Market Research FAQs

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about your target market, competitors, and industry environment. It replaces guesswork with evidence — so your decisions about pricing, product launches, marketing campaigns, or market entry are grounded in real customer data rather than intuition.

Businesses that invest in market research consistently make faster, more accurate decisions and avoid costly missteps. Whether you’re launching a new product, entering a new region, or trying to understand why customer satisfaction has declined, research gives you the clarity to act with confidence.

These two approaches answer different questions, and the best research programs use both together.

Qualitative research explores the ‘why’ behind people’s attitudes and behaviour. It uncovers emotions, motivations, perceptions, and the language consumers use to describe their experiences. Methods include focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviews (IDIs). Because qualitative research works with smaller, purposively selected samples, its findings are directional rather than statistically representative — but they are rich and nuanced.

Quantitative research answers the ‘what’ and ‘how many’ questions. It is conducted with larger, statistically representative samples and produces findings you can project to the wider population. Common applications include brand tracking, customer satisfaction measurement, market sizing, and segmentation studies. Data is gathered through surveys — online, telephone (CATI), or face-to-face.

A good rule of thumb: use qualitative research to generate hypotheses and understand depth; use quantitative research to validate and measure scale.

Quantitative research is ideal when you need measurable, comparable data across a defined population. Typical applications include:

• Market sizing: Estimating the total addressable market by surveying purchasing habits, spend levels, and future purchase intent.
• Brand health tracking: Measuring brand awareness, consideration, preference, usage, and advocacy — usually on a continuous basis to monitor the impact of sales and marketing activity over time.
• Customer segmentation: Grouping customers and prospects by shared attitudes, needs, or behaviours to inform targeting and product development.
• Customer satisfaction (CSAT/NPS): Tracking loyalty and satisfaction scores over time or across different touchpoints in the customer journey.
• Advertising effectiveness: Measuring the before-and-after impact of a campaign on brand perception, recall, and purchase intent within a target segment.

Qualitative research is used when you need depth of understanding rather than breadth of measurement. It is particularly valuable for:

• Exploring unmet customer needs and the emotional drivers behind choices
• Understanding brand perceptions, associations, and the ‘meaning’ consumers attach to products
• Diagnosing why a product or campaign is not performing as expected
• Generating creative territory for new product concepts or advertising
• Mapping the customer journey and identifying pain points

Common qualitative methods include focus group discussions (FGDs), in-depth interviews (IDIs), ethnographic observation, online communities (MROCs), and laddering exercises.

Cognitive mapping is a research technique used to surface and visualise how participants mentally organise their knowledge about a product, brand, category, or market. Participants are asked to articulate their understanding of relationships between concepts, which the researcher then maps visually.

The technique originated in psychology and organisational behaviour and is now widely used in market research to understand competitive positioning, brand associations, and the mental models consumers bring to a category. It is especially useful when you want to understand not just what consumers think, but how they structure their thinking.

The questionnaire should be exactly as long as it needs to be to answer your research objectives — and no longer. Respondent fatigue is real, and every unnecessary question increases drop-out rates and reduces data quality.

As a practical guide:

• Online self-completion surveys: 10–15 minutes (approximately 20–30 questions, depending on complexity)
• Semi-structured telephone interviews (CATI): 20–30 minutes
• Detailed telephone or face-to-face interviews: 30–60 minutes

The ideal length also depends on the audience (business executives have less patience than general consumers), the topic (engaging topics sustain attention longer), the incentive structure, and how the questionnaire is written. A well-designed questionnaire with varied question formats and a logical flow will hold respondents’ attention far better than a list of repetitive rating scales.

At Maction, we always conduct a pilot phase — completing approximately 10% of interviews before full fieldwork — to test questionnaire flow, timing, and data consistency.

Response rates — the proportion of people invited to complete a survey who actually do so — vary enormously depending on the channel, audience, incentive, and topic.

As a rough guide: cold outreach surveys (emailed to a purchased list) typically yield response rates of 5–15%. Surveys sent to an engaged customer base with a relevant topic can achieve 20–40%. Panel-based online surveys, where respondents have opted in to research participation, tend to deliver response rates in the range of 10–30%.

It is important not to confuse response rate with incidence rate (the proportion of the population who qualify for your survey based on screening criteria) or completion rate (the proportion of people who start the survey and finish it). All three affect the total number of interviews completed and the cost per complete.

Maction manages sample and fieldwork to hit agreed interview targets, regardless of the response rate mechanics behind the scenes.

A well-run market research project moves through five clear phases:

1. Kick-off meeting: We meet with your team to align on research objectives, priorities, and success criteria. This is the moment to surface any assumptions, flag constraints, and agree on what ‘good’ looks like. Clear objectives at this stage prevent scope creep and ensure the research delivers actionable outputs.
2. Questionnaire / discussion guide development: Our team drafts the survey instrument or qualitative discussion guide, incorporating insights from the kick-off. We share drafts with clients for review and typically require one to two rounds of feedback before finalisation. For CATI projects, the approved questionnaire is then programmed into our telephony system and translated into relevant languages.
3. Pilot and fieldwork: We begin with a pilot phase — completing roughly 10% of the total interviews — to test question clarity, interview timing, and data consistency. After the pilot review, full fieldwork proceeds over a typical span of two to four weeks, depending on sample size and audience accessibility.
4. Data processing and analysis: Completed survey data is cleaned, coded, and processed in SPSS or equivalent software. Our research team then immerses in the data to identify key trends, test hypotheses, and build a clear narrative around the findings — always with the original research objectives in view.
5. Reporting and presentation: We deliver a final report and present findings to your team — either in person or via video conference. The presentation covers headline findings, detailed analysis, and strategic recommendations. We always build in time for Q&A and discussion of next steps.

