• 18+ Risks and Disadvantages of Technology

How to Build Your Business Identity on a Tight Budget

  • Best Green Tea Brands in the world in 2020: What makes them the best?
  • Global Milk brands in 2020 – What makes them successful?
  • What is a Triple Net Lease? Its Advantages and Disadvantages
  • Adaptation Level Phenomenon – understanding its importance
  • Risk Matrix – Factors of a risk matrix and how to implement it
  • Prioritization Matrix – Different types and how to use a prioritization matrix

Advergize

71+ Research Paper Topics & Ideas for Marketing Students  

marketing research assignment questions

As a marketing student, you probably have access to a plethora of resources such as your college library and of course, the internet, to come up with great research paper topics.

However, the thought of writing your research paper can be daunting, especially if you’re still brainstorming and don’t know what to write about.

Just like any other piece of writing, start by keeping your audience in mind. Then, make a list of research paper topics that are more relevant to your interests, or a new under-developed field (for example; augmented reality, or people sentiments towards Artificial Intelligence), or a unique research topic that intrigues your audience.

But if you’re still struggling to pin down one out of the many research paper topics for your program, we’ll suggest a number of them for you to either choose from; or for you to take inspiration from and come up with your own.

Table of Contents

How to Choose the Best Research Paper Topics

Before we dive into the details, you’ll have to familiarize yourself with the basics. For starters, pick up a pen and paper and brainstorm different topics that you’d like to write about.

While personal interest is definitely important, we also suggest you opt for a topic that will intrigue your readers.  Here are a couple of factors you ought to keep in mind while selecting a topic:

Keeping your personal interest in mind

You probably won’t be able to write a stellar research paper if you’re not interested in the topic. Sit down with your peers and advisors to discuss possible ideas. It will be easier for you to discuss different themes once you’ve written down all your ideas in one place. If you’ve decided on a specific keyword for instance “consumer behaviour”, you can look for similar research papers on the internet.

A research paper isn’t a descriptive essay which you can drag aimlessly. Your research paper needs to be based on factual data and that’s only possible if you’ve conducted thorough research. While jotting down points for your first draft, ensure your statements are supported with references or examples citing credible academicals and research work.

Don’t leave it till the last day

A lot of students tend to undermine the writing process and leave for the last few days. Bear in mind that you can’t possibly write your entire research paper overnight. In order to succeed, you’ll have to devote sufficient amount of time to research.

Also, be prepared to schedule meetings with your advisor on a regular basis as you’re bound to require help along the way. At this point, make sure you only rely on credible sources that will support your dissertation.

Examples & List of Research Paper Topics

If you’re still unable to decide a topic of your interest, here is a list of 70 unique marketing research topics that you can use as marketing project topics for your MBA, or any other marketing course:

  • How do organizations use CSR ( corporate social responsibility ) to reinforce brand equity?
  • What manipulation tactics do brands use to get more customers?
  • How can brand image be communicated via social media marketing?
  • How can social media impact the buying choices of shoppers?
  • Are consumers equipped to shield themselves from direct marketing strategies?
  • Determine and analyze consumer buying behavior for [product name]
  • How does advertising impact consumer behaviour?
  • How does family orientation impact marketing communications?
  • What characteristics do buyers look for when purchasing a product online?
  • How does global marketing incorporate standardization?
  • What attributes do consumers look for when comparing products online?
  • How do financial institutions differentiate their goods and services on the basis of social class?
  • Is direct marketing really the most effective form of marketing?
  • What internet marketing trends can be expected for the future?
  • How to marketing strategies differ across different cultures?
  • Can brand advertising impact political campaigns?
  • How do brands exploit impulsive buying?
  • How does loyalty cards encourage sales and boost customer loyalty?
  • Can well-marketed brands get away with selling substandard quality products?
  • How is globalization having on impact on consumer behaviour?
  • Impact of brand image on customer loyalty
  • Brand attributes that lead to an increase in customer loyalty
  • Successful marketing approaches that helped break through strong market monopoly
  • Impact of cause marketing on brand affinity with young mothers
  • Effect of consumer promotions and discount offerings on brand equity
  • The outcomes of advertising in a recession
  • Influence on Social Media advertising on consumer behaviour
  • Effect of TV advertising on top of mind awareness
  • Understanding customer perceptions around event sponsorships
  • Does corporate social responsibility translate into sales?
  • Canadians perspective on being targeted with mobile ads based on their browser history
  • Is direct marketing welcomed by people?
  • Are customers able to differentiate between various mortgage offering by competing banks?
  • Does social media influence buying behaviour
  • Do people like being click baited into sponsored posts?
  • Understanding the impact of celebrity endorsements on ROI for CPG brands
  • Women’s sentiments around comparison advertising
  • How effective is comparison advertising to build brand equity?
  • Do consumers prefer purchasing routine grocery products online?
  • Is earned media perceived to be as important as it appears to be?
  • What makes people want to share content to their friends?
  • Understanding why content goes viral
  • Marketing challenges around the evolving family structures
  • Are we losing the emotional value and significance of money being in a cashless society?
  • Is centralized global marketing a good idea for brand health in local markets?
  • How is augmented reality going to enhance marketing experiences?
  • How will artificial intelligence support in making better marketing decisions?
  • Is immersion marketing through virtual reality technology going to be accepted?
  • What does the luxury auto buyer look for in a car?
  • How to instill a desire to purchase for customers in the luxury category
  • Harmful effects of advertising to kids
  • Impact of in-store branding on brand salience
  • Effect marketing strategies for restaurant businesses
  • Habit formation and ways to integrate new products in consumer lifestyles
  • Is display advertising going to die?
  • Can Snapchat help small business grow?
  • How do customers perceive the brand who advertise on Instagram?
  • The impact of humour in advertising
  • Do customers pay attention to nutrition labels?
  • What triggers impulse buying behaviour
  • Essentials to sky rocket a new brand to heights of awareness
  • The factors that lead to customer satisfaction in young adults
  • Elements that help build an emotional connection with your audience
  • How do males and females differ in their buying behaviour of mobile phones
  • Does language targeting help in ethnic advertising?
  • Customer Perceptions: Are well known brands good in quality?
  • Is radio still an effective method of advertising?
  • Rural vs Urban marketing challenges to be mindful of
  • Impact of internal branding on employee retention and turnover
  • An in-depth analysis of political marketing in Canada

More Categories of Research Topics

Still in need of some inspiration? Here are a few research paper areas that you can explore:

  • Distribution
  • Consumer Behavior
  • Relationship Marketing
  • Brand Management
  • Nonprofit Marketing
  • Market Segmentation & Targeting
  • Internet Marketing
  • Marketing Planning & Forecasting
  • Product Design & Positioning
  • Direct Marketing
  • Advertising
  • Purchasing & Materials Management

Hopefully, these marketing thesis topics will help you come up with a few topics of your own. If you’re still confused about which area, you’d like to work with, we suggest you consult your advisor for some additional help. Good luck!

' src=

135+ Rumi Quotes on Love, Beauty & Happiness

Group-Polarization

Explanation of Group Polarization with Real Life Examples

Related posts.

non-existent-brand-name

Dell Marketing Strategy – Details of the multi-million-dollar monopoly

Difference between Marketing and Advertising

Difference between Marketing and Advertising: What’s confusing?

Write a comment cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

  • ADVERTISING
  • SOCIAL MEDIA
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  • WEB DEVELOPMENT
  • MAKE MONEY WITHOUT PAYING ANYTHING
  • HOW TO MAKE QUICK MONEY
  • WAYS TO MAKE MONEY BLOGGING
  • BIGGEST SLOGANS GUIDE
  • DIFFERENT TYPES OF MARKETING
  • MARKETING MIX EXPLANATION
  • TYPES OF DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES
  • AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR BEGINNERS
  • LEARN TO MAKE A BLOG
  • FREE PRINTABLE CALENDARS 2019
  • DMCA Notice
  • Privacy Policy

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

mkt-research-cover

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

buyers-journey-guide_3

Updated: 02/21/24

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

→ Download Now: Market Research Templates [Free Kit]

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

  • Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
  • Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

marketing research assignment questions

Free Market Research Kit

  • SWOT Analysis Template
  • Survey Template
  • Focus Group Template

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

  • Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
  • Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
  • What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
  • Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
  • What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
  • Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
  • Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
  • Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
  • Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

  • Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
  • Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

  • Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
  • Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
  • Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
  • Focus Groups
  • Product/ Service Use Research
  • Observation-Based Research
  • Buyer Persona Research
  • Market Segmentation Research
  • Pricing Research
  • Competitive Analysis Research
  • Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
  • Brand Awareness Research
  • Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

  • Define your buyer persona.
  • Identify a persona group to engage.
  • Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
  • List your primary competitors.
  • Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

marketing research assignment questions

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

What is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?

What is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?

28 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

28 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

SWOT Analysis: How To Do One [With Template & Examples]

SWOT Analysis: How To Do One [With Template & Examples]

TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them?

TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them?

How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

5 Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences [New Data + Market Researcher Tips]

5 Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences [New Data + Market Researcher Tips]

Causal Research: The Complete Guide

Causal Research: The Complete Guide

Total Addressable Market (TAM): What It Is & How You Can Calculate It

Total Addressable Market (TAM): What It Is & How You Can Calculate It

What Is Market Share & How Do You Calculate It?

What Is Market Share & How Do You Calculate It?

Free Guide & Templates to Help Your Market Research

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

marketing research assignment questions

Small Business Trends

132 market research questions to ask.

75 Market Research Questions to Ask

Another market research example involves creating clear pictures of your ideal customers — called customer personas –for precise targeting. Other market research examples involve gathering feedback from existing customers to measure customer satisfaction.

Types of Market Research Questions

Market Research CategoryDescription
Target Audience DescriptionQuestions focused on understanding the size of the target market, customer personas, and key consumer trends.
Customer Survey QuestionsInquiries directed at customers to gather feedback on their experience, preferences, and satisfaction levels.
Pricing and Value ResearchQueries aimed at assessing pricing strategies, value proposition, and competitor pricing in the market.
Product or Service QuestionsQuestions aimed at understanding product uniqueness, value proposition, and competitive offerings in the market.
Online Visibility QuestionsInquiries focused on assessing the online presence and visibility of the business in search engines and online platforms.
Reputation ManagementQuestions aimed at monitoring and managing the business's reputation by addressing reviews and customer feedback.
Messaging and AdvertisingInquiries focused on understanding customer needs, emotional triggers, and advertising effectiveness.

Market Research Questions

Questions to ask customers.

Use the following as survey questions, either post sale or as post-support surveys. Or use these market research questions to conduct a focus group, interview individual customers, or engage potential customers during the sales process.

Pricing and Value

Doing research may also require you to gather information internally. For example, meet with Sales to discuss feedback they receive from possible customers.

Product or Service Questions

Online visibility questions, reputation management.

A big part of market research today is to find out what customers think and say about your business (and also about your competitors). You want answers to the following market research questions:

Messaging and Advertising

Study.com

In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

  • Marketing Research

Marketing Research Group Assignment

  • February 2017

Sabrina A. at Victoria University Melbourne

  • Victoria University Melbourne

Discover the world's research

  • 25+ million members
  • 160+ million publication pages
  • 2.3+ billion citations
  • Recruit researchers
  • Join for free
  • Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up
  • About the Authors
  • Additional Materials
  • Recruitment Guide Example
  • Discussion Guide Example
  • Qualitative Report Example
  • Additional Material
  • Presentation Examples
  • Codes of Conduct
  • Instructors Only

Practical Marketing Research

How to present the findings , unit 10 potential exam questions and answers .

1.    Name six key deliverables for a marketing research project and explain why each would be useful for the client.  

Answer : Any six of the following •    Research plan •    Questionnaire* •    Sampling plan •    Field plan •    Field disposition reports •    Tabulation plan •    Raw data •    Data tables* •    Topline report •    Final report* •    Presentation* •    Workshop

2.    List the most common sections of a marketing research report and describe the primary function of each of them.   

Answer:  •     Title page – provides project name and date, client name and supplier name.  Could also have key contact information, copyright notice and project number.  Should catch the eye and draw the client in.  •    Table of Contents – makes it easy to find what you are looking for •    Background – provides the client’s context and reason for the research.  Describes the business decisions to be made. Sets the scene for the analysis.  •    Research objectives – A description of the information needed to make the decisions; serves as a check list to make sure everything is covered in the analysis.  •    Methodology – outlines how the project was conducted and who provided the data (e.g. sample).  Helps readers understand who is represented in the study. Makes it easier to replicate the research when need be.  •    Executive Summary – a one or two page summary of key findings, conclusions and recommendations suitable to be circulated beyond the immediate client team.  •    Detailed Findings – the full analysis and story-line that emerges from the analysis to guide the client in making decisions.  •    Conclusions and Recommendations – Overarching insights that have emerged and the recommended action that the client should take towards their business decision •    Appendix – key information and proofs that were not needed to tell the main story.  Added depth that might be useful for those who want more detail.  •    Contact information and project number – to ensure someone looking to ask a question or repeat the study months or years later can easily find the right research team. 

3.    a) What are the key characteristics of a good executive summary ? 

Answer : It is a short summary of the key findings, conclusions and recommendations for a project, that can be circulated to others in the client organization. It is often a series of bullet points, without elaboration.

  b) Why is an executive summary the most critical part of the report? 

Answer : It will be read first, intensely and in many cases, nothing else will be read.  It is likely what the most senior decision makers in the client organization will see. 

4.    List 5 key pieces of information that should appear in the Methodology section of a quantitative marketing research report.  

