market research questions example

68 market research questions to ask (and how to ask them)

Example market research questions, market research questions to ask customers, market research questions for product development, market research questions for brand tracking, pricing survey questions for market research, how to write your own market research questions.

No two market research projects are alike, but happily there are some tried-and-tested questions you can use for inspiration to get the consumer insights you’re looking for.

It’s all about asking questions that are most relevant to the goals of your research. Every so often the best questions are actually quite straightforward, like asking consumers where they do their grocery shopping.

If you’re creating a customer profile, you’ll ask different questions than when you’re running creative testing with your target audience, or getting insights on key consumer trends in your market.

The right market research questions are the ones that will lead you to actionable insights, and give you a competitive advantage in your target market.

Let’s kick this off and get straight into some questions, shall we?

Where do we even begin with this?! There are so many types of research and we’ll get into which questions work for each below, but here are some classic example market research questions to get you started.

These particular questions are good for surveys that you might run when you’re running some essential consumer profiling research.

• Which of these products have you purchased in the last 3 months?
• Which of the following types of >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY< do you buy at least once a month?
• Approximately, how much would you say you spend on >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY< per month?
• What is stopping you from buying more of >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• When was the last time you tried a new >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• Please rank the following on how important or unimportant they are when deciding which >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to buy?
• Which of these brands are you aware of?
• Which of these brands have you purchased from in the last 3 months?
• How do you prefer to shop for >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• Why do you prefer to shop online?
• Why do you prefer to shop in-store?
• Thinking about the following, how often do you use/listen/watch each of these media?
• Where do you go to keep up to date with the news?
• Which social media platforms do you use daily?
• What mobile phone do you currently own?

Surely you want to talk to your current customers to understand why they buy from you and what they think about your products?

Correct! But your consumer research should definitely not end with current customers!

Here’s why you should think about broadening your research to include other groups and different market research methods :

• Current customers: This is a must! Running research to your current customers will help you understand how you can make your product or service better. These are the people who’ve spent their hard-earned cash on your products so they have a unique perspective on what kind of value you offer. In addition, understanding why your existing customer base chose your brand over others can help you create messaging that resonates with people who are still on the fence.
• Previous customers: People who used to buy your products but don’t anymore can give you valuable insight into areas you might need to improve. Perhaps your brand perception has shifted making some customers buy elsewhere, or maybe your competitors offer customers better value for money than you currently do. These are the kinds of areas you can learn about by running research to previous customers.
• Non-customers: You should also ask people who haven’t bought your products why they haven’t. That way you’ll learn what you need to improve to bring new customers in. You should ideally ask the same kinds of questions, so that you can learn about what product features you need to work on but also things like the messaging you should be putting out there to win people over.

Here are some questions that are perfect for competitive market analysis research. Some of these questions might sound similar to some from our previous section on consumer profiling—that’s because there’s often some crossover between these types of research. Consumer profiling often refers to a more general type of research that covers similar ground to market analysis. If you’re wondering how to calculate market size , questions like these would be a great starting point.

• How often do you usually purchase >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• Why do you buy >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• What types of >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY< do you buy?
• How often do you buy the following types of >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• Where do you buy your >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• Where do you find out about >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• Which of these brands have your purchased in the last 12 months?
• How would you feel if you could no longer buy >INSERT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE CATEGORY<?
• How important or unimportant do you find the following topics? (e.g. sustainability, diversity and inclusion, ethical supply chain)
• What could be improved about the products you currently use?

By involving consumers in the product development process, you can make sure that your products are designed to meet—and ideally exceed—their needs.

Product market research can be done at several points in the product development process, by asking potential customers in your target market questions about existing products (yours or competitors’), prototypes, or just your own early-stage product ideas.

You can dive into the customer experience, specific product features or simply find out if the product quality matches the value proposition you’re putting out there.

Sometimes you even get a surprising answer to the question: how does our product or service help people?

You might learn from the survey responses that customers are using your product in a different way than you intended, opening you up to new target markets and different product types in the future.

Asking these questions also allows you to get feedback on your designs, so that you can make necessary changes before the product is released. Here’s some inspiration for when you’re conducting product market research.

There are different types of new product development research. A key type is Jobs to be done research. This research digs into the practical reasons people buy products—the jobs they need to get done with a specific product. You use these insights to help you create products that will genuinely help consumers, and that they’ll ultimately want to buy.

• How many times have you carried out [INSERT ACTIVITY] in the last 12 months?
• How much time would you typically spend on this [INSERT ACTIVITY]?
• How important or unimportant is carrying out this [INSERT ACTIVITY]?
• How satisfied or unsatisfied do you feel when carrying out this [INSERT ACTIVITY]?
• What is the best thing about carrying out [INSERT ACTIVITY]?
• How does carrying out [INSERT ACTIVITY] make you feel? Please select all that apply
• What particular problems or challenges do you run into while carrying out [INSERT ACTIVITY]?

When you’re cooking up your brand’s next product, you’ll want to go through a concept testing phase. This is where you ask consumers what they think about your idea and find out whether it’s likely to be a success. Here are some of the questions you could ask in your concept testing research.

• To what extent do you like or dislike this idea/product? [ATTACH IMAGE]
• What do you like about this idea/product?
• What do you dislike about this idea/product?
• Is easy to use
• Sounds tasty
• Is good quality
• Is Innovative
• Is different from others
• Purchase this product
• Replace the product I currently own with this
• What other products this idea/product reminds you of? Please provide as much detail as possible including the product name.
• What feature(s), if any, do you feel are missing from this product?
• How would you improve this idea/product? Be as descriptive as possible!
• What issues do you solve through the use of this product?
• When can you see yourself using this product? Please select all that apply.
• The price for this product is $25.00 per item. How likely or unlikely would you be to buy this product at this price?

Get inspired with NPD survey templates

Our in-house research experts have created New Product Development (NPD) survey templates to give you the perfect starting point for your product research!

Does the perspective of new customers change over time? How do you compare to other brands, and how do you become the preferred brand in your market and increase that market share?

Brand perception and brand awareness are super important metrics to track. These insights can be used to improve customer experience and satisfaction on a higher level than just product: the relationship you have with your customers.

This research can also help you understand how to reach the holy grail of branding: turning loyal customers into brand ambassadors.

You should also remember to ask marketing research questions about your brand to existing and potential customers.

Existing customers might have a different view after having interacted with your team and products, and you can use that to manage the expectations of your target customers down the line. And potential customers can help you understand what’s holding them back from joining your customer base.

Top tip: it’s completely fine (and super beneficial!) to run brand tracking into your competitors’ brands as well as your own. Replicating research for different brands will give you a tailored benchmark for your category and position.

Here are some key questions to ask in your brand tracking research.

• Which of the following, if any, have you purchased in the past 12 months?
• Thinking about >INSERT YOUR CATEGORY<, what brands, if any, are you aware of? Please type in all that you can think of.
• Which of these brands of facial wipes, if any, are you aware of?
• Which of these facial wipe brands, if any, have you ever purchased?
• Which of these facial wipe brands, if any, would you consider purchasing in the next 6 months?
• e.g. Innovative
• Easy to use
• Traditional
• We’d now like to ask you some specific questions about >INSERT YOUR BRAND<.
• When did you last use >INSERT YOUR BRAND<?
• What do you like most about >INSERT YOUR BRAND<?
• What do you like least about >INSERT YOUR BRAND<?
• How likely would you be to recommend >INSERT YOUR BRAND< to a friend, family or colleague?
• Why did you give that score? Include as much detail as possible
• In newspapers/magazines
• On Instagram
• On Facebook
• On the radio
• Through friends/family/colleagues
• When did you last use >INSERT MAIN COMPETITOR BRAND<?
• How likely would you be to recommend >INSERT MAIN COMPETITOR BRAND< to a friend, family or colleague?

Kick off your brand tracking with templates

Track your brand to spot—and act on!—how your brand’s perception and awareness affects how people buy. Our survey templates give you the ideal starting point!

When it comes to pricing your product, there’s no need to wing it—a pricing survey can give you the insights you need to arrive at the perfect price point.

By asking customers questions about their willingness to pay for your product, you can get a realistic sense of what price point will be most attractive to them and, not unimportant, why.

Top tip: good pricing research can be tough to get right. Asking how much people would theoretically be willing to pay for a product is very different from them actually choosing it in a shop, on a shelf next to competitors’ products, and with a whole load of other economic context that you can’t possibly test for. Price testing is useful, but should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt.

Here are some questions you could use in your pricing research.

• Which of the following product categories have you bought in the last 12 months?
• How often do you currently purchase >INSERT YOUR CATEGORY<?
• At what price would you consider this >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it? (Too expensive)
• At what price would you consider this >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to be starting to get expensive, so that it is not out of the question, but you have to give some thought to buying it? (e.g. Expensive)
• At what price would you consider this >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to be a bargain—a great buy for the money? (e.g. cheap)
• At what price would you consider this >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY< to be priced so low that you would feel the quality couldn’t be very good? (Too cheap)
• How much do you currently pay for >INSERT PRODUCT CATEGORY<? Please type in below
• Thinking about this product, please rank the following aspects based on how much value they add, where 1 = adds the most value 10 = adds the least value.
• Thinking about the product category as a whole, please rank the following brands in order of value, where 1 is the most expensive and 10 is the least.

Formulating market research questions can be tricky. On the one hand, you want to be specific enough that you can get tangible, useful answers. But on the other hand, you don’t want to ask questions that are so difficult or unclear that respondents will get frustrated and give up halfway through.

Think about what answers you need and what actions you are hoping to take based on those answers.

We’ll help you get started with a list of steps to take when formulating your own market research questions, and putting them together in a survey that makes sense.

1. Define your research goals and link them to actions you can take

Before you can write great market research questions, you need to know what you want to learn from your research.

What are your goals? What do you want to find out? Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can start brainstorming questions that will help you achieve them.

2. Know your target market and the language they use

Who are you conducting market research for? It’s important to know your audience before you start writing questions, as this will help you determine the best way to phrase them.

For example, if you’re conducting market research for a new product aimed at teenagers, you’ll want to use different language than if you were conducting research for a new financial planning service aimed at retirees.

3. Keep it simple, and break things into smaller pieces

Don’t make your questions too complicated. Stick to simple, straightforward questions that can be easily understood by your target audience.

The more complex your questions are, the more likely it is that respondents will get confused and provide inaccurate answers.

If you feel a question is too difficult, see if you can break it up into smaller pieces and add follow-up questions on top.

And don’t ever load two questions into one! This falls into Consumer Research 101, but it’s amazing how often it happens. Instead of ‘What’s your favorite chocolate bar, and why?’ ask two questions: ‘What’s your favorite chocolate bar?’ and ‘Why is this your favorite chocolate bar?’

4. Be super specific

Make sure your questions are specific enough to get the information you need. Vague questions will only lead to vague answers.

For example, instead of asking ‘What do you think of this product?’, ask ‘What did you think of the taste of this product?’ or ‘What did you think of the packaging of this product?’.

5. Avoid leading questions

Leading questions are those that suggest a particular answer or course of action. For example, instead of asking ‘Do you like our new product?’, which suggests that the respondent should like the product, try asking ‘What are your thoughts on this product?

This question is neutral and allows the respondent to answer freely without feeling pressured in any particular direction. It’s also brand-neutral: people answering this question will have no idea who’s asking, and their opinion won’t be biased as a result.

6. Make sure your question is clear

It’s important that your question is clear and concise so that respondents understand exactly what they’re being asked. If there is any ambiguity in your question, respondents may interpret it in different ways and provide inaccurate answers.

Always test your questions on a few people before sending them to a larger group to make sure they understand what they’re being asked.

7. Avoid loaded words

Loaded words are those with positive or negative connotations that could influence the way respondents answer the question. For example, instead of asking ‘Do you love this product?’, which has a positive connotation, try asking ‘What are your thoughts on this product?’

This question is neutral and allows the respondent to answer freely without feeling pressured in any particular direction

8. Make sure the question is answerable

Before you include a question in your market research survey, make sure it’s actually answerable. There’s no point in asking a question if there’s no way for respondents to answer it properly. If a question isn’t answerable, either revise the question or remove it from your survey altogether.

9. Use an appropriate question type

When designing your market research survey, be sure to use an appropriate question type for each question you include. Using the wrong question type can lead to inaccurate or unusable results, so it’s important to choose wisely. Some common question types used in market research surveys include multiple choice, rating scale, and open-ended questions.

10. Pay attention to question order

The order of the questions in your survey can also impact the results you get from your research. In general, it’s best to start with more general questions and then move on to more specific ones later on in the survey. This will help ensure that respondents are properly warmed up and able to provide detailed answers by the time they reach the end of the survey.

Make smart decisions with the reliable insights

To make sure you make smart decisions that have real impact on your business, get consumer insights you can rely on. Here’s our rundown of the top market research tools.

Survey questions for market research are designed to collect information about a target market or audience. They can be used to gather data about consumer preferences, opinions, and behavior. Some common types of market research survey questions include demographic questions, behavioral questions and attitudinal questions.

There are many different types of market research questions that companies can use to gather information about consumer preferences and buying habits. They can be divided into different categories, like a competitive analysis, customer satisfaction or market trends, after which you can make them more specific and turn them into survey questions. These are some of the things your research questions can help you answer: – What is the target market for our product? – Who is our competition? – What do consumers think of our product? – How often do consumers purchase our product? – What is the typical customer profile for our product? – What motivates consumers to purchase our product?

When conducting market research, surveys are an invaluable tool for gathering insights about your target audience. But how do you write a market research questionnaire that will get you the information you need? First, determine the purpose of your survey and who your target respondents are. This will help you to write questions that are relevant and targeted. Next, craft clear and concise questions that can be easily understood. Be sure to avoid ambiguity, leading questions and loaded language. Finally, pilot your survey with a small group of people to make sure that it is effective. With these tips in mind, you can write a market research survey that will help you to gather the crucial insights you need.

Elliot Barnard

Customer Research Lead 

Elliot joined Attest in 2019 and has dedicated his career to working with brands carrying out market research. At Attest Elliot takes a leading role in the Customer Research Team, to support customers as they uncover insights and new areas for growth.

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100+ Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

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Babu Jayaram brings over 20 years of experience in sales and customer service to his role on the Qualaroo Advisory Board. With a profound understanding of sales and conversion strategies, Babu is committed to delivering exceptional results and fostering robust customer relationships. His expertise extends beyond mere management, including adept handling of support tickets, overseeing internal and customer-facing knowledge bases, and training support teams across diverse industries to ensure exceptional service delivery. Read less

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Asking the right market research questions can help you understand your target customers and map their behavior and preferences. 

But what does it actually mean?

Let’s look at a sample from a market research survey report for mapping brand awareness:

From this simple Q&A report, you can:

• Visualize the proportions of demographic segments among your audience.
• Measure how your brand is performing in comparison to others.
• Pick the top preferred brand among the customers, explore what makes it stand out, and apply the same techniques to your brand.
• See how your target market perceives brand advertisements and promotional efforts.

Now imagine if this type of data set is available for different aspects of your business – product development, marketing campaigns, optimization plans, and more.

That’s what market research does for you.

With the evolution of customer interaction points and constantly changing market trends, more and more businesses are fueling efforts to do in-depth market research, as evidenced by the steady increase in the revenue of the market research industry worldwide.

Market research can help you develop essential business strategies and maintain a competitive advantage over other brands to increase conversions and customer base.

And it all starts with asking the right questions to the right audience.

That’s why we have created this collection of 100+ market research questions to ask your target market. Each question aims to uncover a specific attribute about your customers. You can use a combination of these customer research survey questions, interviews, and othe marketing questionnaires for customers.

We have also added key tips to help you write your own effective market analysis questions if the needed.

100+ Great Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

The main challenge while designing and conducting research is – “What questions should I ask in my customer research survey?

That’s why we have a carefully curated list of market research questions to help you get started.

To Explore New Product Opportunities

• What was your first reaction to the product?
• Would you purchase this product if it were available today?
• What feature would you like to see on the website/product?
• Which feature do you think will help improve the product experience for you?
• Of these four options, what’s the next thing you think we should build?
• What’s the one feature we can add that would make our product indispensable for you?
• Would implementing [this feature] increase the usability of the [product name]?
• Please let us know how we can further  improve this feature.
• What problem would you like to solve with our product?

To Collect Feedback on Existing Products

• Have you heard of [product name or category] before?
• How would you feel if [product name] was no longer available?
• How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use [Product/feature name?]
• How often do you use [product name]?
• How long have you been using [product name] for?
• When was the last time you used [product name]?
• Please rate the following product features according to their importance to you.
• According to you, In which area is this product/service lacking the most? Specify below.
• How does the product run after the update?
• Rate our product based on the following aspects:
• Have you faced any problems with the product? Specify below.
• What feature did you expect but not find?
• How are you planning to use [product or service]?
• How satisfied are you with the product?

To Segment the Target Market

Please specify your age.

• Please specify your gender.
• Select your highest level of education.
• What is your current occupation?
• What is your monthly household income?
• What is your current marital status?

• What is the name of your company?
• Where is your company’s headquarters located?
• Please specify the number of employees that work in your company.
• What is your job title?
• In which location do you work?
• Which activity do you prefer in your free time?
• Which other physical activities do you take part in?
• Where is your dream holiday destination?
• Please rate the following as per their priority in your life – Family, work, and social life?
• Are you happy with your current work-life balance?
• Do you describe yourself as an optimist or a pessimist?
• How often do you give to charity?
• How do you travel to work?
• How do you do your Holiday shopping?

To Conduct a Competition Analysis

• Which product/service would you consider as an alternative to ours?
• Rate our competitor based on the following:
• Have you seen any website/product/app with a similar feature?
• How would you compare our products to our competitors? 
• Why did you choose to use our [product] over other options?
• Compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same?
• Which other options did you consider before choosing [product name]?
• Please list the top three things that persuaded you to use us rather than a competitor.
• According to you, which brand best fits each of the following traits.

To Gauge Brand Awareness

• [Your brand name] Have you heard of the brand before?
• How do you feel about this brand?
• How did you hear about us?
• Describe [brand name] in one sentence.
• If yes, please tell us what you like the most about [your brand name]?
• If no, please specify the reason.
• How likely are you to purchase a product from this company again?
• If yes, where have you seen or heard about our brand recently? (Select all that apply)
• Do you currently use the product of this brand?
• Have you purchased from this brand before?
• Of all the brands offering similar products, which do you feel is the best brand?
• Please specify what makes it the best brand for you in the category.
• Which of the following products have you tried? (Select all that apply)
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you recommend this brand to a friend or colleague?

To Map Customers’ Preferences

• Have you ever boycotted a brand? If so, which brand and why?
• What influences your purchase decision more – price or quality of the item?
• How many hours do you spend on social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.?
• How do you do your monthly grocery shopping – online or through outlets?
• How do you search for the products you want to buy?
• Rate the factors that affect your buying decision for [product].
• What persuaded you to purchase from us?
• How likely are you to purchase a product from us again?
• Please rate the following aspects of our product based on their importance to you.
• What is the most important value our product offers to you?
• Which of the following features do you use least?
• How well does the product meet your needs?

To Map Customers’ Reservations

• Is there anything preventing you from purchasing at this point?
• What’s preventing you from starting a trial?
• Do you have any questions before you complete your purchase?
• What is the main reason you’re canceling your account?
• What are your main reasons for leaving?
• What was your biggest fear or concern about purchasing from us?
• What is the problem that the product/service helped to solve for you?
• What problems did you encounter while using our [product]?
• How easy did we make it to solve your problem?
• What is your greatest concern about [product]?
• Have you started using other similar products? If yes, what made you choose that product?

To Perform Pricing Analysis

• Would you purchase the product at [price]
• According to you, what should be the ideal price of the [product name]?
• Is our product pricing clear?
• According to you, what is the ideal price range for the product?

To Collect Feedback on Website Copy

• Please rate the website based on the following aspects:
• How well does the website meet your needs?
• Was the information easy to find?
• Was the information clearly presented?
• What other information should we provide on our website?
• How can we make the site easier to use?
• What could we do to make this site more useful?
• Is there anything on this site that doesn’t work the way you expected it to?
• How easy was it to find the information you were looking for?
• Have feedback or an idea? Leave it here!
• Help us make the product better. Please leave your feedback.

To Assess Website/Product Usability

• Are you satisfied with the website layout?
• What features do you think are missing on our website?
• What features do you not like on our website?
• Was our website navigation simple and user-friendly?
• How much time did it take to find what you were looking for on our website?
• Was it easy to find the products you are looking for?
• Was the payment process convenient?

To Uncover Market Trends and Industry Insights

• Did you purchase our product out of peer influence or individual preference?
• How do you form your opinion about our product?
• Do you follow trends of the product, or do you prefer to go with what you know?
• Do discounts or incentives impact your decision-making process?

Market Research Survey Templates

One of the easiest ways to conduct market research is to use survey templates. They can help you save time and effort in creating your own market research surveys.

There are many types of market research survey templates available, depending on your objectives and target audience. Some of the most popular ones are:

• Demographic Templates: These templates help you segment your customers based on their location. It can help you tailor your marketing strategies and offers to different customer groups.

• Consumer Behavior Templates: These templates help you keep your pulse on your target market.

Industry Insights Templates: These templates help you get detailed information about your target industry and business.

Breakdown of Different Market Research Questions

The answer choices in a market research survey question can significantly impact the quality and reliability of the response data you collect from the audience.

Some answer types help categorize the audience, while others measure their satisfaction or agreement. 

So, before listing the customer research survey questions to ask your target audience, let’s understand their types:

Multiple Choice

A multiple-choice question type lets users select more than one answer from the given options. These questions are great for collecting multiple data sets using the same question and gauging people’s preferences, opinions, and suggestions .

Single Choice

In a single-choice question, the respondent can select only one answer from the given options. This question type is great for:

• Segregating the users.
• Prioritizing product updates based on user consensus.
• Disqualifying irrelevant respondents by placing the question at the start of your customer research survey.

Matrix Match

A matrix matching grid can combine multiple market research questions into one to make the survey shorter . There is only one condition – the individual questions should have the same response anchors as shown in the image below:

The questions are arranged in rows while the answer options occupy the grid columns.

Ranking Question

A ranking question can help map customers’ preferences and set priorities for product development . This question type asks the respondent to arrange the given options in their decreasing/increasing preference.

Dichotomous

A dichotomous question poses a simple yes or no scenario to the respondent. These question types can help disqualify irrelevant people from the survey and categorize the users into two groups .

Likert Scale

Likert scale market research questions can help you measure the extent of respondents’ agreement/disagreement with the given statement . The answer options are arranged from positive to negative sentiments or vice-versa, with the neutral option in the middle.

There are two types of Likert scales: 5-point and 7-point .

Open-ended market questions let you explore the respondents’ minds without adding any restrictions to the answer . This question type is followed by a blank space for the respondent to add a free-text response.

You can add an open-ended question as a follow-up after the first question to explore the reasons for the customer’s previous answer. It also lets you collect more in-depth information about their issues, pain points, and delights.

Tools like Qualaroo offer tons of different question types for your surveys. Just pick the question and match its answer option type from the drop-down. To make it more effective, you can add branching to the survey.

How to Write Your Marketing Research Questions

It’s imperative to have a dedicated repository of market research questions for your surveys. But nothing’s better than crafting your questions.

For this, you need to sit with your team and discuss what information you require from the customers. It lets you analyze and document how much data you already have in your system, which can help set the market research scope.

We have listed some questions you need to ask yourself before asking market research questions to your potential customers or target market:

Audience Segmentation Questions

Audience segmentation questions help to size up your target market and provide a granular view of the audience . Not all customers are equal, and audience segmentation makes it possible to focus on each group individually to address their issues, fears, and expectations.

Here’s what you need to know before you start writing customer research survey questions to understand your audience:

• Do we understand the demographics of the new market we are trying to target? (Age, location, ethnicity, education, company, annual income, etc.)
• What are the locations that drive the most customers to our business? How are these locations different from others?
• What are the interests, preferences, and fears of people from our new target market? Have we addressed these situations for our current customer base?
• What are the psychographics attributes of the current customers and potential market? Are we targeting these in our campaigns?
• What are the most popular engagement channels for our customers? Which channels drive the most traffic to our website?
• Do we have enough data to perform value segmentation to separate high-value customers from low-value customers? 
• How often do these high-value customers make a purchase?

Product-Based Market Research Questions

Product-based market research questions can produce precious insights to channel into your product development and optimization strategies . You can see how changing technology affects customers’ behavior, what new features they want to see in your product, and how they perceive your products and services over the competition.

Start by gathering information about the following:

• How does our product compare to the competition based on the features?
• What products do our competitors offer?
• What new features do customers want to see in our products? Do we have a product roadmap to deliver these updates?
• What unique solutions do our products offer? What is the value proposition that reflects this offering?
• Does our product incorporate the latest technological advancements?
• What channels do we use to collect product feedback from our users?
• What are customers’ preferences while choosing our products over competitors?

Pricing Market Research Questions

Pricing analysis can help you make your product more affordable to different customer segments while maintaining the desired gross margin. It also lets you restructure the pricing tiers to provide features depending on the customers’ requirements and company size .

