MARKET RESEARCH IN DESIGN

Before any design or product development , a market research is done in order to get an efficient and logical solution to the problem related to designing. In a standard language, Market research is the process or set of processes that links the consumers, customers, and end users to the marketer through information — information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems which helps in generating  and evaluating  marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process.

Market research is done in a step-by-step process that’s why here are some levels through which design process takes place and for that process, market research is the first step. As marketing research is a systematic gathering of data collection, so there is an appropriate process for market research. Therfore it involves two methods of marketing research, these are:

• Qualitative marketing research, and
• Quantitative marketing research

Qualitative research is generally used for exploratory purposes, small number of participates, not generalizable to the whole population and statistical significance.  It examples include focus groups, in-depth interviews, and projective techniques. Quantitative research is generally used to draw conclusions, tests a specific hypothesis, uses random sampling techniques so as to infer from the sample to the population, involves a large number of respondents. It examples include surveys and questionnaires.

Market research in designing includes a process  for market research in which first of all a problem is defined for which the research is done.Secondly, Development of an Approach to the Problem, it includes formulating an objective or theoretical framework, analytical models, research questions, hypotheses, and identifying characteristics or factors that can influence the research design.

In next step, it involves Research Design Formulation which details the procedures necessary for obtaining the required information, and its purpose is to design a study that will test the hypotheses of interest, determine possible answers to the research questions, and provide the information needed for decision making.

In fourth step, field work or data collection is started, in which the researcher himself goes to the field for conducting and gathering information about the regarding design problem. In fifth step, the data which is collected from the field is prepared systematically and then further it is analyzed.

After the analysis of data collection and analysis, Report is prepared which defines the total solution to the design problem and lastly in the sixth step, the researcher prepared the presentation.

In any design, research is the most important thing for getting a better result because research identify the exact problem which the customer is facing so that the designer orresearcher may finds a best solution to that problem and it specifies the information required to designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.