11 common mistakes made when conducting primary market research

"Over the years I've seen various errors made by people when using or commissioning market research. There are many mistakes that people can make, but here in this article I have highlighted just 11 of them. I'm hoping anyone reading these may avoid making them in the future."

So, let's get straight to them. Here they are, and in no particular order:

1. Confusion over approaches
2. Worrying too much about sample size
3. Choosing the wrong method of interaction
4. Trying to sell via research
5. Not actually using the research
6. Fixing the results
7. Attempting to carry out DIY research
8. Thinking all research is 'free'
9. Not treating research as part of the strategy
10. Failing to put enough effort into the brief
11. Researching the wrong things

1. Confusion over approaches

Too often, people get the idea they want to conduct some market research, but then they mix up how they are actually going to do it. Don't make that mistake.

Let's keep this nice and simple.

• Qualitative (or 'qual') is mainly used to explore the reasons behind 'why' people feel the way they do or 'why' they behave as they do.
• Quantitative (or 'quant') is mainly used to answer the 'who', 'when', 'where', 'how many', 'how often', and 'how much' sorts of questions.

If you have enough budget, you might be able to do both. But, if you only have limited resources, make sure you use the correct one for your purposes.

2. Worrying too much about sample size

The second mistake people make is to get too concerned about sample sizes. Unless you are the government or perhaps a big brand, you really can't afford a 5,000-sample survey or even much above 2,000. It's probably just not economically viable for you - unless perhaps you are using your own customers and getting online feedback.

It's more about what is the minimum sample size to get you to the answers you seek, and crucially, it's about what can you actually afford.

So, you are probably looking at sample sizes of 350, 500, or perhaps 750 or 1,000. But if you are a small business, even a 150-sample survey may be better than pure guesswork, or certainly better than asking an old friend or your own mum.

3. Choosing the wrong method of interaction

One of the basic challenges of primary market research is figuring out how you will engage with your target respondents. That's the method you will use to interact and collect your data. Actually it's not that difficult. You just need to work out the easiest and best way for each research project. So, it might be door-to-door, or on the street, or by phone, or even web-based research. The thing is to think through what is the most appropriate way. It's usually the most obvious too.

It's as simple as that, but people can still get it wrong.

4. Trying to sell via research

Another mistake is trying to use consumer research as a method of selling. We still hear this with cold callers, you know, thinking they are clever by saying "Hi, I'm doing some research", before it is quite apparent that they are actually trying to sell you some home insulation or eco-energy products.

I've even heard it once from a shopping centre client. They wanted us to hand out some offer leaflets, at the same time we were conducting an exit survey. If you think about it, with a 500-sample survey perhaps 80% would take the leaflet, and then maybe only half of those keep it, so let's call it 200 in total. How many would actually redeem it? Maybe 20-25% of them, so 40-50 people. And that shopping centre had an annual footfall of perhaps 8 million people. So all a bit of a waste of effort, and potentially getting in the way of conducting the market research.

Research is research, not selling, nor promoting. Don't get them confused, and don't multi-task either, would be my advice.

5. Not actually using the research

Some people do the research then incredibly, they don't bother to use it. It's as if it was a box ticking exercise. The market research report ends up on the shelf, or on a window sill, never to be looked at again. Why do people do that? Thankfully, it's not that common, but it does happen.

Don't make that mistake, that's also called "wasting your money".

6. Fixing the results

Some people want to do research to give them a particular answer. Well that's not really research, is it? It may be developing a story, and building some evidence, but the evidence is planted. They are kidding themselves and pretending it's real, proper research. It's up to them if they want to spend their money that way, but it's really fake research. If you think about it a bit more, why don't they just make the whole thing up, instead of wasting everyone's time?

Not a smart move, but it will probably always happen, but it's another mistake.

7. Attempting to carry out DIY research

There's nothing wrong with do it yourself (DIY) research, if you know what you are doing, and if you're prepared to park your day job for a good period of time. But, just as installing really good graphic design software doesn't make you an award-winning graphic designer, so downloading some free survey software doesn't make you a great market researcher. At least not overnight.

Best to stick to what you know, and be prepared to call in the experts when you need them. Plus there's nothing worse than doing all that work, only for the data to sit in one of those cardboard archive boxes, in the corner of your office, for the next 9 months. Never looked at, and hence never used.

Don't waste your own time, even if it seemed like it would save you some money.

8. Thinking all research is 'free'

There is a lot of information available in business libraries or on the Internet. It's definitely there. We call it desk research, or secondary research, and often it's very useful. But it doesn't answer every problem, and you have to find it too. Plus the really good stuff will most likely be behind a paywall, so it won't be free after all. Sometimes you've just got to spend the money on your own primary market research, rather than hope to reuse some random research from a few years ago, conducted in Canada, and about a market sector only a tiny bit like your own.

Remember, not all research is actually available to you for free.

9. Not treating research as part of the strategy

Everyone likes to think they are a bit strategic. So strategy is something people like to talk about these days. But sometimes they forget the role of market research. They fail to involve their research agency in the strategy, or to even have a market research agency or consultancy on board at that stage. Instead of basing their strategy on the research, they decide their strategy first (effectively making it up) and then figure out, at the last minute, that they ought to do some market research to back it up, or maybe to check it out.

Oops. That's the wrong way round. And it's yet another mistake.

10. Failing to put enough effort into the brief

I recall a very smart, experienced marketing director saying in a meeting about an industry-wide advertising campaign many years ago, that it was critical to spend enough time, thought, and energy on the brief. Get the brief right, and the chances of a getting a successful ad campaign were significantly better too.

The same could be said for the market research brief. Get that right, and everything else should follow.

So our 10th mistake we see people making is not putting the effort into the briefing process.

11. Researching the wrong things

Our final error is not about failing to research, but failing to research the right things. People will sometimes use research for all sorts of incidental things. Things like the exact shade of pale blue in the new logo, or something else rather trivial.

If you have limitless time and limitless budgets then you can use market research to make every decision for you. But seriously, who does? Sometimes, you've just got to make a decision yourself, and not rely on market research to make every single micro decision for you.

It's about choosing to use market research for the right reasons.

So there you have them. 11 common mistakes to avoid with your own market research projects.

?If you have any others please feel free to share them with me.

About the Author

Paul Latimer is an experienced market researcher, having held a number of marketing roles in a wide variety of industries he moved over to focus on market research from the agency side in 2004, before setting up his own market research consultancy, Latimer Appleby, in 2012. He is a graduate of the University of Birmingham, and holds several diplomas including those from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), the Market Research Society (MRS) and the Institute of Data & Marketing. He is a Certified Member of the MRS, and a Fellow of the CIM.