Answer : Any 5 of the following •    Nature of the research (e.g. ethnography, focus groups, online or telephone survey, etc. ) •    Definition of relevant population •    How the sample was selected and why •    Size of the sample and expected accuracy  •    When the fieldwork was conducted •    Where the fieldwork was conducted •    Success of the fieldwork (response rate, incidence rate) •    Methods used to clean / weight the data •    Analytic methods used

5.    Why is an appendix an important part of a marketing research report?  

Answer : Helps keep the report short by removing information that is less central to the story line.  Provides detail and statistics that are helpful for those who want them without cluttering the main story-telling purpose of the report.  A storage area for information that might be useful in the future (e.g. secondary research). Key analytical outputs that provide credibility but are represented in a different way (e.g. infographic) in the report.  Includes alternative views of the data, the questionnaire and if a short survey, perhaps the data tables. 

6.    Which of the following are not recommendations for formatting PowerPoint (or similar) slides for marketing research reports?  

a)    Use the headline to summarize what the reader needs to know b)    Make the graph or chart the focal point c)    Put the question wording and sample size in the appendix d)    Write detailed descriptions of what the chart says in a sidebar text box e)    Cut out all non-essential words f)    None of the above (all are recommended) g)    c and d  h)    a and e

7.    Explain the difference between writing analysis in the active voice and the passive voice.  Which approach should be used in marketing research reports? 

Answer : In the active voice, the subject acts directly on the verb.  For example “Teens clearly prefer the cherry flavour over all others” is written in the active voice.  The passive voice implies the subject.  The same sentences would read “Cherry is the flavour that was preferred”.  The active voice should be used to make report findings clearer and more immediate.  

8.    When a graph is used to convey the analysis, which of the following is generally needed? 

a.    A legend or labels b.    A title  c.    Question wording d.    Base or sample size  e.    Numbers or a numbered scale f.    All of the above g.    a, b and e

9.    Which of the following is not a basic principle of communications when writing a marketing research report?

a.    Use plain language b.    Avoid redundancies c.    Use short sentences d.    Avoid the passive voice e.    Use an attractive format f.    None, all are basic principles

10.    What does ‘ chunking ’ mean in the context of writing a marketing research report?  

a.    Avoiding 3-dimensional graphs to provide clearer spatial relationships b.    Separating complex information into smaller logical units c.    Using larger, bold fonts for headlines to ensure the story is easy to follow d.    Organizing analysis into related units by storyboarding e.    None of the above

11.     Multiple choice option: Which of the following are reasons why attention must be paid to how a marketing report looks ?  

a.    An attractive report is an invitation for a reader to read it.  b.    A badly laid out report requires more effort to read c.    Key points are easier to absorb if the report is well laid out d.    Readers might judge the quality of the research based on how the report looks e.    An attractive report reflects well on the company and will lead to more work f.    All of the above

Answer : f  

Short answer option: Why is it important that attention be paid to how a marketing report looks ?  

Potential Answers:   •    Readers often make judgements before they read one word, based on how it looks.   •    Anattractive report is an invitation for a reader to read it.  •    A badly laid out report requires more effort to read and key points may not be absorbed.  •    A badly laid out report is less likely to be read. 

12.    Should a presentation deck be different from a report deck?  If so, how?    

Answer : Yes, a presentation deck will have someone explaining it. It should: •    be shorter (less than one slide for every 2 minutes of presentation time) •    focus only on telling the main storyline •    have very few words, simplified charts or infographics  •    be used to emphasize the point being made by the presenter, not distract from him or her •    use larger font sizes so it can be seen from the back of the room (minimum 24 point) •    serve as a marker to remind everyone where we are in the presentation flow.

13.    Create a series of PowerPoint (or similar) slides that demonstrate the following principles of creating a visually more attractive report.  Explain what you’ve done in each case.  

•    Create an inviting, attractive, professional deck •    Use white space to ‘lighten the look’ of each page •    Ensure the background doesn’t make the text hard to read •    Use images only if they reinforce the message •    Use an easy-to-read font •    Don’t overdo emphasis like bolding or underlining •    Simplify charts as much as possible.

Answer : Instructor to evaluate slides

14.    Which of the following are principles behind ‘ knowing your audience ’ when presenting marketing research findings?

a.    How many people will be in the room (live or virtual) b.    How senior they are in the client organization c.    How much they know already about the findings of the study d.    Whether they are looking for the topline story or need to know details e.    How much time they really have for the presentation f.    All of the above g.    c and d h.    a, b and e

15.    Explain some of the things a marketing researcher should do to improve his or her presentation style ?  

Potential Answers: Any of the following;  •    Know your stuff •    Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse •    Turn your back to the screen and speak to the audience •    Practice stillness •    Speak clearly and accurately •    Slow down •    Use pauses •    Look into their eyes, everyone’s eyes •    Acknowledge questions •    Make your point and stop

16.    Why are workshops an important deliverable when completing a marketing research project?  

Potential Answers:   •    Ensures the findings are absorbed, integrated and acted on •    Gets all stakeholders onto the same path, with shared understanding and language •    Leaves the client with an elevated sense of the usefulness of the research •    Helps the client do an important part of his or her job •    Will get you invited back to do more work

Related Books 

book cover

Amazon Link

  • © 2024 Practical Marketing Research
  • www.practicalmarketingresearch.com

Module 3: Market Research

Assignment: market research.

Secondary market research is key to defining your target market. Type up your answers to the following questions and submit them on Blackboard.

1. When defining your target market what FIVE key characteristics/segmentation must be included as discussed in the previous chapter?

2. Using the information available at the Census Department ( www.census.gov ), Identify the key characteristics of the population that live in YOUR city.

  • Based on your finding, what one product or service do you feel will be then next great money maker in your city?
  • Why have you chosen this product/service?

3. Create a questionnaire/survey of 5 questions based on the above topics and use at least 3 of the question designs from the link below. Type your survey at the bottom of the assignment. Examples go to http://www.howto.gov/customer-service/collecting-feedback/basics-of-survey-and-question-design#before-you-design

4. Go to www.surveymonkey.com and research the services that they provide for you to create and use surveys. List some of the services they offer and explain the benefits of using this tool.

  • Market Research Assignment. Authored by : John Russo. Provided by : Santa Ana College. Located at : http://sac.edu . Project : Project Kaleidoscope. License : CC BY: Attribution
  • Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : http://lumenlearning.com . License : CC BY: Attribution
  • Marketing Principles. Authored by : Anonymous. Located at : http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/marketing-principles-v2.0/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Footer Logo Lumen Candela

Privacy Policy

  • (855) 776-7763

All Products

BIGContacts CRM

Survey Maker

ProProfs.com

  • Get Started Free

FREE. All Features. FOREVER!

Try our Forever FREE account with all premium features!

100+ Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers | Qualaroo

Shivani Dubey

Author & Editor at ProProfs

Shivani Dubey specializes in crafting engaging narratives and exploring Customer Experience Management intricacies. She writes on vital topics like customer feedback, emerging UX and CX trends, and sentiment analysis.

100+ Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers | Qualaroo

Asking the right market research questions can help you understand your target customers and map their behavior and preferences. 

But what does it actually mean?

Let’s look at a sample from a market research survey report for mapping brand awareness:

marketing research assignment questions

From this simple Q&A report, you can:

  • Visualize the proportions of demographic segments among your audience.
  • Measure how your brand is performing in comparison to others.
  • Pick the top preferred brand among the customers, explore what makes it stand out, and apply the same techniques to your brand.
  • See how your target market perceives brand advertisements and promotional efforts.

Now imagine if this type of data set is available for different aspects of your business – product development, marketing campaigns, optimization plans, and more.

That’s what market research does for you.

With the evolution of customer interaction points and constantly changing market trends, more and more businesses are fueling efforts to do in-depth market research, as evidenced by the steady increase in the revenue of the market research industry worldwide.

marketing research assignment questions

Market research can help you develop essential business strategies and maintain a competitive advantage over other brands to increase conversions and customer base.

And it all starts with asking the right questions to the right audience.

That’s why we have created this collection of 100+ market research questions to ask your target market. Each question aims to uncover a specific attribute about your customers. You can use a combination of these customer research survey questions, interviews, and othe marketing questionnaires for customers.

We have also added key tips to help you write your own effective market analysis questions if the needed.

100+ Great Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

The main challenge while designing and conducting research is – “What questions should I ask in my customer research survey?

That’s why we have a carefully curated list of market research questions to help you get started.

To Explore New Product Opportunities

marketing research assignment questions

  • What was your first reaction to the product?
  • Would you purchase this product if it were available today?
  • What feature would you like to see on the website/product?
  • Which feature do you think will help improve the product experience for you?
  • Of these four options, what’s the next thing you think we should build?
  • What’s the one feature we can add that would make our product indispensable for you?
  • Would implementing [this feature] increase the usability of the [product name]?
  • Please let us know how we can further  improve this feature.
  • What problem would you like to solve with our product?

To Collect Feedback on Existing Products

  • Have you heard of [product name or category] before?
  • How would you feel if [product name] was no longer available?
  • How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use [Product/feature name?]
  • How often do you use [product name]?
  • How long have you been using [product name] for?
  • When was the last time you used [product name]?
  • Please rate the following product features according to their importance to you.
  • According to you, In which area is this product/service lacking the most? Specify below.
  • How does the product run after the update?
  • Rate our product based on the following aspects:
  • Have you faced any problems with the product? Specify below.
  • What feature did you expect but not find?
  • How are you planning to use [product or service]?
  • How satisfied are you with the product?

To Segment the Target Market

marketing research assignment questions

Please specify your age.

  • Please specify your gender.
  • Select your highest level of education.
  • What is your current occupation?
  • What is your monthly household income?
  • What is your current marital status?

marketing research assignment questions

  • What is the name of your company?
  • Where is your company’s headquarters located?
  • Please specify the number of employees that work in your company.
  • What is your job title?
  • In which location do you work?
  • Which activity do you prefer in your free time?
  • Which other physical activities do you take part in?
  • Where is your dream holiday destination?
  • Please rate the following as per their priority in your life – Family, work, and social life?
  • Are you happy with your current work-life balance?
  • Do you describe yourself as an optimist or a pessimist?
  • How often do you give to charity?
  • How do you travel to work?
  • How do you do your Holiday shopping?

To Conduct a Competition Analysis

marketing research assignment questions

  • Which product/service would you consider as an alternative to ours?
  • Rate our competitor based on the following:
  • Have you seen any website/product/app with a similar feature?
  • How would you compare our products to our competitors? 
  • Why did you choose to use our [product] over other options?
  • Compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same?
  • Which other options did you consider before choosing [product name]?
  • Please list the top three things that persuaded you to use us rather than a competitor.
  • According to you, which brand best fits each of the following traits.

To Gauge Brand Awareness

  • [Your brand name] Have you heard of the brand before?
  • How do you feel about this brand?
  • How did you hear about us?
  • Describe [brand name] in one sentence.
  • If yes, please tell us what you like the most about [your brand name]?
  • If no, please specify the reason.
  • How likely are you to purchase a product from this company again?
  • If yes, where have you seen or heard about our brand recently? (Select all that apply)
  • Do you currently use the product of this brand?
  • Have you purchased from this brand before?
  • Of all the brands offering similar products, which do you feel is the best brand?
  • Please specify what makes it the best brand for you in the category.
  • Which of the following products have you tried? (Select all that apply)
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you recommend this brand to a friend or colleague?

To Map Customers’ Preferences

  • Have you ever boycotted a brand? If so, which brand and why?
  • What influences your purchase decision more – price or quality of the item?
  • How many hours do you spend on social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.?
  • How do you do your monthly grocery shopping – online or through outlets?
  • How do you search for the products you want to buy?
  • Rate the factors that affect your buying decision for [product].
  • What persuaded you to purchase from us?
  • How likely are you to purchase a product from us again?
  • Please rate the following aspects of our product based on their importance to you.
  • What is the most important value our product offers to you?
  • Which of the following features do you use least?
  • How well does the product meet your needs?

To Map Customers’ Reservations

  • Is there anything preventing you from purchasing at this point?
  • What’s preventing you from starting a trial?
  • Do you have any questions before you complete your purchase?
  • What is the main reason you’re canceling your account?
  • What are your main reasons for leaving?
  • What was your biggest fear or concern about purchasing from us?
  • What is the problem that the product/service helped to solve for you?
  • What problems did you encounter while using our [product]?
  • How easy did we make it to solve your problem?
  • What is your greatest concern about [product]?
  • Have you started using other similar products? If yes, what made you choose that product?

To Perform Pricing Analysis

  • Would you purchase the product at [price]
  • According to you, what should be the ideal price of the [product name]?
  • Is our product pricing clear?
  • According to you, what is the ideal price range for the product?

To Collect Feedback on Website Copy

  • Please rate the website based on the following aspects:
  • How well does the website meet your needs?
  • Was the information easy to find?
  • Was the information clearly presented?
  • What other information should we provide on our website?
  • How can we make the site easier to use?
  • What could we do to make this site more useful?
  • Is there anything on this site that doesn’t work the way you expected it to?
  • How easy was it to find the information you were looking for?
  • Have feedback or an idea? Leave it here!
  • Help us make the product better. Please leave your feedback.

To Assess Website/Product Usability

  • Are you satisfied with the website layout?
  • What features do you think are missing on our website?
  • What features do you not like on our website?
  • Was our website navigation simple and user-friendly?
  • How much time did it take to find what you were looking for on our website?
  • Was it easy to find the products you are looking for?
  • Was the payment process convenient?

To Uncover Market Trends and Industry Insights

  • Did you purchase our product out of peer influence or individual preference?
  • How do you form your opinion about our product?
  • Do you follow trends of the product, or do you prefer to go with what you know?
  • Do discounts or incentives impact your decision-making process?

Market Research Survey Templates

One of the easiest ways to conduct market research is to use survey templates. They can help you save time and effort in creating your own market research surveys.

There are many types of market research survey templates available, depending on your objectives and target audience. Some of the most popular ones are:

  • Demographic Templates: These templates help you segment your customers based on their location. It can help you tailor your marketing strategies and offers to different customer groups.

marketing research assignment questions

  • Consumer Behavior Templates: These templates help you keep your pulse on your target market.

