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Market research templates: what they are and how to use them.

18 min read Interested in market research but need some templates to start with? In this guide, we unpack market research, survey planning best practice and share some of our best templates for brand, customer, product and employee research.

What is a market research template?

While you’re no doubt familiar with the concept of market research and how it can help you to reach your target audiences and improve your product or service , the real challenge is designing a market research plan that is conducive to excellent results.

All of this starts with the right market research template(s) to help you analyze specific target audiences, collect the right data and uncover insights that can drive actionable change.

In this article, we’re going to:

• talk about market research and its use cases,
• provide you with a standard template that allows you to plan your research,
• and share several other templates to help you with specific types of market research

You can also check out our free template library.

But first, let’s revisit market research.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of determining the viability of a new service or product through surveys and questionnaires with prospects and/or customers. It involves gathering information about market needs and prospect/customer preferences .

Through market research, you can discover and/or refine your target market, get opinions and feedback on what you provide to them and uncover further prospect/customer pain points and expectations of your service or product .

Market research can be conducted in-house, either by you and your research team, or through a third-party company that specializes in it (they will typically have their own research panels or be capable of creating a research panel to suit your requirements).

The four common types of market research

There are lots of different ways to conduct market research to collect customer data and feedback , test product concepts , and do brand research, but the four most common are:

The most commonly used form of market research, surveys are a form of qualitative research that asks respondents a series of open or closed-ended questions , delivered either as an on-screen questionnaire or email.

Surveys are incredibly popular because they’re cheap, easy to produce, and can capture data very quickly, leading to faster insights.

2) Focus groups

Why not bring together a carefully selected group of people in your target market using focus groups? Though more expensive and complex than surveys and interviews, focus groups can offer deeper insight into prospect and customer behavior – from how users experience your products and services to what marketing messages really resonate with them.

Of course, as a market research method that’s reliant on a moderator to steer conversation, it can be subject to bias (as different moderators might have preferred questions or be more forceful) and if you cut corners (not asking all the necessary questions or making assumptions based on responses), the data could get skewed.

3) Observation

As if you were a fly-on-the-wall, the observation market research method can be incredibly powerful. Rather than interviewing or surveying users, you simply take notes while someone from your target market/target audience engages with your product . How are they using it? What are they struggling with? Do they look as though they have concerns?

Observing your target audience/target market in this fashion is a great alternative to the other more traditional methods on this list. It’s less expensive and far more natural as it isn’t guided by a moderator or a predefined set of questions. The only issue is that you can’t get feedback directly from the mouth of the user, so it’s worth combining this type of research with interviews, surveys, and/or focus groups.

4) Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions (both in-person and virtually), allowing for more natural conversations with participants.

For gleaning deeper insights (especially with non-verbal cues giving greater weight to opinions), there’s nothing better than face-to-face interviews. Any kind of interview will provide excellent information, helping you to better understand your prospects and target audience/target market.

Use cases for market research

When you want to understand your prospects and/or customers, but have no existing data to set a benchmark – or want to improve your products and services quickly – market research is often the go-to.

Market research (as mentioned above), helps you to discover how prospects and customers feel about your products and services, as well as what they would like to see .

But there are more use cases and benefits to market research than the above.

Reduce risk of product and business failure

With any new venture, there’s no guarantee that the new idea will be successful. As such, it’s up to you to establish the market’s appetite for your product or service. The easiest way to do this is through market research – you can understand the challenges prospects face and quickly identify where you can help. With the data from your market survey, you can then create a solution that addresses the needs and expectations of would-be customers.

Forecast future trends

Market research doesn’t just help you to understand the current market – it also helps you to forecast future needs. As you conduct your research and analyze the findings, you can identify trends – for example, how brands and businesses are adopting new technology to improve customer experiences or how sustainability is becoming a core focus for packaging. Whatever it is you’re looking to understand about the future of business in your market, comprehensive market research can help you to identify it.

Stay ahead of the competition

Understanding your market and what prospects and customers want from you will help to keep you ahead of the competition . The fact is that the top businesses frequently invest in market research to get an edge, and those that don’t tap into the insights of their audience are missing low-hanging fruit.

As well as helping you to stay in front, you can also use market research to identify gaps in the market, e.g. your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses . Just have participants answer questions about competitor products/services – or even use the products/services – and work out how you can refine your offerings to address these issues.