Watch: (1/5) Supercharge Your Revenue With Data-Driven Pricing

Your sales and marketing team can help you hone in on the market research questions to ask your customers for running pricing analysis:

• Do the customers ever complain about the difficulty in finding the pricing information?
• What is the pricing structure of our competitors for the same products? What features do they include for a specific price?
• How do customers find our pricing when compared to the competitors?
• Do our products provide value for money to the customers? Does the sales pitch reflect this point?
• Can we restructure the pricing, and how will it affect the revenue?
• Are there any customer segments that have high-value potential but find the current pricing unaffordable? What are the plans for such customers?
• Are we in a situation to offer a basic free plan to encourage customers to try our product before upgrading?
• What promotions can we run to attract more customers?
• Should we target customers based on income, company size, or type of solution to set our product prices?

Brand Reputation Market Research Questions

A brand reputation questionnaire for marketing research gives you information on how well your target market knows about your brand. You can uncover previously unidentified channels to increase brand awareness and find potential customers to promote your brand .

Start by gauging what customers are saying about your brand:

• Which channels receive mentions of our brand? Are these posts positive or negative?
• Do we have a system in place to analyze and monitor these reviews and posts?
• What are the reviews of our brand on different sites? What is the overall impression of our brand in the market?
• How are we currently addressing the negative reviews and complaints? What do our customers think about the handling process?
• What is the impression of our brand in our target market?
• What brand awareness campaigns are our competitors running?
• Is our brand among the top choices of our target customers?

Advertisement & Campaign-Based Questions

These customer research survey questions let you assess the effectiveness of your current value propositions and campaigns . You can channel the customer insights into your advertising strategies to design targeted campaigns for different customer segments to reduce the overall acquisition cost and increase conversions.

Ask the following questions to collect information about the different marketing campaigns that are performing:

• What are the best modes to run the advertisement campaigns to reach our target audience?
• What is the estimated lifetime value of customers acquired from current campaigns? Is it higher or lower than the acquisition costs?
• Which campaigns bring the most ROI and why?
• How well do our advertisements present our value proposition to the customers? Do they address customers’ fears and expectations to attract them?
• Are we running A/B tests to improve our online campaigns? How are we gathering data to build the A/B test hypotheses – surveys, heatmaps, eye tracking, etc.?
• What advertisement campaigns do our competitors run?

7 Question Types to Use in Market Research Surveys

We mentioned earlier that market research questions provide important data for different operations like product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipeline and more.

But to what extent?

Let’s break it down to individual processes and understand how insights from customer research surveys can impact them:

To Know Your Target Market

Understanding your target audience is the fundamental aspect of market research, be it a new target market or existing customers. If you know what marketing research survey questions to ask your target market, you can identify different customer types’ unique traits and preferences.

The data can help you segment the users based on demographic, psychographic, geographic, and other attributes. These include their behavior, purchase preferences, age, location, habits, delights, frustrations, and more.

You can then create various customer personas and fuel your sales strategies to maximize ROI.

Case study – How Avis increased its revenue per customer

Avis, a leading car rental company, was looking to enhance customer experience by offering useful car add-ons like navigation systems, child seats, insurance, etc., to customers with their booking. So, it reached out to AWA Digital to find a way to promote these products and increase their sales.

AWA digital implemented customer research campaigns using targeted surveys to determine which add-ons were popular among the customers and why. 

Using these insights, the team added an interstitial pop-up just before the booking page to show relevant add-ons to the customers.

This simple update dramatically increased the sales of add-on items and helped Avis generate more revenue per customer.

Read the entire case study here .

To Plan the Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is a visual representation of the current status of your product and planned updates over time. It shows a high-level summary of planned activities and priorities for different teams to take the product to the next level.

Steve Jobs famously said – “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology then try to figure out where to sell it.”

And market research helps to align your product strategies with the customer demand. Using targeted marketing survey questions, you can gauge what new features or functionality customers want to see in your products.

It helps to plan product development strategies based on customers’ consensus to prioritize the ideas that can have the most impact on customers and replace intuition-based approaches with data-backed decisions.

Customers’ demands change with market trends and technological advancements. That’s why your product map also needs to evolve constantly with time to reflect these changes in your product development cycle.

By designing targeted market research questions to ask the customers, you can uncover their expectations to deliver optimal product solutions. 

That’s what our next case study demonstrates.

Case study – How customer research drives Twilio’s operations  

Twilio, a cloud communications platform places customer discovery and research at the core of their product development strategies. It helps its teams to anticipate customer needs in a constantly changing market.

Lack of time and budget are the two biggest challenges that the company faces in its product development cycle. So, the team uses targeted market research questionnaires for a product to understand the challenges the customers face today and the ones they will face tomorrow. 

With an abundance of ideas and no time to test them all, the feedback data from surveys is used to prioritize the hypotheses to run the tests. It makes the process more efficient and effective in producing positive results. 

This data-backed approach is used across 18 different teams at Twilio to release new functionality every week and deliver optimal solutions to the clients.

Read the complete case study here .

To Reduce Acquisition Costs

Your customer base consists of multiple customer segments with different preferences and purchase potential. That’s why you cannot sell to everyone and need to find the right audience for your products.

If an acquired customer doesn’t bring in more revenue than it costs to acquire them, it will increase your acquisition costs over time.

We don’t want that, do we?

For example, let’s say you are targeting the entire market population using the same campaign. If your acquisition cost per customer is $300 and you acquire 20 customers from one campaign, you need to make more than $6000 to register profits.

The difficulty is you don’t know about these customers’ purchase behavior and capacity, so you cannot be sure if you will reach your goals. It adds unnecessary risks to your marketing ventures.

But, if you were targeting a specific segment with high income, regular shopping habits, or proven history of brand loyalty, You can obtain better results.

Now, the question is – 

How will you separate these potential long-term customers from one-time buyers and high-value targets from other segments?

One way to do this is by building customer personas using the data from the market research survey questions. A buyer persona defines different attributes of a particular customer segment so you can hone in on the right audience to funnel your marketing efforts.

Here’s what a typical persona includes:

• Target regions
• Target demographic (age, marital status, gender)
• Ideal psychographics (hobbies, social channels, activities they indulge in, goals)
• Preferred interaction channels
• Favorite brands and products
• Total revenue till date
• Estimated lifetime value

Once you have a clearer picture of different customers, you can find high-value prospects with the potential to be long-term customers looking for product solutions that your business offers. 

You can then design the correct pitch using the market research data to bring in these customers and control the overall acquisition costs.

For example:

• Plugin the demographic and psychographic data into CRM software like BIGContacts or Salesforce to convert high-value targets.
• Use your CRM to create segmented lists of prospects based on estimated value, location, current status, and more. Then target these groups individually with personalized value propositions to increase conversion rates.
• Identify their preferred mode of communication and technographic inclinations to find the right opportunities to pitch your product offering at the precise moment.

Even if acquiring and retaining such customers costs more, their overall revenue can balance the acquisition costs to deliver higher profits.

To Design Targeted Marketing Campaigns

By knowing how your target audience behaves and interacts with your business, you can find the exact opportunities to target them with personalized campaigns.

• You can use mail campaigns to target website users with app-exclusive offers to encourage them to download your app and improve app adoption.
• Add in-app broadcast messages about upcoming offers, exclusive membership benefits, and other incentives for new users to push them towards the end of the funnel.
• Create multiple landing pages to target different customer types.
• Design location-based ad campaigns with personalized value propositions based on audience preferences and problems at each location. 

Case Study – How Canon’s campaigns generated 700% ROI

AWA digital was tasked by Canon, one of the biggest electronics companies worldwide, to assess and increase the demand for their products in different geographies. So, the AWA team conducted customer research using target market survey questions and discovered the following attributes about customers’ purchase behavior and reservations:

• In some regions, people were reluctant to spend money on a Canon camera as they weren’t sure if Canon was an authoritative brand.
• In other regions, authority was not as important to the users.

Using these insights, AWA optimized the ads campaigns’ messaging for different locations to include what consumers deemed important purchase factors.

The results?

With in-depth customer feedback, Canon generated an overall ROI of 700% in all regions using personalized campaigns to target the audience.

To Improve Brand Awareness

Whether you are into soft drinks or not, You probably would have heard of Coca-Cola’s 2011 Share-A-Coke ad. This single campaign put the Coke brand back on the map and reversed the 10-year steady decline in sales in the US.  

Coke understood what motivates their customers and delivered a product offering that appealed to the masses to increase its brand equity- the excitement to get a Coca-Cola bottle with their name on it.

How did they do it?

In 2011, Coca-Cola rolled out its share-a-coke campaign in Australia. The company debranded the traditional Coke logo from the bottle and replaced it with the phrase “Share a Coke with” followed by a name.

The campaign used the list of the country’s most popular names (nicknames). The purpose was to make people go out and find the Coke bottle with their name on it and share it with their friends. The campaign was subsequently rolled out in 80 countries.

How did it impact Coca-Cola as a brand:

• In Australia, it’s estimated that the campaign increased Coke’s share by 4% and increased consumption among young adults by 7%.
• #ShareACoke became the top trending hashtag on Twitter globally and received over 1 billion impressions.
• In the USA, the campaign increased Coke’s market share by over 2% and brought 11% more sales compared to the previous year.

It’s not limited to big brands only.  

Understanding the customers and placing your product’s value offering along with their habits, lifestyle, and behavior can help you extend your brand’s reach.

Today, there are multiple touchpoints to connect with your customers and map their journey to uncover their issues, motivations, and fears to address in your campaigns.

• Monitor brand mentions on social media and engage with the users to cultivate an online community and promote your brand.
• Reach out to satisfied customers and turn them into your brand ambassadors.
• Use targeted ad campaigns that connect people’s emotions and general behavior to imprint your brand’s image in their minds.

Quick Tips for Writing Awesome Market Research Survey Questions

With the inter-team research complete, you are ready to write your own market research questions to ask your target audience. Keep these general dos and don’ts in mind to ensure that the market survey fulfills the purpose without affecting the data quality or response rate.

Use Mutually Exclusive Response Options

If you are using response anchors with specific ranges like age group or income, check that the options do not overlap . Otherwise, it will produce an irregular data set.

Please specify your age:

In the above example, the respondent lying on either extremity of the given age ranges may get confused on which option to choose. For example, a 28-year-old respondent can choose from both second or third options.

Plus, two different respondents of the same age may select different options, which will skew your demographic data.

You can avoid this confusion by creating mutually exclusive groups as shown below:

Always Add A “Not Applicable” Or “Rather Not Say” Option

Since market research questions extract personal information, some respondents may not want to share such details with you. These include questions about age, income, gender, hobbies, social activities, and more.

Forcing such questions on the customers without allowing them to skip can irate them and lead to survey abandonment .

That’s why you can also use Qualaroo’s skip and branching logic to create smart surveys that only ask relevant questions to your respondents based on their previous answers.

Calculate the Required Sample Size

Sample size plays a vital role in your market research questions to determine the reliability of your response data.

If the response volume is low, the results may not be conclusive to point towards customers’ consensus. On the other hand, a larger sample size than required means a waste of the company’s valuable resources and time.

That’s why it’s important to calculate the required sample size to estimate the number of responses you need for your market research survey questions.

You can use any survey sample size calculator available online to get started. Just fill in the required details to get the required sample size.

For example, to reach a statistical significance of 99%, you need at least 3145 responses to your market research questionnaire.

Consider Adding Incentives

Studies show that incentivized customer research surveys or questionnaires fetch higher response rates than general surveys.

The incentives encourage customers to invest their time in a survey and get something in return.

It means creating a gated questionnaire for market research can help you reach the required sample size quickly . The incentive can be a simple discount code, free shipping coupon, free ebook, or other freebies.

However, there is a possibility that irrelevant respondents may fill out the survey randomly just to get to the offer, which may skew the results. You can use screening questions to filter out unsuitable respondents.

Avoid Double-Barreled Market Research Questions

A double-barreled question poses two questions into one. The problem with such questions is that the respondent may have opposing views about the two statements in the questions. It makes it harder for them to choose one answer from the options .

“Please rate the [product name] on a scale of 1-10 based on overall quality and price?”

Here, the respondent may find the product quality appreciable while thinking it to be overpriced at the same time. In such a case, they may skip the question or select any option randomly.

You can easily sidestep this hurdle by breaking your double-barreled market research question into two to make it less confusing for the respondents.

Importance of Market Research

We mentioned earlier that market research questions provide important data for different operations like product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipeline, and more.

Understanding your target audience is the fundamental aspect of market research, be it a new target market or existing customers. If you know what customer research survey questions to ask your target market, you can identify different customer types’ unique traits and preferences.

AWA Digital implemented research campaigns using targeted customer research surveys to determine which add-ons were popular among the customers and why.

Steve Jobs famously said – “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and then try to figure out where to sell it.”

And market research helps to align your product strategies with the customer demand. Using targeted customer research survey questions, you can gauge what new features or functionality customers want to see in your products.

Image Source: Slide Team

By designing targeted market research questions to ask the customers, you can uncover their expectations to deliver optimal product solutions.

Case study – How customer research drives Twilio’s operations

Twilio, a cloud communications platform, places customer discovery and research at the core of its product development strategies. It helps its teams to anticipate customer needs in a constantly changing market.

Lack of time and budget are the two biggest challenges that the company faces in its product development cycle. So, the team uses targeted market research questionnaires for a product to understand the challenges the customers face today and the ones they will face tomorrow.

With an abundance of ideas and no time to test them all, the feedback data from customer research surveys is used to prioritize the hypotheses to run the tests. It makes the process more efficient and effective in producing positive results.

Your customer base comprises multiple customer segments with different preferences and purchase potential. That’s why you cannot sell to everyone and need to find the right audience for your products.

For example, let’s say you target the entire market using the same campaign. If your acquisition cost per customer is $300 and you acquire 20 customers from one campaign, you must make over $6000 to register profits.

But, if you were targeting a specific segment with high income, regular shopping habits, or a proven history of brand loyalty, you could obtain better results.

Now, the question is –

Image Source: brightspark

• Plug the demographic and psychographic data into CRM software like BIGContacts or Salesforce to convert high-value targets.
• Use your CRM to create segmented lists of prospects based on estimated value, location, current status, and more. Then, target these groups individually with personalized value propositions to increase conversion rates.

• Add in-app broadcast messages about upcoming offers, exclusive membership benefits, and other incentives for new users to push them toward the end of the funnel.

AWA Digital was tasked by Canon, one of the biggest electronics companies worldwide, to assess and increase the demand for their products in different geographies. So, the AWA team conducted a customer research survey using target market questions and discovered the following attributes about customers’ purchase behavior and reservations:

• In other regions, authority was not so important to the users.

Whether you are into soft drinks or not, you probably would have heard of Coca-Cola’s 2011 Share-A-Coke ad. This single campaign put the Coke brand back on the map and reversed the 10-year steady decline in sales in the US.  

Coke understood what motivates its customers and delivered a product offering that appealed to the masses to increase its brand equity- the excitement to get a Coca-Cola bottle with its name on it.

• In Australia, it’s estimated that the campaign increased Coke’s share by 4% and consumption among young adults by 7%.

It’s not limited to big brands only. 

Market Research: A Key to Your Business’ Success

Market research is a vital process for any business wanting to understand its customers and market better. By asking the right questions and using the right tools like Qualaroo, you can gain valuable insights that can help you improve your products or services, enhance your customer experiences, and grow your business.

In this blog, we have shared some of the best market research questions to ask your customers, as well as some of the best customer research survey templates to find market trends and industry insights. We hope that this blog has helped you learn more about market research and how to conduct it effectively.

About the author

Shivani dubey.

Shivani has more than 3 years of experience in the modern creative content paradigm and technical writing verticals. She has been published in The Boss Magazine, Reseller Club, and HR Technologist. She is passionate about Artificial Intelligence and has a deep understanding of how organizations can leverage customer support technologies for maximum success. In her free time, she enjoys Nail art, playing with her guinea pigs, and chilling with a bowl of cheese fries.

• 33 Best Market Research Question Examples

To build a successful business, it is important to gather useful insights through market research. More than anything else, carrying out market research helps you to collect necessary information and make the right business decisions with regard to market segmentation and product differentiation. 

In this article, we will share sample questionnaires for different types of market research; specifically product, client, and customer market research. We will also show you how to use Formplus to create a simple online research questionnaire in no time. 

What is Market Research? 

Market research is the process of gathering valuable information about the needs of your target market, consumer behaviors, and market challenges. Conducting market research helps you to determine the feasibility of a product or service before its introduction to the market. 

During market research , an organization can collect primary and/or secondary data. Primary data refers to information that is collected directly from the research participants and target markets while secondary data refers to already-processed information about the research context and subject(s). 

Importance of Market Research

• Improves Sales

Market research provides unique insights into the expectations of your customers and clients, which helps you tailor your product to meet their specific needs. This would ultimately help to increase your sales.

• Identifying New Business Opportunities

With market research, you’d be able to spot untapped business opportunities in your industry and work on building a product in line with this. You can discover new geographical concentrations for your target market, for instance. 

• Reduces Business Risks

As a business owner, your priority should be taking calculated risks and this can be achieved when you have forehand knowledge of the dynamics of your industry. Conducting market research arms you with useful insights that will help you make the right business decisions.

• Advertising

Market research also improves your advertising by helping you to identify the best channels to reach your customers. You’d better understand market demographics and also know the channels that can yield the best returns in terms of lead generation and sales. 

• Competitive Advantage

With better knowledge of market needs and consumers’ preferences, you’d stay ahead of your competition. For instance, you can identify neglected market segments and focus on penetrating them. 

Market Research Questionnaire Examples for Product 

Product market research questions trigger responses that reveal how well-suited your product is for the target market. The right product-market research questions provide useful insight into the feasibility of the product before it is launched. Here are 11 question samples for your product market research questionnaire. 

• What is your deciding factor for product patronage?

This question would help you focus your product’s unique selling point on what the target market considers valuable. For instance, if the deciding factor for your target market is affordability, you would want to work on a fair pricing rate for your product.

• How likely are you to purchase groceries online?

Since you want to create a product that satisfies a specific need, you need to be sure your target market would be willing to buy into your idea. If the market has no need for an online grocery store, there’s little or no reason for you to launch one.

• Which product features are most valuable to you?

You can tweak this question in line with your specific product. Data gathered via responses would help you identify the product features you need to invest in.

• Would you be willing to subscribe to a weekly business newsletter?

Questions like this would help you decide whether you need to go ahead with a specific development plan for your business. If you want to launch a newsletter, it helps to know if you have a willing audience for it.

• Would you like to process orders and payments in a single form?

This type of question would help you identify the need(s) of the market and you can work on creating a product or developing a feature to meet this need.

• Who is your trusted internet service provider?

If you’re looking to penetrate a new market, it is important for you to identify the existing competition; that is, organizations that provide similar services in your industry. Asking prospective customers to identify the brands they trust is an essential part of your competitive analysis.

• What challenges do you face with 3rd party logistics companies?

This question would help you to identify the specific needs of your target market. You can focus your product on providing solutions to the challenges highlighted.

• Would you find this product useful?

This is a straightforward question to determine whether your product fills a specific need in the market.

• Would you be willing to pay in installments for this service?

Questions like this would help you identify product features that your target market considers to be valuable.

• How much are you willing to pay for this product?

This question would help you fix a reasonable price for your product. While your product may be excellent, ensuring its affordability is key to penetrating the market effectively.

• How much do you spend on groceries every month?

This question would provide insights into the purchasing power of your target market.

Read: Research Questions: Definition, Types, +[Examples]

Market Research Questionnaire Examples for Customer

To better under your customers’ perceptions of your product, you can create and administer a market research questionnaire. A market research questionnaire for your customers should include questions that focus on the usefulness of different aspects of your product delivered to your customers. 

You’d also want to centralize questions that bother on customer demographics, challenges, specific needs of your customers, and how your product meets these needs. Here are 11 specific questions you can include in your market research questionnaire for customers: 

Demographic Questions

These questions will help you better understand who your customers are and also help you create an accurate buyer persona.  Knowing who your customers are and what appeals to them means that you would be able to focus your product on what appeals to them. 

• What is your monthly income range?

Knowing how much your customers earn gives you a hint of their purchasing power and how much they can typically spend on your product. This will inform the pricing of your product so that you do not price yourself out of business.

• How much do you spend on shopping every month?

Just like you, customers work with a budget and are more likely to purchase products whose costs fit into this. Responses to this question will help you fix an appropriate fee on your product.

• Where do you prefer to shop?

Catering to customer preferences is one way of securing repeated patronage. Responses to this question will inform your business expansion plan. For example, if your customers prefer shopping online, you can set up a Formplus online order form to allow them to place orders for items and make payments conveniently. 

• How old are you?

This question will help you identify the age group that your product appeals to the most. Knowing this would help you craft marketing and advertising campaigns that appeal to the members of this group.

Feedback Questions

These questions help you to collect insightful information about customer experience; that is, how customers perceive your product and overall delivery. Responses to these questions would let you know why your customers buy from you and how well your product meets their needs. 

• What specific needs does our product meet for you?

This question helps you to identify the unique selling point of your product. You would know why customers patronize your brand and you can leverage this information for better marketing and advertising.

• How would you rate our product delivery?

Responses to this question are a direct reflection of your customer’s perceptions of your product delivery. For better insight, you can ask them to provide reasons for their ratings.

• What challenges did you encounter while using our product?

These questions help you to identify business weaknesses from the point of view of the end user. If left unattended to, competitors can capitalize on these weaknesses to increase their customer base.

• How likely are you to recommend our product?

Happy customers are one of the most effective marketing tools as customers will only recommend a product they are satisfied with. If more people are eager to recommend your product, it means that your business and brand is on the right track.

Other market research question samples are:

• How would you rate our customer experience?

Feedback on customer experience is important because it helps you improve your brand’s relations with its customers across different business touchpoints.

• What do you think about product pricing?

This question would help you adjust your product pricing appropriately. If customers think your product is too expensive, they may stop buying from you.

• How often do you use our product?

This question would help you track repeated patronage and to know how your product fits into your customers’ everyday lives.

Market Research Questionnaire Examples for Client 

Clients are individuals and organizations that you provide specific services for. Just like with customer market research questions, market research questions for clients help you assess your service delivery, identify clients’ unique needs, and gather useful insights via feedback. Here are 11 sample questions for you: 

• How would you rate our service delivery?

This is a feedback question that will help you understand how well your service meets your client’s needs.

• What challenges are you experiencing with our services?

Responses to this question would highlight areas needing improvement in your overall service delivery.

• Would you be willing to recommend us to your network?

If the answers to this question are in the affirmative, then you can be sure that your clients are quite impressed with the service you provide.

• What specific needs do our services meet for you?

To clearly map out the value of your product from the clients’ perspectives, ask them to identify the specific needs your services meet for them.

• How can our service delivery be better?

This is another feedback question that would help you improve your services to better cater to the needs of your clients.

• For how long have you been a client?

This question helps you to gather meaningful data to improve your client retention strategies.

• What do you like the most about our services?

This question would help you identify the unique selling point of your services.

• How would you rate your last experience with us?

With this question, you’d be able to gather valuable information about a client’s experience with your services.

• What do you dislike about our service delivery?

This question allows clients to highlight areas needing improvement in your service delivery. The data gathered would help you improve your services for the benefit of your clients.

• Are our services helpful?

This is a simple question that requires clients to highlight the value of your services.

• Why did you choose us?

How to Create an Online Research Questionnaire 

With Formplus, it is easier for you to create and administer an online questionnaire for market research. In the drag-and-drop form builder, you can add preferred form fields and edit them to suit specific research needs. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to go about it: 

• Sign in to your Formplus account. In your dashboard, click on “create new form” to get started on your online research questionnaire.

• Drag and drop preferred fields into your online questionnaire. You can edit form fields to include market research questions. You can also make some fields hidden or read-only depending on your research needs.

• Use the form customization options to tweak the appearance of the online research questionnaire. You can add preferred background images, add your organization’s logo or tweak the form font.

• Finally, copy the form link and share it with form respondents. You can use one or more of the multiple sharing options including the social media direct sharing buttons and the email invitation option.

Conclusion 

While creating your market research questionnaire, it is important for you to tailor its questions to specific contexts. For instance, if you are conducting product market research, you should ask questions that would provide useful information on product feasibility among other things. 

Conducting market research yields multiple benefits for your business. To make the process seamless and easy to coordinate, you can set up an online research questionnaire with Formplus and share this with your customers, clients, and target market(s). 

Connect to Formplus, Get Started Now - It's Free!

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Business growth

Marketing tips

How to conduct your own market research survey (with example)

After watching a few of those sketches, you can imagine why real-life focus groups tend to be pretty small. Even without any over-the-top personalities involved, it's easy for these groups to go off the rails.

So what happens when you want to collect market research at a larger scale? That's where the market research survey comes in. Market surveys allow you to get just as much valuable information as an in-person interview, without the burden of herding hundreds of rowdy Eagles fans through a product test.

Table of contents:

What is a market research survey?

Market surveys are what's known as "primary research"—that is, information that the researching company gathers firsthand. Secondary research consists of data that another organization gathered and published, which other researchers can then use for their own reports. Primary research is more expensive and time-intensive than secondary research, which is why you should only use market research surveys to obtain information that you can't get anywhere else. 

A market research survey can collect information on your target customers':

Experiences

Preferences, desires, and needs

Values and motivations

The types of information that can usually be found in a secondary source, and therefore aren't good candidates for a market survey, include your target customers':

Demographic data

Consumer spending data

Household size

Why conduct market research?

