopters provides validation of trends - and nothing beats observation and being out in the world, speaking to real people to help you to pick up the micro trends and shifts that are happening on the ground.
It's so important to understand how market trends are influencing ever-changing consumers' lives. Insights teams are the voice of the consumer for our brands so we need to understand their whole world, how it's evolving -- not just how they engage with our categories!
Analista de Inteligência de Mercado - Data Scientist - Engenheiro e Mestre
Once research and trend data is available for consumption (which is a challenge in itself), it is important to assess the context and culture of the organization. Even if the trend and research point to a path, it is up to the company to actively decide whether to follow that path. I have seen several companies fail to respond in a timely manner to the changes identified in the research, leading to loss of market share and competitiveness.
Combining market trends with research entails integrating external market data and insights with internal research efforts, enabling businesses to gain a comprehensive understanding of the industry landscape, customer preferences, and emerging opportunities, driving informed decision-making and gaining a competitive edge.
Finding market trends is essential depending on your industry, niche, and goals. To stay updated on the latest news, developments, and innovations in your field, you can read industry reports, publications, blogs, newsletters, and podcasts. You can also follow influencers, experts, thought leaders, and competitors on social media, websites, and forums to gain their opinions and insights. Furthermore, you can use online tools such as Google Trends, Keyword Planner, BuzzSumo, and SimilarWeb to analyze the popularity of certain topics and keywords related to your market. Additionally, conducting surveys with existing or potential customers can help you learn about their preferences and expectations.
Especially if you are an expert in an industry, there should be constant scanning of trends and relevant information. Combining these findings along with primary data make for a powerful point of view.
Leading and lagging indicators in e.g., a time series graph need some explanatory power, which could come in the form of a market trend overlay. What happened in month X / year Y? Ah, Drug A went generic after LOE, changing the market dynamic. Or, the PI now has a black box warning, slowing down product sales. Or, after a newly released DRTV ad series, first, we see an increase in intent to ask for drug by name during the next doctor visit, followed by a bump in sales, you can even track it by market, if the ad is only released in key local markets. Lots of ways to make the data come to life with market trend overlays.
To find market trends, employ various strategies. Monitor industry publications, research reports, and news outlets for insights on emerging technologies, consumer behavior, and regulatory changes. Analyze social media trends, conduct surveys, and gather customer feedback. Stay informed through industry events and network with industry professionals to gain valuable market insights. Regularly review market data, competitor activities, and consumer preferences to identify patterns and anticipate market shifts. Utilize data analytics tools to track key metrics, such as sales figures and website analytics, to identify trends and make informed business decisions.
Market research is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data about your market, customers, competitors, and industry. It involves two main types of research: primary and secondary. Primary research is data collected from your own sources, such as surveys and interviews, while secondary research is data used from existing sources, such as reports and publications. To conduct market research, you need to define your objectives and questions that you want to answer, choose the methods and tools that suit your budget and timeframe, collect data from reliable sources, analyze the data with appropriate methods (e.g. descriptive or inferential statistics), and interpret the data to draw conclusions and recommendations based on your findings.
o conduct market research, start by defining your objectives and target audience. Determine the research methodology, whether through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or data analysis. Collect primary and secondary data from reliable sources. Analyze the data using statistical tools and qualitative analysis. Draw insights and make informed decisions based on the findings. Regularly update and adapt your research approach to stay abreast of market changes and consumer preferences.
Combining market trends and research is an ongoing process that requires consistent monitoring, evaluation, and adjustment. To do this effectively, you need to align your market trends and research with your business goals, vision, and mission. Compare and contrast them to find similarities, differences, gaps, and opportunities in your market. Utilize these insights to create or improve products, services, marketing, sales, and operations. Additionally, test and validate your assumptions with experiments, prototypes, MVPs, and feedback loops. Lastly, review and update your market trends and research regularly to keep up with changes in the market. Tools such as dashboards, reports, alerts, and newsletters can help you track and communicate these trends.
All very well and good combining several, or many data sources with third party / aggregate / trend data. But your client / sponsor is still going to ask “So What?” if it’s displayed in a linear fashion. Weaving the information points together and telling the story of meaning is called insight - don’t assume your information is going to speak for itself. The best decision making is insight-led… not data driven.
Frist step would be to Assess whether specific market trends coincide with your research objective . When conducting primary research, prioritize examining the top critical trends, as they often directly influence the supply or demand of raw materials, labor, and margins throughout the value chain.
To combine market trends and research, start by identifying relevant market trends through industry publications, reports, and conferences. Conduct internal research to gather data on customer preferences, behaviors, and needs. Analyze market trends alongside research findings, looking for patterns and correlations. Validate findings to ensure accuracy. Assess the impact and relevance of trends and research on business objectives. Develop strategies and action plans based on combined insights. Continuously monitor trends and conduct ongoing research for adaptation and improvement.
One way I combined market trend information with customer satisfaction information: I used the company's stock prices over the time period of the customer satisfaction study, alongside news articles that illustrated what caused spikes and drops in the stock price. I then added in keyword sentiment analysis from social media, and a whole story began to emerge from which we could infer influences on customer satisfaction.
Combining market trends and research can bring many benefits for your business, such as enhancing your market knowledge and awareness, improving decision making and problem solving, increasing innovation and creativity, boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty, and growing your market share and profitability. By researching your market's history, current state, and future direction, as well as your customers' needs, wants, behaviors, and feedback, you can make more informed decisions that align with your market's needs. Additionally, you can discover new ideas to differentiate yourself from competitors and create value for customers. By delivering products and services that meet or exceed customer needs and anticipate their changing preferences, you can attract more customers, retain existing ones, and increase sales revenue.
By combining both trends and market research, you stop yourself from looking at things in a silo and give yourself a wider perspective on what is actually happening and how you can help your customers. Market trends give you those macro PESTEL factors (political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, environmental and legal) - which helps you see what's going on in the wider market place. Market research allows you to see what's happening in your own industry and what your own customers are doing or wanting. Using both of these together allows you to see if there's a reason behind what you're noting: are their correlations between the two types of insight that can help you understand what your customers want and align with their needs?
Combining market trends and research offers several benefits. It provides a holistic view of the business landscape, identifies emerging opportunities, and informs decision-making. It enables businesses to stay competitive by understanding customer preferences, industry shifts, and market dynamics. It enhances product development, marketing strategies, and customer experience. It fosters proactive decision-making, mitigates risks, and drives sustainable growth. Ultimately, it empowers businesses to make informed, data-driven decisions that deliver value and ensure long-term success.
Be aware that a single source of market trend information (such as stock prices) is not enough for inferring everything about what may be influencing customer sentiment or customer response to a survey. The more sources you can investigate, the better.