Plan more strategically

What’s the foundation of your business strategy? If it’s based on evidence, e.g. what people expect of your products and services, it’ll be much easier to deliver something that works. Rather than making assumptions about what you should do, market research gives you a clear, concrete understanding of what people want to see.

Check out our guide to market research for a more comprehensive breakdown.

How do you write a market research plan/template?

A market research plan is very similar to a brief in that it documents the most vital information and steps about your project. Consider it a blueprint that outlines your main objective (summary), key questions and outcomes, target audience and size, your timeline, budget, and other key variables.

Let’s talk about them in more detail.

Elements of a great market research plan

1) overview or summary.

Use the first section of your market research plan to outline the background to the problem that you are attempting to solve (this is usually your problem statement or problem question). Include background information on the study’s purpose and the business to provide context to those who would read the report, as well as the need for the research. Keep the overview simple and concise; focus on the most salient elements.

2) Objectives

What is it that you hope to achieve with this survey? Your objectives are the most important part of the survey. Make sure to list 3-5 of the decisions or initiatives that the research will influence.

For example:

Understand the most-used channels for customer engagement and purchasing to decide where to prioritize marketing and sales budget in Q1 2022. Determine what’s causing customer churn at the later stages of the buyer journey and implement a new retention and sales strategy to address it.

Your objectives should be smart, that is: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

3) Deliverables (or outcomes)

This section should focus on what you expect to have at the end of the project. How many responses are you looking for? How will the data be presented? Who will the data be shared with? (Stakeholders, executives) What are your next steps? Make sure you state how you will collect and analyze the data once it’s available.

Products such as Qualtrics CoreXM make this process fast and incredibly easy to do, drastically reducing the time to insights so you can make more meaningful changes, faster.

4) Target audience

Not to be confused with your market research sample, your target audience represents who you want to research. Of course, your sample may include ideal buyers from your target audience. Here you want to define the main variables or factors of your audience: demographic , age, location , product interaction, experience, and so on. It’s worth building out your buyer personas (if you haven’t already) and including a quick breakdown of them here.

5) Sample plan

How many participants do you want to research and what kind of groups do you want to reach? Depending on these two variables, you may have to use qualitative, quantitative , or multi-method approaches.

6) Research methods

What methods will you use in your market research project? The insights (and the granularity of those insights) will depend on the methods and tools you choose. For example, and as mentioned earlier, surveys are often the go-to for many organizations as they’re affordable and straightforward, but if you want to get more personal views from your respondents, one-to-one interviews might be more applicable. You might even want to take a hands-off approach and simply observe participants as they use your products, or try a combination of research methods. Make sure to outline what methods you will use as part of your research plan.

7) Timeline

How long will your research project run? It’s worth putting together a Gantt chart to highlight key milestones in the project, along with dependencies, and to break down tasks as much as possible. Schedule in contingency time in case some tasks or research runs over – or you need more responses.

Set a budget for the overall program and list it in your plan. Though this might be the most difficult aspect of any research plan, it helps you to be more strategic about tasks and hold people accountable at each stage of the process. If costs go over, that’s good to know for future market research. If costs are lower than anticipated, you then have the opportunity to do further research or prop up other areas of the study.

9) Ethical concerns or conflicts of interest

One of the most important parts of your market research plan, you should highlight any ethical concerns. To begin with, it’s your duty to state whether or not responses will be kept confidential and anonymous as part of the study. It’s also important to allow participants to remain anonymous and ensure you protect their privacy at all times.

Another issue to consider is stereotyping. Any analysis of real populations needs to make approximations and place individuals into groups, but if conducted irresponsibly, stereotyping can lead to undesirable results.

Lastly, conflicts of interest – it may be that researchers have interests in the outcome of the project that lead to a personal advantage that might compromise the integrity of your market research project. You should clearly state in your market research report that any potential conflicts of interest are highlighted and addressed before continuing.

But I want a faster solution!

Well, there’s a quicker and far easier way to do all of the above and get the data you need – just use a market research survey template. In our next section, we’re going to share a whole list of templates that you can use.

Free market research survey templates

No matter what kind of research you want to conduct, we have templates that will remove the complexity of the task and empower you to get more from your data. Below we’ve compiled a list of templates for four key experience areas: Brand , Customer , Employee , and Product .