Here are some examples of how market research surveys can be used to fill a wide range of knowledge gaps for companies:

A B2B software company asks real users in its industry about Kanban board usage to help prioritize their project view change rollout.

A B2C software company asks its target demographic about their mobile browsing habits to help them find features to incorporate into their forthcoming mobile app.

A printing company asks its target demographic about fabric preferences to gauge interest in a premium material option for their apparel lines.

A wholesale food vendor surveys regional restaurant owners to find ideas for seasonal products to offer.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market surveys are what's known as "primary research"—that is, information that the researching company gathers firsthand. Secondary research consists of data that another organization gathered and published, which other researchers can then use for their own reports. 

Primary research is more expensive and time-intensive than secondary research, which is why you should only use market research surveys to obtain information that you can't get anywhere else. 

If you've exhausted your secondary research options and still have unanswered questions, it's time to start thinking about conducting a market research survey.

6 types of market research survey

Depending on your goal, you'll need different types of market research. Here are six types of market research surveys.

1. Buyer persona research

A buyer persona research survey will help you learn more about things like demographics, household makeup, income and education levels, and lifestyle markers. The more you learn about your existing customers, the more specific you can get in targeting potential customers. You may find that there are more buyer personas within your user base than the ones that you've been targeting.

2. Sales funnel research

With a sales funnel research survey, you can learn about potential customers' main drivers at different stages of the sales funnel. You can also get feedback on how effective different sales strategies are. Use this survey to find out:

How close potential buyers are to making a purchase

What tools and experiences have been most effective in moving prospective customers closer to conversion

3. Customer loyalty research

The demographics of your most loyal customers

What tools are most effective in turning customers into advocates

What you can do to encourage more brand loyalty

4. Branding and marketing research

The Charmin focus group featured in that SNL sketch is an example of branding and marketing research, in which a company looks for feedback on a particular advertising angle to get a sense of whether it will be effective before the company spends money on running the ad at scale. Use this type of survey to find out:

Whether a new advertising angle will do well with existing customers

Whether a campaign will do well with a new customer segment you haven't targeted yet

What types of campaign angles do well with a particular demographic

5. New products or features research

What features they wish your product currently had

What they think of a particular product or feature idea

6. Competitor research

Whether your competitors have found success with a buyer persona you're not targeting

Information about buyers for a product that's similar to one you're thinking about launching

Feedback on what features your competitors' customers wish their version of a product had

How to write and conduct a market research survey

Once you've narrowed down your survey's objectives, you can move forward with designing and running your survey.

Step 1: Write your survey questions

A poorly worded survey, or a survey that uses the wrong question format, can render all of your data moot. If you write a question that results in most respondents answering "none of the above," you haven't learned much. 

Categorical questions

Also known as a nominal question, this question type provides numbers and percentages for easy visualization, like "35% said ABC." It works great for bar graphs and pie charts, but you can't take averages or test correlations with nominal-level data.

Multiple choice: Use this type of question if you need more nuance than a Yes/No answer gives. You can add as many answers as you want, and your respondents can pick only one answer to the question. 

Checkbox: Checkbox questions add the flexibility to select all the answers that apply. Add as many answers as you want, and respondents aren't limited to just one. 

Ordinal questions

This type of question requires survey-takers to pick from options presented in a specific order, like "income of $0-$25K, $26K-$40K, $41K+." Like nominal questions, ordinal questions elicit responses that allow you to analyze counts and percentages, though you can't calculate averages or assess correlations with ordinal-level data.

Dropdown: Responses to ordinal questions can be presented as a dropdown, from which survey-takers can only make one selection. You could use this question type to gather demographic data, like the respondent's country or state of residence. 

Ranking: This is a unique question type that allows respondents to arrange a list of answers in their preferred order, providing feedback on each option in the process. 

Interval/ratio questions

For precise data and advanced analysis, use interval or ratio questions. These can help you calculate more advanced analytics, like averages, test correlations, and run regression models. Interval questions commonly use scales of 1-5 or 1-7, like "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree." Ratio questions have a true zero and often ask for numerical inputs (like "How many cups of coffee do you drink per day? ____").

Ranking scale: A ranking scale presents answer choices along an ordered value-based sequence, either using numbers, a like/love scale, a never/always scale, or some other ratio interval. It gives more insight into people's thoughts than a Yes/No question. 

Matrix: Have a lot of interval questions to ask? You can put a number of questions in a list and use the same scale for all of them. It simplifies gathering data about a lot of similar items at once. 

Example : How much do you like the following: oranges, apples, grapes? Hate/Dislike/Ok/Like/Love

Textbox: A textbox question is needed for collecting direct feedback or personal data like names. There will be a blank space where the respondent can enter their answer to your question on their own. 

Step 2: Choose a survey platform

Most survey apps today look great on mobile, but be sure to preview your survey on your phone and computer, at least, to make sure it'll look good for all of your users.

If you have the budget, you can also purchase survey services from a larger research agency. 

Step 3: Run a test survey

Before you run your full survey, conduct a smaller test on 5%-10% of your target respondent pool size. This will allow you to work out any confusing wording or questions that result in unhelpful responses without spending the full cost of the survey. Look out for:

Survey rejection from the platform for prohibited topics

Joke or nonsense textbox answers that indicate the respondent didn't answer the survey in earnest

Multiple choice questions with an outsized percentage of "none of the above" or "N/A" responses

Step 4: Launch your survey

If your test survey comes back looking good, you're ready to launch the full thing! Make sure that you leave ample time for the survey to run—you'd be surprised at how long it takes to get a few thousand respondents. 

Even if you've run similar surveys in the past, leave more time than you need. Some surveys take longer than others for no clear reason, and you also want to build in time to conduct a comprehensive data analysis.

Step 5: Organize and interpret the data

Tips for running a market research survey.

You know the basics of how to conduct a market research survey, but here are some tips to enhance the quality of your data and the reliability of your findings.

Find the right audience: You could have meticulously crafted survey questions, but if you don't target the appropriate demographic or customer segment, it doesn't really matter. You need to collect responses from the people you're trying to understand. Targeted audiences you can send surveys to include your existing customers, current social media followers, newsletter subscribers, attendees at relevant industry events, and community members from online forums, discussion boards, or other online communities that cater to your target audience. 

Focus questions on a desired data type: As you conceptualize your survey, consider whether a qualitative or quantitative approach will better suit your research goals. Qualitative methods are best for exploring in-depth insights and underlying motivations, while quantitative methods are better for obtaining statistical data and measurable trends. For an outcome like "optimize our ice cream shop's menu offerings," you may want to find out which flavors of ice cream are most popular with teens. This would require a quantitative approach, for which you would use categorical questions that can help you rank potential flavors numerically.

Establish a timeline: Set a realistic timeline for your survey, from creation to distribution to data collection and analysis. You'll want to balance having your survey out long enough to generate a significant amount of responses but not so long that it loses relevance. That length can vary widely based on factors like type of survey, number of questions, audience size, time sensitivity, question format, and question length.

Market research survey campaign example

Let's say you own a market research company, and you want to use a survey to gain critical insights into your market. You prompt users to fill out your survey before they can access gated premium content.

Survey questions: 

1. What size is your business? 

<10 employees

11-50 employees

51-100 employees

101-200 employees

>200 employees

2. What industry type best describes your role?

3. On a scale of 1-4, how important would you say access to market data is?

1 - Not important

2 - Somewhat important

3 - Very important

4 - Critically important

4. On a scale of 1 (least important) to 5 (most important), rank how important these market data access factors are.

Accuracy of data

Attractive presentation of data

Cost of data access

Range of data presentation formats

Timeliness of data

5. True or false: your job relies on access to accurate, up-to-date market data.

Survey findings: 

63% of respondents represent businesses with over 100 employees, while only 8% represent businesses with under 10.

71% of respondents work in sales, marketing, or operations.

80% of respondents consider access to market data to be either very important or critically important.

"Timeliness of data" (38%) and "Accuracy of data" (32%) were most commonly ranked as the most important market data access factor.

86% of respondents claimed that their jobs rely on accessing accurate, up-to-date market data.

Insights and recommendations: Independent analysis of the survey indicates that a large percentage of users work in the sales, marketing, or operations fields of large companies, and these customers value timeliness and accuracy most. These findings can help you position future report offerings more effectively by highlighting key benefits that are important to customers that fit into related customer profiles. 

Market research survey example questions

Your individual questions will vary by your industry, market, and research goals, so don't expect a cut-and-paste survey to suit your needs. To help you get started, here are market research survey example questions to give you a sense of the format.

Yes/No: Have you purchased our product before?

Multiple choice: How many employees work at your company?

<10 / 10-20 / 21-50 / 51-100 / 101-250 / 250+

Checkbox: Which of the following features do you use in our app?

Push notifications / Dashboard / Profile customization / In-app chat

Dropdown: What's your household income? 

$0-$10K / $11-$35K / $36-$60K / $61K+

Ranking: Which social media platforms do you use the most? Rank in order, from most to least.

Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / LinkedIn / Reddit

Ranking scale: On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate our customer service? 

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Textbox: How many apps are installed on your phone? Enter a number: 

Market research survey question types

Good survey apps typically offer pre-designed templates as a starting point. But to give you a more visual sense of what these questions might look like, we've put together a document showcasing common market research survey question types.

Use automation to put survey results into action

Related reading:

This article was originally published in June 2015 by Stephanie Briggs. The most recent update, with contributions from Cecilia Gillen, was in September 2023.

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Amanda Pell

Amanda is a writer and content strategist who built her career writing on campaigns for brands like Nature Valley, Disney, and the NFL. When she's not knee-deep in research, you'll likely find her hiking with her dog or with her nose in a good book.

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Market Research Surveys: Sample Questions + Template

Sample Questions

• Creation Tips
• Types of Data
• Employee Feedback
• Creating the Survey
• Identity Protection
• Research Tools

Create your own survey using a MaxDiff question and more!

Definition: Market research surveys are a tool used to collect information about a target market. These surveys allow businesses to understand market needs and preferences.

Your company can offer better products or services by understanding your target market. Often, market research surveys will also include questions about competitors. Competitor data help paint the complete picture of your target market.

Depending on your goal, you want to include different question types in your survey. Here are three general categories of question types to include:

• Customer demographic questions
• Product/service questions
• Company/brand questions

Customer Demographic Questions

These questions will help you to understand  your audience  better. In addition, this data can be used to create market segments.

• What is your age range?
• What is your marital status?
• What is the highest level of education?
• What is your monthly income?
• Which of the following online retailers do you use most often?
• How many hours a week do you spend doing [task]?
• How did you find our company?

Product or Service Questions

When researching a product or service, you want to find out what attributes customers find most valuable in addition to a proper price point.  MaxDiff  will help you determine what is least and most important for this type of research, while  Gabor Granger  and  Van Westendorp  will help you find the optimal price points.

Important note: Don’t ask customers what they would pay for a product or service using an input box. The data will be unreliable. Instead, we recommend using a Gabor Granger question to determine optimal price; this question mimics real-world buying decisions where random price points are evaluated.

Asking about competitors is also essential when drafting product or service questions. Understanding the competition will help your own company build better offerings.

• Of the following features, which are LEAST and MOST important to you?
• Does this product help solve your problems?
• Is there any feature you wish a competitor offered?
• Was our product easy to use?
• How would you evaluate the following price points when purchasing this product?

Company/Brand Questions

When asking questions about your company or brand, the key focus should be on asking the Net Promoter Score question. This question asks, “How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?” with options from 0 to 10. The overall score will range from -100 to 100 and can be benchmarked against other companies.

Some additional questions in this area could include the following

• Do you understand what our brand stands for?
• Of the following terms, which do you associate with our brand?
• When thinking of a new [product] to buy, which of the following brands first comes to mind?

Tips to Create a Great Market Research Survey

Create an objective:.

Once you get the data, what actions will you take with it? For example, do you want to research features or pricing? Whatever the objective is, make sure it is clear. This will ensure the right questions are asked to gather valuable data.

Determine How to Collect Responses:

Do you have a customer list or want general consumers’ opinions? We recommend using your own customers as a starting point for market research surveys. Then you can add in a targeted survey panel to grab more general consumer opinions.

Here is a  sample size calculator  to determine your needed sample size. This data will enable you to know how many responses you need to collect based on the overall population you are studying.

Use Crosstabulation:

To spot hidden trends and relationships, use  cross-tabulation . For example, you could create a cross-tabulation report for a MaxDiff question with gender. Then you can see what product each prefers features. This can be used for marketing or to decide what target market would be more profitable.

Keep Your Survey Short:

No one wants to be overwhelmed. A  study by Survicate  found that surveys with 1-3 questions had an 83% response rate. Use  skip logic  to hide irrelevant questions from users that do not meet specific criteria.

Offer Incentives:

Offer incentives! Offer respondents a discount if they take your survey. This will help drum up new business and ensure you can collect the data you need.

Why Use Market Research Surveys?

Research a target market:.

Your target market is the consumers who would find your product or service most helpful. So first, create a survey to discover opinions on a product or service and respondent demographics such as age, income level, or education level. You can segment your results from here and find out what characteristics make up your target market.

Market Segmentation:

Now that you know your general target market, a more specific group of those people is known as a segment. With the dealership example, maybe you realize consumers in your area and target market love Audi but hate BMW. Luxury cars and people of the same income level drive them, but this difference in product preference is a segment. Knowing this is key to offering the correct brands or prices.

Competitor Analysis:

Often called SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), analyzing your competition is key to gaining market share. Go directly to consumers and ask about their opinions on competitors. Ask questions about what they do well or what you do well. Your survey results will help you identify opportunities for growth or ways your company needs to change to stay competitive.

Product Launches:

Does your product meet your customers’ needs? Sending an online product survey to customers will help you gain insights that drive improvements, consumer satisfaction, and ultimately, sales. When measuring the importance of product features, remember always to include a MaxDiff question.

Types of Market Research Data

Of course, surveys are only part of market research. You might be able to shorten your survey if you can collect data from other places first.

Primary Information (aka Field Research):

Primary market research is information YOU collect specific to your objective. This type of information is most often collected via surveys! For example, you might want to open up an arcade in a small town in the United States. You can send out a survey to a sample of the town’s residents to get demographic information and if they are willing to visit your arcade.

Secondary Information (aka Desk Research):

Secondary market research is information YOU DO NOT collect specific to your objective. This type of data is already available to you in public government databases, journals, publications, or even Google! For example, let’s say you were interested in starting your luxury car dealership. You could look at government census data for income levels for your target market before conducting your detailed research. Secondary information should help narrow down what preliminary information you need to collect.

ABOUT THE AUTOR

Allen is the founder of SurveyKing. A former CPA and government auditor, he understands how important quality data is in decision making. He continues to help SurveyKing accomplish their main goal: providing organizations around the world with low-cost high-quality feedback tools.

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83 Qualitative Research Questions & Examples

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Qualitative research questions help you understand consumer sentiment. They’re strategically designed to show organizations how and why people feel the way they do about a brand, product, or service. It looks beyond the numbers and is one of the most telling types of market research a company can do.

The UK Data Service describes this perfectly, saying, “The value of qualitative research is that it gives a voice to the lived experience .”

Read on to see seven use cases and 83 qualitative research questions, with the added bonus of examples that show how to get similar insights faster with Similarweb Research Intelligence.

What is a qualitative research question?

A qualitative research question explores a topic in-depth, aiming to better understand the subject through interviews, observations, and other non-numerical data. Qualitative research questions are open-ended, helping to uncover a target audience’s opinions, beliefs, and motivations.

How to choose qualitative research questions?

Choosing the right qualitative research questions can be incremental to the success of your research and the findings you uncover. Here’s my six-step process for choosing the best qualitative research questions.

• Start by understanding the purpose of your research. What do you want to learn? What outcome are you hoping to achieve?
• Consider who you are researching. What are their experiences, attitudes, and beliefs? How can you best capture these in your research questions ?
• Keep your questions open-ended . Qualitative research questions should not be too narrow or too broad. Aim to ask specific questions to provide meaningful answers but broad enough to allow for exploration.
• Balance your research questions. You don’t want all of your questions to be the same type. Aim to mix up your questions to get a variety of answers.
• Ensure your research questions are ethical and free from bias. Always have a second (and third) person check for unconscious bias.
• Consider the language you use. Your questions should be written in a way that is clear and easy to understand. Avoid using jargon , acronyms, or overly technical language.

Types of qualitative research questions

For a question to be considered qualitative, it usually needs to be open-ended. However, as I’ll explain, there can sometimes be a slight cross-over between quantitative and qualitative research questions.

Open-ended questions

These allow for a wide range of responses and can be formatted with multiple-choice answers or a free-text box to collect additional details. The next two types of qualitative questions are considered open questions, but each has its own style and purpose.

• Probing questions are used to delve deeper into a respondent’s thoughts, such as “Can you tell me more about why you feel that way?”
• Comparative questions ask people to compare two or more items, such as “Which product do you prefer and why?” These qualitative questions are highly useful for understanding brand awareness , competitive analysis , and more.

Closed-ended questions

These ask respondents to choose from a predetermined set of responses, such as “On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with the new product?” While they’re traditionally quantitative, adding a free text box that asks for extra comments into why a specific rating was chosen will provide qualitative insights alongside their respective quantitative research question responses.

• Ranking questions get people to rank items in order of preference, such as “Please rank these products in terms of quality.” They’re advantageous in many scenarios, like product development, competitive analysis, and brand awareness.
• Likert scale questions ask people to rate items on a scale, such as “On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with the new product?” Ideal for placement on websites and emails to gather quick, snappy feedback.

Qualitative research question examples

There are many applications of qualitative research and lots of ways you can put your findings to work for the success of your business. Here’s a summary of the most common use cases for qualitative questions and examples to ask.

Qualitative questions for identifying customer needs and motivations

These types of questions help you find out why customers choose products or services and what they are looking for when making a purchase.

• What factors do you consider when deciding to buy a product?
• What would make you choose one product or service over another?
• What are the most important elements of a product that you would buy?
• What features do you look for when purchasing a product?
• What qualities do you look for in a company’s products?
• Do you prefer localized or global brands when making a purchase?
• How do you determine the value of a product?
• What do you think is the most important factor when choosing a product?
• How do you decide if a product or service is worth the money?
• Do you have any specific expectations when purchasing a product?
• Do you prefer to purchase products or services online or in person?
• What kind of customer service do you expect when buying a product?
• How do you decide when it is time to switch to a different product?
• Where do you research products before you decide to buy?
• What do you think is the most important customer value when making a purchase?

Qualitative research questions to enhance customer experience

Use these questions to reveal insights into how customers interact with a company’s products or services and how those experiences can be improved.

• What aspects of our product or service do customers find most valuable?
• How do customers perceive our customer service?
• What factors are most important to customers when purchasing?
• What do customers think of our brand?
• What do customers think of our current marketing efforts?
• How do customers feel about the features and benefits of our product?
• How do customers feel about the price of our product or service?
• How could we improve the customer experience?
• What do customers think of our website or app?
• What do customers think of our customer support?
• What could we do to make our product or service easier to use?
• What do customers think of our competitors?
• What is your preferred way to access our site?
• How do customers feel about our delivery/shipping times?
• What do customers think of our loyalty programs?

Qualitative research question example for customer experience

• ‍♀️ Question: What is your preferred way to access our site?
• Insight sought: How mobile-dominant are consumers? Should you invest more in mobile optimization or mobile marketing?
• Challenges with traditional qualitative research methods: While using this type of question is ideal if you have a large database to survey when placed on a site or sent to a limited customer list, it only gives you a point-in-time perspective from a limited group of people.
• A new approach: You can get better, broader insights quicker with Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence. To fully inform your research, you need to know preferences at the industry or market level.
• ⏰ Time to insight: 30 seconds
• ✅ How it’s done: Similarweb offers multiple ways to answer this question without going through a lengthy qualitative research process. 

First, I’m going to do a website market analysis of the banking credit and lending market in the finance sector to get a clearer picture of industry benchmarks.

Here, I can view device preferences across any industry or market instantly. It shows me the device distribution for any country across any period. This clearly answers the question of how mobile dominate my target audience is , with 59.79% opting to access site via a desktop vs. 40.21% via mobile

I then use the trends section to show me the exact split between mobile and web traffic for each key player in my space. Let’s say I’m about to embark on a competitive campaign that targets customers of Chase and Bank of America ; I can see both their audiences are highly desktop dominant compared with others in their space .

Qualitative question examples for developing new products or services

Research questions like this can help you understand customer pain points and give you insights to develop products that meet those needs.

• What is the primary reason you would choose to purchase a product from our company?
• How do you currently use products or services that are similar to ours?
• Is there anything that could be improved with products currently on the market?
• What features would you like to see added to our products?
• How do you prefer to contact a customer service team?
• What do you think sets our company apart from our competitors?
• What other product or service offerings would like to see us offer?
• What type of information would help you make decisions about buying a product?
• What type of advertising methods are most effective in getting your attention?
• What is the biggest deterrent to purchasing products from us?

Qualitative research question example for service development

• ‍♀️ Question: What type of advertising methods are most effective in getting your attention?
• Insight sought: The marketing channels and/or content that performs best with a target audience .
• Challenges with traditional qualitative research methods: When using qualitative research surveys to answer questions like this, the sample size is limited, and bias could be at play.
• A better approach: The most authentic insights come from viewing real actions and results that take place in the digital world. No questions or answers are needed to uncover this intel, and the information you seek is readily available in less than a minute.
• ⏰ Time to insight: 5 minutes
• ✅ How it’s done: There are a few ways to approach this. You can either take an industry-wide perspective or hone in on specific competitors to unpack their individual successes. Here, I’ll quickly show a snapshot with a whole market perspective.

Using the market analysis element of Similarweb Digital Intelligence, I select my industry or market, which I’ve kept as banking and credit. A quick click into marketing channels shows me which channels drive the highest traffic in my market. Taking direct traffic out of the equation, for now, I can see that referrals and organic traffic are the two highest-performing channels in this market.

Similarweb allows me to view the specific referral partners and pages across these channels. 

Looking closely at referrals in this market, I’ve chosen chase.com and its five closest rivals . I select referrals in the channel traffic element of marketing channels. I see that Capital One is a clear winner, gaining almost 25 million visits due to referral partnerships.

Next, I get to see exactly who is referring traffic to Capital One and the total traffic share for each referrer. I can see the growth as a percentage and how that has changed, along with an engagement score that rates the average engagement level of that audience segment. This is particularly useful when deciding on which new referral partnerships to pursue.  

Once I’ve identified the channels and campaigns that yield the best results, I can then use Similarweb to dive into the various ad creatives and content that have the greatest impact.

These ads are just a few of those listed in the creatives section from my competitive website analysis of Capital One. You can filter this list by the specific campaign, publishers, and ad networks to view those that matter to you most. You can also discover video ad creatives in the same place too.

In just five minutes ⏰ 

• I’ve captured audience loyalty statistics across my market
• Spotted the most competitive players
• Identified the marketing channels my audience is most responsive to
• I know which content and campaigns are driving the highest traffic volume
• I’ve created a target list for new referral partners and have been able to prioritize this based on results and engagement figures from my rivals
• I can see the types of creatives that my target audience is responding to, giving me ideas for ways to generate effective copy for future campaigns

Qualitative questions to determine pricing strategies

Companies need to make sure pricing stays relevant and competitive. Use these questions to determine customer perceptions on pricing and develop pricing strategies to maximize profits and reduce churn.

• How do you feel about our pricing structure?
• How does our pricing compare to other similar products?
• What value do you feel you get from our pricing?
• How could we make our pricing more attractive?
• What would be an ideal price for our product?
• Which features of our product that you would like to see priced differently?
• What discounts or deals would you like to see us offer?
• How do you feel about the amount you have to pay for our product?

Get Faster Answers to Qualitative Research Questions with Similarweb Today

Qualitative research question example for determining pricing strategies.

• ‍♀️ Question: What discounts or deals would you like to see us offer?
• Insight sought: The promotions or campaigns that resonate with your target audience.
• Challenges with traditional qualitative research methods: Consumers don’t always recall the types of ads or campaigns they respond to. Over time, their needs and habits change. Your sample size is limited to those you ask, leaving a huge pool of unknowns at play.
• A better approach: While qualitative insights are good to know, you get the most accurate picture of the highest-performing promotion and campaigns by looking at data collected directly from the web. These analytics are real-world, real-time, and based on the collective actions of many, instead of the limited survey group you approach. By getting a complete picture across an entire market, your decisions are better informed and more aligned with current market trends and behaviors.
• ✅ How it’s done: Similarweb’s Popular Pages feature shows the content, products, campaigns, and pages with the highest growth for any website. So, if you’re trying to unpack the successes of others in your space and find out what content resonates with a target audience, there’s a far quicker way to get answers to these questions with Similarweb.

Here, I’m using Capital One as an example site. I can see trending pages on their site showing the largest increase in page views. Other filters include campaign, best-performing, and new–each of which shows you page URLs, share of traffic, and growth as a percentage. This page is particularly useful for staying on top of trending topics , campaigns, and new content being pushed out in a market by key competitors.

Qualitative research questions for product development teams

It’s vital to stay in touch with changing consumer needs. These questions can also be used for new product or service development, but this time, it’s from the perspective of a product manager or development team. 