Concept testing is the research process of exposing target consumers to a description, visual, or prototype of a new product, service, or communication idea — before it is developed or launched — to assess its appeal, relevance, and likely market success.

The stimulus can range from a written concept statement to a product mock-up or animatic (rough-cut advertisement). The closer the stimulus is to the real-world experience of the product or idea, the more predictive the research will be.

Concept testing is most valuable during the early stages of product development, when you want to:

• Screen multiple concepts to identify the strongest contenders
• Understand which features or benefits resonate most
• Estimate purchase intent and likely market size
• Identify barriers to adoption before investing in full development

Maction conducts concept testing in both qualitative (FGD, IDI) and quantitative (online survey) formats, depending on the stage of development and the level of precision required.

Path to purchase research (also called customer journey research) maps the complete end-to-end experience a buyer goes through — from first becoming aware of a need, through information search and supplier evaluation, to purchase and post-purchase experience.

Traditional customer journey mapping often has two blind spots: it focuses only on existing customers (missing how prospects who did not buy experienced the process) and it starts at the point of formal vendor engagement (missing the earlier stages of need recognition and research). Maction’s path to purchase research addresses both gaps by including both customers and prospects in scope, and by tracing the journey back to the very beginning of the buying process.

The outputs — typically a detailed journey map with touchpoints, pain points, and moments of influence — are used to improve marketing, sales enablement, and customer experience strategies.

A customer journey map is a visual representation of every interaction — or touchpoint — a customer has with your brand, product, or service across time. It captures what the customer is doing, thinking, and feeling at each stage, and highlights where their experience is strong and where it falls short.

Journey maps are typically built using a combination of qualitative research (to understand the emotional texture of each stage) and quantitative data (to understand the relative importance and frequency of different touchpoints). The result is a tool that aligns cross-functional teams — marketing, product, customer service, and sales — around a shared, evidence-based understanding of the customer experience.

Net Promoter Score is a widely used loyalty metric calculated by asking customers a single question: ‘On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [brand/product/service] to a colleague or friend?’ Respondents scoring 9–10 are Promoters; 7–8 are Passives; 0–6 are Detractors. NPS = % Promoters minus % Detractors, giving a score ranging from -100 to +100.

As for what constitutes a ‘good’ NPS: it depends heavily on the industry. An NPS of +30 might be outstanding in one sector and below average in another. As a general benchmark, any positive NPS (above 0) indicates that you have more promoters than detractors. Scores above +50 are considered excellent in most industries.

Maction recommends benchmarking your NPS against direct competitors and category norms rather than using a single absolute threshold. We track NPS across a wide range of Indian and global industries and can provide relevant benchmarks for your category.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) applies the same NPS methodology to your workforce. Employees are asked: ‘How likely are you to recommend this organisation as a place to work?’ The calculation is identical — Promoters minus Detractors — producing a score from -100 to +100.

eNPS is a quick, comparable measure of employee engagement and organisational loyalty. Because it is a single standardised question, it is easy to track over time and to benchmark across departments, locations, or against industry peers. It is typically used as part of a broader employee experience study rather than as a standalone metric.

Customer experience (CX) metrics are quantitative measures that help businesses track how well they are meeting customer needs and expectations over time. The most commonly used metrics are:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures advocacy and loyalty
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Measures satisfaction with a specific interaction or transaction
• Customer Effort Score (CES): Measures how easy it was for a customer to complete a task or resolve an issue

No single metric tells the full story. NPS captures long-term loyalty but may not be sensitive to individual touchpoint issues. CSAT is excellent for transactional feedback but does not predict future behaviour well. CES is a strong predictor of churn in service contexts.

Maction recommends using a combination of metrics — anchored to your specific business objectives — and tracking them consistently over time so trends become meaningful.

Brand awareness is typically measured in two ways:

Unaided (spontaneous) awareness: Respondents are asked to name all the brands they can recall in a given category, without any prompting. The brands mentioned first — ‘top of mind’ awareness — are the most salient in the market.

Aided (prompted) awareness: Respondents are shown or read a list of brand names and asked which ones they recognise. This measures whether your brand registers at all when consumers are exposed to it.

Awareness is usually tracked as part of a broader brand health study that also measures consideration, preference, usage, and advocacy. Tracking these metrics at regular intervals — quarterly or bi-annually — allows you to assess the impact of marketing activity and identify early warning signs of brand decline.

Digital channels add additional signals: direct traffic to your website (indicating people who sought you out by name), branded search volume in Google, and social media mention tracking can all supplement survey-based awareness measurement.

But when the stakes are high and the cost of being wrong is significant, evidence-based decision-making consistently outperforms gut feel.

Consider commissioning research when:

• You are entering a new market or launching a new product where you have limited direct experience
• A significant capital investment is on the table and you need to de-risk the decision
• Customer feedback is telling you something is wrong, but you are not sure what or why
• You are making pricing decisions that could affect revenue and competitive position
• You want to track the return on marketing spend over time

The cost of a well-designed research study is almost always small relative to the cost of a bad decision made without it.

Maction works across a broad range of sectors, with particular depth in FMCG, automotive, telecommunications, financial services, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, education, retail, agriculture, and social and rural research. We have also conducted research for clients in construction, industrials, chemicals, IT and technology, media and advertising, and professional services.

Our client base includes multinational corporations, Indian conglomerates, and academic institutions. Past clients include Yamaha, Toyota, Vodafone, EY, Adani Group, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.