Industry Insights Templates: These templates help you get detailed information about your target industry and business.

marketing research assignment questions

Case Study:

Check out how AWA Digital increased revenue per customer for Avis by understanding the market and promoting add-on products.

marketing research assignment questions

Read Full Story Here

Breakdown of Different Market Research Questions

The answer choices in a market research survey question can significantly impact the quality and reliability of the response data you collect from the audience.

Some answer types help categorize the audience, while others measure their satisfaction or agreement. 

So, before listing the customer research survey questions to ask your target audience, let’s understand their types:

Multiple Choice

A multiple-choice question type lets users select more than one answer from the given options. These questions are great for collecting multiple data sets using the same question and gauging people’s preferences, opinions, and suggestions .

marketing research assignment questions

Single Choice

In a single-choice question, the respondent can select only one answer from the given options. This question type is great for:

  • Segregating the users.
  • Prioritizing product updates based on user consensus.
  • Disqualifying irrelevant respondents by placing the question at the start of your customer research survey.

marketing research assignment questions

Matrix Match

A matrix matching grid can combine multiple market research questions into one to make the survey shorter . There is only one condition – the individual questions should have the same response anchors as shown in the image below:

marketing research assignment questions

The questions are arranged in rows while the answer options occupy the grid columns.

Ranking Question

A ranking question can help map customers’ preferences and set priorities for product development . This question type asks the respondent to arrange the given options in their decreasing/increasing preference.

marketing research assignment questions

Dichotomous

A dichotomous question poses a simple yes or no scenario to the respondent. These question types can help disqualify irrelevant people from the survey and categorize the users into two groups .

marketing research assignment questions

Likert Scale

Likert scale market research questions can help you measure the extent of respondents’ agreement/disagreement with the given statement . The answer options are arranged from positive to negative sentiments or vice-versa, with the neutral option in the middle.

marketing research assignment questions

There are two types of Likert scales: 5-point and 7-point .

Open-ended market questions let you explore the respondents’ minds without adding any restrictions to the answer . This question type is followed by a blank space for the respondent to add a free-text response.

marketing research assignment questions

You can add an open-ended question as a follow-up after the first question to explore the reasons for the customer’s previous answer. It also lets you collect more in-depth information about their issues, pain points, and delights.

Tools like Qualaroo offer tons of different question types for your surveys. Just pick the question and match its answer option type from the drop-down. To make it more effective, you can add branching to the survey.

How to Write Your Marketing Research Questions

It’s imperative to have a dedicated repository of market research questions for your surveys. But nothing’s better than crafting your questions.

For this, you need to sit with your team and discuss what information you require from the customers. It lets you analyze and document how much data you already have in your system, which can help set the market research scope.

We have listed some questions you need to ask yourself before asking market research questions to your potential customers or target market:

Audience Segmentation Questions

Audience segmentation questions help to size up your target market and provide a granular view of the audience . Not all customers are equal, and audience segmentation makes it possible to focus on each group individually to address their issues, fears, and expectations.

marketing research assignment questions

Here’s what you need to know before you start writing customer research survey questions to understand your audience:

  • Do we understand the demographics of the new market we are trying to target? (Age, location, ethnicity, education, company, annual income, etc.)
  • What are the locations that drive the most customers to our business? How are these locations different from others?
  • What are the interests, preferences, and fears of people from our new target market? Have we addressed these situations for our current customer base?
  • What are the psychographics attributes of the current customers and potential market? Are we targeting these in our campaigns?
  • What are the most popular engagement channels for our customers? Which channels drive the most traffic to our website?
  • Do we have enough data to perform value segmentation to separate high-value customers from low-value customers? 
  • How often do these high-value customers make a purchase?

Product-Based Market Research Questions

Product-based market research questions can produce precious insights to channel into your product development and optimization strategies . You can see how changing technology affects customers’ behavior, what new features they want to see in your product, and how they perceive your products and services over the competition.

marketing research assignment questions

Start by gathering information about the following:

  • How does our product compare to the competition based on the features?
  • What products do our competitors offer?
  • What new features do customers want to see in our products? Do we have a product roadmap to deliver these updates?
  • What unique solutions do our products offer? What is the value proposition that reflects this offering?
  • Does our product incorporate the latest technological advancements?
  • What channels do we use to collect product feedback from our users?
  • What are customers’ preferences while choosing our products over competitors?

Pricing Market Research Questions

Pricing analysis can help you make your product more affordable to different customer segments while maintaining the desired gross margin. It also lets you restructure the pricing tiers to provide features depending on the customers’ requirements and company size .

Watch: (1/5) Supercharge Your Revenue With Data-Driven Pricing

Your sales and marketing team can help you hone in on the market research questions to ask your customers for running pricing analysis:

  • Do the customers ever complain about the difficulty in finding the pricing information?
  • What is the pricing structure of our competitors for the same products? What features do they include for a specific price?
  • How do customers find our pricing when compared to the competitors?
  • Do our products provide value for money to the customers? Does the sales pitch reflect this point?
  • Can we restructure the pricing, and how will it affect the revenue?
  • Are there any customer segments that have high-value potential but find the current pricing unaffordable? What are the plans for such customers?
  • Are we in a situation to offer a basic free plan to encourage customers to try our product before upgrading?
  • What promotions can we run to attract more customers?
  • Should we target customers based on income, company size, or type of solution to set our product prices?

Brand Reputation Market Research Questions

A brand reputation questionnaire for marketing research gives you information on how well your target market knows about your brand. You can uncover previously unidentified channels to increase brand awareness and find potential customers to promote your brand .

marketing research assignment questions

Start by gauging what customers are saying about your brand:

  • Which channels receive mentions of our brand? Are these posts positive or negative?
  • Do we have a system in place to analyze and monitor these reviews and posts?
  • What are the reviews of our brand on different sites? What is the overall impression of our brand in the market?
  • How are we currently addressing the negative reviews and complaints? What do our customers think about the handling process?
  • What is the impression of our brand in our target market?
  • What brand awareness campaigns are our competitors running?
  • Is our brand among the top choices of our target customers?

Advertisement & Campaign-Based Questions

These customer research survey questions let you assess the effectiveness of your current value propositions and campaigns . You can channel the customer insights into your advertising strategies to design targeted campaigns for different customer segments to reduce the overall acquisition cost and increase conversions.

marketing research assignment questions

Ask the following questions to collect information about the different marketing campaigns that are performing:

  • What are the best modes to run the advertisement campaigns to reach our target audience?
  • What is the estimated lifetime value of customers acquired from current campaigns? Is it higher or lower than the acquisition costs?
  • Which campaigns bring the most ROI and why?
  • How well do our advertisements present our value proposition to the customers? Do they address customers’ fears and expectations to attract them?
  • Are we running A/B tests to improve our online campaigns? How are we gathering data to build the A/B test hypotheses – surveys, heatmaps, eye tracking, etc.?
  • What advertisement campaigns do our competitors run?

7 Question Types to Use in Market Research Surveys

We mentioned earlier that market research questions provide important data for different operations like product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipeline and more.

But to what extent?

Let’s break it down to individual processes and understand how insights from customer research surveys can impact them:

To Know Your Target Market

Understanding your target audience is the fundamental aspect of market research, be it a new target market or existing customers. If you know what marketing research survey questions to ask your target market, you can identify different customer types’ unique traits and preferences.

marketing research assignment questions

The data can help you segment the users based on demographic, psychographic, geographic, and other attributes. These include their behavior, purchase preferences, age, location, habits, delights, frustrations, and more.

You can then create various customer personas and fuel your sales strategies to maximize ROI.

Case study – How Avis increased its revenue per customer

Avis, a leading car rental company, was looking to enhance customer experience by offering useful car add-ons like navigation systems, child seats, insurance, etc., to customers with their booking. So, it reached out to AWA Digital to find a way to promote these products and increase their sales.

AWA digital implemented customer research campaigns using targeted surveys to determine which add-ons were popular among the customers and why. 

Using these insights, the team added an interstitial pop-up just before the booking page to show relevant add-ons to the customers.

This simple update dramatically increased the sales of add-on items and helped Avis generate more revenue per customer.

Read the entire case study here .

To Plan the Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is a visual representation of the current status of your product and planned updates over time. It shows a high-level summary of planned activities and priorities for different teams to take the product to the next level. Understanding different types of summary can help you create more effective and concise roadmaps that clearly communicate your vision and strategy.

Steve Jobs famously said – “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology then try to figure out where to sell it.”

And market research helps to align your product strategies with the customer demand. Using targeted marketing survey questions, you can gauge what new features or functionality customers want to see in your products.

It helps to plan product development strategies based on customers’ consensus to prioritize the ideas that can have the most impact on customers and replace intuition-based approaches with data-backed decisions.

marketing research assignment questions

Customers’ demands change with market trends and technological advancements. That’s why your product map also needs to evolve constantly with time to reflect these changes in your product development cycle.

By designing targeted market research questions to ask the customers, you can uncover their expectations to deliver optimal product solutions. 

That’s what our next case study demonstrates.

Case study – How customer research drives Twilio’s operations  

Twilio, a cloud communications platform places customer discovery and research at the core of their product development strategies. It helps its teams to anticipate customer needs in a constantly changing market.

Lack of time and budget are the two biggest challenges that the company faces in its product development cycle. So, the team uses targeted market research questionnaires for a product to understand the challenges the customers face today and the ones they will face tomorrow. 

marketing research assignment questions

With an abundance of ideas and no time to test them all, the feedback data from surveys is used to prioritize the hypotheses to run the tests. It makes the process more efficient and effective in producing positive results. 

This data-backed approach is used across 18 different teams at Twilio to release new functionality every week and deliver optimal solutions to the clients.

Read the complete case study here .

To Reduce Acquisition Costs

Your customer base consists of multiple customer segments with different preferences and purchase potential. That’s why you cannot sell to everyone and need to find the right audience for your products.

If an acquired customer doesn’t bring in more revenue than it costs to acquire them, it will increase your acquisition costs over time.

We don’t want that, do we?

For example, let’s say you are targeting the entire market population using the same campaign. If your acquisition cost per customer is $300 and you acquire 20 customers from one campaign, you need to make more than $6000 to register profits.

The difficulty is you don’t know about these customers’ purchase behavior and capacity, so you cannot be sure if you will reach your goals. It adds unnecessary risks to your marketing ventures.

But, if you were targeting a specific segment with high income, regular shopping habits, or proven history of brand loyalty, You can obtain better results.

Now, the question is – 

How will you separate these potential long-term customers from one-time buyers and high-value targets from other segments?

One way to do this is by building customer personas using the data from the market research survey questions. A buyer persona defines different attributes of a particular customer segment so you can hone in on the right audience to funnel your marketing efforts.

Here’s what a typical persona includes:

  • Target regions
  • Target demographic (age, marital status, gender)
  • Ideal psychographics (hobbies, social channels, activities they indulge in, goals)
  • Preferred interaction channels
  • Favorite brands and products
  • Total revenue till date
  • Estimated lifetime value

marketing research assignment questions

Once you have a clearer picture of different customers, you can find high-value prospects with the potential to be long-term customers looking for product solutions that your business offers. 

You can then design the correct pitch using the market research data to bring in these customers and control the overall acquisition costs.

For example:

  • Plugin the demographic and psychographic data into CRM software like BIGContacts or Salesforce to convert high-value targets.
  • Use your CRM to create segmented lists of prospects based on estimated value, location, current status, and more. Then target these groups individually with personalized value propositions to increase conversion rates.
  • Identify their preferred mode of communication and technographic inclinations to find the right opportunities to pitch your product offering at the precise moment.

Even if acquiring and retaining such customers costs more, their overall revenue can balance the acquisition costs to deliver higher profits.

To Design Targeted Marketing Campaigns

By knowing how your target audience behaves and interacts with your business, you can find the exact opportunities to target them with personalized campaigns.

marketing research assignment questions

  • You can use mail campaigns to target website users with app-exclusive offers to encourage them to download your app and improve app adoption.
  • Add in-app broadcast messages about upcoming offers, exclusive membership benefits, and other incentives for new users to push them towards the end of the funnel.
  • Create multiple landing pages to target different customer types.
  • Design location-based ad campaigns with personalized value propositions based on audience preferences and problems at each location. 

Case Study – How Canon’s campaigns generated 700% ROI

AWA digital was tasked by Canon, one of the biggest electronics companies worldwide, to assess and increase the demand for their products in different geographies. So, the AWA team conducted customer research using target market survey questions and discovered the following attributes about customers’ purchase behavior and reservations:

  • In some regions, people were reluctant to spend money on a Canon camera as they weren’t sure if Canon was an authoritative brand.
  • In other regions, authority was not as important to the users.

Using these insights, AWA optimized the ads campaigns’ messaging for different locations to include what consumers deemed important purchase factors.

The results?

With in-depth customer feedback, Canon generated an overall ROI of 700% in all regions using personalized campaigns to target the audience.

To Improve Brand Awareness

Whether you are into soft drinks or not, You probably would have heard of Coca-Cola’s 2011 Share-A-Coke ad. This single campaign put the Coke brand back on the map and reversed the 10-year steady decline in sales in the US.  

Coke understood what motivates their customers and delivered a product offering that appealed to the masses to increase its brand equity- the excitement to get a Coca-Cola bottle with their name on it.

How did they do it?

In 2011, Coca-Cola rolled out its share-a-coke campaign in Australia. The company debranded the traditional Coke logo from the bottle and replaced it with the phrase “Share a Coke with” followed by a name.

marketing research assignment questions

The campaign used the list of the country’s most popular names (nicknames). The purpose was to make people go out and find the Coke bottle with their name on it and share it with their friends. The campaign was subsequently rolled out in 80 countries.

How did it impact Coca-Cola as a brand:

  • In Australia, it’s estimated that the campaign increased Coke’s share by 4% and increased consumption among young adults by 7%.
  • #ShareACoke became the top trending hashtag on Twitter globally and received over 1 billion impressions.
  • In the USA, the campaign increased Coke’s market share by over 2% and brought 11% more sales compared to the previous year.