• What are customers’ primary needs and wants for this product?
• What do customers think of our current product offerings?
• What is the most important feature or benefit of our product?
• How can we improve our product to meet customers’ needs better?
• What do customers like or dislike about our competitors’ products?
• What do customers look for when deciding between our product and a competitor’s?
• How have customer needs and wants for this product changed over time?
• What motivates customers to purchase this product?
• What is the most important thing customers want from this product?
• What features or benefits are most important when selecting a product?
• What do customers perceive to be our product’s pros and cons?
• What would make customers switch from a competitor’s product to ours?
• How do customers perceive our product in comparison to similar products?
• What do customers think of our pricing and value proposition?
• What do customers think of our product’s design, usability, and aesthetics?

Qualitative questions examples to understand customer segments

Market segmentation seeks to create groups of consumers with shared characteristics. Use these questions to learn more about different customer segments and how to target them with tailored messaging.

• What motivates customers to make a purchase?
• How do customers perceive our brand in comparison to our competitors?
• How do customers feel about our product quality?
• How do customers define quality in our products?
• What factors influence customers’ purchasing decisions ?
• What are the most important aspects of customer service?
• What do customers think of our customer service?
• What do customers think of our pricing?
• How do customers rate our product offerings?
• How do customers prefer to make purchases (online, in-store, etc.)?

Qualitative research question example for understanding customer segments

• ‍♀️ Question: Which social media channels are you most active on?
• Insight sought: Formulate a social media strategy . Specifically, the social media channels most likely to succeed with a target audience.
• Challenges with traditional qualitative research methods: Qualitative research question responses are limited to those you ask, giving you a limited sample size. Questions like this are usually at risk of some bias, and this may not be reflective of real-world actions.
• A better approach: Get a complete picture of social media preferences for an entire market or specific audience belonging to rival firms. Insights are available in real-time, and are based on the actions of many, not a select group of participants. Data is readily available, easy to understand, and expandable at a moment’s notice.
• ✅ How it’s done: Using Similarweb’s website analysis feature, you can get a clear breakdown of social media stats for your audience using the marketing channels element. It shows the percentage of visits from each channel to your site, respective growth, and specific referral pages by each platform. All data is expandable, meaning you can select any platform, period, and region to drill down and get more accurate intel, instantly.

This example shows me Bank of America’s social media distribution, with YouTube , Linkedin , and Facebook taking the top three spots, and accounting for almost 80% of traffic being driven from social media.

When doing any type of market research, it’s important to benchmark performance against industry averages and perform a social media competitive analysis to verify rival performance across the same channels.

Qualitative questions to inform competitive analysis

Organizations must assess market sentiment toward other players to compete and beat rival firms. Whether you want to increase market share , challenge industry leaders , or reduce churn, understanding how people view you vs. the competition is key.

• What is the overall perception of our competitors’ product offerings in the market?
• What attributes do our competitors prioritize in their customer experience?
• What strategies do our competitors use to differentiate their products from ours?
• How do our competitors position their products in relation to ours?
• How do our competitors’ pricing models compare to ours?
• What do consumers think of our competitors’ product quality?
• What do consumers think of our competitors’ customer service?
• What are the key drivers of purchase decisions in our market?
• What is the impact of our competitors’ marketing campaigns on our market share ? 10. How do our competitors leverage social media to promote their products?

Qualitative research question example for competitive analysis

• ‍♀️ Question: What other companies do you shop with for x?
• Insight sought: W ho are your competitors? Which of your rival’s sites do your customers visit? How loyal are consumers in your market?
• Challenges with traditional qualitative research methods:  Sample size is limited, and customers could be unwilling to reveal which competitors they shop with, or how often they around. Where finances are involved, people can act with reluctance or bias, and be unwilling to reveal other suppliers they do business with.
• A better approach: Get a complete picture of your audience’s loyalty, see who else they shop with, and how many other sites they visit in your competitive group. Find out the size of the untapped opportunity and which players are doing a better job at attracting unique visitors – without having to ask people to reveal their preferences.
• ✅ How it’s done: Similarweb website analysis shows you the competitive sites your audience visits, giving you access to data that shows cross-visitation habits, audience loyalty, and untapped potential in a matter of minutes.

Using the audience interests element of Similarweb website analysis, you can view the cross-browsing behaviors of a website’s audience instantly. You can see a matrix that shows the percentage of visitors on a target site and any rival site they may have visited.

With the Similarweb audience overlap feature, view the cross-visitation habits of an audience across specific websites. In this example, I chose chase.com and its four closest competitors to review. For each intersection, you see the number of unique visitors and the overall proportion of each site’s audience it represents. It also shows the volume of unreached potential visitors.

Here, you can see a direct comparison of the audience loyalty represented in a bar graph. It shows a breakdown of each site’s audience based on how many other sites they have visited. Those sites with the highest loyalty show fewer additional sites visited.

From the perspective of chase.com, I can see 47% of their visitors do not visit rival sites. 33% of their audience visited 1 or more sites in this group, 14% visited 2 or more sites, 4% visited 3 or more sites, and just 0.8% viewed all sites in this comparison. 

How to answer qualitative research questions with Similarweb

Similarweb Research Intelligence drastically improves market research efficiency and time to insight. Both of these can impact the bottom line and the pace at which organizations can adapt and flex when markets shift, and rivals change tactics.

Outdated practices, while still useful, take time . And with a quicker, more efficient way to garner similar insights, opting for the fast lane puts you at a competitive advantage.

With a birds-eye view of the actions and behaviors of companies and consumers across a market , you can answer certain research questions without the need to plan, do, and review extensive qualitative market research .

Wrapping up

Qualitative research methods have been around for centuries. From designing the questions to finding the best distribution channels, collecting and analyzing findings takes time to get the insights you need. Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence drastically improves efficiency and time to insight. Both of which impact the bottom line and the pace at which organizations can adapt and flex when markets shift.

Similarweb’s suite of digital intelligence solutions offers unbiased, accurate, honest insights you can trust for analyzing any industry, market, or audience.

• Methodologies used for data collection are robust, transparent, and trustworthy.
• Clear presentation of data via an easy-to-use, intuitive platform.
• It updates dynamically–giving you the freshest data about an industry or market.
• Data is available via an API – so you can plug into platforms like Tableau or PowerBI to streamline your analyses.
• Filter and refine results according to your needs.

Are quantitative or qualitative research questions best?

Both have their place and purpose in market research. Qualitative research questions seek to provide details, whereas quantitative market research gives you numerical statistics that are easier and quicker to analyze. You get more flexibility with qualitative questions, and they’re non-directional.

What are the advantages of qualitative research?

Qualitative research is advantageous because it allows researchers to better understand their subject matter by exploring people’s attitudes, behaviors, and motivations in a particular context. It also allows researchers to uncover new insights that may not have been discovered with quantitative research methods.

What are some of the challenges of qualitative research?

Qualitative research can be time-consuming and costly, typically involving in-depth interviews and focus groups. Additionally, there are challenges associated with the reliability and validity of the collected data, as there is no universal standard for interpreting the results.

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• 50+ Must-ask questions for your market research surveys

Şeyma Beyazçiçek

Market research is an essential part of finding answers to your questions. For this reason, market research surveys have a big importance. So, market study survey questions, too . These types of questions help you get essential data about the target audience, conduct competitive analysis, get new ones, or protect existing customers .

We have gathered the most essential data to help you gather information on the target market or target customer. In this article, you will find 50+ market research survey questions and examples about customers, products, social media, etc. You need to seriously consider these business survey questions for market research and learn more!

• What is a market research survey?

A market research survey is a document that asks demographic questions or any type of market research questions that aim to collect vital customer feedback to make you better in marketing . The critical point of a market research survey is to learn customer experience and make marketing plans according to it.

A report by Statista shows that since 2008 , the market research sector’s global revenue has increased by more than twice, surpassing $81 billion in 2022 . So, the importance of market research is getting more realized, and you need market analysis survey questions. Good survey questions for market research collect data to help you create definite strategies for a better marketing plan.

• 50+ Market research survey questions you must ask in your surveys

Each company has its own unique priorities and needs. For this reason, companies should choose questions carefully for their survey. 50+ market research survey questions might differ according to the needs and requirements of a company. Nevertheless, we have gathered the most essential and basic ones to make you grow faster. 

If you want to access all these privileges we have discussed so far, you need to have a look at these 50+ must-ask questions for your market research surveys:

Customer survey questions for market research questions

The primary reason for selling a product or service is for customers . Finding the target audience for your company is one of the most important parts of your market research survey. For that reason, you need to have a look at these customer survey questions for market research questions: 

1. How often do you shop from us?

• Once a week
• Twice a week
• Once a month
• Twice a month
• Once every two months
• Once every three months
• Once every six months
• Once a year

2. What is your favorite product/service?

3. What is your least favorite product/service?

4. Why do you choose us?

• Your reputation for quality products and services
• Your competitive pricing
• Your commitment to customer service
• Your convenient location
• Your wide selection of products and services
• Your knowledgeable staff
• Your experience in the industry
• Your commitment to innovation
• Your commitment to sustainability

5. Would you recommend us to your friends/family?

6. Since when do you choose us?

• Two Years Ago
• Three Years Ago

7. Overall, from 1-10, how do you rate us?

An opinion scale question example about satisfaction

Market research questions for a product

A market research question for a product is an excellent helper for companies to understand and collect data about existing. If you want to learn how your customers are satisfied with your exciting product, you only need to ask them these questions. Here are your market research questions for a product: 

8. Have you ever heard of this product before?

9. From 1-10, how would you rate this product?

10. Do you believe this product is useful/helpful for you? 

11. What is the likelihood of buying this product again?

• Very Likely
• Very Unlikely

12. What do you like about this product?

• It is easy to use
• It is cost-effective
• It is reliable
• It has great customer service
• It has a wide range of features

13. What do you dislike about this product?

• Functionality

14. Would you recommend this product to your friends or family?

You can replace the word “ product”  with the name of your own product.

A question example about purchasing behavior

New product market research survey questions

New product market research survey questions are perfect for your company if you plan for a new product. Imagine that you are about to launch a new product. You can take fewer risks if you ask questions about the new product before launching it. So you might need these market research questionnaire questions for your new product: 

15. Have you seen a similar product? 

16. How likely are you to use this product for your business activities?

17. What do you think is the best feature of this new product?

18. What do you think is the least favorite feature of this new product?

19. Do you find the price reasonable?

20. Are you excited about this product?

21. Overall, from 1-10, how do you rate this new product?

A question example about later use

Social media survey questions for market research

Social media is an excellent way of collecting helpful data from your customers because, today, nearly everybody has a social media account. You can have insightful data as long as you know which platform to use and how to use it. So, here are your social media survey questions for market research: 

22. Which social media platforms do you use? ( you can choose more than 1 )

23. In which social media platforms do you spend time the most?

24. Do you follow us on your social media accounts?

25. What do you think about our company’s social media account? 

• It's great!
• It could use some improvement.
• I haven't seen it

26. Do you believe we can use social media effectively?

27. What can we do to improve our social media accounts?

• Post regularly
• Run contests and giveaways
• Use relevant hashtags
• Optimize profile information
• Respond to comments
• Collaborate with influencers

28. Which influencers do you relate to us the most?

A market research survey question example about social media

Market research questions to ask potential customers

As much as trying to hold your existing customers, you should also try to find potential customers and expand your network. Because only in this way you can grow your business. When you have good market research questions to ask potential customers, as given below, you can easily get what you need: 

29. Have you ever heard us before?

30. When you think of our brand, what comes to your mind first? 

31. Who is our rival for you?

32. What is your minimum budget?

33. What is your maximum budget?

34. Would you consider choosing our product/service?

35. What are your best aspects, you think?

Market research questions for B2B companies

Just like any sector, B2B companies need to do their best to run market research. As for their market research survey, the questions will be different because they need to aim at businesses directly. If you need them, here are your market research questions for B2B companies: 

36 . Who is your ideal customer?

37. What really matters to your ideal customer?  

38. Do you think you know your customers?

39. How can you know your customers better?

40. What is your customers’ annual income? 

41. What do your customers do in their free time?

42. What attracts your customer?

Demographic questions for your market research survey

Demographic questions allow your company to understand your customer’s background better. Also, if you want to understand the certain characteristics of your target audience, demographic questions are the best option for you. Have a look at these demographic questions for your market research survey: 

43. What gender do you identify as?

• Genderfluid

44. How old are you?

• 65 or Above

45. What is your marital status?

46. Can you please specify your ethnicity?

• African American
• Asian American
• Hispanic/Latino
• Native American
• Pacific Islander
• White/Caucasian

47. Where are you located?

• United States
• United Kingdom

48. What is your education level?

• High School
• Associate's Degree
• Bachelor's Degree
• Master's Degree
• Doctorate Degree

49. What is your annual income?

• $0 - $25,000
• $25,001 - $50,000
• $50,001 - $75,000
• $75,001 - $100,000
• $100,001 - $150,000
• $150,001 - $200,000
• $200,001 and above

50. What is your current employment situation? 

• Employed full-time
• Employed part-time
• Self-employed
• Not looking for work

A market research survey question example about income

• How can I create a market research survey?

In order to collect essential data for your market research, if you want to handle it the fastest way, you will need an online form builder. Also, if you want to build your form with lots of options and create just like you wish and want to do all of them for free, there is only one option left: forms.app .

As long as you follow some basic steps, you can easily create your market research survey and here are the steps: 

1. Login or create an account

Firstly, you should log in to your existing account if you do not have one; no worries, you can easily and quickly create an account . Also, do not forget that you have the opportunity to log in via Google, Facebook, and Apple accounts. 

2. Start from scratch, choose a temple, or generate with AI

You have access to a wide range of options thanks to forms.app . You must begin from scratch if you wish to pick every aspect of your survey. The site offers pre-made market research survey templates if you do not want to spend too much time on it. However, if you stay current with the latest technology, artificial intelligence can create your survey in seconds!

3. Add your market research survey questions

Based on your company’s primary needs and essential requirements, you should choose your market research survey questions very carefully. Each company’s priorities can differ. For that reason, you need to pay attention while adding them. 

4. Customize your survey form

In this step, you can easily change and personalize your online survey . To give an example, you can change the size and type of the font, colors, and order of questions, add your brand’s logo, etc. 

5. Share your market research survey

In the final step, you can share your survey with your target via many platforms . You can choose the link to be public, limited, or private while sharing. Additionally, you can preview the link to see whether it has any meta titles, descriptions, or images. 

• How can I write good market research questions?

One can randomly create market research questions for the survey; however, if you want to be one step ahead of your rivals and be good at writing market research questions, you need to follow the points given below:

• Consider your company’s needs : You need to have a moment and consider what your company needs the most. What are your priorities or urgent needs? Or what are your urgent deficiencies to be covered? After answering these questions, you can create better questions. 
• Think like the customer: The key point is listening to your customers and trying to think like them. When you think like them, you can come up with better market research questions and collect more valuable data for your survey. 
• Be direct: Questions asked directly are definitely better , instead of asking too many indirect questions or long and complex sentences that might be confusing. So, you need to pay attention at this point. 
• Key points to take away

As we have discussed so far, the importance of market research is undeniable. If you want to increase your market share and be more successful in your sector, there are some key points for your company to take away. You should not ignore these points:

• Design of the survey: Do not forget that the more you pay attention to your market research survey design, the more you will seem professional. 
• Pay attention to the context: Design is an important factor, but context is the exact reason you run a survey. So, you need to be careful with your questions. 
• Check the result: At the end of the survey, checking and analyzing the results is a key point. If you will not do that, there is no need to share the survey, isn’t it?

Now that you have read so far, you know all the critical points about the issue and where to start. Take action now and start finding your own effective data collection methods for market research !

Şeyma is a content writer at forms.app. She loves art and traveling. She is passionate about reading and writing. Şeyma has expertise in surveys, survey questions, giveaways, statistics, and online forms.

• Market Research
• Form Features
• Data Collection

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Home | Blog | 79 Market Research Questions For Better Results

79 Market Research Questions For Better Results

By Magellan Solutions

Updated on May 2, 2024

Schedule a FREE call with our outsourcing expert now and get a precise quotation that meets your requirements. Don't wait - get started today!

Valuable answers come from practical questions.

In this article, you’ll learn about the top market research questions you can ask to obtain valuable insights from your potential and existing market.

What you’ll learn:

What is market research, how to write market research questions, examples of market research questions.

• For new businesses
• For a new product
• For existing customers
• For potential customers
• For competitive analysis
• For customer service improvement

Market research is the systematic process of getting and analyzing feedback from different market segments. Using this approach, you can identify the potential of your product or service when offered to a specific consumer demographic.

In other words, it helps you find the right customers to patronize your business. It also enables you to determine the pain points of your target market. Through this, you can develop or improve products or services that can resolve the struggles of your existing customers or target audience. 

It has three main methods:

• Online survey – This tool can gather information from a sample population online. To help you get started, check out some of the methods for conducting surveys: – If you are starting a business, you can begin by utilizing email and social media to send survey questions or polls to your target market.- You can also embed it into your website or app, but since it is a reactive method, the chances of getting feedback are lower.- If you think you have the budget for it, you can send it to paid survey sites to get higher response rates.
• Phone interview – Have you experienced receiving cold calls from certain companies asking about your opinion on a particular product or service? If yes, then you’re probably familiar with market research. A phone interview is a proactive way of conducting market research surveys. It guarantees you a faster and more accurate response from your target demographics. Some companies outsource to a survey call center to expand their reach while saving time and money.
• Face-to-face interviews – This is the traditional way of conducting customer surveys. It is one of the best ways to get actual, first-hand opinions. Unlike the first two methods, it requires you to go out to the street and into the houses of your sample respondents. Here, you can encourage consumers to participate by giving freebies or samplers. While this is an excellent way to build personal relationships with your ideal customers, it is not as efficient as phone interviews and online surveys.

Aside from gathering first-hand consumer data, you can also keep track of economic trends .

Secondary information provided by existing sources enables you to kick-start your market research. It gives general and quantifiable data on industry trends, demographics, and potential competitors.

Some of the best secondary information sources include government census data, statistics and research reports published by independent market research firms, and business news.

It’s easy to think of and write questions right off the bat. But first, make sure you’re square on the following details:

• What is the problem you want to solve?
• What are your goals/objectives?
• Who is your target audience?

From there, you can start brainstorming questions that would provide insightful information for your marketing, sales, and research and development departments.

Here are some things you can consider that will add depth and dimension to your market research process:

• Demand is the number of products consumers are willing to purchase at any given time.
• Market size – the number of potential consumers within a specific market.
• Customer demographics – any given sector of a population segmented using different factors such as age, gender, occupation, income, location, etc.
• Location – the place where the target market resides.
• Market saturation – the number of similar products available to target customers.
• Economic indicators – any economic activity in the location of your business that is presented in metric format.
• Pricing – the cost of products or services based on target consumers’ economic status and competitors’ current pricing.

Once you’ve listed enough questions based on some of these elements, the next step is to select questions that bring you closer to your objectives. Make sure to remove those that won’t give enough value.

While answering those questions, create a clear picture or a registry of the possible target audience response. Ask only what is necessary to prevent your respondents from getting bored. Remember that if it takes too long, they might get triggered to answer questions hastily.

Also, keep your market research process simple. Through this, you will not only keep the attention of your respondents, but it will also enable you to obtain valuable answers.

Do you still find yourself struggling to come up with appropriate market research questions? If yes, check out these examples and carefully select what you need.

Market research questions for new businesses

If you’re opening a new business, it pays to gather extensive information about the industry, market size, target audience’s buying behaviors, competitors, and competitive advantage. 

• Who are your target customers?
• What are the core problems of your customers?
• What is your product or service?
• How can your product or service solve the problems of your customers?
• Does your product fit into the current market? 
• Is it possible to create a new market for your product?
• What is the current market size? What is the potential size of the market?
• Will the market size grow or contract? Why?
• What are the buying habits in the market? How can we exploit them?
• What are the existing segments of the market?
• In which segments do you plan to compete?
• Which of the segments are growing, and which are contracting?
• Who are your direct competitors? What are their strategies for attracting customers?
• What is your competitive advantage?
• Where do you plan to establish your business?
• What is the current economic status of your target customers from that location?
• How much do you plan to charge your customers for availing of your products or services?
• How much are you going to spend on customer acquisition?

When starting a new business, position yourself as an expert. This means having in-depth knowledge about your customers, the industry, the market trends, and competitors.

It is essential to curate questions that can show you opportunities to succeed. Assess your edge over your competitors. For example, you can ask your target market how your competitors can improve their products or services. Once you’ve analyzed their answers, it will be easier to figure out what you can add or enhance to meet customer expectations.

Market research questions for new product launch

Expanding your product line also requires lots of research and market testing. Here are some of the questions you can ask.

• How do you plan to test your new product?
• What will you test? (Product, marketing collaterals, marketing message, etc.)
• Where will you find users who will test the product?
• How high is the current demand for your new product?
•  How are you going to promote it?
• What channels are you going to use?
• Where do you plan to promote it?
• Who will be your market?
• How much do your competitors charge for a similar product?

Before launching a new product, you must know your target customers, the demand for the product, your marketing or advertising strategy, and your possible competitors.

Questions to ask existing customers

When researching existing customers, the main goal is to find out how they feel about your brand. Since they have first-hand experience using your products, they are the ones who can show you their strengths and weaknesses.

You can use a rating scale or a checklist for these questions. This way, it will be easier for your customers to answer your survey.

Checklist with ‘other’ option in case the answer isn’t indicated on your survey form:

• How did you hear about us?
• How long have you been our customer?
• What problem does our product solve for you?
• What features do you like most about our product?
• What do you like the least about our product?
• What made you choose us over the other products in the market?
• How often do you purchase our product?
• Would you avail of our product/service again?
• What else can we do to improve your experience with our brand?

Rating scale

• How well does our product meet your needs?
• How would you rate your last experience with us?
• How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend?
• How will you rate the speed and promptness of our customer service team?

The goal of conducting market research among your existing customers is to know their satisfaction with your brand. This will let you see what you need to continue doing and the areas you need to improve.

Market research questions to ask potential customers

When interviewing your potential customers, get enough information about their demographics, socioeconomic status, and unique interests.

These are the essential information you need to acquire:

• Address (doesn’t need to be specific, especially if confidentiality is required)
• Education level
• Profession/Job
• Household income
• Household size

On the other hand, these are some questions you can ask to help you better segment your target audience:

• What are your hobbies and interests?
• What are the common challenges you encounter regularly?
• What are your main goals?
• What products do you consider the most important for your everyday life?
• Where do you usually discover new products?
• How much do you spend when purchasing (specify here the type of product you’re offering)?
• How often do you buy (again, specify here the type of product you’re offering)?
• How likely are you going to buy our product?

You can also add more questions about your brand to get the necessary information when improving your marketing message.

These questions will help your marketing team create value-added promotional materials that appeal to your target audience. 

Questions for competitive analysis

Competitive benchmarking lets you compare your performance against your direct competitors. Here are some questions to help you get started:

• How’s your brand’s performance compared to your competitors?
• How do your competitors advertise or market their products?
• What are the other brands’ customer acquisition strategies?
• How much web traffic does your competitor receive?
• What keywords are your competitors using?
• What type of content are they producing?
• Are you using the same keyword on your website?
• What other channels do your competitors use aside from their websites?
• How many inbound links do your competitors have?
• How active are the other brands in producing backlinks with authority websites?

Measure your success by knowing the performance of your competitors. Analyzing their products, services, marketing strategies, sales, authority in the industry, customer acquisition strategies, and branding will let you see where you can thrive better than your competitors.

To improve customer service

Customer service is a crucial element in customer retention. It serves as the fine line between repeat business and an abandoned transaction. Do it right , and your customers will come back for more. Neglect it, and your customers are likely to move to your competitors.

Always check the quality of customer service you provide to keep your loyal customers.

• How fast do you respond to inquiries?
• How well and quickly do you resolve customer complaints?
• What are your customer satisfaction ratings?
• What problems do your customers often experience concerning your customer service?
• How can you improve your customer service?
• How can you measure your customer experience?
• Do your customers know all of the features, products, and services your business offers?
• Do you provide a personalized experience?
• How convenient is it to reach your business?
• What customer service channels are you using?
• Is your website or mobile app user-friendly?
• Is the experience consistent across all channels?
• Does your brand appear trustworthy based on online reviews?
• If you have international clients, do you provide multilingual options ?

As high as 49% of US customers leave a brand due to poor customer service. Don’t let this happen to your brand! Regularly assess the quality of your customer service to provide positive customer experiences. 

In conclusion

Market research can save a lot of trouble and financial heartbreaks when done right. Whether starting a business, chasing growth, creating better marketing messages, or improving your processes, market research can bring you the answers you need to develop dynamic strategies. Ask the right questions, and you’ll surely get valuable results.

Do you need the help of a market research call center to reach a wider audience within a shorter time? Magellan Solutions is here to help! We offer tailor-fit solutions to meet the needs and budget of your business. If you want to know more, contact us using the form below.

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Small Business Trends

132 market research questions to ask.

Market research sounds so formal. Yet it doesn’t have to be. It can be part of your daily marketing activity if you adopt one of the best and easiest techniques: simply ask questions.