All of our research templates are free. All you need to do is sign up for a free Qualtrics account to access them.

Brand experience market research templates:

• Logo testing : Collect feedback to help you evaluate and iterate on your logo designs and concepts
• Brand awareness : Track the level of brand awareness in your target market, including current and potential future customers
• Ad testing : Evaluate your consumers’ reaction to an advertisement so you know which campaigns to deploy before you invest
• A/B testing : Quickly and easily compare to versions or options in a study, whether it’s a design, headline, color palette or a mock-up of your latest ad campaign

Customer experience market research templates

• Student satisfaction : Gather feedback on how your institution is delivering on the student experience
• Net promoter score (NPS) : Measure customer loyalty and understand how they feel about your product or service using one of the world’s best-recognized metrics
• Customer satisfaction : Evaluate how satisfied your customers are with your company, including the products and services you provide, and how they are treated when they buy from you
• Customer service : Gain insights into the contact center experience, so you can achieve and maintain optimum levels of customer experience (CX) performance
• Event feedback : Measure the effectiveness of your events and how well they meet attendee expectations so that you can continuously improve your offering
• IT help desk : Understand how satisfied your employees and customers are with your IT help desk experience
• Website suggestion box : Collect visitor feedback on how your website can be improved
• Website satisfaction : Find out how satisfied visitors are with your website’s design, usability, and performance
• Store purchase feedback : Capture customer experience data at the point of purchase to help you improve the in-store experience
• Online purchase feedback : Find out how well your online shopping experience performs against customer needs and expectations

Employee experience market research templates

• Employee satisfaction : Get an overview of your current employee experience
• Manager feedback : Improve your skills as a leader with valuable feedback from your team
• Employee engagement : Find out how employees find the current experience at your workplace with this entry-level engagement survey
• Employee exit interview : Understand why your employees are leaving and how they’ll speak about your company once they’re gone with this survey template
• Employee onboarding : Improve your onboarding program by understanding what’s working and what’s not
• Team event planning : Collect inputs from employees to plan a team event that works for everyone
• Meeting feedback : Check-in with team members after a meeting to see how well your company is running and what improvements can be made
• Interview feedback : Improve your candidate experience by gathering actionable insights about the interview process
• Employee suggestion box : Gather anonymous data to help address concerns and improve the employee experience in your organization
• Candidate experience : Improve your candidate experience to increase brand perception, offer acceptance rates, and hiring process efficiency with this single-touchpoint survey template
• Employee suggestion action : Take employee feedback a step further by working with your staff to quantify solutions based on their experience data

Product experience market research templates

• Product research : Evaluate your consumers’ reaction to a new product or product feature across every stage of the product development journey
• Pricing : Understand how to set the exact price point for your product or service, according to your target consumers
• Feature prioritization : Compare and contrast product features using conjoint analysis to find the optimal mix for your customers
• Product package testing : Collect feedback on your product packaging to see how well it meets the needs and expectations of your customers

Armed with the right market research templates, getting the information you need across brand, product, customer and employee disciplines — as well as beyond — is significantly easier.

Free eBook: Guide to Modern Agile Research

Related resources

Market intelligence 10 min read, marketing insights 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, qualitative vs quantitative research 13 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, primary vs secondary research 14 min read, request demo.

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Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

• Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
• Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

Free Market Research Kit

• SWOT Analysis Template
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template

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Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
• Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
• Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
• Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

• Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
• Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

• Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
• Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
• Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
• Focus Groups
• Product/ Service Use Research
• Observation-Based Research
• Buyer Persona Research
• Market Segmentation Research
• Pricing Research
• Competitive Analysis Research
• Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
• Brand Awareness Research
• Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

• Define your buyer persona.
• Identify a persona group to engage.
• Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
• List your primary competitors.
• Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

The Beginner's Guide to the Competitive Matrix [+ Templates]

What is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?

9 Best Marketing Research Methods to Know Your Buyer Better [+ Examples]

SWOT Analysis: How To Do One [With Template & Examples]

28 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them?

How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide]

5 Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences [New Data + Market Researcher Tips]

Causal Research: The Complete Guide

Free Guide & Templates to Help Your Market Research

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Market analysis templates

Turn market research into insights

Save time, highlight crucial insights, and drive strategic decision-making

Last updated

22 July 2023

Reviewed by

To outlast competitors, your business needs to stay ahead of the curve. To do this, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the market.

