Market research – now?
During uncertain and less buoyant times, market research is seldom considered a priority. But researching the market or surveying your customer base could help provide focus and direction for long-term plans, budgets and forecasts.
Identifying niches with growth potential becomes more important in a depressed market. But there is also a strong case for taking a more detailed look at core or mature market and product sectors.
Competition is likely to have intensified, the market may have seen movements in price and your competitors may have restructured their businesses. When there is negligible or negative market growth, it becomes more important to grow, or at least maintain, market share. It’s a good time to reflect on your market position, on how your customers view your brand and on what you can do to ensure your customers stay loyal.
Ever since the start of the pandemic, the construction marketplace has been in a state of change. And it hasn’t settled yet. The way companies are doing business continues to change, as is the way homeowners and tradesmen buy things. Some of the changes and solutions put in place during the pandemic were temporary, but many appear to have become permanent features of the market.
The real threat is the one you don’t see
Sometimes it is easy to focus on key competitors and not pay enough attention to new companies entering the market – especially those from overseas – and events that take place outside of traditional boundaries, such as new distribution channels emerging. Do you have a good estimate for how much product in your sector is sold online or imported directly by clients from overseas manufacturers? Do you know if or how Brexit has impacted your sales?
Data and statistics are important for identifying longer term trends and telling us what is happening now; how sales are doing compared to last month, or last year; whether online sales are increasing; or how customers are buying. But in times of turmoil, the past provides a less useful reference.
Instead, looking ahead becomes more important. It is essential to understand how customers see the future and how their needs have changed, before they start to vote with their feet – or fingers for that matter!
Your customers have the answers
One of the most powerful actions you can take is to ask your customers directly what you can do to support them.
Even if you have a good relationship with some customers and feel you understand their needs, a properly conducted survey, which quantifies opinions and is aimed at producing data robust enough to provide a basis for making important strategic decisions, may be needed. It is important to consider the whole customer base, including those at the periphery. These companies may have the potential to become a much larger customer, or may be more likely to leave in favour of a competitor.
Another way research can help with planning, particularly in uncertain times, is by allowing companies to test concepts, ideas and decisions with existing or potential customers before implementing them, as well as to monitor the effect changes have on their customer base.
Before closing a branch and moving to online, it is worth checking in with customers to get an idea of what impact this will have. If a decision has already been made to implement a change, tracking customer satisfaction over time will allow you to see what impact the changes are having. What about benchmarking against your closest competitors to ensure you stay one step ahead?
The future has arrived somewhere, and is on its way here
Something else that can provide invaluable insight, in particular when trying to predict the future, is to seek best practice examples from outside the immediate marketplace, and look at trends outside the industry. Construction is notoriously slow at responding and adapting to change, so it’s likely that what’s happening in other industries – for example retail – will feed through to construction in the future. Similarly, different growth drivers and economic conditions may have led to a faster pace of change in other countries.
While the current economic climate is challenging, the underlying demand for home improvement products, homes and buildings is still there. Changes or a new strategy may be needed to tap into that demand. Market research allows you to implement changes safely and effectively, without risk of losing customers.
Get in touch to see how MRA Research can help.