Asking market research questions can yield new insights to boost your marketing to the next level. One example of market research involves gathering competitive information to inform your new product and service development.

Another market research example involves creating clear pictures of your ideal customers — called customer personas –for precise targeting. Other market research examples involve gathering feedback from existing customers to measure customer satisfaction.

The key to success, however, is knowing which questions to ask. Below is a list of 132 market research questions to use as templates for your own questions. Use them to ask questions internally to your team, or ask prospects and clients directly.

Types of Market Research Questions

Market research questions.

A good way to start your market research is to size up and describe your target audience. Gather primary and secondary research to assess the following marketing parameters:

• What is the size of our target market? How many potential customers are there?
• Do we have a good set of customer personas developed, to understand ideal target customers?
• Demographic questions: gender, age, ethnicity. Include annual income, education and marital status.
• Firmographic questions: size, industry. Include annual revenues and other relevant factors.
• Psychographic questions: habits, preferences, interests.
• What key consumer trends do we see?
• How do we identify new target segments? How do these new segments differ from those we already have?
• Which neighborhoods and zip codes do we get most of our customers from today?
• Which geographic locations are growing? Are the demographics of growth markets similar to those in which we already operate? If not, what should we change?
• Is online commerce or online service delivery a growth opportunity? Are our competitors doing business online?
• Can we find marketing partners to expand our reach?

Related: How to Conduct Market Research

Questions to Ask Customers

Use the following as survey questions, either post sale or as post-support surveys. Or use these market research questions to conduct a focus group, interview individual customers, or engage potential customers during the sales process.

Make it a point to include respondents who are less than thrilled with your customer service. You learn more than if you only talk with happy customers. Ask:

• How did you hear about us?
• What made you choose us?
• What features do you like most about our product or service?
• Is our product or service easy, fast, convenient to use?
• What do you wish our product or service did that it does not today?
• Are you aware that we offer _________?
• Were our personnel courteous in all dealings?
• Did we answer all your questions or solve your support problem?
• Can we help you get started using our product or service?
• Were you satisfied with our promptness and speed?
• Would you be willing to tell friends, family or colleagues about us?
• How do you rate your experience with us?
• Would you buy from us again?
• Why have you decided to leave us / not renew?
• How likely are you to recommend our product/service to others on a scale of 1-10?
• What is the primary reason for your score?
• Can you describe a situation where our product/service exceeded your expectations?
• What changes would most improve our product/service?
• If you could change one thing about our product/service, what would it be?
• How do our products/services fit into your daily life or routine?
• What other products/services do you wish we offered?

Related: Tailoring Survey Questions for Your Industry and Best Practices for Surveys

Pricing and Value

The following are pricing research questions to ask. Small business owners and marketers may want to assign someone to do a competitive analysis, such as gathering data from competitor websites and putting it into a spreadsheet.

Doing research may also require you to gather information internally. For example, meet with Sales to discuss feedback they receive from possible customers.

You could also ask Customer Support to start tracking when customers give price as a reason to not renew. Here are sample market research questions about pricing:

• Does our team have a compelling sales pitch based on value, not just price?
• How do we create more value to justify our prices?
• How can we position our product as “premium”?
• What are our competitors charging? Are our prices higher, lower or about the same?
• Are our prices allowing sufficient profit to stay in business?
• How often do sales and support staff hear pricing objections? And how often do they overcome them?
• Are we identifying enough people who can afford our products and services, or who want to pay what we ask for?
• Can we more precisely target prospects by income, neighborhoods and other factors to isolate a target audience receptive to our price point?
• In the case of B2B, are we targeting the right industries with needs and pain points we can solve?
• Are we targeting the right job title? Does the target executive have sufficient budget authority?
• How does our business model compare in our industry? Are we missing opportunities?
• What kind of promotions are our competitors advertising? Bulk buys / annual subscriptions? Free gift with purchase? Discounts? Sales events?
• How do our prices compare with the value you perceive from our products/services?
• What pricing model do you find most appealing – subscription, one-time purchase, pay-per-use?
• How sensitive are you to price changes in our products/services?
• What discounts or promotions would encourage you to make a purchase?

Product or Service Questions

Ask yourself or your team these market research questions about your products and services:

• Are our new products or services sufficiently unique compared with what already exists?
• What exactly is our value proposition — the reason customers should choose us? How can we best convey our benefits?
• How are customers currently solving the problem that our product addresses?
• What products do competitors offer? How does our target market view these competitive offerings?
• How do competitors deliver service? Does their process differ from our methods? Are there obvious advantages such as cost or time savings to gain if we adjust?
• Customers have been asking for a certain service — do others in the market offer it?  What do they charge?
• What changes will customers likely want in the future that technology can provide?
• How do we get feedback about our product, so we know what to improve, and what to highlight in sales and marketing messages?
• What technology is available in the market to improve operational productivity or cut costs? What solutions are competitors or big corporations using?
• When considering new product development, do we interview customers to test their interest level?
• Are there any untapped market segments or niches where our products or services could be a perfect fit?
• What are the potential challenges or barriers that customers face when using our products or services?
• Have we conducted customer satisfaction surveys to gauge overall customer experience and identify areas for improvement?
• Are there any complementary products or services that we could offer to enhance our customers’ experience?
• How do customers perceive the quality and reliability of our products or services compared to competitors?
• What are the specific pain points or needs that our products or services address, and how well are we communicating this to customers?
• Have we explored partnerships or collaborations with other businesses to expand our product/service offerings?
• Are there any emerging trends or technologies in the market that could disrupt our current products or services?
• Have we analyzed customer feedback and complaints to identify recurring issues that require immediate attention?
• What are the future trends and demands in our industry, and how can we proactively align our offerings with these trends?
• What additional features would you like to see in our future products?
• How can we improve the user experience of our product/service?
• What would make you choose our product/service over a competitor’s?
• Are there any aspects of our product/service that you find unnecessary or rarely use?

Related: How to Minimize Survey Fatigue

Online Visibility Questions

Online traffic is essential to most small businesses, even local businesses, to drive in-store traffic. Market research questions can assess your company’s online visibility. Get answers from your digital team:

• How much website traffic do we receive compared with competitors? Check free tools like Alexa and SimilarWeb – while not exact they can compare relative levels of traffic.
• How prominently do we appear in search engines like Google and Bing?
• Do we appear in search engines for the queries our audience is searching for, using their words? Or do we need to invest in search engine optimization?
• Which search queries actually send us website traffic? Check Google Search Console or another SEO tool.
• How does our search visibility compare with competitors? A tool like SEMRush or Ahrefs can give this kind of advanced look.
• Have we done a gap analysis and identified which keywords our competitors rank for? Do we have a content marketing plan to attract more visitors?
• Have we claimed business listings like Google My Business and Bing Places, and completed them with engaging content such as photos?
• How prominently do we show up in Google Maps, Apple Maps and Bing Maps?
• Do we give visitors something to do on our website to engage them, such as fill out a lead gen form, read the blog, or schedule an appointment?
• Are our website’s loading speed and performance optimized for a better user experience?
• Do we have a mobile-friendly website that caters to the growing number of mobile users?
• Are we utilizing social media platforms effectively to engage with our target audience?
• Have we analyzed user behavior on our website through tools like Google Analytics to identify areas for improvement?
• Are we actively monitoring and responding to online reviews and comments about our business?
• Have we implemented effective link building strategies to improve our website’s authority and search rankings?
• How do our online advertising efforts compare with competitors in terms of reach and conversion rates?
• Are we using email marketing campaigns to nurture leads and maintain communication with our customers?
• Have we explored influencer marketing as a way to expand our online reach and brand visibility?
• Are we leveraging online customer feedback surveys to gather insights and improve our online presence?
• What type of content would you like to see more of on our website?
• How easy is it to navigate our website and find what you’re looking for?
• Are there any online channels (social media, forums, etc.) where you feel we should have a presence?
• How do you prefer to interact with us online – through email, live chat, social media, or other channels?

Related: How to Interpret Survey Results

Reputation Management

Customers today have extraordinary power to talk about a brand, and its products and services. Customers can choose dozens of social media sites or review sites like Yelp to share opinions.

A big part of market research today is to find out what customers think and say about your business (and also about your competitors). You want answers to the following market research questions:

• Do we have negative reviews online?
• Do we have any other type of reputation issue, such as poor word of mouth in our local community?
• Are competitors spamming with fake reviews?
• What can we learn from bad reviews?
• Do we thank those who give positive reviews and referrals, or do we ignore them?
• Do we address negative reviews or complaints by trying to make good or by correcting wrong facts?
• Can we use an app such as GatherUp.com to make it easy for customers to leave reviews?
• Does our website have compelling testimonials?
• What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear our brand name?
• How would you describe our company to a friend or colleague?
• Are there any misconceptions about our brand that you think we should address?
• How do you perceive our efforts in responding to and resolving customer complaints or issues?

Messaging and Advertising

Assess your current marketing messages. Brands will want to know that their messaging supports their marketing goals. Make sure to also assess advertising to make sure it is in sync with goals and performing well:

• Have we identified the milestones in the customer journey, and what customers looking for at each milestone? Are we addressing the milestones?
• What emotions drive our customers’ buying decisions? Fear? Aspirational desire? Does our messaging align with these emotional needs?
• What information sources do prospects rely on? TV, online digital, social media, radio, newspapers?
• Which marketing and advertising channels have been our top performers?
• Have we developed quality content to educate and persuade prospects?
• What are the best advertising methods and media outlets to reach our prospects?
• Are we using our advertising spend to precisely target our desired buyer, or is it spray and pray?
• Where and how frequently do competitors advertise, and what messages do they use?
• Do we have good assets such as display ads and landing pages to drive prospects to? How do they compare with competitors’ assets?
• What social media channels does our target market use? Should we boost our presence on those channels?
• What issues do our target buyers talk about on social media?
• Do we use heat maps, A/B testing or other measurements to test content and calls to action?
• Do our marketing messages align with the values and brand identity we want to convey to our target audience?
• How do our marketing messages address common pain points or challenges faced by our customers?
• Have we conducted focus groups or surveys to gather direct feedback on the effectiveness of our marketing messages?
• Are there any cultural or regional considerations that could impact the resonance of our messaging with different segments of our target audience?
• What unique selling points (USPs) do we emphasize in our advertising, and how well do they differentiate us from competitors?
• Have we tested various advertising messages to identify which ones resonate best with our target audience?
• Are we effectively utilizing storytelling techniques in our marketing messages to create emotional connections with our customers?
• How do we track the success of our advertising campaigns in terms of reach, engagement, and conversions?
• Have we analyzed customer journey data to identify potential gaps in our messaging at various touchpoints?
• Are there any specific keywords or phrases that our target audience commonly uses, and how can we incorporate them into our messaging?
• What messages in our advertising resonate with you the most?
• Are there certain advertising channels where you feel our presence is lacking?
• How do you usually respond to our advertising – visit our website, follow us on social media, make a purchase?
• In your opinion, what could improve the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns?

Related: 9 Strategies to Get More Customer Feedback and When to Use Online Surveys .

These 132 questions and examples of market research should give you plenty to explore. Always come back to the most important question of all: what can we do better? Answering this one question can put your brand well on the way toward long term growth.

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Market Research Survey Questions Examples to Include in Your In-App Surveys

Have you ever wondered if you are wasting your resources because you don’t know your customers well enough? Some good market research survey questions examples can help you understand your customers better.

Market research survey questions are the key to thoroughly understanding user sentiment . With the help of market research, industry and company-specific data can be analyzed to obtain valuable insights.

In the article, we’ll discuss how you can create the right market research survey questions and 40+ market research questions you can ask your target audience.

• Market research is an organized effort to collect information about your ideal customers and their needs and preferences.
• Market research questions are questionnaires sent to potential users or existing customers to collect feedback .
• Market research surveys help you better understand your target market , optimize pricing, gain insights, learn about market trends, and do competitive analysis.
• To write survey questions, set clear market research goals, write straightforward questions, and send targeted surveys at the right time.
• The market research survey questions examples discussed here are used for knowing the demography, understanding brand perception, collecting user feedback, doing competitive analysis, prioritizing product development, and analyzing product pricing .
• Userpilot lets you create various in-app surveys code-free, trigger surveys across different stages of the user journey, and analyze responses .

What is market research?

Market research, or marketing research, is an organized activity of collecting information about your ideal customers and their needs and preferences.

Market research helps businesses identify and understand their target audience. It’s crucial for developing business strategies and creating a competitive advantage. For example, user feedback on a new product helps in improving the product’s design.

What are market research questions?

Market research questions are a questionnaire sent to potential users or existing customers to get their feedback on a specific topic.

Whether you want to identify your target market, get customer feedback, or understand user perceptions about your brand or product, market research questions offer the best insights.

Why do you need market research surveys?

Market research surveys offer a multitude of benefits. They allow you to:

• Better understand your existing customers and your target audience: This helps in product development and improvements to boost customer satisfaction.
• Optimize your pricing for your target market: Market research helps you know the expectations of your target market to create optimal pricing strategies .
• Gain customer insights regarding your product or service: Both prospective and existing users provide their feedback on your product or service and may also share their opinions on what needs to be improved.
• Learn about market trends: You can stay updated on relevant trends in the market to upgrade your product and develop marketing campaigns accordingly.
• Perform competitive analysis and work on your unique value proposition: Market research lets you assess your strengths and weaknesses relative to competitors and develop a unique selling point for your product.

How to write market research questions?

If you ever struggle with writing market research questions or need to refresh your memory before getting started, you can always refer to this post. You only have to follow three simple rules.

Set clear market research goals

The first step is to set clear market research goals. Since there are multiple types of market research surveys, it’s imperative to stay aligned with specific research goals for each survey.

Once you identify the problem you want to solve, a goal-setting framework helps to frame how the market research questions are written out.

For example, you may want to get customer feedback and thus create a market research survey to gain customer insights into improvement areas. You ultimately want to increase conversion by 10% by the end of the year.

SMART goals are a highly structured framework for establishing clear, precise goals. It takes a systematic approach to focus your strategies in the right place and improve your productivity.

The SMART acronym stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Write clear market survey questions

Keep your questions short and simple to ensure high response rates. The answer options should also be easy to understand.

Use close-ended and open-ended questions to collect quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.

Don’t use biased or leading questions by designing them in a way where you expect a positive or negative response.

Moreover, it is best to avoid double-barreled questions. Here’s an example: “How do you think this [feature name] improves the usability and competitiveness of this product?”

This reduces the quality of the feedback because people would give the same answer for ‘usability’ and ‘competitiveness’ although they are two different issues.

Ask the right market research questions at the right time

Make sure you ask the right market research questions to the right audience at the right time. Surveys should be contextual so users don’t feel bombarded with questions irrelevant to their use case.

Customer segmentation lets you understand how different users interact with your product. Therefore, segmenting users based on shared characteristics will help you send targeted survey questions at the right time.

Suppose you want to survey your new users. Since they are at the initial stage of the customer lifecycle, it’s best to ask them demographic questions in the welcome survey included in the welcome screen.

In another example, you can ask product experience questions after a specific interaction with the customer support team to measure customer satisfaction.

40+ Market research questions to ask your target audience

Now let’s check out the market research survey questions examples. There are six major types of market research questions.

• For knowing the demography
• To understand brand perception
• For collecting user feedback on your product or service
• For competitive analysis
• To prioritize product development
• For analyzing product pricing

Demographic questions

Demographic questions are used to learn about your target market’s age, gender, occupation, company role, etc. These questions help you segment target customers based on their user persona or jobs to be done.

Here are some examples.

• What is your current occupation?
• What is your job title?
• What is the name of your company?
• Please specify the number of employees that work in your company.
• Please specify your age.

Marketing survey questions to understand brand perception

These questions are needed to gauge brand awareness and how customers perceive the value of your brand. One example is an NPS survey to understand user sentiment and loyalty.

Some examples of marketing survey questions are:

• Describe [brand name] in one sentence.
• How do you feel about this brand?
• Do you currently use the product of this brand?
• Which of the following products have you tried? (Select all that apply)
• How did you hear about us?
• Would you recommend [brand name] to others based on our current features and attributes?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this brand to colleagues or friends?
• Of all the brands offering similar products, which do you feel is the best brand?
• Please specify what makes it the best brand for you in the category.

Marketing research questions to collect feedback regarding your product or service

These questions help you understand user perception and identify the necessary changes to be made in the product development cycle. This lets you improve your product and in turn, enhance the customer experience .

For instance, you can use a customer satisfaction score (CSAT) survey to know how satisfied customers are with your in-app self-service support.

Examples of marketing research questions include:

• Have you heard of [product name] before?
• How would you feel if [product name] was no longer available?
• What feature did you expect but not find?
• How are you planning to use [product or service]?
• How satisfied are you with the product?
• How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use [product/feature name]?
• Rate our product based on the following aspects:
• Have you faced any problems with the product? Specify below.
• According to you, In which area is this product/service lacking the most? Specify below.
• Please rate the following product features according to their importance to you.
• How often do you use [product name]?
• How long have you been using [product name]?
• When was the last time you used [product name]?
• How does the product run after the update?

Questions to ask existing and potential customers to perform competitive analysis

These market research questions enable you to analyze your relative position to competitors and devise strategies to gain a competitive advantage.

Examples include:

• Which product/service would you consider as an alternative to ours?
• How would you compare our products to our competitors?
• Rate our competitor based on the following:
• Compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same?
• Have you seen any website/product/app with a similar feature?
• Please list the top three things that persuaded you to use us rather than a competitor.
• Why did you choose to use our [product] over other options?
• Which other options did you consider before choosing [product name]?
• According to you, which brand best fits each of the following characteristics?

Market research questionnaire to prioritize product development

To prioritize product development, you must work on new features your target customers will love. For instance, you can send a feature request survey to know how you need to improve your value proposition and match key consumer trends.

Some examples are:

• Would you purchase this product if it were available today?
• What feature would you like to see in the product?
• Would implementing [this feature] increase the usability of the [product name]?
• Which feature do you think will help improve the product experience for you?
• Please let us know how we can further improve this feature.
• What was your first reaction to the product?
• Of these four options, what’s the next thing you think we should build?
• What feature can we add that would make our product indispensable for you?
• What problem would you like to solve with our product?

Questions to analyze your product pricing

You can ask the following market research questions to analyze your pricing strategy. Thus, you can set optimal, competitive prices for your subscription plans.

• According to you, what should be the ideal price of the [product name]?
• According to you, what is the ideal price range for the product?
• Would you purchase the product at [price]?
• Is our product pricing clear?

How to create market research surveys in-app with Userpilot

Userpilot is a product growth that includes onboarding, product adoption, and product analytics as its major functionalities. So let’s see how you can create in-app market research surveys with Userpilot and get actionable insights.

Create different in-app surveys code-free

Userpilot lets you create a wide variety of in-app surveys , such as CSAT, NPS, PMF, and feature request surveys. You can even customize these surveys to reflect the style and colors of your brand, all code-free.

With Userpilot, you can add both close-ended and open-ended questions. For example, you can add qualitative follow-up questions to NPS surveys to know the reasons behind a particular score.

The image below shows a product-market fit (PMF) survey. You can add different formats to each survey for customization.

Trigger surveys at any point in the customer journey

You can send automated surveys by setting triggers at different stages of the customer journey .

This allows you to identify friction and drop-off points and address these areas to improve customer satisfaction. Moreover, you can analyze user perception at multiple stages, e.g., during awareness, conversion, and loyalty campaigns.

Use custom events to group several events together. It lets you trigger the survey after a custom event has been completed.

Collect feedback and analyze responses

Userpilot lets you tag and analyze qualitative responses in their dashboard. It offers in-depth insights into your target customers.

Below, you can see the various NPS response tags and the score for each of them.

Wrapping up

Want to get started with market research? Get a Userpilot demo and see how you can use these market research survey questions examples to analyze data and create effective marketing strategies.

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7 Critical Market Research Survey Questions Every Marketer Should Ask

Don’t we hear it most of the time that we need to do a market research before launching a new product or service or modifying the existing product or service? This is the best way to find each and every detail about your target audience like the Psychographic and demographic profile of your target audience and also the information about your competition. Surprisingly, professionals conducting quantitative and qualitative market research generally skip this part. The reality is that the decision making for product development or modification is mostly based on word of mouth, peer suggestion or personal assessment without taking real factual data into consideration.

LEARN ABOUT: Open-Ended Questions

Statistical surveying can give you an understanding of your market, your product or service, your rivals and your audience. Here are 7 market research survey questions every marketer should ask:

1. Who is currently purchasing your products or services?

A very important question to ask, to understand your customer’s or client’s purchasing buying behavior and understand what exactly are their needs and preferences. Once you can identify their purchase pattern and behavior it is easier to cater to their needs in a better manner.

2. What audience will be interested in purchasing the product in future?

Businesses need to know what type of audience they are willing to target while launching a new product in the market.The features or the attributes related to the products should be aforethought to suit the needs of the audience.

3. What are the main reasons for not buying the product?

There are various factors involved when a buyer chooses not to buy your product. Some of the common issues are: price, quality of the product, usefulness of the product, competitor has a better product and so on.

4. Where would individuals purchase your products or services from?

In this technology-driven world, buyers prefer sitting in the comfort of their home and use the internet to its optimum potential to shop online. More and more people prefer shopping online over the traditional brick and mortar store. When you know the exact source of their purchase, it is advisable to put in efforts to make the purchasing process smoother.

LEARN ABOUT: 5 Ways Market Research

5. Who is the main competitor?

Knowing your competitors is always advisable while you are in a competitive environmental analysis . If you know your competition, chances are you will be better prepared. There may be incidences where even your most loyal customers can choose your competitors over you for reasons that you might need to explore further.

6. What are your opinions about various features of our products or service (packaging, name, features, pricing, advertising)?

According to a study, loyal customers have emotional attachments with products offered by brands. It is important to know what your buyers feel about the product and its features or services that offer. Based on feedback, received from customers, a brand can work on strategies for improving, their packaging, features, pricing, advertising etc. (if needed).

LEARN ABOUT: Pricing Research

7. What upgrades could be made to your products or services to make it better?

This open ended question can help you gain maximum feedback from your customers as they will have a suitable platform to express what changes they expect. Through feedbacks and comments gathered, it will be easier for you to work on the upgrades or changes (if needed).

QuestionPro’s matrix type question provides a handy solution where 5 questions can be converted to 1 hence reducing the questionnaire length and survey response time.

LEARN ABOUT: Product Survey Questions

The market research is a continuous process. The market intelligence is key if you want to remain relevant in the marketplace.

LEARN ABOUT: Performance Appraisal Survey

Select from various FREE  market research templates to start your research now.

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Market research questionnaire: examples and complete guide

How to make a market research questionnaire? What questions to ask?  When you do market research, the questionnaire is a must. So much so that  questionnaires and market research are often used interchangeably . However, it is only one step in a  complete process  that allows you to get closer to the truth of the market. In this article, we address all these issues and propose  complete examples in B2B and B2C to download .

For more real-life examples, we refer you to the website  etude-de-marche.online , where we list and comment on the questionnaires we find online. You can also find our guide to  writing your questionnaire here .

All about the market research questionnaire in 30 seconds

• The questionnaire is a market research technique . It aims to obtain a quantitative assessment that complements the qualitative view offered by techniques such as individual interviews or focus groups.
• Questionnaire and market research are too often considered interchangeable terms. It is essential to understand that we must combine several techniques to approach the reality of a market. The administration time for a questionnaire should not exceed 10 minutes . This corresponds to about 25 questions.
• The questionnaire is divided into 3 distinct parts : 1) the introduction, 2) the questions specific to the market research, and 3) the collection of information on the respondent’s profile
• 5 questions are recurrent in any market research questionnaire: screening questions, buying habits, needs, buying intentions, and pricing.
• A B2C market research questionnaire will differ from its B2B counterpart. The latter will focus more on competitive aspects, the decision cycle, and the price currently paid by the company.

What is the place of the questionnaire in global market research?

Duration and number of questions not to exceed, the 3 parts of a market research questionnaire, how to adapt your questionnaire for b2b market research.

• Example of B2C market research questionnaire
• Example of B2B market research questionnaire

Download other examples of market research questionnaires

Understanding a market involves approaching it from several angles. Classically,  market research is done in 3 phases :

• desk research (or documentary research)
• qualitative research
• quantitative research (via questionnaire)

To know more about the market research process, visit our free online guide . You can browse the right infographic, representing the global method we have conceptualized. The questionnaire section is #6.

Most questionnaires are now administered in the form of online surveys. As far as our market research firm is concerned, we have to admit that it has been a long time since a customer asked us to conduct a face-to-face administration (on the street, for example) or by post.

We advise our customers  never to exceed 10 minutes and 25-30 questions . This avoids problems such as:

• Attrition : Respondents give up along the way when the questionnaire is too long.
• Fatigue : questionnaires that are too long will tire respondents, who tend to be more distracted and answer poorly. The quality of the answers will be inferior, and your results will be less reliable at the end of the questionnaire.

Two examples to download are waiting for you at the end of this article.

Questionnaire and market research are too often considered interchangeable terms.