It’s not limited to big brands only.  

Understanding the customers and placing your product’s value offering along with their habits, lifestyle, and behavior can help you extend your brand’s reach.

Today, there are multiple touchpoints to connect with your customers and map their journey to uncover their issues, motivations, and fears to address in your campaigns.

  • Monitor brand mentions on social media and engage with the users to cultivate an online community and promote your brand.
  • Reach out to satisfied customers and turn them into your brand ambassadors.
  • Use targeted ad campaigns that connect people’s emotions and general behavior to imprint your brand’s image in their minds.

Quick Tips for Writing Awesome Market Research Survey Questions

With the inter-team research complete, you are ready to write your own market research questions to ask your target audience. Keep these general dos and don’ts in mind to ensure that the market survey fulfills the purpose without affecting the data quality or response rate.

Use Mutually Exclusive Response Options

If you are using response anchors with specific ranges like age group or income, check that the options do not overlap . Otherwise, it will produce an irregular data set.

Please specify your age:

In the above example, the respondent lying on either extremity of the given age ranges may get confused on which option to choose. For example, a 28-year-old respondent can choose from both second or third options.

Plus, two different respondents of the same age may select different options, which will skew your demographic data.

You can avoid this confusion by creating mutually exclusive groups as shown below:

Always Add A “Not Applicable” Or “Rather Not Say” Option

Since market research questions extract personal information, some respondents may not want to share such details with you. These include questions about age, income, gender, hobbies, social activities, and more.

marketing research assignment questions

Forcing such questions on the customers without allowing them to skip can irate them and lead to survey abandonment .

That’s why you can also use Qualaroo’s skip and branching logic to create smart surveys that only ask relevant questions to your respondents based on their previous answers.

Calculate the Required Sample Size

Sample size plays a vital role in your market research questions to determine the reliability of your response data.

If the response volume is low, the results may not be conclusive to point towards customers’ consensus. On the other hand, a larger sample size than required means a waste of the company’s valuable resources and time.

That’s why it’s important to calculate the required sample size to estimate the number of responses you need for your market research survey questions.

You can use any survey sample size calculator available online to get started. Just fill in the required details to get the required sample size.

marketing research assignment questions

For example, to reach a statistical significance of 99%, you need at least 3145 responses to your market research questionnaire.

Consider Adding Incentives

Studies show that incentivized customer research surveys or questionnaires fetch higher response rates than general surveys.

marketing research assignment questions

The incentives encourage customers to invest their time in a survey and get something in return.

It means creating a gated questionnaire for market research can help you reach the required sample size quickly . The incentive can be a simple discount code, free shipping coupon, free ebook, or other freebies.

marketing research assignment questions

However, there is a possibility that irrelevant respondents may fill out the survey randomly just to get to the offer, which may skew the results. You can use screening questions to filter out unsuitable respondents.

Avoid Double-Barreled Market Research Questions

A double-barreled question poses two questions into one. The problem with such questions is that the respondent may have opposing views about the two statements in the questions. It makes it harder for them to choose one answer from the options .

“Please rate the [product name] on a scale of 1-10 based on overall quality and price?”

Here, the respondent may find the product quality appreciable while thinking it to be overpriced at the same time. In such a case, they may skip the question or select any option randomly.

You can easily sidestep this hurdle by breaking your double-barreled market research question into two to make it less confusing for the respondents.

Importance of Market Research

We mentioned earlier that market research questions provide important data for different operations like product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipeline, and more.

Understanding your target audience is the fundamental aspect of market research, be it a new target market or existing customers. If you know what customer research survey questions to ask your target market, you can identify different customer types’ unique traits and preferences.

marketing research assignment questions

AWA Digital implemented research campaigns using targeted customer research surveys to determine which add-ons were popular among the customers and why.

Case study – How customer research drives Twilio’s operations

Twilio, a cloud communications platform, places customer discovery and research at the core of its product development strategies. It helps its teams to anticipate customer needs in a constantly changing market.

Lack of time and budget are the two biggest challenges that the company faces in its product development cycle. So, the team uses targeted market research questionnaires for a product to understand the challenges the customers face today and the ones they will face tomorrow.

marketing research assignment questions

With an abundance of ideas and no time to test them all, the feedback data from customer research surveys is used to prioritize the hypotheses to run the tests. It makes the process more efficient and effective in producing positive results.

AWA Digital was tasked by Canon, one of the biggest electronics companies worldwide, to assess and increase the demand for their products in different geographies. So, the AWA team conducted a customer research survey using target market questions and discovered the following attributes about customers’ purchase behavior and reservations:

  • In other regions, authority was not so important to the users.

Whether you are into soft drinks or not, you probably would have heard of Coca-Cola’s 2011 Share-A-Coke ad. This single campaign put the Coke brand back on the map and reversed the 10-year steady decline in sales in the US.  

Coke understood what motivates its customers and delivered a product offering that appealed to the masses to increase its brand equity- the excitement to get a Coca-Cola bottle with its name on it.

marketing research assignment questions

  • In Australia, it’s estimated that the campaign increased Coke’s share by 4% and consumption among young adults by 7%.

It’s not limited to big brands only. 

Market Research: A Key to Your Business’ Success

Market research is a vital process for any business wanting to understand its customers and market better. By asking the right questions and using the right tools like Qualaroo, you can gain valuable insights that can help you improve your products or services, enhance your customer experiences, and grow your business.

In this blog, we have shared some of the best market research questions to ask your customers, as well as some of the best customer research survey templates to find market trends and industry insights. We hope that this blog has helped you learn more about market research and how to conduct it effectively.

About the author

Shivani Dubey

Shivani has more than 3 years of experience in the modern creative content paradigm and technical writing verticals. She has been published in The Boss Magazine, Reseller Club, and HR Technologist. She is passionate about Artificial Intelligence and has a deep understanding of how organizations can leverage customer support technologies for maximum success. In her free time, she enjoys Nail art, playing with her guinea pigs, and chilling with a bowl of cheese fries.

Related Posts

marketing research assignment questions

9 Must-Try iOS Survey Apps to Collect In-App Feedback

marketing research assignment questions

12 Best Sentiment Analysis Tools to Choose in 2024 [Free and Paid]

marketing research assignment questions

Product Testing Surveys: 45+ Questions to Ask for Product Growth | Qualaroo

marketing research assignment questions

9 Android Survey Apps to Enhance Your In-App Experience

marketing research assignment questions

10 Best Website Feedback Widgets to Collect Actionable Insights

marketing research assignment questions

35+ Excellent UX Survey Questions You Need to Ask | Qualaroo

68 market research questions to ask (and how to ask them)

Example market research questions, market research questions to ask customers, market research questions for product development, market research questions for brand tracking, pricing survey questions for market research, how to write your own market research questions.

No two market research projects are alike, but happily there are some tried-and-tested questions you can use for inspiration to get the consumer insights you’re looking for.

It’s all about asking questions that are most relevant to the goals of your research. Every so often the best questions are actually quite straightforward, like asking consumers where they do their grocery shopping.

If you’re creating a customer profile, you’ll ask different questions than when you’re running creative testing with your target audience, or getting insights on key consumer trends in your market.

The right market research questions are the ones that will lead you to actionable insights, and give you a competitive advantage in your target market.

Let’s kick this off and get straight into some questions, shall we?

marketing research assignment questions

Where do we even begin with this?! There are so many types of research and we’ll get into which questions work for each below, but here are some classic example market research questions to get you started.

These particular questions are good for surveys that you might run when you’re running some essential consumer profiling research.

  • Which of these products have you purchased in the last 3 months?
  • Which of the following types of >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY< do you buy at least once a month?
  • Approximately, how much would you say you spend on >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY< per month?
  • What is stopping you from buying more of >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • When was the last time you tried a new >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • Please rank the following on how important or unimportant they are when deciding which >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to buy?
  • Which of these brands are you aware of?
  • Which of these brands have you purchased from in the last 3 months?
  • How do you prefer to shop for >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • Why do you prefer to shop online?
  • Why do you prefer to shop in-store?
  • Thinking about the following, how often do you use/listen/watch each of these media?
  • Where do you go to keep up to date with the news?
  • Which social media platforms do you use daily?
  • What mobile phone do you currently own?

Surely you want to talk to your current customers to understand why they buy from you and what they think about your products?

Correct! But your consumer research should definitely not end with current customers!

Potential customer in a supermarket

Here’s why you should think about broadening your research to include other groups and different market research methods :

  • Current customers: This is a must! Running research to your current customers will help you understand how you can make your product or service better. These are the people who’ve spent their hard-earned cash on your products so they have a unique perspective on what kind of value you offer. In addition, understanding why your existing customer base chose your brand over others can help you create messaging that resonates with people who are still on the fence.
  • Previous customers: People who used to buy your products but don’t anymore can give you valuable insight into areas you might need to improve. Perhaps your brand perception has shifted making some customers buy elsewhere, or maybe your competitors offer customers better value for money than you currently do. These are the kinds of areas you can learn about by running research to previous customers.
  • Non-customers: You should also ask people who haven’t bought your products why they haven’t. That way you’ll learn what you need to improve to bring new customers in. You should ideally ask the same kinds of questions, so that you can learn about what product features you need to work on but also things like the messaging you should be putting out there to win people over.

Here are some questions that are perfect for competitive market analysis research. Some of these questions might sound similar to some from our previous section on consumer profiling—that’s because there’s often some crossover between these types of research. Consumer profiling often refers to a more general type of research that covers similar ground to market analysis. If you’re wondering how to calculate market size , questions like these would be a great starting point.

  • How often do you usually purchase >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • Why do you buy >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • What types of >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY< do you buy?
  • How often do you buy the following types of >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • Where do you buy your >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • Where do you find out about >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • Which of these brands have your purchased in the last 12 months?
  • How would you feel if you could no longer buy >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
  • How important or unimportant do you find the following topics? (e.g. sustainability, diversity and inclusion, ethical supply chain)
  • What could be improved about the products you currently use?

Group of people taking part in market research

By involving consumers in the product development process, you can make sure that your products are designed to meet—and ideally exceed—their needs.

Product market research can be done at several points in the product development process, by asking potential customers in your target market questions about existing products (yours or competitors’), prototypes, or just your own early-stage product ideas.

You can dive into the customer experience, specific product features or simply find out if the product quality matches the value proposition you’re putting out there.

Sometimes you even get a surprising answer to the question: how does our product or service help people?

You might learn from the survey responses that customers are using your product in a different way than you intended, opening you up to new target markets and different product types in the future.

Asking these questions also allows you to get feedback on your designs, so that you can make necessary changes before the product is released. Here’s some inspiration for when you’re conducting product market research.

There are different types of new product development research. A key type is Jobs to be done research. This research digs into the practical reasons people buy products—the jobs they need to get done with a specific product. You use these insights to help you create products that will genuinely help consumers, and that they’ll ultimately want to buy.

  • How many times have you carried out [INSERT ACTIVITY] in the last 12 months?
  • How much time would you typically spend on this [INSERT ACTIVITY]?
  • How important or unimportant is carrying out this [INSERT ACTIVITY]?
  • How satisfied or unsatisfied do you feel when carrying out this [INSERT ACTIVITY]?
  • What is the best thing about carrying out [INSERT ACTIVITY]?
  • How does carrying out [INSERT ACTIVITY] make you feel? Please select all that apply
  • What particular problems or challenges do you run into while carrying out [INSERT ACTIVITY]?

When you’re cooking up your brand’s next product, you’ll want to go through a concept testing phase. This is where you ask consumers what they think about your idea and find out whether it’s likely to be a success. Here are some of the questions you could ask in your concept testing research.

  • To what extent do you like or dislike this idea/product? [ATTACH IMAGE]
  • What do you like about this idea/product?
  • What do you dislike about this idea/product?
  • Is easy to use
  • Sounds tasty
  • Is good quality
  • Is Innovative
  • Is different from others
  • Purchase this product
  • Replace the product I currently own with this
  • What other products this idea/product reminds you of? Please provide as much detail as possible including the product name.
  • What feature(s), if any, do you feel are missing from this product?
  • How would you improve this idea/product? Be as descriptive as possible!
  • What issues do you solve through the use of this product?
  • When can you see yourself using this product? Please select all that apply.
  • The price for this product is $25.00 per item. How likely or unlikely would you be to buy this product at this price?

Get inspired with NPD survey templates

Our in-house research experts have created New Product Development (NPD) survey templates to give you the perfect starting point for your product research!

Does the perspective of new customers change over time? How do you compare to other brands, and how do you become the preferred brand in your market and increase that market share?

Brand perception and brand awareness are super important metrics to track. These insights can be used to improve customer experience and satisfaction on a higher level than just product: the relationship you have with your customers.

This research can also help you understand how to reach the holy grail of branding: turning loyal customers into brand ambassadors.

You should also remember to ask marketing research questions about your brand to existing and potential customers.

Existing customers might have a different view after having interacted with your team and products, and you can use that to manage the expectations of your target customers down the line. And potential customers can help you understand what’s holding them back from joining your customer base.

Top tip: it’s completely fine (and super beneficial!) to run brand tracking into your competitors’ brands as well as your own. Replicating research for different brands will give you a tailored benchmark for your category and position.

Here are some key questions to ask in your brand tracking research.

  • Which of the following, if any, have you purchased in the past 12 months?
  • Thinking about >INSERT YOUR CATEGORY<, what brands, if any, are you aware of? Please type in all that you can think of.
  • Which of these brands of facial wipes, if any, are you aware of?
  • Which of these facial wipe brands, if any, have you ever purchased?
  • Which of these facial wipe brands, if any, would you consider purchasing in the next 6 months?
  • e.g. Innovative
  • Easy to use
  • Traditional
  • We’d now like to ask you some specific questions about >INSERT YOUR BRAND<.
  • When did you last use >INSERT YOUR BRAND<?
  • What do you like most about >INSERT YOUR BRAND<?
  • What do you like least about >INSERT YOUR BRAND<?
  • How likely would you be to recommend >INSERT YOUR BRAND< to a friend, family or colleague?
  • Why did you give that score? Include as much detail as possible
  • In newspapers/magazines
  • On Instagram
  • On Facebook
  • On the radio
  • Through friends/family/colleagues
  • When did you last use >INSERT MAIN COMPETITOR BRAND<?
  • How likely would you be to recommend >INSERT MAIN COMPETITOR BRAND< to a friend, family or colleague?

