Market Research for Retail

Objective of the service program

The essence of market research lies in answering two fundamental questions. The first one is ascertaining whether customers will buy or not in a given market from any retailer. There could be many reasons why customers may or may not buy. For any retailer, the second one is figuring out the strategies to make customers buy from them instead of their competitors. Answering both the questions involves considering a wide range of factors.
The challenges for retail businesses in market research lie in acquiring the necessary competence, data sourcing, extracting meaningful insights, and maintaining the relevance of the market research itself. For many retailers, both novice and experienced, the question – ‘how to do market research for a retail store or how to do market research for online retail business?’ continues to remain the first big hurdle in converting their business ambitions into reality. In this service program, DFX shall carry out the market research for its retail business clients.

Why market research for retail?

Rather than asking why market research for retail business, a more beneficial approach would be to understand the advantages of market research for retail businesses. Market research is aimed at discovering insights to answer these two important questions – will customers buy? And what can be done to ensure that customers buy from a retail enterprise? In both cases, we are strictly looking from the perspective of customers. Let us address these one by one.

1. Will customers buy?
   Whether a retail business will be sustainable in a market or not primarily depends on what product/services it is offering. A market may or may not generate the demand for a certain set of products/services owing to two sets of factors – buying conditions and buying preferences. The buying conditions reflect the basic requirements for purchasing and using a product. It can include need, purchasing power, social and cultural norms, ease of usage, storage/maintenance requirements, ease of purchasing, weather conditions, etc. The presence of a strong, irreversible negative condition simply writes off any possibility for retailing. Take the example of alcoholic drinks where these are completely banned in many states and countries. In such cases, there is absolutely no point in going to the next question that is on gathering insights for formulating better marketing strategies.
2. What can you do to ensure that customers buy from you?
   In addition to the fundamental buying conditions, there is also an advanced level of requirements that helps retail businesses in customer acquisition and retention. Once customers are through with the basic conditions, they tend to seek better alternatives for purchasing. This is where competition creeps in among retailers. This is where retailers need to level up their game in terms of better products, wider merchandising, better services, attractive pricing, focus on physical and digital touch points for a better customer experience, easier purchasing process, efficient delivery, ease of making payments, easier product return/exchange, etc.

Challenges in retail market research

Market research is no longer about dropping survey teams in the physical market for gathering data. It has reached the realm of digital technologies. Apart from the standard readings, there are unique aspects to each market vertical. Over time, the objectives and output of market research have got more sophisticated. Some of the challenges are briefly discussed here.

1. Lack of experience
   Market research has evolved as a specialized profession calling for experience and expertise in the field. It is understandable that entrepreneurs who are intending to start a retail business irrespective of the vertical may not necessarily possess the required level of competence in market research without undermining their acumen in their respective fields. The difference lies in the expert touch of market research analysts.
2. Sourcing data
   When a market has to be studied, it calls for both qualitative and quantitative assessments. Even the experienced market analysis consultants know that sourcing the necessary data from reliable sources is a big challenge here. It often turns out to be time-consuming and taxing for entrepreneur-retailers. Instead of doing it on their own, many assign the task to market research consulting companies.
3. Extracting insightful output
   Market research is of no use if it cannot bring out information that can be acted upon to formulate better marketing strategies. However, these days it is not easy to draw conclusions about markets. We are living in a highly connected world where the interactions between traditional retail and modern eCommerce are constantly being put to test by new and evolving business models that are capable of bringing significant changes to the market dynamics and customer behaviour.
4. Staying up-to-date for customer retention
   Customer loyalty is a big ask for retailers nowadays which heightens the importance of market research for understanding retail customers. The buying preferences, we discussed earlier, are being constantly tickled by competitors to grab a pie of one another’s market share. Sometimes it is in the form of abrupt offers, hidden benefits, tie-ups with facilitating businesses like financial institutions, or any other change that is capable of attracting more customers. In such a scenario, it becomes important for retail businesses to keep a vigil eye on the market activities with market research as a continued business process.

Why DFX for market research?

Having over eight years of experience in delivering market research services, DFX (Digital Financial Experts) helps its retail clients gain a solid understanding of their target markets. Our team of expert market research consultants follow a well-planned and systematic approach curated for every client to meet their specific business objectives. We provide insights, CTAs (Call to Action), and recommendations to serve as meaningful inputs for informed decision making, planning, and strategy formulation. Our dedicated support and reporting mechanism shall keep you closer to the process and updated on the developments being made.
If you have any questions about our market research consulting services, drop us a message and we shall be happy to reach out to you.

Product/ Service Research

• Product Demand Study
• Buying pattern and preference of our TG
• Product/ Services Categories Demand Analysis
• Keyword Analysis i.e. Online Search Analysis of our products: No. of searches per day/ week/ month in our target location

Range Plan/ Merchandising Strategy Research

• Fast moving categories in the market within the retail industry
• Range Plan recommendation for your product-mix, as per budgets allocated for production/ inventory

Competitor Research

• Identify and benchmark the key players in a competitive set
• Analyse the online best-sellers of your competitors
• Competitors Policies adopted for online/ e-commerce sales

Price Feasibility Research

• Market Price Analysis (includes key competitors and market players)
• Suitable Price Bracket (Min-Max range): as per your brand positioning

Marketing Strategy Research

• Evaluate the channels which is driving traffic to your competitors
• Determine industry trends and strategies adopted by top market players
• Evaluate the effectiveness of how competitors are acquiring customers
• Traffic Channels: Direct/ Referring sites/ Social Media/ email/ Paid Ads/ Organic traffic
• identify marketing channels that drive the highest conversion rates
• Top Referring Sites & Top visiting pages
• Social Media Leaderboard
• Influencers Profiling
• Trending Online Searches related to your Industry, products & services.

Market Overview

• TG Demographics (Total Market size in terms of: Age/ Gender/ Cities/ etc)
• TG Profiling – 5W Analysis: Who, Where, What, When, Why
• Market SWOT Analysis
• Risk & Mitigation Factors

Operations Strategy Research

• Infrastructure Strategy
• Human Resource Strategy
• Information Technology Strategy

Action Plan Recommendations