In this paragraph, we propose to go through the ideal structure of a market research questionnaire:

• Introductory text
• Recurring themes
• Respondent profile

Part 1: The introductory text

Your questionnaire can start with a short introduction presenting the purpose of the market research. It should not be too long but clear enough for the respondent to understand:

• what do you want to ask them about
• what they will gain from it
• how much time will it take
• what will be done with their data (on this subject, consider reading this article on the  problems posed by the cloud act in market research questionnaires )

Part 2: questions specific to the market research

In B2C and B2B, some themes are almost always present in all market research questionnaires. There are 5 of them:

• screening of the respondent
• buying habits
• purchase intention

As you can see, these questions follow a certain logic. You will first check that the respondent has the right profile to answer (screening), then ask them about their buying habits (the current situation) before moving on.

We propose the following table to give you an overview.

Part 3: Questions about the respondent’s profile

You will finish your questionnaire by asking questions about the respondent’s profile. Age, sector of activity, gender, etc., are all variables that will allow you to cross-reference the results and better segment your target population. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the control variables we use most often in our research.

B2B (for products or services sold to companies):

• company size
• sector of activity
• hierarchical position of the respondent
• geographical location (postal code, region, country)

B2C (for products or services sold to individuals)

• family status
• level of research
• household income

In a B2B context, a market research questionnaire must undergo certain adaptations.

These concern, of course, the questions on the respondent’s profile . Demographic aspects are little important in B2B. However, the hierarchical position, the company’s size, and its sector of activity must be recorded.

Above all, the questions asked will be different. You will probably have to ask more questions to determine the company’s current practices and gather information on the competition. In this respect, B2B market research will also be interested in the price currently paid by the company if it already has a competing solution. In a B2C context, this price aspect may be less important, especially if it is a regular purchase. Do you remember the price of everything you buy in the supermarket as a consumer?

In the B2B context, you will also have to put more emphasis on decision-making . In B2C, the consumer decides alone most of the time. In B2B, this is never the case because there are procedures to follow within any company.

Example of a B2C market research questionnaire

The questionnaire below concerns research on car purchases by individuals. It is, therefore, B2C market research. It includes 26 questions. You can find the internal instructions (in blue) that we put to check that the programming of our questionnaire is correct.

Example of a B2B market research questionnaire

The questionnaire you will find below concerns research on hygiene in companies. It is therefore intended for a professional audience. You will note that we have provided an explanatory text (in blue) for some questions. This is a good practice when the question is complicated or needs to be contextualized.

Many examples of market research questionnaires are available on our dedicated website,  www.etude-de-marche.online . You can find the complete questionnaire, all the questions, and our explanations and reviews in the video.

• Market research methodology

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14 Market Research Examples

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

Example #1: National bank’s A/B testing

You can learn what customers want by conducting experiments on real-life customer decisions using A/B testing. When you ensure your tests do not have any validity threats, the information you garner can offer very reliable insights into customer behavior.

Here’s an example from Flint McGlaughlin, CEO of MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute, and the creator of its  online marketing course .

A national bank was working with MECLABS to discover how to increase the number of sign-ups for new checking accounts.

Customers who were interested in checking accounts could click on an “Open in Minutes” link on the bank’s homepage.

Creative Sample #1: Anonymized bank homepage

After clicking on the homepage link, visitors were taken to a four-question checking account selector tool.

Creative Sample #2: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool

After filling out the selector tool, visitors were taken to a results page that included a suggested package (“Best Choice”) along with a secondary option (“Second Choice”). The results page had several calls to action (CTAs). Website visitors were able to select an account and begin pre-registration (“Open Now”) or find out more information about the account (“Learn More”), go back and change their answers (“Go back and change answers”), or manually browse other checking options (“Other Checking Options”).

Creative Sample #3: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool results page

After going through the experience, the MECLABS team hypothesized that the selector tool wasn’t really delivering on the expectation the customer had after clicking on the “Open in Minutes” CTA. They created two treatments (new versions) and tested them against the control experience.

In the first treatment, the checking selector tool was removed, and instead, customers were directly presented with three account options in tabs from which customers could select.

Creative Sample #4: Checking account landing page Treatment #1

The second treatment’s landing page focused on a single product and had only one CTA. The call-to-action was similar to the CTA customers clicked on the homepage to get to this page — “Open Now.”

Creative Sample #5: Checking account landing page Treatment #2

Both treatments increased account applications compared to the control landing page experience, with Treatment #2 generating 65% more applicants at a 98% level of confidence.

Creative Sample #6: Results of bank experiment that used A/B testing

You’ll note the Level of Confidence in the results. With any research tactic or tool you use to learn about customers, you have to consider whether the information you’re getting really represents most customers, or if you’re just seeing outliers or random chance.

With a high Level of Confidence like this, it is more likely the results actually represent a true difference between the control and treatment landing pages and that the results aren’t just a random event.

The other factor to consider is — testing in and of itself will not produce results. You have to use testing as research to actually learn about the customer and then make changes to better serve the customer.

In the video How to Discover Exactly What the Customer Wants to See on the Next Click: 3 critical skills every marketer must master , McGlaughlin discussed this national bank experiment and explained how to use prioritization, identification and deduction to discover what your customers want.

This example was originally published in Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want .

Example #2: Consumer Reports’ market intelligence research from third-party sources

The first example covers A/B testing. But keep in mind, ill-informed A/B testing isn’t market research, it’s just hoping for insights from random guesses.

In other words, A/B testing in a vacuum does not provide valuable information about customers. What you are testing is crucial, and then A/B testing is a means to help better understand whether insights you have about the customer are either validated or refuted by actual customer behavior. So it’s important to start with some research into potential customers and competitors to inform your A/B tests.

For example, when MECLABS and MarketingExperiments (sister publisher to MarketingSherpa) worked with Consumer Reports on a public, crowdsourced A/B test, we provided a market intelligence report to our audience to help inform their test suggestions.

Every successful marketing test should confirm or deny an assumption about the customer. You need enough knowledge about the customer to create marketing messages you think will be effective.

For this public experiment to help marketers improve their split testing abilities, we had a real customer to work with — donors to Consumer Reports.

To help our audience better understand the customer, the MECLABS Marketing Intelligence team created the 26-page ConsumerReports Market Intelligence Research document (which you can see for yourself at that link).

This example was originally published in Calling All Writers and Marketers: Write the most effective copy for this Consumer Reports email and win a MarketingSherpa Summit package and Consumer Reports Value Proposition Test: What you can learn from a 29% drop in clickthrough .

Example #3: Virtual event company’s conversation

What if you don’t have the budget for A/B testing? Or any of the other tactics in this article?

Well, if you’re like most people you likely have some relationships with other human beings. A significant other, friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, customers, a nemesis (“Newman!”). While conducting market research by talking to these people has several validity threats, it at least helps you get out of your own head and identify some of your blind spots.

WebBabyShower.com’s lead magnet is a PDF download of a baby shower thank you card ‘swipe file’ plus some extras. “Women want to print it out and have it where they are writing cards, not have a laptop open constantly,” said Kurt Perschke, owner, WebBabyShower.com.

That is not a throwaway quote from Perschke. That is a brilliant insight, so I want to make sure we don’t overlook it. By better understanding customer behavior, you can better serve customers and increase results.

However, you are not your customer. So you must bridge the gap between you and them.

Often you hear marketers or business leaders review an ad or discuss a marketing campaign and say, “Well, I would never read that entire ad” or “I would not be interested in that promotion.” To which I say … who cares? Who cares what you would do? If you are not in the ideal customer set, sorry to dent your ego, but you really don’t matter. Only the customer does.

Perschke is one step ahead of many marketers and business leaders because he readily understands this. “Owning a business whose customers are 95% women has been a great education for me,” he said.

So I had to ask him, how did he get this insight into his customers’ behavior? Frankly, it didn’t take complex market research. He was just aware of this disconnect he had with the customer, and he was alert for ways to bridge the gap. “To be honest, I first saw that with my wife. Then we asked a few customers, and they confirmed it’s what they did also. Writing notes by hand is viewed as a ‘non-digital’ activity and reading from a laptop kinda spoils the mood apparently,” he said.

Back to WebBabyShower. “We've seen a [more than] 100% increase in email signups using this method, which was both inexpensive and evergreen,” Perschke said.

This example was originally published in Digital Marketing: Six specific examples of incentives that worked .

Example #4: Spiceworks Ziff Davis’ research-informed content marketing

Marketing research isn’t just to inform products and advertising messages. Market research can also give your brand a leg up in another highly competitive space – content marketing.

Don’t just jump in and create content expecting it to be successful just because it’s “free.” Conducting research beforehand can help you understand what your potential audience already receives and where they might need help but are currently being served.

When Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) published its annual State of IT report, it invested months in conducting primary market research, analyzing year-over-year trends, and finally producing the actual report.

“Before getting into the nuts and bolts of writing an asset, look at market shifts and gaps that complement your business and marketing objectives. Then, you can begin to plan, research, write, review and finalize an asset,” said Priscilla Meisel, Content Marketing Director, SWZD.

This example was originally published in Marketing Writing: 3 simple tips that can help any marketer improve results (even if you’re not a copywriter) .

Example #5: Business travel company’s guerilla research

There are many established, expensive tactics you can use to better understand customers.

But if you don’t have the budget for those tactics, and don’t know any potential customers, you might want to brainstorm creative ways you can get valuable information from the right customer target set.

Here’s an example from a former client of Mitch McCasland, Founding Partner and Director, Brand Inquiry Partners. The company sold a product related to frequent business flyers and was interested in finding out information on people who travel for a living. They needed consumer feedback right away.

“I suggested that they go out to the airport with a bunch of 20-dollar bills and wait outside a gate for passengers to come off their flight,” McCasland said. When people came off the flight, they were politely asked if they would answer a few questions in exchange for the incentive (the $20). By targeting the first people off the flight they had a high likelihood of reaching the first-class passengers.

This example was originally published in Guerrilla Market Research Expert Mitch McCasland Tells How You Can Conduct Quick (and Cheap) Research .

Example #6: Intel’s market research database

When conducting market research, it is crucial to organize your data in a way that allows you to easily and quickly report on it. This is especially important for qualitative studies where you are trying to do more than just quantify the data, but need to manage it so it is easier to analyze.

Anne McClard, Senior Researcher, Doxus worked with Shauna Pettit-Brown of Intel on a research project to understand the needs of mobile application developers throughout the world.

Intel needed to be able to analyze the data from several different angles, including segment and geography, a daunting task complicated by the number of interviews, interviewers, and world languages.

“The interviews were about an hour long, and pretty substantial,” McClard says. So, she needed to build a database to organize the transcripts in a way that made sense.

Different types of data are useful for different departments within a company; once your database is organized you can sort it by various threads.

The Intel study had three different internal sponsors. "When it came to doing the analysis, we ended up creating multiple versions of the presentation targeted to individual audiences," Pettit-Brown says.

The organized database enabled her to go back into the data set to answer questions specific to the interests of the three different groups.

This example was originally published in 4 Steps to Building a Qualitative Market Research Database That Works Better .

Example #7: National security survey’s priming

When conducting market research surveys, the way you word your questions can affect customers’ response. Even the way you word previous questions can put customers in a certain mindset that will skew their answers.

For example, when people were asked if they thought the U.S. government should spend money on an anti-missile shield, the results appeared fairly conclusive. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed thought the country should and only six percent were unsure, according to Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls .

But when pollsters added the option, "...or are you unsure?" the level of uncertainty leaped from six percent to 33 percent. When they asked whether respondents would be upset if the government took the opposite course of action from their selection, 59 percent either didn’t have an opinion or didn’t mind if the government did something differently.

This is an example of how the way you word questions can change a survey’s results. You want survey answers to reflect customer’s actual sentiments that are as free of your company’s previously held biases as possible.

This example was originally published in Are Surveys Misleading? 7 Questions for Better Market Research .

Example #8: Visa USA’s approach to getting an accurate answer

As mentioned in the previous example, the way you ask customers questions can skew their responses with your own biases.

However, the way you ask questions to potential customers can also illuminate your understanding of them. Which is why companies field surveys to begin with.

“One thing you learn over time is how to structure questions so you have a greater likelihood of getting an accurate answer. For example, when we want to find out if people are paying off their bills, we'll ask them to think about the card they use most often. We then ask what the balance was on their last bill after they paid it,” said Michael Marx, VP Research Services, Visa USA.

This example was originally published in Tips from Visa USA's Market Research Expert Michael Marx .

Example #9: Hallmark’s private members-only community

Online communities are a way to interact with and learn from customers. Hallmark created a private members-only community called Idea Exchange (an idea you could replicate with a Facebook or LinkedIn Group).

The community helped the greeting cards company learn the customer’s language.

“Communities…let consumers describe issues in their own terms,” explained Tom Brailsford, Manager of Advancing Capabilities, Hallmark Cards. “Lots of times companies use jargon internally.”

At Hallmark they used to talk internally about “channels” of distribution. But consumers talk about stores, not channels. It is much clearer to ask consumers about the stores they shop in than what channels they shop.

For example, Brailsford clarified, “We say we want to nurture, inspire, and lift one’s spirits. We use those terms, and the communities have defined those terms for us. So we have learned how those things play out in their lives. It gives us a much richer vocabulary to talk about these things.”

This example was originally published in Third Year Results from Hallmark's Online Market Research Experiment .

Example #10: L'Oréal’s social media listening

If you don’t want the long-term responsibility that comes with creating an online community, you can use social media listening to understand how customers talking about your products and industry in their own language.

In 2019, L'Oréal felt the need to upgrade one of its top makeup products – L'Oréal Paris Alliance Perfect foundation. Both the formula and the product communication were outdated – multiple ingredients had emerged on the market along with competitive products made from those ingredients.

These new ingredients and products were overwhelming consumers. After implementing new formulas, the competitor brands would advertise their ingredients as the best on the market, providing almost magical results.

So the team at L'Oréal decided to research their consumers’ expectations instead of simply crafting a new formula on their own. The idea was to understand not only which active ingredients are credible among the audience, but also which particular words they use while speaking about foundations in general.

The marketing team decided to combine two research methods: social media listening and traditional questionnaires.

“For the most part, we conduct social media listening research when we need to find out what our customers say about our brand/product/topic and which words they use to do it. We do conduct traditional research as well and ask questions directly. These surveys are different because we provide a variety of readymade answers that respondents choose from. Thus, we limit them in terms of statements and their wording,” says Marina Tarandiuk, marketing research specialist, L'Oréal Ukraine.

“The key value of social media listening (SML) for us is the opportunity to collect people’s opinions that are as ‘natural’ as possible. When someone leaves a review online, they are in a comfortable environment, they use their ‘own’ language to express themselves, there is no interviewer standing next to them and potentially causing shame for their answer. The analytics of ‘natural’ and honest opinions of our customers enables us to implement the results in our communication and use the same language as them,” Tarandiuk said.

The team worked with a social media listening tool vendor to identify the most popular, in-demand ingredients discussed online and detect the most commonly used words and phrases to create a “consumer glossary.”

Questionnaires had to confirm all the hypotheses and insights found while monitoring social media. This part was performed in-house with the dedicated team. They created custom questionnaires aiming to narrow down all the data to a maximum of three variants that could become the base for the whole product line.

“One of our recent studies had a goal to find out which words our clients used to describe positive and negative qualities of [the] foundation. Due to a change in [the] product’s formula, we also decided to change its communication. Based on the opinions of our customers, we can consolidate the existing positive ideas that our clients have about the product,” Tarandiuk said.

To find the related mentions, the team monitored not only the products made by L'Oréal but also the overall category. “The search query contained both brand names and general words like foundation, texture, smell, skin, pores, etc. The problem was that this approach ended up collecting thousands of mentions, not all of which were relevant to the topic,” said Elena Teselko, content marketing manager, YouScan (L'Oréal’s social media listening tool).

So the team used artificial intelligence-based tagging that divided mentions according to the category, features, or product type.

This approach helped the team discover that customers valued such foundation features as not clogging pores, a light texture, and not spreading. Meanwhile, the most discussed and appreciated cosmetics component was hyaluronic acid.

These exact phrases, found with the help of social media monitoring, were later used for marketing communication.

Creative Sample #7: Marketing communicating for personal care company with messaging based on discoveries from market research

“Doing research and detecting audience’s interests BEFORE starting a campaign is an approach that dramatically lowers any risks and increases chances that the campaign would be appreciated by customers,” Teselko said.

This example was originally published in B2C Branding: 3 quick case studies of enhancing the brand with a better customer experience .

Example #11: Levi’s ethnographic research

In a focus group or survey, you are asking customers to explain something they may not even truly understand. Could be why they bought a product. Or what they think of your competitor.

Ethnographic research is a type of anthropology in which you go into customers’ homes or places of business and observe their actual behavior, behavior they may not understand well enough to explain to you.

While cost prohibitive to many brands, and simply unfeasible for others, it can elicit new insights into your customers.

Michael Perman, Senior Director Cultural Insights, Levi Strauss & Co. uses both quantitative and qualitative research on a broad spectrum, but when it comes to gathering consumer insight, he focuses on in-depth ethnographic research provided by partners who specialize in getting deep into the “nooks and crannies of consumer life in America and around the world.” For example, his team spends time in consumers’ homes and in their closets. They shop with consumers, looking for the reality of a consumer’s life and identifying themes that will enable designers and merchandisers to better understand and anticipate consumer needs.

Perman then puts together multi-sensory presentations that illustrate the findings of research. For example, “we might recreate a teenager’s bedroom and show what a teenage girl might have on her dresser.”

This example was originally published in How to Get Your Company to Pay Attention to Market Research Results: Tips from Levi Strauss .

Example #12: eBags’ ethnographic research

Ethnographic research isn’t confined to a physical goods brand like Levi’s. Digital brands can engage in this form of anthropology as well.

While usability testing in a lab is useful, it does miss some of the real-world environmental factors that play a part in the success of a website. Usability testing alone didn’t create a clear enough picture for Gregory Casey, User Experience Designer and Architect, eBags.

“After we had designed our mobile and tablet experience, I wanted to run some contextual user research, which basically meant seeing how people used it in the wild, seeing how people are using it in their homes. So that’s exactly what I did,” Gregory said.

He found consumers willing to open their home to him and be tested in their normal environment. This meant factors like the television, phone calls and other family members played a part in how they experienced the eBags mobile site.

“During these interview sessions, a lot of times we were interrupted by, say, a child coming over and the mother having to do something for the kid … The experience isn’t sovereign. It’s not something where they just sit down, work through a particular user flow and complete their interaction,” Gregory said.

By watching users work through the site as they would in their everyday life, Gregory got to see what parts of the site they actually use.

This example was originally published in Mobile Marketing: 4 takeaways on how to improve your mobile shopping experience beyond just responsive design .

Example #13: John Deere’s shift from product-centric market research to consumer-centric research

One of the major benefits of market research is to overcome company blind spots. However, if you start with your blind spots – i.e., a product focus – you will blunt the effectiveness of your market research.

In the past, “they’d say, Here’s the product, find out how people feel about it,” explained David van Nostrand, Manager, John Deere's Global Market Research. “A lot of companies do that.” Instead, they should be saying, “Let's start with the customers: what do they want, what do they need?”

The solution? A new in-house program called “Category Experts” brings the product-group employees over as full team members working on specific research projects with van Nostrand’s team.

These staffers handle items that don’t require a research background: scheduling, meetings, logistics, communication and vendor management. The actual task they handle is less important than the fact that they serve as human cross-pollinators, bringing consumer-centric sensibility back to their product- focused groups.

For example, if van Nostrand’s team is doing research about a vehicle, they bring in staffers from the Vehicles product groups. “The information about vehicle consumers needs to be out there in the vehicle marketing groups, not locked in here in the heads of the researchers.”

This example was originally published in How John Deere Increased Mass Consumer Market Share by Revamping its Market Research Tactics .

Example #14: LeapFrog’s market research involvement throughout product development (not just at the beginning and the end)

Market research is sometimes thought of as a practice that can either inform the development of a product, or research consumer attitudes about developed products. But what about the middle?

Once the creative people begin working on product designs, the LeapFrog research department stays involved.

They have a lab onsite where they bring moms and kids from the San Francisco Bay area to test preliminary versions of the products. “We do a lot of hands-on, informal qualitative work with kids,” said Craig Spitzer, VP Marketing Research, LeapFrog. “Can they do what they need to do to work the product? Do they go from step A to B to C, or do they go from A to C to B?”

When designing the LeapPad Learning System, for example, the prototype went through the lab “a dozen times or so,” he says.

A key challenge for the research department is keeping and building the list of thousands of families who have agreed to be on call for testing. “We've done everything from recruiting on the Internet to putting out fliers in local schools, working through employees whose kids are in schools, and milking every connection we have,” Spitzer says.

Kids who test products at the lab are compensated with a free, existing product rather than a promise of the getting the product they're testing when it is released in the future.

This example was originally published in How LeapFrog Uses Marketing Research to Launch New Products .

Related resources

The Marketer’s Blind Spot: 3 ways to overcome the marketer’s greatest obstacle to effective messaging

Get Your Free Test Discovery Tool to Help Log all the Results and Discoveries from Your Company’s Marketing Tests

Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want

Online Marketing Tests: How do you know you’re really learning anything?

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Types of market research: Methods and examples

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Here at GWI we publish a steady stream of blogs, reports, and other resources that dig deep into specific market research topics.

But what about the folks who’d appreciate a more general overview of market research that explains the big picture? Don’t they deserve some love too?

Of course they do. That’s why we’ve created this overview guide focusing on types of market research and examples. With so many market research companies to choose from, having a solid general understanding of how this sector works is essential for any brand or business that wants to pick the right market research partner.

So with that in mind, let’s start at the very beginning and get clear on…

Market research definition

At the risk of stating the slightly obvious, market research is the gathering and analyzing of data on consumers, competitors, distributors, and markets. As such it’s not quite the same as consumer research , but there’s significant overlap.

Market research matters because it can help you take the guesswork out of getting through to audiences. By studying consumers and gathering information on their likes, dislikes, and so on, brands can make evidence-based decisions instead of relying on instinct or experience. 

What is market research?

Market research is the organized gathering of information about target markets and consumers’ needs and preferences. It’s an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness.

If a business wants to know – really know – what sort of products or services consumers want to buy, along with where, when, and how those products and services should be marketed, it just makes sense to ask the prospective audience. 

Without the certainty that market research brings, a business is basically hoping for the best. And while we salute their optimism, that’s not exactly a reliable strategy for success.

What are the types of market research?

Primary research .

Primary research is a type of market research you either conduct yourself or hire someone to do on your behalf.

A classic example of primary research involves going directly to a source – typically customers or prospective customers in your target market – to ask questions and gather information about a product or service. Interviewing methods include in-person, online surveys, phone calls, and focus groups.

The big advantage of primary research is that it’s directly focused on your objectives, so the outcome will be conclusive, detailed insights – particularly into customer views – making it the gold standard.

The disadvantages are it can be time-consuming and potentially costly, plus there’s a risk of survey bias creeping in, in the sense that research samples may not be representative of the wider group.

Secondary research 

Primary market research means you collect the data your business needs, whereas the types of market research known as secondary market research use information that’s already been gathered for other purposes but can still be valuable. Examples include published market studies, white papers, analyst reports, customer emails, and customer surveys/feedback.

For many small businesses with limited budgets, secondary market research is their first choice because it’s easier to acquire and far more affordable than primary research.

Secondary research can still answer specific business questions, but with limitations. The data collected from that audience may not match your targeted audience exactly, resulting in skewed outcomes. 

A big benefit of secondary market research is helping lay the groundwork and get you ready to carry out primary market research by making sure you’re focused on what matters most.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is one of the two fundamental types of market research. Qualitative research is about people and their opinions. Typically conducted by asking questions either one-on-one or in groups, qualitative research can help you define problems and learn about customers’ opinions, values, and beliefs.

Classic examples of qualitative research are long-answer questions like “Why do you think this product is better than competitive products? Why do you think it’s not?”, or “How would you improve this new service to make it more appealing?”

Because qualitative research generally involves smaller sample sizes than its close cousin quantitative research, it gives you an anecdotal overview of your subject, rather than highly detailed information that can help predict future performance.

Qualitative research is particularly useful if you’re developing a new product, service, website or ad campaign and want to get some feedback before you commit a large budget to it.

Quantitative research

If qualitative research is all about opinions, quantitative research is all about numbers, using math to uncover insights about your audience. 

Typical quantitative research questions are things like, “What’s the market size for this product?” or “How long are visitors staying on this website?”. Clearly the answers to both will be numerical.

Quantitative research usually involves questionnaires. Respondents are asked to complete the survey, which marketers use to understand consumer needs, and create strategies and marketing plans.

Importantly, because quantitative research is math-based, it’s statistically valid, which means you’re in a good position to use it to predict the future direction of your business.

Consumer research 

As its name implies, consumer research gathers information about consumers’ lifestyles, behaviors, needs and preferences, usually in relation to a particular product or service. It can include both quantitative and qualitative studies.

Examples of consumer research in action include finding ways to improve consumer perception of a product, or creating buyer personas and market segments, which help you successfully market your product to different types of customers.

Understanding consumer trends , driven by consumer research, helps businesses understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles. The result helps brands improve their products and services by making them more customer-centric, increasing customer satisfaction, and boosting bottom line in the process.

Product research 

Product research gives a new product (or indeed service, we don’t judge) its best chance of success, or helps an existing product improve or increase market share.

