This post on marketing research and development, is the third in a series. It covers developing a profitable and marketable product, and marketing your product.

But before you’re ready to take these steps in the marketing research and development process, you first need to take the first four steps. You can access posts related to them below:

Marketing Research And Development 1 – Steps 1 and 2

Marketing Research And Development 2 – Steps 3 and 4

Marketing Research And Development
Developing A Profitable
And Marketable Product

After completing you marketing research from the first four steps, you’ll have a good idea of what you’re product will be like. So now you have to make a “go or “no go” decision.

To make this decision, you need a firm estimate of what you product will cost per unit and solid research to determine what you can sell for. You should have gotten price information from your survey. No you have to get some bids to determine cost information.

Don’t get bids for more units of the product than you believe you can sell during start-up.

You’re going to need lots of money for marketing and distribution. So don’t tie up all your funds in product development and build an inventory that becomes a liability if you don’t sell it quickly.

If the difference between what it costs you and what you can sell it for isn’t enough to cover production, marketing, distribution and overhead, you must make a “no go” decision.

I know it’s hard to put so much time and money into researching a product and then decide not to produce it. But that’s not nearly as hard on your business as having an inventory that you can’t sell at a profit.

If you determine that you can make a profit, you make a “go” decision and proceed to have your product developed.

Marketing Research And Development
Marketing Your Product

Once you’ve made your “go” decision, you need to develop a marketing plan and campaign. You conducted much of your marketing research during the first four steps. Now you need to incorporate that research in your marketing planning and your first marketing campaign.

In fact you may need multiple campaigns: one for potential customers, another for retailers and distributors, and perhaps another for supporters and influencers.

Many businesses start their first consumer marketing campaign while the product is still in production because they believe creating the demand before the supply is provided helps to get distributors and retailers for their products.

I think it a better idea to target your distributors and retailers with your first marketing campaign. For instance, you can advertise in industry journals, send salespeople out to meet retailers and to persuade them to carry your product.

You can offer them exclusivity within a geographical area and include their shops in your first commercial marketing campaign.

All campaigns are included in your marketing plan, but require unique research and planning within each campaign. If you want someone else to do this for you, try a market research company that offers qualitative and quantitative market research methods.

With the right marketing planning, the right campaigns targeted at various target markets, and good financial decisions, your product should be a success – thanks to following the six steps in the marketing research and development process.

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Posted 10-22-06:
Marketing Research
And Development 3

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I’m covering marketing research and development in this series of posts. This second post in the series covers steps 3 and 4 in the marketing research and development process.

My last post covered the first two steps. If you missed it, you can access by clicking the link below:

Marketing Research And Development 1

Steps three and four include discovering a needed product and deciding on the product’s features.

Marketing Research And Development
Discovering A Needed Product

This step determines whether developing your product is worthwhile.

Just because people express needs doesn’t mean they are willing to exchange their money for fulfilling those needs. If they aren’t willing to pay you enough to make a profit, then you shouldn’t develop a product.

To learn if you can develop a profitable product, you can administer a survey to a random sample of target market members. Like a focus group, a survey has guidelines that you need to follow to assure that your results are valid. You can access my guidelines at

Strategic Publications: Questionnaires

Your survey questionnaire should ask questions to determine people’s attitudes about:

• the needs,
• how important those needs are to them,
• how it would benefit them to have those needs met,
• and what they would be willing to pay for those benefits.

This information will help you to decide what features your product should include.

To learn more about writing questions for surveys see

Surveys Sample Questions, Part 1

Marketing Research And Development
Deciding Features To
Provide Desired Benefits

People don’t buy for features. They buy for benefits. But you build in benefits with product features.

Your survey questions on benefits will tell you what features your product needs to have.

You need to also develop features to meet your target market’s needs. Once you’ve decided on what features you want to include in your product, you’re ready to take the next step in the marketing research and development process.

Take the next step by clicking the link below: Marketing Research And Development 3

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Posted 10-20-08:
Marketing Research And Development 2

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Marketing research and development includes six major steps:

1. Analyzing The Market
2. Determining The Target Market
3. Discovering A Needed Product
4. Deciding Features To Provide Desired Benefits
5. Developing a Profitable and Marketable Product
6. Marketing Your Product

I’m covering the first two of these steps in today’s post and will cover the remaining ones in consecutive posts.

Marketing Research And Development
Analyzing The Market

Analyzing the market uses marketing research to discover unmet needs. It includes two major kinds of marketing research.

Qualitative research gathers lots of information and then attempts to make sense of that information. It’s easy to start, but difficult to analyze.

Quantitative research uses data that can be converted to numbers. It’s difficult to set up, but easy to analyze using statistical software.

Analyzing the market starts with qualitative research and moves to quantitative research. The two steps in this post use qualitative research.

The first step is to analyze the market by monitoring it to discover people’s expressed needs. For example, if you’re business is on line, you can monitor forums and social networking sites in your niche. If your business is off line, you can keep track of what people request that you don’t have and listen as potential customers talk.

You record all expressed needs, looking for those mentioned most often. This can be difficult because people express the same needs in different words. You have to interpret what they mean. Then you categorize the needs and look for commonalities between them.

You also record as much information as available about the people expressing the needs.

Monitoring the environment is a time consuming process, but prepares you for the next step in the marketing research and development.

Marketing Research And Development
Determining The Target Market

Your records about the people expressing needs, provide the first clues about your target market.

• Are they primarily one gender or one age group?
• Are their needs related to a certain experience or education level?
• What do they have in common beyond expressing the need?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can conduct more research with similar people. You can gather a group of them and ask them questions about the needs. This group meeting of target market members is called a focus group.

There are guidelines for conducting a good focus group that you should consider if you plan to do it yourself. You can access mine at another of my sites linked below:

Strategic Publications: Focus Groups

Many marketing and public relations agencies will do an excellent job for you. However, expect to pay thousands for one focus group.

After the focus group is completed and analyzed, you can use the information to conduct a survey with more target market members.

Following these two steps starts developing effective marketing research and development.

In my next post, I’ll cover using surveys to discover a needed product, and the features that it should include. You can access it below:

Marketing Research And Development 2

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Posted 10-17-08:
Marketing Research And Development 1

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