When to do market research during the product life cycle
Enhance your product development process with strategic market research.
- Market research is crucial for understanding customer needs, market trends, and competition, enabling informed decisions.
- Conduct market research throughout the product life cycle, from concept to post-launch, to ensure it meets customer needs and adapts to changes.
- The product life cycle describes the stages a product goes through from development and introduction to growth, maturity, and eventual decline.
Market research informs product development teams and their strategies to bring products to market. It’s an invaluable tool that can be deployed at all points of the product life cycle. This article will discuss how to use market research throughout the product life cycle.
Why conduct market research
Considering why businesses invest in research will inform when to conduct market research.
There are a myriad of reasons why companies use market research to benefit their business, including to:
- Gather insight on customer needs. Market research tools like focus groups and surveys provide critical feedback on customer pain points and needs, guiding product design. Understanding what solutions customers seek will inform the development of new products and features, allowing you to tailor your design to meet consumer preferences.
- Learn about market trends. Market trends significantly influence the timing and nature of new product or feature launches. Companies may choose to align with current trends or adopt a different approach to stand out. Either way, online market research supports business growth by providing valuable insights.
- Gain a competitive advantage. Businesses use market research to stay competitive by gaining insights into customer perceptions of their rivals' products. This information helps enhance features and better meet customer needs. Regular market research keeps businesses informed and ahead of the curve, driving growth.
- Plan to launch a new product or feature. Market research is essential for planning a new product launch or feature update. It provides insights into optimal release timing and helps plan a successful launch. By gathering customer feedback and analyzing market trends, you can make informed decisions when entering the market.
- Project expenses and evaluate pricing. Pricing a new product can be challenging. Market research during product development helps determine an appropriate price point by providing insights into customer willingness to pay. This includes data on your target audience’s income, careers, and purchasing habits for similar products.
- Recognize red flags and take corrective action. Market research surveys provide crucial insights that may reveal issues you hadn't anticipated. These insights enable you to adjust your strategy before it's too late. If customers indicate a preference for something different from your current product design, you can pivot and take corrective action, thereby conserving resources.
Does this sound intimidating? Don’t worry. We will outline how to conduct market research during every stage of product development.
Let’s look at this in the context of a product’s entire lifecycle.
When to conduct market research in the product life cycle
When is the best time to do market research? Trick question! Continuously. No matter where you work, you can always tap into the market’s opinions and preferences to get better at your job.
Conducting market research should be an ongoing process for you and your team. Since the market research process provides valuable insights into the competitive market, you should continuously monitor and utilize it to improve.
Development
Conducting market research is essential to successfully launching a new product. This will help you understand the market opportunity and potential customer needs and preferences. Additionally, you should analyze purchasing behaviors, the competitive landscape, and emerging industry trends.
Market research is an ongoing process. After initial discovery, concept testing, a common practice during the development stage, will further inform the validity of your product or service.
You should conduct market surveys on initial product concepts to gauge consumer interest and gather insights on buying behavior, competitor sentiment, and market trends.
Concept testing occurs across all industries, including the art industry. Sakura of America, an art supply manufacturer, used the SurveyMonkey market research solution to expand into the North American market. Concept testing allowed Sakura to quickly gather feedback from target customers, understand a new customer segment, and tailor its products and marketing to North Americans.
Introduction
As you near product launch, aligning your go-to-market strategy with your target audience is essential. Testing packaging, messaging, and other elements provide early consumer response insights.
Kajabi, a software development company, conducted a Usage & Attitudes study to understand customer purchase drivers and motivations. The company created user personas to empower market teams and drive brand and marketing decisions.
Growth
In the growth stage, market research helps you test and optimize your messaging and monitor brand perception. It also identifies opportunities to enhance your product and expand your customer base.
As your product gains traction, market research is not just a one-time activity. It's a continuous process that helps stabilize and expand your brand. Collecting customer feedback on product offerings and messaging enables continuous business growth.
Maturity
Continuously monitoring your brand, competitors, and industry trends during the maturity stage can guide your next steps. Market research may inform you that it’s time to enter a new market, refresh your brand, or develop a product line extension.
The Golden State Warriors conducted market research to better understand their audience’s perceptions. Despite the brand's popularity and maturity, the Warriors discovered that its fan base desired more inclusive performances, on-site social media opportunities, and more. By addressing each survey finding, the Warriors increased fan loyalty.
Decline / Extension
If product sales decline, diagnosing the cause is critical. Is it merely seasonality? Is a competitor's product stealing market share? Market research can help you detect declines early.
Market research can also help you understand how to extend your product life cycle. You may find it time to expand your product offerings to remain competitive in a saturated market.
Conduct market research with SurveyMonkey
Any time is a good time to conduct market research. Market research surveys are key to understanding customer needs and market trends and keeping track of competitors in your space.
SurveyMonkey is a market research solution for brands of all sizes. The tools SurveyMonkey provides empower businesses to leverage consumer data and feedback to build stronger products.
Sign up for SurveyMonkey today to start creating surveys.