How Well Do You Know Your Customers?

An even better question may be how well do you know your prospective customers? Fortune 500 companies pay a great deal of money to market research firms to answer that question. Understanding who their prospective customers are and what their market demographic looks like allows a company to adjust their business model to address exactly what their customers want. Wouldn’t it be great if you as a small business owner had the money to do the same?

Now you do. Membership in the Southern Barter Club allows you to gain access to market research and gives you a leg up on your competition. You’ll be able to put your barter dollars to good use by hiring a professional research firm.

You’ll find that the type of market research you choose to perform will depend largely on how much you are willing to spend. For instance, hiring a firm to convene and moderate a focus group may be more expensive than compiling a survey. You will have to determine the best balance between the depth of your research and your budget. Thankfully barter can give you access to options you may not have had available to you in the past.

Here are a just a few options open to you:

Focus Groups
A moderator will ask a scripted series of questions and monitor a discussion among groups of individuals that fit your selected profile. The discussion can be videotaped or monitored live from an observation room with one-way mirrors.

Surveys
These take the form of questionnaires online or by mail and interviews in person or on the phone. You can perform employee and customer service studies and learn first hand where you need to improve, be more competitive or where you need to branch out in order to meet the demands of your customers.

Personal Interviews
More in-depth than surveys, your demographic is asked a series of questions and the session is recorded for analysis.

Field Trials
You can place your new product in select stores and observe customer response and buying habits.

Observation
Have you ever walked through a mall and witnessed someone with a clipboard taking notes? It’s possible that they’re performing and observation technique. By observing consumers’ behavior, you can gain valuable feedback regarding your customer’s patterns and habits.

Mystery Shopping
Hotels, restaurants and retail stores benefit greatly by utilizing mystery shopping. You can improve the quality of your services and ensure customer retention by sending mystery shoppers to your business to measure customer satisfaction at specific locations.

Taste Tests
What do your customers really think about the taste of your products? A research firm will conduct taste tests in your behalf so that you can improve your product.

By gathering data from your customers and target market in the form of market research, you can take the guesswork out of how to fit the needs of your clients and you’ll be a step ahead of the competition!

For more information about how market research can benefit your company, contact Thomas Cheshire at Roundtable Support. To locate research firms that are available on barter, call SBC at 1.877.779.8803