Kick off your brand tracking with templates

Track your brand to spot—and act on!—how your brand’s perception and awareness affects how people buy. Our survey templates give you the ideal starting point!

When it comes to pricing your product, there’s no need to wing it—a pricing survey can give you the insights you need to arrive at the perfect price point.

By asking customers questions about their willingness to pay for your product, you can get a realistic sense of what price point will be most attractive to them and, not unimportant, why.

Top tip: good pricing research can be tough to get right. Asking how much people would theoretically be willing to pay for a product is very different from them actually choosing it in a shop, on a shelf next to competitors’ products, and with a whole load of other economic context that you can’t possibly test for. Price testing is useful, but should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt.

Here are some questions you could use in your pricing research.

  • Which of the following product categories have you bought in the last 12 months?
  • How often do you currently purchase >INSERT YOUR CATEGORY<?
  • At what price would you consider this >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it? (Too expensive)
  • At what price would you consider this >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to be starting to get expensive, so that it is not out of the question, but you have to give some thought to buying it? (e.g. Expensive)
  • At what price would you consider this >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to be a bargain—a great buy for the money? (e.g. cheap)
  • At what price would you consider this >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to be priced so low that you would feel the quality couldn’t be very good? (Too cheap)
  • How much do you currently pay for >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY<? Please type in below
  • Thinking about this product, please rank the following aspects based on how much value they add, where 1 = adds the most value 10 = adds the least value.
  • Thinking about the product category as a whole, please rank the following brands in order of value, where 1 is the most expensive and 10 is the least.

Formulating market research questions can be tricky. On the one hand, you want to be specific enough that you can get tangible, useful answers. But on the other hand, you don’t want to ask questions that are so difficult or unclear that respondents will get frustrated and give up halfway through.

Think about what answers you need and what actions you are hoping to take based on those answers.

We’ll help you get started with a list of steps to take when formulating your own market research questions, and putting them together in a survey that makes sense.

1. Define your research goals and link them to actions you can take

Before you can write great market research questions, you need to know what you want to learn from your research.

What are your goals? What do you want to find out? Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can start brainstorming questions that will help you achieve them.

2. Know your target market and the language they use

Who are you conducting market research for? It’s important to know your audience before you start writing questions, as this will help you determine the best way to phrase them.

For example, if you’re conducting market research for a new product aimed at teenagers, you’ll want to use different language than if you were conducting research for a new financial planning service aimed at retirees.

3. Keep it simple, and break things into smaller pieces

Don’t make your questions too complicated. Stick to simple, straightforward questions that can be easily understood by your target audience.

The more complex your questions are, the more likely it is that respondents will get confused and provide inaccurate answers.

If you feel a question is too difficult, see if you can break it up into smaller pieces and add follow-up questions on top.

And don’t ever load two questions into one! This falls into Consumer Research 101, but it’s amazing how often it happens. Instead of ‘What’s your favorite chocolate bar, and why?’ ask two questions: ‘What’s your favorite chocolate bar?’ and ‘Why is this your favorite chocolate bar?’

4. Be super specific

Make sure your questions are specific enough to get the information you need. Vague questions will only lead to vague answers.

For example, instead of asking ‘What do you think of this product?’, ask ‘What did you think of the taste of this product?’ or ‘What did you think of the packaging of this product?’.

5. Avoid leading questions

Leading questions are those that suggest a particular answer or course of action. For example, instead of asking ‘Do you like our new product?’, which suggests that the respondent should like the product, try asking ‘What are your thoughts on this product?

This question is neutral and allows the respondent to answer freely without feeling pressured in any particular direction. It’s also brand-neutral: people answering this question will have no idea who’s asking, and their opinion won’t be biased as a result.

6. Make sure your question is clear

It’s important that your question is clear and concise so that respondents understand exactly what they’re being asked. If there is any ambiguity in your question, respondents may interpret it in different ways and provide inaccurate answers.

Always test your questions on a few people before sending them to a larger group to make sure they understand what they’re being asked.

7. Avoid loaded words

Loaded words are those with positive or negative connotations that could influence the way respondents answer the question. For example, instead of asking ‘Do you love this product?’, which has a positive connotation, try asking ‘What are your thoughts on this product?’

This question is neutral and allows the respondent to answer freely without feeling pressured in any particular direction

8. Make sure the question is answerable

Before you include a question in your market research survey, make sure it’s actually answerable. There’s no point in asking a question if there’s no way for respondents to answer it properly. If a question isn’t answerable, either revise the question or remove it from your survey altogether.

9. Use an appropriate question type

When designing your market research survey, be sure to use an appropriate question type for each question you include. Using the wrong question type can lead to inaccurate or unusable results, so it’s important to choose wisely. Some common question types used in market research surveys include multiple choice, rating scale, and open-ended questions.

10. Pay attention to question order

The order of the questions in your survey can also impact the results you get from your research. In general, it’s best to start with more general questions and then move on to more specific ones later on in the survey. This will help ensure that respondents are properly warmed up and able to provide detailed answers by the time they reach the end of the survey.

Make smart decisions with the reliable insights

To make sure you make smart decisions that have real impact on your business, get consumer insights you can rely on. Here’s our rundown of the top market research tools.

Survey questions for market research are designed to collect information about a target market or audience. They can be used to gather data about consumer preferences, opinions, and behavior. Some common types of market research survey questions include demographic questions, behavioral questions and attitudinal questions.

There are many different types of market research questions that companies can use to gather information about consumer preferences and buying habits. They can be divided into different categories, like a competitive analysis, customer satisfaction or market trends, after which you can make them more specific and turn them into survey questions. These are some of the things your research questions can help you answer: – What is the target market for our product? – Who is our competition? – What do consumers think of our product? – How often do consumers purchase our product? – What is the typical customer profile for our product? – What motivates consumers to purchase our product?

When conducting market research, surveys are an invaluable tool for gathering insights about your target audience. But how do you write a market research questionnaire that will get you the information you need? First, determine the purpose of your survey and who your target respondents are. This will help you to write questions that are relevant and targeted. Next, craft clear and concise questions that can be easily understood. Be sure to avoid ambiguity, leading questions and loaded language. Finally, pilot your survey with a small group of people to make sure that it is effective. With these tips in mind, you can write a market research survey that will help you to gather the crucial insights you need.

marketing research assignment questions

Elliot Barnard

Customer Research Lead 

Elliot joined Attest in 2019 and has dedicated his career to working with brands carrying out market research. At Attest Elliot takes a leading role in the Customer Research Team, to support customers as they uncover insights and new areas for growth.

Related articles

5 beverage branding ideas (with examples you can learn from), survey vs questionnaire: what’s the difference and which should you use, what does inflation mean for brands, consumer profiling, subscribe to our newsletter.

Fill in your email and we’ll drop fresh insights and events info into your inbox each week.

* I agree to receive communications from Attest. Privacy Policy .

You're now subscribed to our mailing list to receive exciting news, reports, and other updates!

Small Business Bonfire

  • Productivity
  • Working from Home
  • Social Media
  • Content Marketing
  • Contact SBB

75+ Market Research Questions for Success

marketing research assignment questions

Regarding market research, having the right questions is critical for getting  accurate  and  valuable insights .

These 75 market research questions can help you get started on your next project, giving you an idea of what topics to cover to ensure success.

We’ll review everything you need to know about  customer surveys ,  competitive analysis, product feedback, and more !

What is Market Research?

Market research is the process of gathering and analyzing data to understand customer behavior, market trends, and competitor strategies.

It gives businesses the insights needed to make informed decisions about their products and services.

Market research is important because it  helps companies to understand what their customers want  and  how they can best serve them .

We’ll review the steps to help you start conducting market research and asking the right questions.

Types of Market Research

Several different types of market research questions can be used to gain insights into customer behavior and market trends.

These include the following:

  • Single choice
  • Multiple choice
  • Ranking questions
  • Likert scale
  • Dichotomous

75+ Market Research Questions for Success

Single-Choice

These basic questions ask respondents to select one answer from a list of options.

The purpose of a single-choice question is to provide a general overview of customer preferences and needs.

 An example of a single-choice question is:

“What is your favorite type of ice cream?”

Multiple-Choice

These questions ask respondents to select multiple answers from a given list of options.

They can be used to gain more detailed insights into customer preferences than single-choice questions.

An example of a multiple-choice question is the following: 

Which of these activities do you do regularly?

A) Exercise

D) Watch TV

E) Listen to Music

The purpose of a multiple-choice question is to gain a more comprehensive understanding of customer behavior and preferences.

Ranking Questions

Ranking questions ask respondents to rank a list of options in order of preference.

These types of questions can be used to understand how important certain factors are when making decisions.

An example of a ranking question would be the following:

Please rank the following items from most important to least important when selecting a car:

(D) Fuel Efficiency

Likert Scale

A Likert scale is a type of question that asks respondents to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with a statement.

It can be used to gauge customer sentiment around specific topics and gain insights into how they feel about your products or services.

An example of a Likert scale question is: 

“How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend?”

Dichotomous Questions

Dichotomous questions present respondents with two possible answers and ask them to choose one. They are often used to gain quick insights into customer preferences.

An example of a dichotomous question is the following: 

Do you prefer online or in-store shopping?

B) In-store

Open-ended questions allow respondents to provide more detailed answers than single-choice, multiple-choice, ranking, and dichotomous questions.

They are helpful in gaining qualitative insights into customer behavior and preferences.

An example of an open-ended question is the following: 

“What do you think could be improved about our product?”

By understanding the different types of market research questions, businesses can more effectively gather data to gain insights into customer behavior and make informed decisions. With the proper market research techniques, companies can better understand their customers and identify growth opportunities.

How to Write Questions for Market Research

Writing practical questions for market research is key to getting meaningful and valuable results.

Questions should be clear and concise, avoiding jargon or overly technical language. They should also cover the topics that are most important to the project.

Additionally, it’s important to remember who you’re targeting with your questions. Write them in a way the target audience can easily understand and relate to, which will help ensure they provide accurate responses.

For example, if you are writing questions as a market research agency in the USA, you’ll want to tailor them to the appropriate culture and consumer trends.

Finally, take into account any legal or ethical considerations when writing questions. This is especially important when collecting sensitive personal data or working with vulnerable groups.

We’ll go over how to write the following types of questions: 

Feedback Questions

Existing product questions, market segment quesitons, market discovery questions, brand awareness questions, customer reservation questions, pricing analysis questions.

market research questions - feedback

To write feedback questions, start by asking general questions about customer satisfaction. These can include queries about the level of service they received, the quality of products, and whether they would recommend it to others.

You can also ask more specific questions, such as what features customers like or dislike, how easy it is to use a certain product or service, and what changes they would like to see.

To write great existing product questions, you need to know what customers think about your current offerings.

Ask them how satisfied they are with the features and performance of the products or if there is anything that could be improved.

You can also get their opinion on your product’s design, packaging, price point, and customer support.

These questions are designed to gain an understanding of different segments within the market.

Questions can include asking about the following:

  • Income level
  • Customers’ age
  • Primary interests and activities

This information can help businesses identify potential target markets and tailor their products and services accordingly.

Market discovery questions help businesses explore the market and gain insights into customer behavior.

These questions can include asking customers what they currently use their product or service for, their expectations and needs, and what would make them switch to a different offering.

Brand awareness questions can help businesses understand how well their products are known in the market.

Questions can range from asking customers to rate how familiar they are with the brand to what words or phrases come to mind when they think of it.

Boosting brand awareness is important for businesses to reach new customers, so this information can be invaluable.

Customer reservation questions can help businesses identify potential barriers preventing customers from purchasing their products or services.

Questions like the following can be useful in uncovering potential areas for improvement:

  • “What is holding you back from making a purchase?”
  • “What would make you more likely to buy?”
  • “What feature do you wish was available?”

Finally, pricing analysis questions can help businesses determine how much customers are willing to pay for their products and services.

Questions such as the following can help businesses gain valuable insights:

  • “What is your budget?”
  • “Would you be willing to pay more for extra features?”
  • “What other products have you considered in a similar price range?”

By following these tips, you should be able to write effective questions that will provide valuable insights into the market.

market research questions - research

75+ Market Research Questions

In addition to the above questions, here are 75 market research questions you can ask your target audience to help inform your business decisions.

  • How did you learn about our product or service?
  • What made you decide to purchase our product or service?
  • How likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague?
  • Would you say that the features of our product or service met your expectations?
  • Did you find it easy to navigate our website and locate the information needed to make your decision?
  • Did you find any areas of improvement in terms of usability when using our website?
  • How satisfied are you with the customer support options we provide?
  • Did the delivery process for our product meet your expectations in terms of speed, accuracy, and overall experience? 
  • If applicable, did the installation process for our product meet your expectations in terms of speed, accuracy, and overall experience? 
  • Are there any other products or services we could offer that would improve your overall experience with us?
  • What do you think of the quality of our current offerings?
  • How would you rate the usability of our products/services?
  • How would you rate the performance of our products/services?
  • What could we do to make our products/services more appealing to you?
  • Are there any features that are missing from our products/services?
  • What do you like most about our products/services?
  • What could we change to make them better?
  • Do you think our prices are competitive?
  • Would you recommend our products/services to someone else?