Conducting a market analysis can provide you with detailed information about all areas of your industry and help guide decisions for the greatest growth potential.

Benefits of conducting a market analysis

A market analysis is one of the things a business can do that benefits nearly every facet of the business. From your marketing team to your product development manager, all the way up to the CEO, the insights provided by a market analysis will help to drive important decisions and push the business forward. 

Some of the ways in which it can do that are:

Identifying customer needs and preferences

Your reputation is made or broken by how well you meet the needs and preferences of your target customers. Market analysis gives you deep insights into those needs and preferences, allowing you to tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to better meet them. You'll build better customer satisfaction and increase brand loyalty in the process.

Identifying competitors and market share

You don't just have to meet your customers' needs; you have to do a better job of it than your competitors. This will not be possible if you don't understand the strengths and weaknesses of those competitors. A market analysis can provide that information, giving you the data you need to set yourself apart from them.

Identifying market opportunities and threats

Markets aren't static. Your business can't be static, either. Through ongoing market analysis, you'll identify opportunities and threats as they occur, allowing you to pivot gracefully to best handle those situations. You'll be able to better predict opportunities for growth and better prepare for potential threats such as new competitors or changing market conditions.

Enhancing product development and innovation

With more information about customer needs and preferences and deeper insight into emerging market trends, you'll be positioned nicely for a more efficient product development process. You'll be able to make product decisions quickly based on the knowledge you've gained and develop products the market will love.

Supporting business planning and strategy

Data plays an important role in planning and decision-making from the very first days of a startup to a large corporation planning its next few years. A market analysis helps you identify target markets, build your value proposition, and set realistic goals and objectives. They can help guide the feasibility of new business ventures or business expansions.

Component of a market analysis

A market analysis consists primarily of three components. Although they overlap, each focuses the bulk of its intent on one specific area of analysis. 

Industry examination

This part of the analysis is focused on the specific industry you operate in or are hoping to expand into. It examines the trends, characteristics, and dynamics of the industry. 

To do so, it looks at the key players in the industry and its market size and growth rate. It also examines factors impacting entry into the market, such as technological barriers, regulatory requirements, supply chain logistics, and more.

The industry analysis can be broken down into the following steps:

Industry size and growth — Determine the market size and growth rate. For a complete picture, consider historical data and future projections.

Industry structure — Identify the key players, market segments, and distribution channels within the industry. When prudent, focus on the region you'll be working within.

Market trends — Analyze the current and emerging trends, innovations, and technologies influencing the industry. Look for opportunities to capitalize on those trends.

Competitive forces — Assess the competitive landscape. Look at the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers and competitive rivalry within the industry.

Regulatory and legal factors — Examine any policies, regulations, or laws that must be accounted for when entering the industry. When needed, consult with a lawyer familiar with the industry.

Market examination

The market examination focuses on understanding a specific target market within the industry.

When conducting a market analysis, you'll gather data about customers within the industry—their demographics, buying behavior, needs and preferences, and demand for products or services. This part of your analysis helps you identify your target audience and help you begin to form your value propositions.

Conducting the market examination portion of the market analysis consists of the following steps:

Target market segmentation — Segment customer segments based on characteristics such as demographics, psychographics, behavior, location, and other factors. This helps you decide which market segments are a good fit for you.

Customer analysis — For each segment, research the needs, preferences, motivations, and purchasing behavior of those customers. For this, you can limit yourself to only those market segments you're interested in appealing to.

Market size and growth — Gather detailed data on the market size. Examine the historical size of the market to identify any trends that might impact your perception of the market. Look at future predictions to see where the market will be in years after you've entered it.

Market trends — Examine customer behavior to determine what their needs and preferences are now, how they've changed in the future, and where they might be heading. Look also for customers' behavior in the market and the strength of their demand for products and services.

Market gaps and opportunities — Armed with your data on customers and market trends, look for any gaps in the market that currently aren't being met by the existing players in the space. Explore each gap further to examine its market viability.

Competitor examination

The final area of the market analysis is the competitor examination.

During this part of the analysis, the focus is squarely on the competitors operating in the industry. A close look will be taken at their strengths and weaknesses and the strategies they use within the market. This helps you further refine your value proposition and set yourself apart from other market players.

