Market research

Market research is an effective way to learn about potential customers, their opinions, habits, trends and future plans. It is used to determine the geographic area of a business and demographic characteristics of customers such as age, gender, income and educational level. Market research may reveal unfilled needs, suggest marketing strategies or identify the competition's strengths and weaknesses. Market research involves asking questions, systematically recording the information and taking time to analyze and learn from the information. Suppose you are thinking of opening a new coffee shop and are trying to determine the best location. Market research would need to be carried out to determine how many competitors there are in each area of Dublin, how the population of Dublin is divided up, what the demographic profile of Dublin is, how shop rent costs vary within Dublin etc. All this 'local information' could then be cross-analyzed with industry information (e.g. the typical age of coffee shop customers) to provide useful market intelligence on which the right decision can be made. There are several market research companies based in Dublin.