This document discusses market research and identifying customer needs. It defines market research as planning, collecting, and analyzing data relevant to marketing decisions. Market research should be done to improve decision making, identify problems, focus on retaining customers, and understand market changes. The key steps of market research are defining the problem, developing a plan, collecting data, analyzing it, and reporting findings. Identifying customer needs is crucial because customers will not buy products or services they do not need. The document then outlines 10 methods for identifying customer needs such as analyzing existing data, interviewing stakeholders, mapping customer journeys, conducting surveys, analyzing competition, and recording customer feedback.

1. MARKET RESEARCH AND
IDENTIFYING CUSTOMER NEEDS
K.BALAJI

2. Market Research
• The planning, collection and analysis of data
relevant to marketing decision making and the
communication of the results of this analysis
to management.

4. Why it should be done
• To improve the quality of the decision making
• Trace problems
• Focus on keeping existing customers
• Understand changes in marketplace

5. Market research process
• Define the research problem
• Develop the research plan
• Collect data
• Analyze the data
• Report findings

7. Identifying customer needs
• However your product or the service is good,
no one will buy it if they don’t need it
• Knowing and understanding customer needs is
at the center of every successful business

8. 10 methods for identifying customer
needs
• Analyzing with existing data
• Interviewing stakeholders
• Mapping the customer process
• Mapping customer journey
• Conducting follow me research
• Interviewing customers
• Conducting voice of customer surveys
• Analyzing the competition
• Analyzing the cause and effects
• Recoding feedback from customers

9. Analyzing with existing datas
• It is easier to collect and analysis the existing
datas
• Review past surveys, customer interviews and
customer call logs.
• This process does not need more funding if
the data is already collected.

10. Interviewing stakeholders

11. Interviewing stakeholders
• When you don’t have the existing data start
with the sales and support teams
• They know the product and the customers.
• They also have a list f feature requests, bug
reports and enhancements – straight from the
customer mouth.
• Combine this to generate list of requirements.

12. Mapping the customer process

13. Mapping the customer process
• Let us ride in a normal taxi company where
you have to wait to reach the dispatcher and
also waited for a car to be dispatched and also
hope that the driver would find you.
• But if you ride in uber call taxi you can open
your

14. Mapping customer journey

15. Mapping customer journey
• A customer journey is a visualization of the
process a customer goes through when
engaging with a product or service.
• It’s a document meant to unify fragmented
efforts and identify points of friction and
opportunities for improvement.
• It is about the innovation that comes from
fixing the pain.

16. Conducting ‘follow me home” research
• It literally means following a customer from
home to work.
• You follow a customer to her workplace,
spending the day watching her do her job.
• You observe process pain points ad then look
for opportunities for improvement.
• This step took time and sometimes led to
failure and frustration.

17. Interviewing customers

18. Interviewing customers
• Go directly to the source and ask customers
about what problems they have and what
features they want.
• Even when customers cant articulate their
needs clearly, you can often gain insights that
lead to successful innovations.

19. Conducting voice of customer surveys

20. Conducting voice of customer surveys
• This survey collect data from email or from a
pop-up on a website, about the attitudes and
expectations of existing or prospective
customers.
• Use a mix of open and closed ended questions
to produce the most useful data.
• This survey yields to identify customer goals,
challenges, problems and attitudes and
recommend for improvement.

21. Analyzing your competition

22. Analyzing your competition
• Consider using firms that might present a
more objective face to customers who engage
with your organization and its competition.
• Consider using SWOT rule : Identify your
competitor's strengths, weakness,
opportunities and threats.
• Don’t just look at your competition in the
same industry, but other industries as well.

23. Analyzing cause and effect

24. Analyzing cause and effect
• Not only positive thinking, negative thinking
can also solve problems more effectively.
• Through observations, surveys and other data
sources you can find the symptoms for the
root cause problems.
• Task failures, errors and long task times are
the usual symptoms of problems.

25. Recording experiences thorough diary
studies
• Ask participants to record problems,
frustrations, positive experiences or thoughts
at intervals throughout a day, week or even a
year.
• This can be low tech, with customers writing
their experiences and thoughts down on
paper and mailing it in, or high tech in which
you can send text messages or emailed
surveys to customers at particular intervals

26. References :
http://www.dummies.com/business/customers/10-methods-for-identifying-customer-needs/