For the competitor examination, follow these steps:

Competitive analysis — Identify key competitors in the industry and research them thoroughly. Analyze their market share, product offerings, pricing strategies, and marketing tactics. Look at their distribution and supply channels to better understand how they function in the industry.

SWOT analysis — A SWOT analysis assesses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats posed by competitors. It tells you what you need to be wary of when dealing with your competitors and potential avenues for gaining a competitive advantage.

Differentiation — With the help of your SWOT analysis and the other data you've gathered, look for areas where gaps in the market mesh with weaknesses in the competitive landscape. These are areas you can focus on to differentiate yourself from your competition.

Competitive advantage — Understand the value proposition of your competitors, both as they state it and as customers perceive it. These factors will identify their competitive advantages. Develop a plan to work around these advantages or turn them in your favor.

8 market analysis templates

As you can see, there are many steps within the three areas of market analysis. Getting a template to guide you through the ones you're working on can save a lot of time.

Below, we've gathered eight quality templates for some of the most important aspects of market analysis. All of the companies linked provide a host of other templates to fit other aspects of the analysis as well.

1. Market research kit

2. market analysis.

This market analysis template streamlines business market research by utilizing secondary sources and analyzing market reports and industry data. It saves time, emphasizes key insights, and informs strategic decision-making.

3. SWOT analysis

This SWOT analysis template helps assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a concise and organized manner. It will help facilitate strategic planning and decision-making.

4. Risk assessment 

This risk assessment template , integrated with market analysis, enables businesses to identify and evaluate potential risks associated with market dynamics and other potential barriers.

5. Competitive analysis 

This template helps to systematically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. It provides a structured approach to research, and it analyzes its products, services, target market, marketing strategies, and financial performance.

6. Marketing SWOT analysis

This marketing SWOT analysis template allows for evaluating a company's marketing strategies. It helps identify strengths and weaknesses internally while analyzing opportunities and threats in the market. 

7. Market segmentation

This template aids in analyzing geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral segments to better understand the target audience's preferences and needs. It enables effective targeting and messaging.

8. Market potential analysis

This market potential analysis template offers a comprehensive and customizable solution for analyzing market size, trends, segmentation, SWOT analysis, and new product launch strategy.

Here are 8 templates to analyze market reports, industry data, and other relevant documents.

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The Ultimate Guide to Market Research [+Free Templates]

A comprehensive guide on Market Research with tools, examples of brands winning with research, and templates for surveys, focus groups + presentation template.

Rakefet is the CMO at Mayple. She manages all things marketing and leads our community of experts through live events, workshops, and expert interviews. MBA, 1 dog + 2 cats, and has an extensive collection of Chinese teas.

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Natalie is a content writer and manager who is passionate about using her craft to empower others. She thrives on team dynamic, great coffee, and excellent content. One of these days, she might even get to her own content ideas.

Updated February 26, 2024.

Before you do anything in business you have to have a good grasp of the market. What’s the market like? Who are your competitors? And what are the pain points and challenges of your ideal customer? And how can you solve them? Once you have the answers to those questions then you are ready to move forward with a marketing plan and/or hire a digital marketing agency to execute it.

In this guide we break down what market research is, the different types of market research, and provide you with some of the best templates, tools, and examples, to help you execute it on your own.

Excited to learn?

Let’s dive in.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to determine the success of your product or service, make changes to your existing product, or understand the perception of your brand in the market.

“Research is formalized curiosity, it is poking and prying with a purpose.” - Zora Neale Hurston

We hear the phrase "product-market fit" all the time and that just means that a product solves a customer's need in the market. And it's very hard to get there without proper market research. Now, I know what you're going to say. Why not get actionable insights from your existing customers? Why not do some customer research?

The problem with customer research is two-fold:

• You have a very limited amount of data as your current customers don't represent the entire market.
• Customer research can introduce a lot of bias into the process.

So the real way to solve these issues is by going broader and conducting some market research.

Why do market research?

There are many benefits of doing market research for your company. Here are a few of them:

• Understand how much demand exists in the market, the market size
• Discover who your competitors are and where they are falling short.
• Better understand the needs of your target customers and the problems and pain points your product solves.
• Learn what your potential customers feel about your brand.
• Identify potential partners and new markets and opportunities.
• Determine which product features you should develop next.
• Find out what your ideal customer is thinking and feeling.
• Use these findings to improve your brand strategy and marketing campaigns.