Market Segment Questions

  • What age range would you classify yourself in?
  • Are you married, single, or in a relationship?
  • What city/town do you currently reside in? 
  • How many hours a day do you typically spend on the internet?
  • What type of device(s) do you use to access the internet (desktop, laptop, mobile phone)? 
  • On average, how much money do you spend online each month? 
  • What products or services have you purchased online within the last 6 months? 
  • How likely are you to purchase goods or services from an unfamiliar website compared to a familiar website? 
  • How often do you interact with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter? 
  • Are there any particular features or functions that would make it easier for you to shop online or make purchases? 
  • Do you find yourself comparing prices and product features before making a purchase decision? 
  • Are there any particular brands that stand out to you when shopping for products or services online? 
  • When looking for information about products and services online, what sources do you rely on most (e-commerce websites, review sites, etc.)? 
  • What types of discounts are most enticing to customers when making an online purchase (free shipping offers, bonus items with purchase, coupon codes)? 
  • Do certain payment methods influence your purchasing decisions? 
  • What do you think are the most important features when considering a purchase?
  • How would you define your personal style and aesthetic preferences? 
  • Are there any new products or services you want to see in the marketplace? 
  • Do certain brand values affect your purchasing decisions (e.g., sustainability, ethical practices, etc.)? 
  • What do you think are the biggest challenges facing companies in your industry?
  • When researching products or services, what content or information would you like to see from brands? 
  • Are there any particular technologies that you think could improve customer experiences online? 
  • Do current trends in social media affect your views on certain brands and their offerings?
  • Are there any new products or services that would benefit your lifestyle? 
  • What do you think sets certain brands apart from their competitors?
  • Are there any particular marketing strategies that you find appealing when considering a purchase? 
  • Which channels do you prefer to use for customer service (live chat, email, phone)?
  • What is your familiarity with our brand?
  • Do you recognize our brand name when shopping online or in-store?
  • Are there any particular elements that stand out to you in the design of our website, logo, products, and services? 
  • How do you feel when interacting with our brand (positive, neutral, negative)?
  • What do you think our brand stands for?
  • What words would you use to describe our brand and its offerings? 
  • Do you prefer more traditional or modern marketing techniques/strategies when engaging with our brand? 
  • Which social media platforms do you associate most with our brand?
  • Are there any particular campaigns that have resonated with you in the past?
  • What type of content do you expect to see from our brand? 
  • Are there any particular features or services that make our brand stand out from its competitors? 
  • Do certain events or promotions influence your views on our brand? 
  • Do you believe our brand offers competitive pricing compared to other brands?
  • Do you think our brand is transparent with its customers regarding providing information and responding to inquiries? 
  • Are there any particular resources that could help customers better understand our brand and offerings? 
  • What do you believe our brand should focus on to improve customer experiences?
  • Do you think our brand adequately addresses customer feedback or suggestions? 
  • Do certain rewards or loyalty programs influence your purchasing decisions when considering our brand?
  • Do you feel that our brand keeps up with the latest trends in technology and innovation?

Customer Retention Questions

  • What do you believe are the key factors that make customers commit to our brand?
  • Do you think our customer service is up to par with competitors in the market?
  • How likely are you to recommend our products or services to friends and family? 
  • What do you think keeps customers engaged with our brand, both online and in-store? 
  • Are there any particular features or services that you think make our brand stand out from its competitors?
  • Do certain discounts, promotions, or loyalty programs influence your decision to stay with us?
  • What do you think is the biggest challenge when retaining customers for our brand?
  • Are there any new products or services that would make you a more loyal customer?
  • Are there any particular communications or marketing tactics that could help keep customers engaged with our brand?
  • Do certain events or milestones influence your commitment to our brand?
  • What do you think is the most effective way to show appreciation for customers?
  • Are there any loyalty or rewards programs that have successfully kept customers loyal to our brand?
  • Do you think our customer service team is responsive and attentive when addressing customer needs and inquiries?
  • Are there any particular features or services that could improve your overall experience with our brand? 
  • Do you feel our prices are reasonable compared to other products and services in the market?
  • Are there any specific features or services that add value to our offerings?
  • What do you think is the best way to differentiate ourselves from competitors regarding pricing?
  • Are there any particular discounts or promotions that could influence customers to purchase from us?
  • Do you think our pricing strategy is transparent and easy for customers to understand?
  • Do certain market events or trends influence customer decisions when choosing our brand over competitors?
  • What do you believe are the biggest challenges when it comes to setting prices for our products or services?
  • Do you think our price points are competitive enough to draw customer interest?
  • Are there any particular features or services that could be offered at a lower cost than competitors?
  • Do you think certain rewards or loyalty programs influence customer decisions when comparing brand prices?
  • Are there any discounts, promotions, or offers that have successfully driven sales?
  • What is the most effective way to communicate pricing information to customers?
  • Are there any particular resources or tools that could be used to analyze and adjust our prices as needed?

Market Research Wrap Up

These 75 market research questions provide a great starting point for any business looking to gain valuable insights into customer behavior and market trends.

By using this as a guide, you can ensure that your surveys are comprehensive and effective in helping you make informed decisions about your products and services. Good luck!

Do you have any questions of your own to add? Let us know in the comments below!

Newsletter Signup

Join The Leads Field Guide Newsletter for tips, strategies and (free) resources for growing your leads, and closing more deals.

Related Articles

Step-by-step guide to designing a captivating vinyl banner, maximizing brand exposure: how to effectively utilize promotional products, beyond press releases: the evolving role of public relations agencies.

63 Insightful Market Research Questions to Ask in 2023

Better understand your target customer with these must-ask questions.

marketing research assignment questions

Understanding your target market, and how they respond to your product, is the key to successful promotional campaigns. Even if you feel like you understand your market perfectly, markets do change over time. Your customers’ opinions, needs, and wants will change along with current trends in society, politics, pop culture, and other influences. Asking the right market research questions can help you stay on top of your changing market.

The market research questions below will help you understand your market’s most pressing concerns , along with potential pain points.

Market research questions to understand customer demographics and psychology

Aside from basic demographic questions, like age, gender, income, and location, you can create a more specific customer profile. Ask these questions to get to know your customers better:

  • How do you primarily spend your time?
  • In which industry do you work?
  • What kind of hobbies do you regularly participate in?
  • What are your main interests?
  • If money or time were not an issue, what do you prefer to spend money on?
  • What draws you to one brand over another?
  • How do you choose between brands and products? 
  • Who makes the primary purchasing decisions in your household?
  • How many people do you shop for on a regular basis?
  • What’s your preferred method of shopping? Why?
  • What makes you decide to avoid a brand in the future?
  • How do you feel about available products in [your product category]?
  • How often do you shop for [your product category]? 
  • How much do you spend on [product category] on a monthly basis?
  • How do you use [product type] in your everyday life?

Market research questions for new products

If you’re gathering information to create or launch new products, these questions can provide valuable insight:

  • What do you look for when purchasing [new product or service]?
  • What is the most important feature for a [product type]?
  • How does [product type] make your life easier?
  • How often do you use [product type]?
  • Describe how you use [product type].
  • How much would you prefer to spend on a similar product or service?
  • What features would encourage you to pay more for a product or service?
  • Are there any features in [similar product or service] that you wouldn’t use?
  • Do you feel [competing products] are priced fairly?
  • What would convince you to try a new product or service in this category?

Market research questions for pain points

Understanding how your customers are responding to your current offerings, whether product, service, advertising, or customer service, can help you understand where your business can improve. Ask these questions to learn more:

  • When was the last time you purchased from [company]?
  • Describe your experience with your last purchase.
  • Where did we succeed in meeting your expectations?
  • Where did we fail in meeting your expectations?
  • What would make your experience with [product] better?
  • Are there any features you don’t use?
  • What would your ideal product or service include?
  • Have you ever talked to our customer service team?
  • Describe your reason for needing customer service assistance.
  • Describe your experience with our customer service team.
  • Was your issue resolved?
  • How quickly was your issue resolved?
  • Were you satisfied with the outcome?
  • What would have made the experience better?
  • What’s the most difficult part of using our products or services?
  • Do you use our website? How do you use it?
  • Have you experienced any problems contacting us for assistance? What were they?
  • Have you experienced any problems on our website? What were they?

Market research questions for pricing and placement

Understanding how your product pricing and placement compare to those of your competitors can be helpful. Use these questions to refine your pricing and promotional strategies:

  • How much do you currently pay for [product type]?
  • Do you think our product is priced fairly?
  • Have you found [product or service] for less? Did you purchase it? Why or why not?
  • What is a reasonable price range for [product or service]?
  • What is the ideal price for [product or service]?
  • Is [price point] too low or too high for a similar product/service?
  • Have you seen our products in stores before?
  • Where have you seen our products mentioned/placed/advertised?
  • Where would you like to see our products or services mentioned/placed/advertised?

Market research questions for advertising and brand awareness

Advertising, marketing, and branding create an image in your customers’ minds. While brand awareness is its own market research niche, these questions will help you understand how customers perceive your brand and advertising campaigns:

  • Are you familiar with our brand?
  • How did you find our brand/company?
  • Have you ever seen any reviews of our brand/product/company? How did they influence your purchase?
  • Have you ever seen advertisements for our brand/product/company? How did they influence your opinion of us?
  • Who do you think our target customer is?
  • When you think of our brand, how do you feel?
  • Does our advertising and branding accurately reflect your experience with our company?
  • What should potential customers know about our products and services?
  • What do you think our brand/company stands for?
  • Have you ever followed any of our social media channels? Which ones? How do you feel about our social media presence?

Ask the insightful questions with Voiceform

When it’s time to ask the market research questions that will get you the insight you desire, Voiceform will make the process simple. Our feature-rich, innovative multimedia survey platform empowers companies to get the answers they need. From voice and video functions to AI transcription and analysis , this powerful survey platform can help you create, launch and distribute multiple survey types. Learn more about our products today by scheduling a demonstration.

We make collecting, sharing and analyzing data a breeze

Get started for free. Get instant access to Voiceform features that get you amazing data in minutes.

marketing research assignment questions

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

  • Knowledge Base
  • Starting the research process
  • 10 Research Question Examples to Guide Your Research Project

10 Research Question Examples to Guide your Research Project

Published on October 30, 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on October 19, 2023.

The research question is one of the most important parts of your research paper , thesis or dissertation . It’s important to spend some time assessing and refining your question before you get started.

The exact form of your question will depend on a few things, such as the length of your project, the type of research you’re conducting, the topic , and the research problem . However, all research questions should be focused, specific, and relevant to a timely social or scholarly issue.

Once you’ve read our guide on how to write a research question , you can use these examples to craft your own.

Research question Explanation
The first question is not enough. The second question is more , using .
Starting with “why” often means that your question is not enough: there are too many possible answers. By targeting just one aspect of the problem, the second question offers a clear path for research.
The first question is too broad and subjective: there’s no clear criteria for what counts as “better.” The second question is much more . It uses clearly defined terms and narrows its focus to a specific population.
It is generally not for academic research to answer broad normative questions. The second question is more specific, aiming to gain an understanding of possible solutions in order to make informed recommendations.
The first question is too simple: it can be answered with a simple yes or no. The second question is , requiring in-depth investigation and the development of an original argument.
The first question is too broad and not very . The second question identifies an underexplored aspect of the topic that requires investigation of various  to answer.
The first question is not enough: it tries to address two different (the quality of sexual health services and LGBT support services). Even though the two issues are related, it’s not clear how the research will bring them together. The second integrates the two problems into one focused, specific question.
The first question is too simple, asking for a straightforward fact that can be easily found online. The second is a more question that requires and detailed discussion to answer.
? dealt with the theme of racism through casting, staging, and allusion to contemporary events? The first question is not  — it would be very difficult to contribute anything new. The second question takes a specific angle to make an original argument, and has more relevance to current social concerns and debates.
The first question asks for a ready-made solution, and is not . The second question is a clearer comparative question, but note that it may not be practically . For a smaller research project or thesis, it could be narrowed down further to focus on the effectiveness of drunk driving laws in just one or two countries.

Note that the design of your research question can depend on what method you are pursuing. Here are a few options for qualitative, quantitative, and statistical research questions.

Type of research Example question
Qualitative research question
Quantitative research question
Statistical research question

Other interesting articles

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

  • Sampling methods
  • Simple random sampling
  • Stratified sampling
  • Cluster sampling
  • Likert scales
  • Reproducibility

 Statistics

  • Null hypothesis
  • Statistical power
  • Probability distribution
  • Effect size
  • Poisson distribution

Research bias

  • Optimism bias
  • Cognitive bias
  • Implicit bias
  • Hawthorne effect
  • Anchoring bias
  • Explicit bias

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, October 19). 10 Research Question Examples to Guide your Research Project. Scribbr. Retrieved July 30, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/research-question-examples/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, writing strong research questions | criteria & examples, how to choose a dissertation topic | 8 steps to follow, evaluating sources | methods & examples, get unlimited documents corrected.

✔ Free APA citation check included ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

Access best-in-class company data

Get trusted first-party funding data, revenue data and firmographics

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry.

What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Business intelligence insight graphic with hand showing a lightbulb with $ sign in it

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

  • Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
  • Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
  • Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
  • Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
  • Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
  • Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

  • Qualitative research
  • Quantitative research
  • Exploratory research
  • Descriptive research
  • Causal research
  • Cross-sectional research
  • Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

  • Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
  • Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
  • Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Build your project graphic

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

  • Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
  • Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
  • Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

  • Surveys and questionnaires
  • Focus groups
  • Observational research
  • Online research tools
  • Experiments
  • Content analysis
  • Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

  • Set clear objectives
  • Identify your target audience
  • Choose your research methods
  • Use the right market research tools
  • Collect data
  • Analyze data 
  • Interpret your findings
  • Identify opportunities and challenges
  • Make informed business decisions
  • Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

  • Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

Market Research Graphic Crunchbase

  • Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
  • Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
  • Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
  • Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

Enrich your database graphic

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

  • Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

Product Image Advanced Search CRMConnected

  • Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
  • Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
  • Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
  • Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

  • Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
  • SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
  • HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
  • SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
  • SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

Related Articles

marketing research assignment questions

  • Entrepreneurs
  • 15 min read

What Is Competitive Analysis and How to Do It Effectively

'  data-srcset=

Rebecca Strehlow, Copywriter at Crunchbase

marketing research assignment questions

17 Best Sales Intelligence Tools for 2024

marketing research assignment questions

  • Market research
  • 10 min read

How to Do Market Research for a Startup: Tips for Success

'  data-srcset=

Jaclyn Robinson, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at Crunchbase

Search less. Close more.

