What is Market Research?
No matter how good your service is, your product has few chances to succeed without proper market research. It is too dangerous to assume that you already know enough about your target market. Let me tell you the truth “You know nothing, Jon Snow!” So, go perform market research to ensure you are on the right track.

When you need Market Research?
ASAP! You need to carry out market research as soon as you think about that new product or service. Research should be your earliest step. Don’t take it for granted.

Who should conduct Market Research?
– Product managers
– Startupers/entrepreneurs
– Anyone else who cares enough about the product/service

Then after the questions Market research, we move to data collection that involve collective quantitatives and qualitatives data. There are some differences between these two. Here is a quick overview:

Quantitative Data:

• What is the total size of your market?
• What percent share of the market can you potentially have?
• Demographic picture of your potential B2C customers (Age, Gender, Location, Income, Social class, Occupation, Education)
• Demographic picture of your potential B2B customers (Industry, Location, Size of firm, Price preferences)
• Where are your potential leads coming from?
• What’s the age range?

Qualitative Data:

• What is the current demand in your target market?
• What are the existing or new customers’ values and beliefs
• Trends in target market — growth trends, trends in consumer preferences, and trends in product development
• Growth potential and opportunity for your product and/or business of your size.

With all the differences you can conduct data by interviews, focus groups, observations, and anything else together this information. Then after you get all the data that you need, you can process the data analysis. It’s a stage in market research when qualitative data, quantitative data or a mixture of both, is brought together in order to draw conclusions based on that data. These conclusions then provide enough insights for you to answer your market research questions and validate a new product/service or move on with your existing product/service.

Source: https://medium.com/@rafamkrtchyan/data-analysis-the-last-step-in-market-research-30b969c45de3