“The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight.” - Carly Fiorina

Market research allows you to make better business decisions at every stage of your business and helps you launch better products and services for your customers.

Primary vs secondary research

There are two main types of market research - primary and secondary research.

Primary research

Primary market research is when researchers collect information directly, instead of relying on outside sources of information. It could be done through interviews, online surveys, or focus groups and the advantage here is that the company owns that information. The disadvantage of using primary sources of information is that it's usually more expensive and time-consuming than secondary market research.

Secondary research

Secondary market research involves using existing data that is summarized and collected by third parties. Secondary sources could be commercial sources or public sources like libraries, other websites, blogs , government agencies, and existing surveys. It's data that's more readily available and it's usually much cheaper than conducting primary research.

Qualitative vs quantitative research

Qualitative research is about gathering qualitative data like the market sentiment about the products currently available on the market (read: words and meanings). Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics. It's data that is numbers-based, countable, and measurable.

Types of market research

1. competitive analysis.

Every business needs to know its own strengths and weaknesses and how they compare with its largest competitors in the market. It helps brands identify gaps in the market, develop new products and services, uncover market trends, improve brand positioning , and increase their market share. A SWOT analysis is a good framework to use for this type of research.

2. Consumer insights

It's also equally important to know what consumers are thinking, what the most common problems are and what products they are purchasing. Consumer research can be done through social listening which involves tracking consumer conversations on social media. It could also include analyzing audiences of brands , online communities, and influencers, and analyzing trends in the market.

3. Brand awareness research

Brand awareness is a super important metric for understanding how well your target audience knows your brand. It's used to assess brand performance and the marketing effectiveness of a brand. It tells you about the associations consumers make when they think of your brand and what they believe you're all about.

4. Customer satisfaction research

 Customer satisfaction and loyalty are two really important levers for any business and you don't have to conduct in-depth interviews to get that information. There is a wide range of automated methods to get that kind of data including customer surveys such as NPS surveys, customer effort score (CES) surveys, and regularly asking your customers about their experience with your brand.

5. Customer segmentation research

 Customer segmentation research involves figuring out what buckets consumers fall into based on common characteristics such as - demographics, interests, purchasing behavior, and more. Market segmentation is super helpful for advertising campaigns, product launches, and customer journey mapping.

6. Interviews

Customer interviews are one of the most effective market research methods out there. It's a great way for business owners to get first-party data from their customers and get insights into how they are doing in real time.

7. Focus groups

Focus groups are a great way to get data on a specific demographic. It's one of the most well-known data collection methods and it involves taking a sample size of people and asking them some open-ended questions. It's a great way to get actionable insights from your target market.

8. Pricing research

 Pricing strategy has a huge influence on business growth and it's critical for any business to know how they compare with the leading brands in their niche. It can help you understand what your target customer is willing to pay for your product and at what price you should be selling it.

To start, get automated software to track your competitors' pricing . Then, summarize your research into a report and group the results based on product attributes and other factors. You can use quadrants to make it easier to read visually.

9. Campaign research

It's also important for a brand to research its past marketing campaigns to determine the results and analyze their success. It takes a lot of experimentation to nail the various aspects of a campaign and it's crucial for business leaders to continuously analyze and iterate.

10. Product/service use research

Product or user research gives you an idea of why and how an audience uses a product and gives you data about specific features. Studies show that usability testing is ranked among the most useful ways to discover user insights (8.7 out of 10), above digital analytics and user surveys. So it's a very effective way to measure the usability of a product.

Now that you know the different types of market research let's go through a step-by-step process of setting up your study.

How to conduct a market research study

Looking for your next business idea? Want to check which niche markets are going to be best for it? if it's going to Here's a pretty simple process for conducting

1. Define your buyer persona

The first step in market research is to understand who your buyers are. For that, you need a buyer persona (sometimes called a marketing persona) which is a fictional generalized description of your target customer. You could (and should) have several buyer personas to work with.

Key characteristics to include in your buyer personas are:

• Job title(s)
• Family size
• Major challenges

Now that you've got your customer personas it's time to decide who to work with for your research.