Grow your revenue with Crunchbase, the all-in-one prospecting solution. Start your free trial.

marketing research assignment questions

29 Market Research Questions to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

You are currently viewing 29 Market Research Questions to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

  • Post author: Daniel
  • Reading time: 5 mins read
  • Post last modified: June 10, 2022

One of the best ways to learn about your market and customers is by asking questions. When you ask the right market research questions, you can identify opportunities to improve your marketing strategy , operations, and industry.

Page Contents

You can gain insights that help you:

  • Attract your target audience
  • Stand out from competitors
  • Improve your products and services
  • Better serve your customers

To ask the best questions, it helps to break down your market research questions into the following categories:

  • Market research questions
  • Questions to ask your target market
  • Questions to ask your customers
  • Questions for competitive analysis

Some market research questions will require research to find the answers. For example, you may want to know, “How do our competitors drive traffic?” Other questions you can directly ask your customers. For those questions, you can survey or interview customers to find answers and insights.

Here are some examples of questions you can ask for each type of marketing research .

Market Research Questions

General market research aims to help you learn about your market size and potential to connect with customers.

Great qualitative market research questions include:

  • How big is our potential market?
  • Will this market grow or shrink in the future?
  • What other products and services are similar to ours?
  • Who are our top competitors?
  • What market share do our competitors own?
  • What share is available for us to own/take?

To find answers to these questions, use  sites for market research  that help you find information on geographic locations, industry competitors, and economic conditions.

Market Research Questions to Ask Your Target Market

Questions to ask your target market include demographic market research questions that help you get to know who your customers are.

Here are some examples:

  • What is your age?
  • What is your gender?
  • What is your education level?
  • Where do you live?
  • What is your profession?
  • What is your household income?
  • What is your household size?

These questions can go deeper and uncover psychographic segmentation details that help you learn about the interests, attitudes, and needs of your customers.

Examples of these questions include:

  • What are your hobbies and interests?
  • Where do you spend your free time?
  • What are your biggest challenges?
  • What are your primary goals?
  • What is most important to you?
  • Where do you go for information?
  • How do you like to make purchases?

To gather these details, you can survey or interview your customers.

Market Research Questions to Ask Customers

Existing customers can provide great insight into your business, products, and services.

Market research questions to ask clients or customers include:

  • How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend?
  • How long have you been a customer?
  • What problem does [product/service] solve for you?
  • How does the [product/service] fit into your daily workflow?
  • How well does [product/service] meet your needs?
  • What do you wish the [product/service] had that it currently does not?
  • What do you like [most/least] about [product/service]?
  • What made you choose us over a competitor?
  • How would you rate your last experience with us?

You can gather this information through audience analysis, in-person interviews with your customers, or online customer surveys.

Pro Tip:  It’s important to collect information from customers who are advocates of your product/service, but also those who did not have an agreeable experience. Asking infrequent or lost customers for their feedback is an excellent way to surface gaps in your product/service and identify opportunities for improvement.

Market Research Questions for Competitive Analysis

Once you assess your industry and customers, start asking market research questions about your competitors. Some questions to ask include:

  • How is our brand doing compared to our competitors?
  • How do our competitors effectively attract customers?
  • How much website traffic do our competitors receive?
  • Which keywords are driving traffic to our competitors?
  • What sources are driving traffic to our competitors?
  • How many inbound links do our competitors have?
  • What type of content is performing well for our competitors?

For tips on how to conduct a thorough  competitive analysis , download our free competitive analysis template.

Get Better Answers to Your Market Research Questions

Asking the right market research questions helps you uncover insights to improve customer satisfaction, business operations, and  marketing strategies . But asking questions is only half the process. You also need to make sure you’re collecting the most accurate and authentic answers.

Use the market research questions in this post to direct your inquiries to your business, customers, and industry.

Source: blog.alexa.com

Post author avatar

You Might Also Like

Read more about the article Industry Analysis Using Porter’s Five Forces: Guide + Example

Industry Analysis Using Porter’s Five Forces: Guide + Example

Read more about the article How To Uncover Your Competitor’s Winning Moves With Semrush

How To Uncover Your Competitor’s Winning Moves With Semrush

Read more about the article How to Use Growth Share Matrix to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy

How to Use Growth Share Matrix to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Order a complete seo audit:.

  • Name/Company: *
  • Your email *
  • Website url: *
  • Select deliverable: * SEO Audit [Small & Medium] SEO Audit [Large]
  • Get a 15% discount if you add a SEO strategy or a 25% discount if you also add the CI service .
  • Only the SEO audit
  • Add SEO Strategy [15% off]
  • Add SEO Strategy & CI Analysis [25% off]
  • Pay with: * Stripe PayPal
  • Total (one time): $0.00
  • Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

marketing research assignment questions

Order a Complete SEO Strategy:

  • Get a 15% discount if you add bundle it with an SEO audit .
  • Select Deliverable: * SEO Strategy SEO Strategy + Audit [Small & Medium] SEO Strategy + Audit [Large]

“Daniel goes above and beyond your expectations. The communication was excellent; he is friendly and great to work with. Can’t do anything else than give him a top score and my best recommendations!” Read more testimonials .

Order a CI Website Analysis or CI Program:

  • Select Deliverable: * Digital Business Competitive Analysis Competitive Analysis + Ongoing Monitoring
  • Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

What we include in the Complete SEO Audit

Here is what we include in the complete SEO audit so you can discover how to unleash its true potential and prepare it for Google SGE & AI:

  • A manual check of over 100 SEO factors done by a certified SEO specialist [GSC, SGE, AI included];
  • A PDF document of 25-30 pages that covers all the findings and importance along with advice on fixing the issues identified;
  • 3-4 pages summary of findings that outline the current status of your website SEO and what should be addressed for improvements;
  • A 4-page document describing the status of the preparation of your website for Google SGE and AI.
  • Technical sheets and documents, crawls, exports, and data that support our audit findings;
  • Follow-up call(s) of up to 2 hours (4 hours for the Large plan) on Zoom to discuss and explain all the audit findings and your next steps;
  • Four (six for Large plan) weeks of email support from our SEO experts after delivery (up to 4(6) emails answered);
  • The option to work with us for fixes on predictable  ongoing SEO plans ;
  • Before starting, we need access to your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts.
  • We will deliver the SEO Audit to you within one month of ordering;

Choose a plan to suit your SEO needs:

  • Select SEO Plan: * Ongoing SEO Care Plan Ongoing SEO Performance Plan Ongoing SEO Growth Plan
  • Total (monthly): $0.00
  • Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

“Daniel goes above and beyond your expectations. The communication was excellent, he is friendly and great to work with. Can’t do anything else than give him a top score and my best recommendations!” Read more testimonials .

By continuing to use this website, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our Cookie Policy.

Root out friction in every digital experience, super-charge conversion rates, and optimize digital self-service

Uncover insights from any interaction, deliver AI-powered agent coaching, and reduce cost to serve

Increase revenue and loyalty with real-time insights and recommendations delivered to teams on the ground

Know how your people feel and empower managers to improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention

Take action in the moments that matter most along the employee journey and drive bottom line growth

Whatever they’re are saying, wherever they’re saying it, know exactly what’s going on with your people

Get faster, richer insights with qual and quant tools that make powerful market research available to everyone

Run concept tests, pricing studies, prototyping + more with fast, powerful studies designed by UX research experts

Track your brand performance 24/7 and act quickly to respond to opportunities and challenges in your market

Explore the platform powering Experience Management

  • Free Account
  • Product Demos
  • For Digital
  • For Customer Care
  • For Human Resources
  • For Researchers
  • Financial Services
  • All Industries

Popular Use Cases

  • Customer Experience
  • Employee Experience
  • Employee Exit Interviews
  • Net Promoter Score
  • Voice of Customer
  • Customer Success Hub
  • Product Documentation
  • Training & Certification
  • XM Institute
  • Popular Resources
  • Customer Stories
  • Artificial Intelligence

Market Research

  • Partnerships
  • Marketplace

The annual gathering of the experience leaders at the world’s iconic brands building breakthrough business results, live in Sydney.

language

  • English/AU & NZ
  • Español/Europa
  • Español/América Latina
  • Português Brasileiro
  • REQUEST DEMO
  • Experience Management
  • The Ultimate Guide to Market Research
  • Market Research Questions

Try Qualtrics for free

Market research questions: what to ask and how.

9 min read Whether you’re looking for customer feedback, product suggestions or brand perception in the market, the right market research questions can help you get the best insights. Learn how you can use them correctly and where to begin.

What is market research?

Market research (also called marketing research) is the action or activity of gathering information about market needs and preferences. This helps companies understand their target market — how the audience feels and behaves.

For example, this could be an online questionnaire, shared by email, which has a set of questions that ask an audience about their views. For an audience of target customers, your questions may explore their reaction to a new product that can be used as feedback into the design.

Why do market research?

When you have tangible insights on the audience’s needs, you can then take steps to meet those needs and solve problems. This mitigates the risk of an experience gap – which is what your audience expects you deliver versus what you actually deliver.

In doing this work, you can gain:

  • Improved purchase levels – Sales will improve if your product or service is ticking all the right buttons for your customers.
  • Improved decision making – You can avoid the risk of losing capital or time by using what your research tells you and acting with insights.
  • Real connection with your target market – If you’re investing in understanding your target audience, your product and service will more likely to make an impact.
  • Understand new opportunities – it might be that your research indicates a new area for your product to play within, or you find potential for a new service that wasn’t considered before.

Get started with our free survey software

Who do you ask your questions to?

Who to target in your market research is crucial to getting the right insights and data back. If you don’t have a firm idea on who your target audiences are, then here are some questions that you can ask before you begin writing your market research questions:

  • Who is our customer currently and who do we want to attract in the future?
  • How do they behave with your brand?
  • What do they say, do and think?
  • What are their pain points, needs and wants?
  • Where do they live? What is the size of our market?
  • Why do they use us? Why do they use other brands?

We’ve put together some questions below (Market research questions for your demographics) if you wanted to reach out to your market for this.

With the answers, you can help you segment your customer market, understand key consumer trends, create customer personas and discover the right way to target them.

Market research goals

Give yourself the right direction to work towards.There are different kinds of market research that can happen, but to choose the right market research questions, figure out your market research goals first.

Set a SMART goal that thinks about what you want to achieve and keeps you on track. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. For example, a good SMART business goal would be to increase website sales for a top product by 10% over a period of 6 months.

You may need to review some strategic business information, like customer personas and historical sales data, which can give you the foundation of knowledge (the ‘baseline’) to grow from. This, combined with your business objectives, will help you form the right SMART targets tailored to your teams.

Types of market research questions

Now that you have your SMART target, you can look at which type of market research questions will help you reach your goal. They can be split into these types:

  • For demographics
  • For customers
  • For product

Market research questions for your demographics

Demographic information about your customers is data about gender, age, ethnicity, annual income, education and marital status. It also gives key information about their shopping habits.

Here are some questions you can ask in your market research survey:

  • What is your age / gender / ethnicity / marital status?
  • What is the highest level of education you have achieved?
  • What is your monthly income range?
  • What methods of shopping do you use?
  • What amount do you spend on [product/brand/shopping] each month?
  • How regular do you shop for [product/brand]?

Learn more about the demographic survey questions that yield valuable insights .

Market research questions for your customer

These questions are aimed at your customer to understand the voice of the customer — the customer marketing landscape is not an one-way dialogue for engaging prospects and your customer’s feedback is needed for the development of your products or services.

  • How did we do / would you rate us?
  • Why did you decide to use [product or service]?
  • How does that fit your needs?
  • Would you recommend us to your friends?
  • Would you buy from us again?
  • What could we do better?
  • Why did you decide to shop elsewhere?
  • In your opinion, why should customers choose us?
  • How would you rate our customer experience?

Learn more about why the voice of the customer matters or try running a customer experience survey.

Market research questions for your product

These questions will help you understand how your customers perceive your product, their reactions to it and whether changes need to be made in the development cycle.

  • What does our [product or service] do that you like or dislike?
  • What do you think about [feature or benefit]?
  • How does the product help you solve your problems?
  • Which of these features will be the most valuable / useful for you?
  • Is our product competitive with other similar products out there? How?
  • How does the product score on [cost / service / ease of use, etc.]?
  • What changes will customers likely want in the future that technology can provide?

There are also a set of questions you can ask to find out if your product pricing is set at the right mark:

  • Does the product value justify the price it’s marketed at?
  • Is the pricing set at the right mark?
  • How much would you pay for this product?
  • Is this similar to what competitors are charging?
  • Do you believe the price is fair?
  • Do you believe the pricing is right based on the amount of usage you’d get?

Have you tried a pricing and value research survey to see how much your target customers would be willing to pay?

Market research questions for your brand

How does the impact of your products, services and experiences impact your brand’s image? You can find out using these questions:

  • What do you think about our brand?
  • Have you seen any reviews about us online? What do they say?
  • Have you heard about our brand from friends or family? What do they say?
  • How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend?
  • Have you read the testimonials on our own channels? Did they have an impact on your decision to purchase? How?
  • When you think of our brand, what do you think/ feel / want?
  • How did you hear about us?
  • Do you feel confident you know what our brand stands for?
  • Are you aware of our [channel] account?

Learn more about brand perception surveys and how to carry them out successfully.

How to use market research questions in a survey

For the best research questionnaires, tailoring your market research questions to the goal you want will help you focus the direction of the data received.

You can get started now on your own market research questionnaire, using one of our free survey templates, when you sign up to a free Qualtrics account.