It’s common sense: by finding out what consumers want and adjusting your offering accordingly, you gain a competitive edge. It can be the difference between a product being a roaring success or an abject failure.

Examples of product research include finding ways to develop goods with a higher value, or identifying exactly where innovation effort should be focused. 

Product research goes hand-in-hand with other strands of market research, helping you make informed decisions about what consumers want, and what you can offer them.

Brand research  

Brand research is the process of gathering feedback from your current, prospective, and even past customers to understand how your brand is perceived by the market.

It covers things like brand awareness, brand perceptions, customer advocacy, advertising effectiveness, purchase channels, audience profiling, and whether or not the brand is a top consideration for consumers.

The result helps take the guesswork out of your messaging and brand strategy. Like all types of market research, it gives marketing leaders the data they need to make better choices based on fact rather than opinion or intuition.

Market research methods 

So far we’ve reviewed various different types of market research, now let’s look at market research methods, in other words the practical ways you can uncover those all-important insights.

Consumer research platform 

A consumer research platform like GWI is a smart way to find on-demand market research insights in seconds.

In a world of fluid markets and changing attitudes, a detailed understanding of your consumers, developed using the right research platform, enables you to stop guessing and start knowing.

As well as providing certainty, consumer research platforms massively accelerate speed to insight. Got a question? Just jump on your consumer research platform and find the answer – job done.

The ability to mine data for answers like this is empowering – suddenly you’re in the driving seat with a world of possibilities ahead of you. Compared to the most obvious alternative – commissioning third party research that could take weeks to arrive – the right consumer research platform is basically a magic wand.

Admittedly we’re biased, but GWI delivers all this and more. Take our platform for a quick spin and see for yourself.

And the downside of using a consumer research platform? Well, no data set, however fresh or thorough, can answer every question. If you need really niche insights then your best bet is custom market research , where you can ask any question you like, tailored to your exact needs.

Face-to-face interviews 

Despite the rise in popularity of online surveys , face-to-face survey interviewing – using mobile devices or even the classic paper survey – is still a popular data collection method.

In terms of advantages, face-to-face interviews help with accurate screening, in the sense the interviewee can’t easily give misleading answers about, say, their age. The interviewer can also make a note of emotions and non-verbal cues. 

On the other hand, face-to-face interviews can be costly, while the quality of data you get back often depends on the ability of the interviewer. Also, the size of the sample is limited to the size of your interviewing staff, the area in which the interviews are conducted, and the number of qualified respondents within that area.

Social listening 

Social listening is a powerful solution for brands who want to keep an ear to the ground, gathering unfiltered thoughts and opinions from consumers who are posting on social media. 

Many social listening tools store data for up to a couple of years, great for trend analysis that needs to compare current and past conversations.

Social listening isn’t limited to text. Images, videos, and emojis often help us better understand what consumers are thinking, saying, and doing better than more traditional research methods. 

Perhaps the biggest downside is there are no guarantees with social listening, and you never know what you will (or won’t) find. It can also be tricky to gauge sentiment accurately if the language used is open to misinterpretation, for example if a social media user describes something as “sick”.

There’s also a potential problem around what people say vs. what they actually do. Tweeting about the gym is a good deal easier than actually going. The wider problem – and this may shock you – is that not every single thing people write on social media is necessarily true, which means social listening can easily deliver unreliable results.

Public domain data 

Public domain data comes from think tanks and government statistics or research centers like the UK’s National Office for Statistics or the United States Census Bureau and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences. Other sources are things like research journals, news media, and academic material.

Its advantages for market research are it’s cheap (or even free), quick to access, and easily available. Public domain datasets can be huge, so potentially very rich.

On the flip side, the data can be out of date, it certainly isn’t exclusive to you, and the collection methodology can leave much to be desired. But used carefully, public domain data can be a useful source of secondary market research.

Telephone interviews 

You know the drill – you get a call from a researcher who asks you questions about a particular topic and wants to hear your opinions. Some even pay or offer other rewards for your time.

Telephone surveys are great for reaching niche groups of consumers within a specific geographic area or connected to a particular brand, or who aren’t very active in online channels. They’re not well-suited for gathering data from broad population groups, simply because of the time and labor involved.

How to use market research 

Data isn’t an end in itself; instead it’s a springboard to make other stuff happen. So once you’ve drawn conclusions from your research, it’s time to think of what you’ll actually do based on your findings.

While it’s impossible for us to give a definitive list (every use case is different), here are some suggestions to get you started.

Leverage it . Think about ways to expand the use – and value – of research data and insights, for example by using research to support business goals and functions, like sales, market share or product design.

Integrate it . Expand the value of your research data by integrating it with other data sources, internal and external. Integrating data like this can broaden your perspective and help you draw deeper insights for more confident decision-making.

Justify it . Enlist colleagues from areas that’ll benefit from the insights that research provides – that could be product management, product development, customer service, marketing, sales or many others – and build a business case for using research.

How to choose the right type of market research 

Broadly speaking, choosing the right research method depends on knowing the type of data you need to collect. To dig into ideas and opinions, choose qualitative; to do some testing, it’s quantitative you want.

There are also a bunch of practical considerations, not least cost. If a particular approach sounds great but costs the earth then clearly it’s not ideal for any brand on a budget.

Then there’s how you intend to use the actual research, your level of expertise with research data, whether you need access to historical data or just a snapshot of today, and so on.

The point is, different methods suit different situations. When choosing, you’ll want to consider what you want to achieve, what data you’ll need, the pros and cons of each method, the costs of conducting the research, and the cost of analyzing the results. 

Market research examples

Independent agency Bright/Shift used GWI consumer insights to shape a high-impact go-to-market strategy for their sustainable furniture client, generating £41K in revenue in the first month. Here’s how they made the magic happen .

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Market research questions: what to ask and how.

9 min read Whether you’re looking for customer feedback, product suggestions or brand perception in the market, the right market research questions can help you get the best insights. Learn how you can use them correctly and where to begin.

What is market research?

Market research (also called marketing research) is the action or activity of gathering information about market needs and preferences. This helps companies understand their target market — how the audience feels and behaves.

For example, this could be an online questionnaire, shared by email, which has a set of questions that ask an audience about their views. For an audience of target customers, your questions may explore their reaction to a new product that can be used as feedback into the design.

Why do market research?

When you have tangible insights on the audience’s needs, you can then take steps to meet those needs and solve problems. This mitigates the risk of an experience gap – which is what your audience expects you deliver versus what you actually deliver.

In doing this work, you can gain:

• Improved purchase levels – Sales will improve if your product or service is ticking all the right buttons for your customers.
• Improved decision making – You can avoid the risk of losing capital or time by using what your research tells you and acting with insights.
• Real connection with your target market – If you’re investing in understanding your target audience, your product and service will more likely to make an impact.
• Understand new opportunities – it might be that your research indicates a new area for your product to play within, or you find potential for a new service that wasn’t considered before.

Get started with our free survey software

Who do you ask your questions to?

Who to target in your market research is crucial to getting the right insights and data back. If you don’t have a firm idea on who your target audiences are, then here are some questions that you can ask before you begin writing your market research questions:

• Who is our customer currently and who do we want to attract in the future?
• How do they behave with your brand?
• What do they say, do and think?
• What are their pain points, needs and wants?
• Where do they live? What is the size of our market?
• Why do they use us? Why do they use other brands?

We’ve put together some questions below (Market research questions for your demographics) if you wanted to reach out to your market for this.

With the answers, you can help you segment your customer market, understand key consumer trends, create customer personas and discover the right way to target them.

Market research goals

Give yourself the right direction to work towards.There are different kinds of market research that can happen, but to choose the right market research questions, figure out your market research goals first.

Set a SMART goal that thinks about what you want to achieve and keeps you on track. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. For example, a good SMART business goal would be to increase website sales for a top product by 10% over a period of 6 months.

You may need to review some strategic business information, like customer personas and historical sales data, which can give you the foundation of knowledge (the ‘baseline’) to grow from. This, combined with your business objectives, will help you form the right SMART targets tailored to your teams.

Types of market research questions

Now that you have your SMART target, you can look at which type of market research questions will help you reach your goal. They can be split into these types:

• For demographics
• For customers
• For product

Market research questions for your demographics

Demographic information about your customers is data about gender, age, ethnicity, annual income, education and marital status. It also gives key information about their shopping habits.

Here are some questions you can ask in your market research survey:

• What is your age / gender / ethnicity / marital status?
• What is the highest level of education you have achieved?
• What is your monthly income range?
• What methods of shopping do you use?
• What amount do you spend on [product/brand/shopping] each month?
• How regular do you shop for [product/brand]?

Learn more about the demographic survey questions that yield valuable insights .

Market research questions for your customer

These questions are aimed at your customer to understand the voice of the customer — the customer marketing landscape is not an one-way dialogue for engaging prospects and your customer’s feedback is needed for the development of your products or services.

• How did we do / would you rate us?
• Why did you decide to use [product or service]?
• How does that fit your needs?
• Would you recommend us to your friends?
• Would you buy from us again?
• What could we do better?
• Why did you decide to shop elsewhere?
• In your opinion, why should customers choose us?
• How would you rate our customer experience?

Learn more about why the voice of the customer matters or try running a customer experience survey.

Market research questions for your product

These questions will help you understand how your customers perceive your product, their reactions to it and whether changes need to be made in the development cycle.

• What does our [product or service] do that you like or dislike?
• What do you think about [feature or benefit]?
• How does the product help you solve your problems?
• Which of these features will be the most valuable / useful for you?
• Is our product competitive with other similar products out there? How?
• How does the product score on [cost / service / ease of use, etc.]?
• What changes will customers likely want in the future that technology can provide?

There are also a set of questions you can ask to find out if your product pricing is set at the right mark:

• Does the product value justify the price it’s marketed at?
• Is the pricing set at the right mark?
• How much would you pay for this product?
• Is this similar to what competitors are charging?
• Do you believe the price is fair?
• Do you believe the pricing is right based on the amount of usage you’d get?

Have you tried a pricing and value research survey to see how much your target customers would be willing to pay?

Market research questions for your brand

How does the impact of your products, services and experiences impact your brand’s image? You can find out using these questions:

• What do you think about our brand?
• Have you seen any reviews about us online? What do they say?
• Have you heard about our brand from friends or family? What do they say?
• How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend?
• Have you read the testimonials on our own channels? Did they have an impact on your decision to purchase? How?
• When you think of our brand, what do you think/ feel / want?
• How did you hear about us?
• Do you feel confident you know what our brand stands for?
• Are you aware of our [channel] account?

Learn more about brand perception surveys and how to carry them out successfully.

How to use market research questions in a survey

For the best research questionnaires, tailoring your market research questions to the goal you want will help you focus the direction of the data received.

You can get started now on your own market research questionnaire, using one of our free survey templates, when you sign up to a free Qualtrics account.

Drag-and-drop interface that requires no coding is easy-to-use, and supported by our award-winning support team.

With Qualtrics, you can distribute, and analyse surveys to find customer, employee, brand, product, and marketing research insights.

More than 11,000 brands and 99 of the top 100 business schools use Qualtrics solutions because of the freedom and power it gives them.

Related resources

Market intelligence tools 10 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, primary vs secondary research 14 min read, business research methods 12 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, business research 10 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, request demo.

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What Is Market Research?

Market research is a process where businesses collect and analyze data on specific markets, customers and consumers.

With the goal of becoming a customer-focused company , organizations will follow research methods to gain a better understanding of their desired audiences and how to interact with them. Any information gathered provides insights into how companies can make their products more appealing to potential customers.  

What are the main purposes of market research?

• Knowing what people want ahead of time enables companies to make more informed business decisions.

Releasing a product or service without knowing how it will perform presents a huge risk. Market research exists to gain more insight before going all-in on a new product. Companies conduct research to determine what problems their audiences face and how their products can resolve these issues. 

Understanding customer preferences has become crucial to saving companies time and money, making market research a key component of the product development process. Rather than just releasing products into the market, businesses take the time to determine how these products will perform. This approach enables companies to spend resources more efficiently while earning the trust of consumers with more relevant products.

What are the types of market research?

• Different circumstances call for unique types of market research, which range from one-on-one interviews to focus group conversations.

Market research takes on many forms, so teams must determine the types of market research that best serve their needs. If a company wants to elicit feedback from larger samples, surveys and focus groups are ideal options. However, businesses should keep in mind that these practices deliver breadth at the expense of depth. 

Interviews cater more to companies that want to dive into specific details with customers. Unique value propositions may require these more intimate interactions as businesses pursue ways to improve customers’ experiences with their products. Observations and field tests also provide genuine customer reactions, but with a subtler approach. Companies can decide on the best method by defining the initial problem and goals for their research.

What are the steps in the marketing research process?

• Before marketing teams undertake product launches , they need to gather extensive insights into audience preferences and general market trends.

To enhance a product or service, a company must gather plenty of information on its ideal customers and competitors. Defining a target audience allows teams to get a sense of what issues customers may face and how their products can address those concerns. In addition, conducting a competitor analysis lets teams know what companies in their market are doing and how they can help their product stand out from similar ones.  

Once marketing teams sort out these details, they can focus their attention on executing a research plan. Determining the sample size and desired outcome helps members decide what type of research methods they want to employ. By following these practices, companies can craft more minimum viable products , which customers will find better suited to their needs.

Recent Expert Contributors Articles

Research Question

Ai generator.

A research question serves as the foundation of any academic study, driving the investigation and framing the scope of inquiry. It focuses the research efforts, ensuring that the study addresses pertinent issues systematically. Crafting a strong research question is essential as it directs the methodology, data collection, and analysis, ultimately shaping the study’s conclusions and contributions to the field.

What is a Research Question?

A research question is the central query that guides a study, focusing on a specific problem or issue. It defines the purpose and direction of the research, influencing the methodology and analysis. A well-crafted research question ensures the study remains relevant, systematic, and contributes valuable insights to the field.

Types of Research Questions

Research questions are a crucial part of any research project. They guide the direction and focus of the study. Here are the main types of research questions:

1. Descriptive Research Questions

These questions aim to describe the characteristics or functions of a specific phenomenon or group. They often begin with “what,” “who,” “where,” “when,” or “how.”

• What are the common symptoms of depression in teenagers?

2. Comparative Research Questions

These questions compare two or more groups or variables to identify differences or similarities.

• How do the academic performances of students in private schools compare to those in public schools?

3. Correlational Research Questions

These questions seek to identify the relationships between two or more variables. They often use terms like “relationship,” “association,” or “correlation.”

• Is there a relationship between social media usage and self-esteem among adolescents?

4. Causal Research Questions

These questions aim to determine whether one variable causes or influences another. They are often used in experimental research.

• Does a new teaching method improve student engagement in the classroom?

5. Exploratory Research Questions

These questions are used when the researcher is exploring a new area or seeking to understand a complex phenomenon. They are often open-ended.

• What factors contribute to the success of start-up companies in the tech industry?

6. Predictive Research Questions

These questions aim to predict future occurrences based on current or past data. They often use terms like “predict,” “forecast,” or “expect.”

• Can high school GPA predict college success?

7. Evaluative Research Questions

These questions assess the effectiveness or impact of a program, intervention, or policy .

• How effective is the new community outreach program in reducing homelessness?

8. Ethnographic Research Questions

These questions are used in qualitative research to understand cultural phenomena from the perspective of the participants.

• How do cultural beliefs influence healthcare practices in rural communities?

9. Case Study Research Questions

These questions focus on an in-depth analysis of a specific case, event, or instance.

• What were the critical factors that led to the failure of Company X?

10. Phenomenological Research Questions

These questions explore the lived experiences of individuals to understand a particular phenomenon.

• What is the experience of living with chronic pain?

Research Question Format

A well-formulated research question is essential for guiding your study effectively. Follow this format to ensure clarity and precision:

• Begin with a broad subject area.
• Example: “Education technology”
• Define a specific aspect or variable.
• Example: “Impact of digital tools”
• Decide if you are describing, comparing, or investigating relationships.
• Example: “Effectiveness”
• Identify who or what is being studied.
• Example: “High school students”
• Formulate the complete question.
• Example: “How effective are digital tools in enhancing the learning experience of high school students?”

Sample Format: “How [specific aspect] affects [target population] in [context]?” Example: “How does the use of digital tools affect the academic performance of high school students in urban areas?”

Research Question Examples

Research questions in business.

• “What are the primary factors influencing customer loyalty in the retail industry?”
• “How does employee satisfaction differ between remote work and in-office work environments in tech companies?”
• “What is the relationship between social media marketing and brand awareness among small businesses?”
• “How does implementing a four-day workweek impact productivity in consulting firms?”
• “What are the emerging trends in consumer behavior post-COVID-19 in the e-commerce sector?”
• “Why do some startups succeed in attracting venture capital while others do not?”
• “How effective is corporate social responsibility in enhancing brand reputation for multinational companies?”
• “How do decision-making processes in family-owned businesses differ from those in publicly traded companies?”
• “What strategies do successful entrepreneurs use to scale their businesses in competitive markets?”
• “How does supply chain management affect the operational efficiency of manufacturing firms?”

Research Questions in Education

• “What are the most common challenges faced by first-year teachers in urban schools?”
• “How do student achievement levels differ between traditional classrooms and blended learning environments?”
• “What is the relationship between parental involvement and student academic performance in elementary schools?”
• “How does the implementation of project-based learning affect critical thinking skills in middle school students?”
• “What are the emerging trends in the use of artificial intelligence in education?”
• “Why do some students perform better in standardized tests than others despite similar instructional methods?”
• “How effective is the flipped classroom model in improving student engagement and learning outcomes in high school science classes?”
• “How do teachers’ professional development programs impact teaching practices and student outcomes in rural schools?”
• “What strategies can be employed to reduce the dropout rate among high school students in low-income areas?”
• “How does classroom size affect the quality of teaching and learning in elementary schools?”

Research Questions in Health Care

• “What are the most common barriers to accessing mental health services in rural areas?”
• “How does patient satisfaction differ between telemedicine and in-person consultations in primary care?”
• “What is the relationship between diet and the incidence of type 2 diabetes in adults?”
• “How does regular physical activity influence the recovery rate of patients with cardiovascular diseases?”
• “What are the emerging trends in the use of wearable technology for health monitoring?”
• “Why do some patients adhere to their medication regimen while others do not despite similar health conditions?”
• “How effective are community-based health interventions in reducing obesity rates among children?”
• “How do interdisciplinary team meetings impact patient care in hospitals?”
• “What strategies can be implemented to reduce the spread of infectious diseases in healthcare settings?”
• “How does nurse staffing level affect patient outcomes in intensive care units?”

Research Questions in Computer Science

• “What are the key features of successful machine learning algorithms used in natural language processing?”
• “How does the performance of quantum computing compare to classical computing in solving complex optimization problems?”
• “What is the relationship between software development methodologies and project success rates in large enterprises?”
• “How does the implementation of cybersecurity protocols impact the frequency of data breaches in financial institutions?”
• “What are the emerging trends in blockchain technology applications beyond cryptocurrency?”
• “Why do certain neural network architectures outperform others in image recognition tasks?”
• “How effective are different code review practices in reducing bugs in open-source software projects?”
• “How do agile development practices influence team productivity and product quality in software startups?”
• “What strategies can improve the scalability of distributed systems in cloud computing environments?”
• “How does the choice of programming language affect the performance and maintainability of enterprise-level software applications?”

Research Questions in Psychology

• “What are the most common symptoms of anxiety disorders among adolescents?”
• “How does the level of job satisfaction differ between remote workers and in-office workers?”
• “What is the relationship between social media use and self-esteem in teenagers?”
• “How does cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) affect the severity of depression symptoms in adults?”
• “What are the emerging trends in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?”
• “Why do some individuals develop resilience in the face of adversity while others do not?”
• “How effective are mindfulness-based interventions in reducing stress levels among college students?”
• “How does group therapy influence the social skills development of children with autism spectrum disorder?”
• “What strategies can improve the early diagnosis of bipolar disorder in young adults?”
• “How do sleep patterns affect cognitive functioning and academic performance in high school students?”

More Research Question Examples

Research question examples for students.

• “What are the primary study habits of high-achieving college students?”
• “How do academic performances differ between students who participate in extracurricular activities and those who do not?”
• “What is the relationship between time management skills and academic success in high school students?”
• “How does the use of technology in the classroom affect students’ engagement and learning outcomes?”
• “What are the emerging trends in online learning platforms for high school students?”
• “Why do some students excel in standardized tests while others struggle despite similar study efforts?”
• “How effective are peer tutoring programs in improving students’ understanding of complex subjects?”
• “How do different teaching methods impact the learning process of students with learning disabilities?”
• “What strategies can help reduce test anxiety among middle school students?”
• “How does participation in group projects affect the development of collaboration skills in university students?”

Research Question Examples for College Students

• “What are the most common stressors faced by college students during final exams?”
• “How does academic performance differ between students who live on campus and those who commute?”
• “What is the relationship between part-time employment and GPA among college students?”
• “How does participation in study abroad programs impact cultural awareness and academic performance?”
• “What are the emerging trends in college students’ use of social media for academic purposes?”
• “Why do some college students engage in academic dishonesty despite awareness of the consequences?”
• “How effective are university mental health services in addressing students’ mental health issues?”
• “How do different learning styles affect the academic success of college students in online courses?”
• “What strategies can be employed to improve retention rates among first-year college students?”
• “How does participation in extracurricular activities influence leadership skills development in college students?”

Research Question Examples in Statistics

• “What are the most common statistical methods used in medical research?”
• “How does the accuracy of machine learning models compare to traditional statistical methods in predicting housing prices?”
• “What is the relationship between sample size and the power of a statistical test in clinical trials?”
• “How does the use of random sampling affect the validity of survey results in social science research?”
• “What are the emerging trends in the application of Bayesian statistics in data science?”
• “Why do some datasets require transformation before applying linear regression models?”
• “How effective are bootstrapping techniques in estimating the confidence intervals of small sample data?”
• “How do different imputation methods impact the results of analyses with missing data?”
• “What strategies can improve the interpretation of interaction effects in multiple regression analysis?”
• “How does the choice of statistical software affect the efficiency of data analysis in academic research?”

Research Question Examples in Socialogy

• “What are the primary social factors contributing to urban poverty in major cities?”
• “How does the level of social integration differ between immigrants and native-born citizens in urban areas?”
• “What is the relationship between educational attainment and social mobility in different socioeconomic classes?”
• “How does exposure to social media influence political participation among young adults?”
• “What are the emerging trends in family structures and their impact on child development?”
• “Why do certain communities exhibit higher levels of civic engagement than others?”
• “How effective are community policing strategies in reducing crime rates in diverse neighborhoods?”
• “How do socialization processes differ in single-parent households compared to two-parent households?”
• “What strategies can be implemented to reduce racial disparities in higher education enrollment?”
• “How does the implementation of public housing policies affect the quality of life for low-income families?”

Research Question Examples in Biology

• “What are the primary characteristics of the various stages of mitosis in eukaryotic cells?”
• “How do the reproductive strategies of amphibians compare to those of reptiles?”
• “What is the relationship between genetic diversity and the resilience of plant species to climate change?”
• “How does the presence of pollutants in freshwater ecosystems impact the growth and development of aquatic organisms?”
• “What are the emerging trends in the use of CRISPR technology for gene editing in agricultural crops?”
• “Why do certain bacteria develop antibiotic resistance more rapidly than others?”
• “How effective are different conservation strategies in protecting endangered species?”
• “How do various environmental factors influence the process of photosynthesis in marine algae?”
• “What strategies can enhance the effectiveness of reforestation programs in tropical rainforests?”
• “How does the method of seed dispersal affect the spatial distribution and genetic diversity of plant populations?”

Research Question Examples in History

• “What were the key social and economic factors that led to the Industrial Revolution in Britain?”
• “How did the political systems of ancient Athens and ancient Sparta differ in terms of governance and citizen participation?”
• “What is the relationship between the Renaissance and the subsequent scientific revolution in Europe?”
• “How did the Treaty of Versailles contribute to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the onset of World War II?”
• “What are the emerging perspectives on the causes and impacts of the American Civil Rights Movement?”
• “Why did the Roman Empire decline and eventually fall despite its extensive power and reach?”
• “How effective were the New Deal programs in alleviating the effects of the Great Depression in the United States?”
• “How did the processes of colonization and decolonization affect the political landscape of Africa in the 20th century?”
• “What strategies did the suffragette movement use to secure voting rights for women in the early 20th century?”
• “How did the logistics and strategies of the D-Day invasion contribute to the Allied victory in World War II?”

Importance of Research Questions

Research questions are fundamental to the success and integrity of any study. Their importance can be highlighted through several key aspects:

• Research questions provide a clear focus and direction for the study, ensuring that the researcher remains on track.
• Example: “How does online learning impact student engagement in higher education?”
• They establish the boundaries of the research, determining what will be included or excluded.
• Example: “What are the effects of air pollution on respiratory health in urban areas?”
• Research questions dictate the choice of research design, methodology, and data collection techniques.
• Example: “What is the relationship between physical activity and mental health in adolescents?”
• They make the objectives of the research explicit, providing clarity and precision to the study’s goals.
• Example: “Why do some startups succeed in securing venture capital while others fail?”
• Well-crafted research questions emphasize the significance and relevance of the study, justifying its importance.
• Example: “How effective are public health campaigns in increasing vaccination rates among young adults?”
• They enable a systematic approach to inquiry, ensuring that the study is coherent and logically structured.
• Example: “What are the social and economic impacts of remote work on urban communities?”
• Research questions offer a framework for analyzing and interpreting data, guiding the researcher in making sense of the findings.
• Example: “How does social media usage affect self-esteem among teenagers?”
• By addressing specific gaps or exploring new areas, research questions ensure that the study contributes meaningfully to the existing body of knowledge.
• Example: “What are the emerging trends in the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare?”
• Clear and precise research questions increase the credibility and reliability of the research by providing a focused approach.
• Example: “How do educational interventions impact literacy rates in low-income communities?”
• They help in clearly communicating the purpose and findings of the research to others, including stakeholders, peers, and the broader academic community.
• Example: “What strategies are most effective in reducing youth unemployment in developing countries?”

