DSG Associates - COVID 19: Should You Choose Managed or DIY Market Research?

COVID 19: Should You Choose Managed or DIY Market Research?

A while ago, we discussed 7 Insane Ways Market Research Could Benefit Your Business. One of the key benefits we discussed is how market research strategies like mystery shops, intercept interviews, customer surveys, and the likes can help drive business growth and resilience with regards to the current pandemic.

But with several DIY platforms emerging nowadays, business owners are often torn between choosing a managed market research strategy like DSG or going the DIY route. This blog will explain when both of these strategies work best.

Why/When to Choose DIY Market Research

According to Wikipedia, DIY market research involves using online research tools and software to carry out research and surveys. This method has become popular recently and more business owners are using it to design and manage their surveys. Should you also join them?

Perhaps, but only if;

You can’t wait: you need quick insights into certain things and don’t have much time to wait. There are certain DIY platforms that promise to help you get these insights in as little time as one hour.
Your budget is limited: DIY research may often come cheaper than managed research. So, if your budget is limited, you might want to consider going this route.
You have in-house insight experts: If you have a team of in-house experts, it would always be easy to not just design the research but also interpret the results.

When/Why to Choose Managed Research

Unlike DIY researched, managed market research like the type we do here at DSG is entirely done by a market research company. Setting up the research, carrying out the research, interpreting the data, and almost every other thing is done for you. Should you rather consider this? Well, we would say yes, if;

You need quantitative data for high-profile projects: Market research consultancy from an agency of the caliber of DSG Associates will bring much-needed value to the table when handling a large-scale market research project. From helping you develop ideas to planning and strategy, you’ll find more value in managed research.
You don’t have the money to assemble an in-house team or the time to handle market research yourself: the current busy climate has presented more work for most businesses than they can handle. So, while we’re all busy, we’re also dealing with the economic implications of COVID. Granted that non-experts can still carry out DIY market research, teams with in-house insight experts tend to get more value, overall. Many business owners don’t even have enough time on their hands to set up surveys and research. And assembling a new team solely for the sake of this can be quite challenging when you’re working with a shrinking budget.
You want a degree of personalization or have custom requirements: Marketing research consulting agencies can help you customize the research to meet your personal requirements. This is always needed to improve the quality and reliability of the data from your research whether it’s from customer surveys, intercept interviews, mystery shops, audits, etc.

Conclusion

Whichever route you choose, market research offers many business benefits.

Your choice between DIY or managed market research will be based on your current reality and expectations from the market research project. DSG helps businesses get insights into highly accurate and very valuable customer experience insights to help pivot your business strategies and service for improved customer experience, increased brand and customer loyalty, and a significant boost to your business’s bottom line.