Drag-and-drop interface that requires no coding is easy-to-use, and supported by our award-winning support team.

With Qualtrics, you can distribute, and analyse surveys to find customer, employee, brand, product, and marketing research insights.

More than 11,000 brands and 99 of the top 100 business schools use Qualtrics solutions because of the freedom and power it gives them.

Related resources

Market intelligence tools 10 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, primary vs secondary research 14 min read, business research methods 12 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, business research 10 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, request demo.

Ready to learn more about Qualtrics?

Cart

  • SUGGESTED TOPICS
  • The Magazine
  • Newsletters
  • Managing Yourself
  • Managing Teams
  • Work-life Balance
  • The Big Idea
  • Data & Visuals
  • Reading Lists
  • Case Selections
  • HBR Learning
  • Topic Feeds
  • Account Settings
  • Email Preferences

Research: How Passion Can Backfire at Work

  • Erica R. Bailey,
  • Kai Krautter,
  • Adam D. Galinsky,
  • Jon M. Jachimowicz

marketing research assignment questions

And how managers should handle this double-edged sword.

Passion has long been championed as a key to workplace success. However, scientific studies have found mixed results: On the one hand, some studies find evidence that passionate employees tend to perform better, while other research has documented null or even negative effects on performance. What’s the root of these inconsistent findings surrounding passion? And how can we reap the benefits of passion without falling prey to its downsides? Through a series of studies with more than 1,000 employees from the U.S. and China, researchers shed light on these questions by showing that passion is associated with overconfidence in our own performance. Although this passion-driven overconfidence is not necessarily harmful — and in certain contexts, it may even be helpful — their findings suggest that managers should take steps to mitigate the potential negative consequences of the overconfidence that may go hand in hand with passion.

From business leaders to athletes to everyday employees, passion is often cited as a key ingredient in the success of high achievers. Consider Elon Musk, whose passion is undeniable. He followed this drive and went on to popularize electric cars through Tesla and reinvigorate space transportation via SpaceX.

marketing research assignment questions

  • EB Erica R. Bailey is an Assistant Professor in the Management of Organizations group at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Her research primarily focuses on authenticity and the self, asking questions like, how do we define who we are? When do we experience that sense of self in everyday life? What barriers prevent us from sharing that self fully with others?
  • KK Kai Krautter is a PhD student in the Organizational Behavior Unit at the Harvard Business School. His research interests revolve around maintaining passion for work over time as well as flexibility in extraversion between different situations.
  • WW Wen Wu is a professor at School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University. His research focuses on leadership, emotions, and employee proactivity.
  • Adam D. Galinsky is the chair of the Management Division at the Columbia Business School. He co-authored the critically acclaimed and best-selling book,  Friend & Foe  (Penguin Random House, 2015), and delivered a popular TED talk,  How to Speak Up for Yourself .
  • Jon M. Jachimowicz is an assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior Unit at the Harvard Business School. He received his PhD in management from Columbia Business School. He studies how people pursue their passion for work, how they perceive passion in others, and how leaders and organizations seek to manage for passion.

Partner Center

Building, Architecture, Outdoors, City, Aerial View, Urban, Office Building, Cityscape

Clinical Research Project Coordinator II

  • Madison, Wisconsin
  • SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH/OBSTETRICS & GYNECOLOGY-GEN
  • Partially Remote
  • Staff-Full Time
  • Opening at: Jul 29 2024 at 13:40 CDT
  • Closing at: Aug 12 2024 at 23:55 CDT

Job Summary:

The Department of OB/GYN seeks a Clinical Research Project Coordinator II who will work on basic, translational and clinical trial related research in the Department of OBGYN and as it relates to collaborators from other Departments or study sites. We see the value in a dedicated research project coordinator who focuses on the understanding and managing the full spectrum of work as it relates to specific research initiative/global projects from patient recruitment, coordination of consent, communication with healthcare team on participant enrollment, tissue collection and processing. The first main project will work with the Tissue Bank and/or projects that use Human tissue collections. This person will work with team to improve operations of tissue banking and work as liaison between Human Subjects Core and Tissue Collection and Processing Cores. Additionally, this candidate will also be able to train/teach others on the research team who more specifically perform these task types on a more focused level. The ideal candidate will have excellent communication skills and effectively communicate with study PI's on setting up and planning for new projects, database set-up, and successful recruitment and tissue collection. Candidate will also ensures data is entered accurately by study team(s), which may include monitoring study records for completeness and accuracy. This person will identify opportunities for research infrastructure improvement in processes and then follow-up with streamlining and development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

Responsibilities:

  • 5% Serves as point of contact for external institutions participating in clinical research studies. Ensures data is entered accurately by study team(s), which may include monitoring study records for completeness and accuracy
  • 30% Collaborates with investigators, research staff, study sponsors, participating sites, and other collaborators to rapidly move clinical trial research protocols through the activation process
  • 30% Interfaces with investigators, research staff, sponsors, participating sites, and collaborators to maintain clinical trials, including reviewing, evaluating and implementing protocol amendments, ensuring timelines and milestones are met, and performs proper study close-out procedures. Performs effective, clear, and timely communication to ensure proper trial management
  • 5% Coordinates and conducts participating site visits
  • 5% May serve as a site manager
  • 5% Schedules , coordinates, and prepares for sponsor site visits, ensuring that all study records are available, complete, and accurate for sponsor review
  • 10% Backup lab support for Tissue collections
  • 10% Backup patient coordinator for Tissue Bank and/or projects that use Human tissue collections

Institutional Statement on Diversity:

Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals. The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background - people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world. For more information on diversity and inclusion on campus, please visit: Diversity and Inclusion

Preferred Bachelor's Degree Degree in biology or closely related field.

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications: - Experience in translational and clinical research studies. Preferred Qualifications: - Experience in women's health. - Experience in reproductive health.

Full Time: 100% This position may require some work to be performed in-person, onsite, at a designated campus work location. Some work may be performed remotely, at an offsite, non-campus work location. Work schedule: Up to 15% outside the normal business day work schedule. The job will require following established protocols, handling of human tissues and fluids, and sharing responsibility of a 24- hour/365 day call schedule.

Appointment Type, Duration:

Ongoing/Renewable

Minimum $58,450 ANNUAL (12 months) Depending on Qualifications Employees in this position can expect to receive benefits such as generous vacation, holidays, and sick leave; competitive insurances and savings accounts; retirement benefits. Benefits information can be found at ( https://hr.wisc.edu/benefits/ ). SMPH Academic Staff Benefits flyer: ( https://uwmadison.box.com/s/r50myohfvfd15bqltljn0g4laubuz7t0 ).

Additional Information:

This position has been identified as a position of trust with access to vulnerable populations. The selected candidate will be required to pass an initial caregiver check to be eligible for employment under the Wisconsin Caregiver Law and every four years.

How to Apply:

To apply for this position, please click on the "Apply Now" button. You will be asked to upload a current resume/CV and a cover letter briefly describing your qualifications and experience, and a document listing contact information for three (3) references, including your current/most recent supervisor. References will not be contacted without prior notice.

Kirsten Gragg [email protected] 608-265-3357 Relay Access (WTRS): 7-1-1. See RELAY_SERVICE for further information.

Official Title:

Clin Res Project Coord II(RE103)

Department(s):

A53-MEDICAL SCHOOL/OB-GYN/GYN RESEARCH

Employment Class:

Academic Staff-Renewable

Job Number:

The university of wisconsin-madison is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer..

You will be redirected to the application to launch your career momentarily. Thank you!

Frequently Asked Questions

Applicant Tutorial

Disability Accommodations

Pay Transparency Policy Statement

Refer a Friend

You've sent this job to a friend!

Website feedback, questions or accessibility issues: [email protected] .

Learn more about accessibility at UW–Madison .

© 2016–2024 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System • Privacy Statement

Before You Go..

Would you like to sign-up for job alerts.

Thank you for subscribing to UW–Madison job alerts!

COMMENTS

  1. 71+ Research Paper Topics & Ideas for Marketing Students

    Product Design & Positioning. Direct Marketing. Advertising. Purchasing & Materials Management. Hopefully, these marketing thesis topics will help you come up with a few topics of your own. If you're still confused about which area, you'd like to work with, we suggest you consult your advisor for some additional help.

  2. Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

    Download HubSpot's free, editable market research report template here. 1. Five Forces Analysis Template. Use Porter's Five Forces Model to understand an industry by analyzing five different criteria and how high the power, threat, or rivalry in each area is — here are the five criteria: Competitive rivalry.

  3. PDF Marketing Research Project Workbook

    The Marketing Research Project Workbook provides step-by-step directions for you to conduct your own marketing research study. Research concepts are ... Before beginning any research project, certain questions should be asked. These questions will directly impact the decision of whether to execute the research, and will shape the design, scope,

  4. Market research questions: what to ask and how

    Market research (also called marketing research) is the action or activity of gathering information about market needs and preferences. This helps companies understand their target market — how the audience feels and behaves. For example, this could be an online questionnaire, shared by email, which has a set of questions that ask an audience ...

  5. 132 Market Research Questions to Ask

    Pricing and Value. The following are pricing research questions to ask. Small business owners and marketers may want to assign someone to do a competitive analysis, such as gathering data from competitor websites and putting it into a spreadsheet. Doing research may also require you to gather information internally.

  6. Marketing 301

    1. Determine the research problem. Provide a case background and business situation. Share your research objectives and questions. Identify what role your research should play. 2. Identify the ...

  7. (PDF) Marketing Research Group Assignment

    Marketing Research Group Assignment. February 2017; DOI: ... DMK 2033 MARKETING RESEARCH. STUDENT NAME STUDENT ID. ... 2.2 Research Questions.

  8. Exam Questions and Answers

    Unit 10 Potential Exam Questions and Answers. 1. Name six key deliverables for a marketing research project and explain why each would be useful for the client. 2. List the most common sections of a marketing research report and describe the primary function of each of them. • Title page - provides project name and date, client name and ...

  9. Assignment: Market Research

    Assignment: Market Research. Secondary market research is key to defining your target market. Type up your answers to the following questions and submit them on Blackboard. ... Create a questionnaire/survey of 5 questions based on the above topics and use at least 3 of the question designs from the link below. Type your survey at the bottom of ...

  10. 99 Market Research Questions You Should Be Asking

    99 market research questions: discover, define, drill down. There's no need to limit yourself! The best types of market research should - and do - include general questions and those addressing both existing and prospective customers. Indeed, an intelligent approach to market research should cover demographic questions all the way to ...

  11. 100+ Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

    Likert scale market research questions can help you measure the extent of respondents' agreement/disagreement with the given statement. The answer options are arranged from positive to negative sentiments or vice-versa, with the neutral option in the middle. There are two types of Likert scales: 5-point and 7-point.

  12. 68 Market Research Questions to Ask (& How to do it)

    Survey questions for market research are designed to collect information about a target market or audience. They can be used to gather data about consumer preferences, opinions, and behavior. Some common types of market research survey questions include demographic questions, behavioral questions and attitudinal questions. 2.

  13. 75+ Market Research Questions for Success

    These 75 market research questions provide a great starting point for any business looking to gain valuable insights into customer behavior and market trends. By using this as a guide, you can ensure that your surveys are comprehensive and effective in helping you make informed decisions about your products and services. Good luck!

  14. 63 Insightful Market Research Questions to Ask in 2023

    63 Insightful Market Research Questions to Ask in 2023. Better understand your target customer with these must-ask questions. Jan 17, 2023. Understanding your target market, and how they respond to your product, is the key to successful promotional campaigns. Even if you feel like you understand your market perfectly, markets do change over time.

  15. 10 Research Question Examples to Guide your Research Project

    The first question asks for a ready-made solution, and is not focused or researchable. The second question is a clearer comparative question, but note that it may not be practically feasible. For a smaller research project or thesis, it could be narrowed down further to focus on the effectiveness of drunk driving laws in just one or two countries.

  16. Marketing research assignment

    Marketing research is the function linking the consumer, customer and public to the marketer through information - information used: to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; to generate, refine and evaluate marketing actions; to monitor marketing performance; and to improve understanding of the marketing process.

  17. How to Do Market Research

    It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 5. Causal research.

  18. 29 Market Research Questions to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

    Get Better Answers to Your Market Research Questions. You can gain insights that help you: Attract your target audience. Stand out from competitors. Improve your products and services. Better serve your customers. To ask the best questions, it helps to break down your market research questions into the following categories: Market research ...

  19. Solved Marketing Research Assignment

    Question: Marketing Research Assignment. Marketing Research Assignment. Here's the best way to solve it. Powered by Chegg AI. 100 % ...

  20. Unit 22 Market Research Assignment

    Market Research Assignment - 22.1 Introduction In this report I am going to be discussing how a part time research assistant for a market research agency would look to expand their company and target different size enterprises as potential new clients. I will also put together a briefing paper which examines the types of market research used by ...

  21. Market Research Questions: What to Ask and How

    Market research (also called marketing research) is the action or activity of gathering information about market needs and preferences. This helps companies understand their target market — how the audience feels and behaves. For example, this could be an online questionnaire, shared by email, which has a set of questions that ask an audience ...

  22. Research: How Passion Can Backfire at Work

    Through a series of studies with more than 1,000 employees from the U.S. and China, researchers shed light on these questions by showing that passion is associated with overconfidence in our own ...

  23. Clinical Research Project Coordinator II

    Job Summary: The Department of OB/GYN seeks a Clinical Research Project Coordinator II who will work on basic, translational and clinical trial related research in the Department of OBGYN and as it relates to collaborators from other Departments or study sites.We see the value in a dedicated research project coordinator who focuses on the understanding and managing the full spectrum of work as ...

  24. UA Launches New Center for AI Research and Development

    "The launch of the ALA-AI Center marks a transformative moment in AI research and education here at The University of Alabama and for our state, showcasing UA's unwavering dedication to excellence, innovation, world-class education and in being at the forefront of the research and development of cutting-edge technologies," said Dr ...