Research Question vs. Hypothesis

Chracteristics of research questions.

Research questions are fundamental to the research process as they guide the direction and focus of a study. Here are the key characteristics of effective research questions:

1. Clear and Specific

• The question should be clearly articulated and specific enough to be understood without ambiguity.
• Example: “What are the effects of social media on teenagers’ mental health?” rather than “How does social media affect people?”

2. Focused and Researchable

• The question should be narrow enough to be answerable through research and data collection.
• Example: “How does participation in extracurricular activities impact academic performance in high school students?” rather than “How do activities affect school performance?”

3. Complex and Analytical

• The question should require more than a simple yes or no answer and should invite analysis and discussion.
• Example: “What factors contribute to the success of renewable energy initiatives in urban areas?” rather than “Is renewable energy successful?”

4. Relevant and Significant

• The question should address an important issue or problem in the field of study and contribute to knowledge or practice.
• Example: “How does climate change affect agricultural productivity in developing countries?” rather than “What is climate change?”

5. Feasible and Practical

• The question should be feasible to answer within the constraints of time, resources, and access to information.
• Example: “What are the challenges faced by remote workers in the tech industry during the COVID-19 pandemic?” rather than “What are the challenges of remote work?”

6. Original and Novel

• The question should offer a new perspective or explore an area that has not been extensively studied.
• Example: “How do virtual reality technologies influence empathy in healthcare training?” rather than “What is virtual reality?”
• The question should be framed in a way that ensures the research can be conducted ethically.
• Example: “What are the impacts of privacy laws on consumer data protection in the digital age?” rather than “How can we collect personal data more effectively?”

8. Open-Ended

• The question should encourage detailed responses and exploration, rather than limiting answers to a simple yes or no.
• Example: “In what ways do cultural differences affect communication styles in multinational companies?” rather than “Do cultural differences affect communication?”

9. Aligned with Research Goals

• The question should align with the overall objectives of the research project or study.
• Example: “How do early childhood education programs influence long-term academic achievement?” if the goal is to understand educational impacts.

10. Based on Prior Research

• The question should build on existing literature and research, identifying gaps or new angles to explore.
• Example: “What strategies have proven effective in reducing urban air pollution in European cities?” after reviewing current studies on air pollution strategies.

Benefits of Research Question

Research questions are fundamental to the research process and offer numerous benefits, which include the following:

1. Guides the Research Process

A well-defined research question provides a clear focus and direction for your study. It helps in determining what data to collect, how to collect it, and how to analyze it.

Benefit: Ensures that the research stays on track and addresses the specific issue at hand.

2. Clarifies the Purpose of the Study

Research questions help to articulate the purpose and objectives of the study. They make it clear what the researcher intends to explore, describe, compare, or test.

Benefit: Helps in communicating the goals and significance of the research to others, including stakeholders and funding bodies.

3. Determines the Research Design

The type of research question informs the research design, including the choice of methodology, data collection methods, and analysis techniques.

Benefit: Ensures that the chosen research design is appropriate for answering the specific research question, enhancing the validity and reliability of the results.

4. Enhances Literature Review

A well-crafted research question provides a framework for conducting a thorough literature review. It helps in identifying relevant studies, theories, and gaps in existing knowledge.

Benefit: Facilitates a comprehensive understanding of the topic and ensures that the research is grounded in existing literature.

5. Focuses Data Collection

Research questions help in identifying the specific data needed to answer them. This focus prevents the collection of unnecessary data and ensures that all collected data is relevant to the study.

Benefit: Increases the efficiency of data collection and analysis, saving time and resources.

6. Improves Data Analysis

Having a clear research question aids in the selection of appropriate data analysis methods. It helps in determining how the data will be analyzed to draw meaningful conclusions.

Benefit: Enhances the accuracy and relevance of the findings, making them more impactful.

7. Facilitates Hypothesis Formation

In quantitative research, research questions often lead to the development of hypotheses that can be tested statistically.

Benefit: Provides a basis for hypothesis testing, which is essential for establishing cause-and-effect relationships.

8. Supports Result Interpretation

Research questions provide a lens through which the results of the study can be interpreted. They help in understanding what the findings mean in the context of the research objectives.

Benefit: Ensures that the conclusions drawn from the research are aligned with the original aims and objectives.

9. Enhances Reporting and Presentation

A clear research question makes it easier to organize and present the research findings. It helps in structuring the research report or presentation logically.

Benefit: Improves the clarity and coherence of the research report, making it more accessible and understandable to the audience.

10. Encourages Critical Thinking

Formulating research questions requires critical thinking and a deep understanding of the subject matter. It encourages researchers to think deeply about what they want to investigate and why.

Benefit: Promotes a more thoughtful and analytical approach to research, leading to more robust and meaningful findings.

How to Write a Research Question

Crafting a strong research question is crucial for guiding your study effectively. Follow these steps to write a clear and focused research question:

Identify a Broad Topic:

Start with a general area of interest that you are passionate about or that is relevant to your field. Example: “Climate change”

Conduct Preliminary Research:

Explore existing literature and studies to understand the current state of knowledge and identify gaps. Example: “Impact of climate change on agriculture”

Narrow Down the Topic:

Focus on a specific aspect or issue within the broad topic to make the research question more manageable. Example: “Effect of climate change on crop yields”

Consider the Scope:

Ensure the question is neither too broad nor too narrow. It should be specific enough to be answerable but broad enough to allow for thorough exploration. Example: “How does climate change affect corn crop yields in the Midwest United States?”

Determine the Research Type:

Decide whether your research will be descriptive, comparative, relational, or causal, as this will shape your question. Example: “How does climate change affect corn crop yields in the Midwest United States over the past decade?”

Formulate the Question:

Write a clear, concise question that specifies the variables, population, and context. Example: “What is the impact of increasing temperatures and changing precipitation patterns on corn crop yields in the Midwest United States from 2010 to 2020?”

Ensure Feasibility:

Make sure the question can be answered within the constraints of your resources, time, and data availability. Example: “How have corn crop yields in the Midwest United States been affected by climate change-related temperature increases and precipitation changes between 2010 and 2020?”

Review and Refine:

Evaluate the question for clarity, focus, and relevance. Revise as necessary to ensure it is well-defined and researchable. Example: “What are the specific impacts of temperature increases and changes in precipitation patterns on corn crop yields in the Midwest United States from 2010 to 2020?”

What is a research question?

A research question is a specific query guiding a study’s focus and objectives, shaping its methodology and analysis.

Why is a research question important?

It provides direction, defines scope, ensures relevance, and guides the methodology of the research.

How do you formulate a research question?

Identify a topic, narrow it down, conduct preliminary research, and ensure it is clear, focused, and researchable.

What makes a good research question?

Clarity, specificity, feasibility, relevance, and the ability to guide the research effectively.

Can a research question change?

Yes, it can evolve based on initial findings, further literature review, and the research process.

What is the difference between a research question and a hypothesis?

A research question guides the study; a hypothesis is a testable prediction about the relationship between variables.

How specific should a research question be?

It should be specific enough to provide clear direction but broad enough to allow for comprehensive investigation.

What are examples of good research questions?

Examples include: “How does social media affect academic performance?” and “What are the impacts of climate change on agriculture?”

Can a research question be too broad?

Yes, a too broad question can make the research unfocused and challenging to address comprehensively.

What role does a research question play in literature reviews?

It helps identify relevant studies, guides the search for literature, and frames the review’s focus.

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Likert scale surveys: Definition, examples, and how-tos

Conducting Likert scale surveys can improve your research. Learn how this rating scale works and can give you insightful data.

Latest posts on Opinions & Expertise

Lydia Kentowski    |    05.2024

Typeform    |    05.2024

Sheena Fronk    |    04.2024

A Likert scale is a way to answer a survey question on a five- or seven-point scale. The choices range from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree so the survey maker can get a holistic view of people’s opinions. All Likert scale survey questions also include a mid-point for those who are neutral on the subject matter.

We can all agree that there’s no single question that designates someone as politically liberal or conservative. Political affiliation is complicated—a person who's liberal on matters of health care could be conservative on questions of international aid.

So instead of asking one question, you measure how much people agree or disagree with various statements about political policy with a Likert rating scale . Then when you combine or average a person’s responses, you get a more accurate measure of their opinions. Let’s jump into how to create a Likert scale survey and what to do with your results.

How to create a Likert scale survey

Okay, so how do you craft a Likert scale survey that gets you results? That’s the hardest part. Don’t fret—these four steps will help you get it right.

Determine what the Likert Scale should measure

What is it you want to find out? Let’s say you’ve noticed some people love online shopping while others wouldn’t do it if their lives depended on it. And you want to quantify this.

So your task is to measure how people like shopping online. Likert questions will help you here.

Create your list of indicator statements

Remember: A Likert scale survey works best when you want to learn about something that can’t be understood with one question. That means you have to measure indicators—specific types of questions that help you understand the concept you’re trying to measure.

Likert scale questions are great for when you need to do a customer satisfaction survey because there are several characteristics that can influence the phenomenon: perceived quality, customer expectations, pricing, speed of service or delivery, and so on. Each of these is an indicator of customer satisfaction—you can find out if the customer is delighted with their purchase overall or very dissatisfied.

So what question types can you ask people to find out how much they enjoy buying things online?

You could start by asking them to list words they associate with online shopping: boring, complicated, easy, quick, intangible, and so on—you want to gauge the respondent’s opinion here.

Build the indicator statements, or Likert items, around this list.

I prefer to touch things before I buy them (Strongly Agree—Strongly Disagree)

 The variety of options online overwhelms me (Strongly Agree—Strongly Disagree)

 Checking out is easy online (Strongly Agree—Strongly Disagree)

It’s important that every statement gets to the heart of what you’re interested in understanding.

Here are a few more tips for writing your indicator statements:

Use positive and negative indicators for balance. A positively worded statement should have a negatively worded counterpart later in the questionnaire or survey .

So if you have the statement, “The variety of options online overwhelms me,” then you should also have an item like, “I appreciate the wide selection online shopping has to offer.”

People who agree with the positive statements should disagree with the negative ones, and vice versa. That’s how you can be confident that your questions are clear and the responses are reliable.

Follow best practices for creating survey questions . Cater to your audience, use their language, and avoid double-barreled or long, complicated statements.

Remember: how we phrase a question influences the response. So use neutral language, avoiding words like “love,” “hate,” “terrible,” “incredible,” and so on. Let people tell you the strength of their feelings instead of cueing it in the statements.

Decide on the response scale you want to use

When it comes to the Likert-type response ordinal scales, you have to make two decisions.

First is the semantic scale . You want to choose options that are simple and unambiguous. Among the most common: Agree—Disagree, Helpful—Not Helpful, Excellent—Poor, Satisfied—Dissatisfied, Always—Never. But just because they’re popular doesn’t mean they're clear.

And make sure the differences between the categories are valid and useful. Let’s say you want to measure how often a person gets up from their desk at work. You choose Never—Seldom—Sometimes—Often—Always. How do you quantify the difference between seldom and sometimes?

If a scale is potentially ambiguous, either explain the meanings in your introduction or change the scale. Don’t use “Sometimes” when you really mean “Once a week.”

Second is the number of response choices . Likert-type responses often have an odd number, so respondents have a neutral option. The jury is still out on whether that is necessary or even desirable.

Most researchers agree that, at a minimum, you should use a five-point Likert scale survey. But other research shows that the more choices there are, the less often respondents use the middle or neutral category. What seems clear is that a seven-point Likert scale approaches the upper limits of reliability—so adding more options is likely to give you worse, not better, Likert scale data.

Think about those HappyOrNot terminals you find in airports, shopping malls, and even in toilets. You know, the ones with the happy and angry faces on them? Most of them use an even number of response choices. Why? Because it forces people to choose a side, making it easier to collapse responses into two categories (positive vs. negative experience).

Which you choose depends on how you plan to evaluate the responses.

Here are a few more tips for creating your Likert scale responses:

Be creative 

Just because you’re collecting data doesn’t mean you need to sound like a robot. 

Survey tools like Typeform let you edit the labels so your brand voice can shine through your questions. 

Try out Interesting—Not Interesting, or even No Way—Meh—Totally! to keep people engaged.

Use unipolar responses  

The aim of a Likert scale is to get at a larger concept with a series of questions. 

Don’t name that concept with polar opposites like Safe—Dangerous or Strong—Weak. 

Instead, measure in degrees, like Very Safe—Not Safe and Very Strong—Not at All Strong. 

They’re just easier for people to understand, and you can be sure that one extreme is the exact opposite of the other.

Stay consistent with your scales  

Creating a Likert scale involves summing or averaging the responses to measure a concept or phenomenon. 

Without consistent scales, you can’t be certain you are measuring the same thing with each statement.

Test and test again

Surveys are an iterative process. The key to successful research is testing, analyzing, revising, and improving the way you collect data.

Test your survey on a small pool of participants that represent the larger group you’re trying to learn more about and analyze the data. If you’re going for extra credit, you can conduct an item analysis.

An item analysis helps you find out which items, or statements, are most useful and which are problematic. The math’s a bit tricky (which is why I defected from psychology), but a statistical analysis tool can help you find the correlations between your questions.

Once you’ve started conducting the Likert scale questionnaire , run another item analysis to ensure the scale is consistent.

What to do with your Likert scale results

Once you’ve crafted the questionnaire for a Likert scale survey, most of the hard work is already done. If the statements in your questionnaire measure a particular concept when combined, that’s a Likert scale. Averages and standard deviations among your participants describe the data.

If you've used Likert-type items in a survey, then averages, medians, and frequencies are the tools you need for analysis. The tendencies in the data will give you answers to the questions that prompted this survey.

Although Likert scale surveys are relatively simple, a major weakness to consider when interpreting your results is respondent biases .

As with most surveys, social desirability bias can affect the reliability of your Likert scale survey. Even when you tell respondents their responses will remain anonymous, many people still try to give socially acceptable answers rather than being honest. This can be minimized with an even-number scale, which prevents people from sitting on the fence.

Likert scale surveys are particularly susceptible to central tendency bias: People avoid choosing the most extreme responses, such as Very Helpful or Strongly Disagree. You can reduce the effect of this bias with some clear definitions, such as “In this survey, Very Helpful means you got everything you needed from our customer service agent.”

At the other end of the spectrum is extreme response bias. This happens when people only choose the extreme options. There are several causes of this, including cultural attitudes and IQ. But the one you have control over is the wording of the question. Use neutral language and don’t ask leading questions—it’ll impact your data analysis.

People tend to agree with statements to please others. This is known as acquiescence response bias—otherwise known as the when-in-doubt-just-agree bias. 

There are two ways to minimize its effect:

Phrase your statements as questions.

Include a positive and negative statement and evaluate the pairs for consistency.

Overall, Likert scale surveys are pretty simple to create and complete and provide highly reliable data. They allow you to capture the variation and complexity of people’s attitudes, giving you deeper insights into what people are thinking and feeling.

Getting your Likert scale survey right means loads of useful data to help you get to know people better. Ready to get started? We can help you create a survey today!

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The Best Sales Discovery Questions for Effective Lead Qualifying

There’s nothing worse than spending hours building a relationship with a lead only to discover months later that they don’t need what you’re selling. The lousiest part is that it could all have been avoided with a simple call or meeting and a series of sales discovery questions at the start.

That’s not to say that setting up a meeting with your new prospect and firing away with a list of questions about their business is necessarily the answer. An effective discovery event calls for thoughtful and deliberate questions to ensure you have all the information you need to qualify your prospect as a potential lead.

Coming up with a solid set of sales discovery questions to cover all your bases can be tricky, though. That’s why we’ve gathered some of the most reliable discovery question examples to give you a hand.

Table of Contents

What is the sales discovery process, why is the sales discovery process important, the vital role of sales discovery questions, questions to learn more about your prospect, questions to understand the business needs.

• Questions to identify the prospects’s challenges

Questions to qualify prospects as leads

Questions to move your prospect along the pipeline.

• Tips for using sales discovery questions effectively  

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The sales discovery process is a sales representative’s first set of interactions with a prospect to determine whether their product or service is a good fit for the prospect’s business. During this process, you can establish prospect pain points and goals. 

A well-considered sales discovery call or meeting helps you connect with prospects and lay the groundwork for solid customer relationships. The process also gives you insight into how to structure your sales efforts.

You may need more than one phone call or meeting to get a good sense of the prospect’s needs, and that’s perfectly fine. The sales discovery process can take place over multiple interactions. The important thing is to get the ball rolling as early as possible to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship going forward.

The sales discovery process is essential because entering into discovery calls or meetings is helpful to both you and your prospect. These initial interactions are an opportunity to inform your prospect about the features and benefits of your product or service. 

You’ll also learn about your prospect’s business, their organization’s vision, and what their operation needs to succeed. From the information gathered, both you and your prospect will have a better idea of whether your offering will positively impact their business.

It’s also an opportunity to let your prospects know that you understand their challenges and want to see them succeed. After a thorough discovery process, you should know if there’s a chance that you’ll be able to win the prospect’s business.

Never go into a discovery call or meeting prepared. Time wasted on a conversation without clear direction or results is time you could use to progress sales with more qualified leads. Knowing what to ask could be the difference between finding a great customer fit versus spending hours nurturing a prospect who needs a different solution or isn’t ready to buy.

To ensure a productive sales discovery interaction, you’ll need a series of targeted questions to determine whether your product or service suits the prospect’s needs. Asking the right questions from the start ensures you’re both on the same page before you even consider scheduling a sales presentation .

Effective discovery questions encourage discussion, meaning they are open-ended questions that prospects can’t simply answer with a “yes,” “no,” or “maybe.” Leading the conversation with great sales discovery questions will reveal your prospect’s challenges, objectives, and internal processes related to your product or service.

Examples of effective sales discovery questions

Working from a sales script verbatim seldom leads to a natural, comfortable conversation or a successful conversion. However, mapping out key sales discovery questions and discussion points can ensure a worthwhile discovery process. 

To help you get started, we’ve prepared some helpful sales discovery question guidelines and examples to get you the necessary answers.

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Getting to know the ins and outs of your prospect’s business and the role your point of contact plays in it is your first port of call. You’ll begin by asking broader sales discovery questions about the business and then dig deeper to unearth more information.

Starting your discovery conversation with the following series of questions should help you gather the details you need to move to the next stage of the discussion:

• Tell me more about your company: Before asking this question, share what you know about the company’s business to show that you’ve done your research.
• I’d like to learn more about your role. What does your day-to-day look like? Casually ask about the prospect’s role so they’ll open up about what they do at the company.
• What metrics are most vital for you to measure in your role? Uncover how your prospect measures success to show them how your product or service will improve it.

The next step is understanding the prospect’s business requirements, which means learning about obstacles, pain points, and goals. With these questions, you’ll identify areas where your product or service might benefit the business. If not, this company may not be a good fit for you.

Key questions to ask when qualifying your prospect are as follows:

• What are some of your core business goals for the next year/quarter?: Consider how long your product or service would take to set up, use, and garner results when determining the specific period you mention.
• When is the deadline for achieving these goals? Your meeting may be a month before the company’s annual goal assessment, in which case you’d pitch your offering to help them improve on goal metrics in the following year.
• Which areas of your current business processes are you happy with? This question should help you understand what’s working well at the company and why.
• Which areas of the business would you like to improve on? Here, you might be able to pinpoint areas where your product or service could improve upon the organization’s existing systems.

Questions to identify the prospect’s challenges

Now that you know what the business wants to achieve, it’s time to figure out what’s holding them back. Remember, the point of these sales discovery questions is to figure out how to help your prospect overcome an issue and attain their goals.

To find out more about the challenges your prospect faces, work these questions into the conversation:

• What obstacles have you faced preventing you from reaching your goals? Try to avoid directing the question to a specific area of their business to ensure you get a broader sense of the problems faced.
• Tell me about some actions you’ve taken to overcome these obstacles: The prospect’s answer should give you insight into how the company approaches problems and where its priorities lie.
• What alternative solutions have you considered? Use this question to determine challenges preventing the business from investing in other solutions, such as budget. 
• What do you think the ideal solution would be? You may hear some interesting answers here, but use them to pick up on what success looks like in the prospect’s eyes.
• What would resolving this problem mean for your business? This will give you an idea of how an effective solution, ideally your offering, will benefit the company.

In this phase of your sales discovery process, you want to understand whether your solution would be an option for the prospect and how buying decisions are made at their company. Dive into the following questions to qualify your prospect:

• What obstacles prevent you from implementing a more effective solution? By asking this question, you’re more likely to identify the core reasons the problem still exists and whether this will prevent the company from investing in your product or service.
• If presented with an ideal solution, how soon would you want to implement it? Asking this question will give you an idea of whether the company wants a solution urgently and if your solution would be ideal given the preferred timeline.
• What would be the budget available for a solution like this? This question provides a straightforward way to establish whether the prospect can afford your product or service.

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Once qualified, you’ll want to present a possible solution (your product or service) and provide a road map for testing, purchasing, and implementing your offering. You’ll also need some more information to ensure you deliver the best possible sales proposal to meet their needs and expectations.

Depending on the type of product or service you provide and the nature of your prospect company, consider these questions as your next step:

• Who will be included in the buying and decision-making process? Try to determine whether your point of contact is the decision-maker and if there’s anyone else who should be included in the conversation.
• What would the process for purchasing a product/service look like? The answer to this question should help you identify the next steps and what to expect going forward.
• Are you considering other similar offers? It’s essential to know whether you’ll be competing against others for the prospect’s business, and it may help you tailor a more attractive proposal.
• What are the potential roadblocks to you working with us? This question should let you know of any obstacles you might come across preventing the prospect from purchasing your solution.
• What can I do to make the decision-making process easier? Whether the prospect needs additional information or nothing at all, it’s worth giving them the opportunity to ask for assistance where needed.

Always firm up a date on which to follow up with the prospect before ending your sales discovery calls and meetings.

Tips for using sales discovery questions effectively

No two discovery calls or meetings are the same, so it’s crucial to have a few tips and strategies in mind before diving in. Some of the guidelines to ensure an effective sales discovery question session include:

• Keep small talk to a minimum: Small talk is great as an opener, but it’s best to focus on the more crucial stuff throughout your conversation for a better chance at progressing to your sales process’s next stage.
• Remember, it’s a conversation: Your discussion should sound less like a back-and-forth Q&A session and more like a natural conversation by thoughtfully timing questions and responding to the prospect’s answers before moving on.
• Don’t ask too many questions: Asking 10 to 12 questions is ideal for one call or meeting, but anything over 15 questions is a bit much and should be left for another day.
• Solve multiple problems: You may aim to solve an obvious problem at the onset, but the conversation might reveal other issues you could aim to resolve to sweeten the deal.
• Time your call or meeting well: Mornings can be the busiest time for executives, so try to schedule your meeting or call for the afternoon, preferably early in the week.
• Include customer stories: Find ways to add relatable stories about your existing customers and how you’ve resolved similar problems at their companies.

Beyond these tips, it is integral to execute the tried-and-true practices of taking comprehensive notes and using the prospect’s issues, needs, and vision of success to shape your proposal and value proposition.

Perfect your sales discovery process with the #1 next-action CRM

Arming yourself with a foolproof series of sales discovery questions is great. Having a robust CRM system to help you nurture leads and close more deals is even better. Nutshell is the ideal CRM solution to support your sales discovery process, qualify leads, and encourage conversions.

With Nutshell as part of your arsenal, you can:

• Create custom pipelines to align with your process using Nutshell’s powerful pipeline management capabilities.
• Book discovery calls and meetings with Nutshell’s native Scheduler tool .
• Sync discovery events to your preferred calendar with seamless email and calendar synchronization.
• Make a discovery call and record the conversation right in Nutshell with our click-to-call feature if you’re a Nutshell Pro user. 
• Summarize Zoom discovery meeting transcriptions using the native Zoom integration for Nutshell Pro users.
• View a timeline of all prospect interactions in the contact’s record.
• Add notes to contact records to organize contact information and remind yourself of vital information discussed in your discovery call or meeting.
• Send personalized automated follow-up emails with Nutshell’s email automation tools.
• Connect with over 1,000 apps through Nutshell integrations , including document sharing, communication tools, and accounting software, to expand your CRM’s functionality.
• Set up engaging email drip sequences , newsletters, broadcasts, and more with world-class built-in email marketing tools.

Choose Nutshell as your partner in sales and leverage its versatile features and user-friendly interface to nurture leads effectively, improve customer relationships, and encourage more wins.

Sign up today to try Nutshell free for 14 days , or get in touch with our team to set up a call or demo.

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