The industry sector you deal with may lead to different suggestions. In general, however, “product research” may suggest you are working on a new product launch or re-staging. In such cases, begin with the framework, consider the research tools, and then move to the operating part of the research.
The framework may be the:
- Product Strategy, for products bought for what they do (like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, engineering, and others)
and/or the
- Copy Strategy, for products characterized by how they look, work, taste, or smell (like most consumer goods, washing products, cosmetics, etc.)
The framework influences the tools used to conduct the study. The king research tool of business decision-makers is marketing research. Marketing research, however, is expensive and poses technical challenges in order to deliver sound information.
My suggestion is, in both cases, to begin with dissecting the Product Strategy, which describes three brands elements:
- Technical performance. What the product does.
- Product design. How the product looks and works.
- Customer acceptance. How strongly customers (eventually both buyers and users) prefer the product.
The latter element requires sampling customers and gathering information with marketing research, which implies substantial investments of knowledge, time, and money. If you are not knowledgeable of this tool, ask for expert help. Do not improvise. And, do not rely on salespeople, they are biased (although they could supply useful ideas to state research hypotheses).
The former two elements are less knowledge-intensive and can be approached in a pragmatic way. Collect pieces of communication material used by your competitors, like advertisements, promotional material, product packages, product samples, and the like.
If it is a technological product begin with the Technical performance. Compare the major claims of each competing brand, and you will begin noticing differences. For instance, one brand may claim to remove tough spots, another cleans cleaner, another is price convenient, one is delicate, and so on.
If it is a hardly differentiated product begin with the Product design: How the product looks and works. Some are fast, others are safe, smaller, colored, smelling better, healthier, and so on.
At this point, add sales data to your analysis (if unavailable, replace it with customer preference data from marketing research by brand), and you’ll begin to see clusters of consumption preference, which brings you closer to answer the part of your question concerning how your tech stacks up in the market.
For more, connect with me on LinkedIn.
Good luck with your endeavors,
Mirio E.D. de Rosa