Market research provides invaluable insights that guide critical business decisions across the entire product life cycle. But harvesting those insights takes the right tools. This comprehensive guide explores the key capabilities of market research software, helping you select the solution that best fits your needs.
What is Market Research Software?
Market research software encompasses a range of solutions designed for gathering, analyzing and operationalizing consumer insights. Key capabilities include:
Data Collection: Tools to field quantitative surveys, facilitate qualitative research sessions (focus groups, interviews, ethnographies) or curate social listening data.
Analytics: Extract meaning from market data through statistical analysis, text analytics, data visualization or machine learning models.
Panel Management: Maintain access to target respondent groups. Screen panelists using demographic, psychographic, behavioral or purchase intent criteria.
Reporting & Sharing: Create customized reports and interactive dashboards. Export to files or integrate directly into business intelligence tools.
Leading providers offer combinations of these functions within an end-to-end platform. Others focus specifically on one competency like survey programming, data visualization or predictive analytics. Choosing the right solution depends heavily on understanding your organization‘s market research objectives and processes.
Benefits of Market Research Software
Investing in a purpose-built software platform brings manifold advantages over makeshift solutions cobbled together using spreadsheets or generic analytics programs.
Speed
Today‘s leading solutions radically accelerate time-to-insight by streamlining cumbersome market research workflows. For example, DIY online survey tools make questionnaire design, distribution and analysis available to anyone in a matter of minutes. Automated reporting eliminates the need for manual analysis and presentations.
Scale
Software enables organizations to tackle vastly more ambitious market research projects in terms of sample sizes, complexity and variety of data types. Access to respondent panels in the millions makes it possible to target niche psychographic segments that would be difficult to reach otherwise.
Consistency
Standardizing on an enterprise-wide software platform provides a shared toolkit for executing market research. This fosters consistent quality standards, methodology and branding across the organization.
Integration
Modern solutions don‘t silo market data. They integrate directly with downstream systems across the organization???from CRM and marketing automation platforms to business intelligence tools. This drives adoption of insights by making information readily accessible to decision-makers.
10 Leading Providers
The market research software landscape encompasses well over a thousand solutions tailored to varying needs. Below are ten leading providers that offer full-featured enterprise platforms:
| Provider | Key Capabilities |
|---|---|
| Qualtrics | Surveys, reporting, panel management |
| SurveyMonkey | DIY surveys, analysis, dashboards |
| Lucid | Surveys, audience targeting, analysis |
| Confirmit | Voice-of-customer, analytics, reporting |
| Askia | Surveys, data analysis, visualization |
| InMoment | Voice-of-customer, text analytics, insights activation |
| UserInterviews | Recruiting, remote moderated sessions, analysis |
| UserZoom | Usability testing, feedback analysis |
| Alpha | Enterprise survey platform, advanced analytics |
| Cint | Respondent access, sampling, data delivery |
This list highlights leaders across key capabilities including do-it-yourself surveys, voice-of-customer research, qualitative insight gathering, advanced analytics, text analytics, reporting and access to respondent panels.
Best Practices for Selection
Optimizing investment in market research software requires aligning solutions to overarching business objectives for leveraging consumer insights.
Identify Key Decisions the Platform Must Support
- What strategic business questions will the platform answer?
- Who are the internal stakeholders and decision makers?
- How will insights be used across the organization?
Map End-to-End Processes
- How is market research currently conducted?
- What works well vs. pain points?
- How could technology improve efficiency?
Benchmark Requirements
- Data collection and analysis techniques needed
- preferred reporting formats
- mandatory integrations with downstream systems
Calculate Total Cost of Ownership
Factor both direct licensing costs plus indirect organizational change management efforts into total cost of ownership estimates during business case creation.
12 Must-Have Capabilities
All enterprise market research platforms provide an abundance of features to suit varying needs. Here are 12 essential capabilities to prioritize:
1. Survey Programming – Build sophisticated quantitative surveys with advanced logic, randomization and complex multi-format question types.
2. Panel Access – Leverage existing consumer panels available via the platform. Screen respondents using firmographic, behavioral and purchase intent criteria.
3. Data Integration – Ingest first-party sales, CRM, financial data etc. This enables analysis of market data against key business KPIs.
4. Random Sampling – Ensure statistically representative respondent groups that allow for projecting findings onto the broader target population.
5. Reporting – Produce customized reporting objects like cross tabs, charts, regression outputs. Format reports using corporate templates and branding.
6. Dashboards – Deliver insights through interactive dashboards with ability to drill down into supporting data visually.
7. Integrations – Provide direct connectors to downstream analytics tools and databases for further analysis. Allow embedding dashboards into internal portals.
8. Automation – Schedule recurring waves of measurement, reports and downstream data deliveries.
9. Mobile App – Support research workflows via mobile applications. This enables access to insights anytime, anywhere for decision makers on the go.
10. Text Analytics – Analyze open-ended text response at scale. Code themes, generate word clouds and extract consumer sentiment.
11. Advanced Analytics – Conduct complex statistical modeling including drivers analysis, simulations and predictive techniques like discrete choice modeling.
12. Collaboration – Provide qualitative research capabilities like journaling, content tagging and commenting for group research initiatives.
Prioritizing must-have capabilities upfront ensures you select solutions purpose-built for your use cases. Compromising core requirements only leads to workarounds down the line that erode user adoption.
Evaluating Top Contenders
Demoing platforms firsthand is the best way to accurately assess fit. When reviewing top contenders, go in with specific scenarios that map to high-priority workflows. Gather feedback from both casual business users plus market research power users to gauge ease-of-use.
Many leading providers also allow you to pilot software on self-serve trials with included respondent sample. This enables hands-on validation of key functions on an actual project to experience real-world performance.
Be sure to verify vendors can support seamless integration with mandatory downstream systems prior to selection. Smooth data connectivity ensures insights get activated across the organization.
Scaling Usage & Adoption
Market research software often meets resistance upon initial rollout from analysts comfortable with previous tools and methods. Provide extensive training and support at launch by:
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Highlighting benefits – Emphasize how the platform saves time and effort on manual tasks. Showcase modern interactive reporting capabilities not possible previously.
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Promoting usage – Set expectations from executives that the new solution becomes the default standard. Highlight adoption KPIs in regular business reviews.
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Enforcing governance – Don‘t allow unused niche analytics tools to operate in parallel. Handle exceptions on a case-by-case basis only.
Gaining proficiency and trust in new platforms takes time. Persist by continually demonstrating value delivered and addressing any lingering workflow concerns.
The Future of Market Research Software
Consumer insights functions face perpetual pressure to deliver intelligence faster, cheaper and on demand. Advances in automation, machine learning and leveraging alternative data accelerates this transformation.
Expect even more aggressive adoption of:
Action-oriented dashboards – Embedded, highly visual reporting that triggers downstream workflows via alerts and integrations.
Automated analytics – Machine learning for text and image classification. Prescriptive modeling that recommends actions.
Continuous measurement – Internet of Things (IoT) data integration and always-on research approaches vs periodic surveys.
Mixed methods – Blending behavioral data, social media posts, observed video and transaction logs with survey self-reports for 360-views.
Managed services – Outsourcing panel management, programming, analysis and reporting via on-demand talent networks.
The market research function must progress well beyond releasing reports. To drive growth, consumer insights teams will need to deliver contextual recommendations that sync dynamically to business outcomes. The right software ensures you capitalize on this transformation.