2. Identify the right people to engage with

It's critical that you pick the right group of people to research. This could make or break your market research study. It's important to pick a representative sample that most closely resembles your target customer. That way you'll be able to identify their actual characteristics, challenges, pain points, and buying behavior.

Here are a few strategies that will help you pick the right people:

• Select people who have recently interacted with you
• Pull a list of participants who made a recent purchase
• Call for participants on social media
• Leverage your own network
• Gather a mix of participants
• Offer an incentive (gift card, product access, content upgrades)

3. Pick your data collection method(s)

Here's a quick breakdown of all the different ways you could collect data for your market research study.

Surveys are by far the fastest method of gathering data. You could launch them on your site or send them in an email and automate the whole process. Regular surveys can also help brands improve their customer service so they help kill two birds with one stone.

Interviews take a little longer and require a detailed set of interview questions. Never go into an interview without a clear idea of what you're going to be asking. It's also a little more difficult to schedule time and to get your potential or current customers on the phone or on Zoom.

Focus group

Focus groups are controlled interviews with groups of people led by facilitators. Participants in focus groups are selected based on a set of predetermined criteria such as location, age, social status, income, and more.

Online tracking

Online tracking is done through digital analytics tools like HotJar or Google Analytics. Tracking user behavior on your site gets you an accurate analysis of who your demographic is and what are the types of products or content that they engage with.

The problem here is that you never get to find out the 'why' - the reason behind their behavior - and that's why you need to combine digital analytics with other data collection methods like surveys and usability/product testing.

Marketing analysis

Another great way to collect data is to analyze your marketing campaigns which gives you a great idea of who clicked on your ads, how often, and which device they used. It's a more focused way of using tracking to zero in on a specific marketing campaign.

Social media monitoring

We've talked about this one before. Social monitoring or listening is when you track online conversations on social media platforms. You can use a simple social listening tool to get all the data you need by searching for specific keywords, hashtags, or topics.

Subscription and registration data

Another great way to collect data is to look at your existing audience. That might include your email list, rewards program, or existing customers. Depending on the size of your list, it could give you some broad insights into the type of customers/users you have and what they are most interested in.

Monitoring in-store traffic

Conduct a customer observation session to monitor your actual customers and how they behave in your store (physically or online). Observation is a market research technique where highly-trained market researchers observe how people or consumers interact with products/services in a natural setting.

4. Prepare your research questions

Write down your research questions before you conduct the research. Make sure you cover all the topics that you are trying to gain clarity on and include open-ended questions. The type of questions you use will vary depending on your data collection approach from the last step.

If you're doing a survey or an in-person interview then here are some of the best questions to ask.

The awareness stage

• How did you know that something in this product category could help you?
• Think back to the time you first realized you needed [product category]. What was your challenge?
• How familiar were you with different options on the market?

The consideration stage

• Where did you go to find out the information?
• What was the first thing you did to research potential solutions?
• Did you search on Google? What specifically did you search for? Which keywords did you use?
• Which vendor sites did you visit?
• What did you find helpful? What turned you off?

The decision stage

• Which criteria did you use to compare different vendors?
• What vendors made it to the shortlist and what were the pros/cons of each?
• Who else was involved in the final decision?
• Allow time for further questions on their end.
• Don't forget to thank them for their time and confirm their email/address to receive the incentive you offered

If you noticed, the progression of these questions follows the stages of the buyer's journey which helps you to gain actionable insights into the entire customer experience.

5. List your primary competitors

There are two kinds of competitors - industry competitors and content competitors. Industry competitors compete with you on the actual product or service they sell. Content competitors compete with you in terms of the content they publish - whether that's on specific keywords or they rank higher on topics that you want to be ranked for.

It's important to write a list of all of your competitors and compare their strengths, weaknesses, competitive advantages, and the type of content they publish.

There are different ways to find your competitors. You can look on sites like G2 Crowd and check their industry quadrants.

You could also download a market report from Forrester or Gartner . And you could also search on social media or market research tools like SimilarWeb .

6. Summarize your findings

Now that you've done your research it's time to summarize your findings. Look for common themes in your research and try to present them in the simplest way possible. Use your favorite presentation software to document it and add it to your company database.

Here's a quick research outline you could use:

Background - your goals and why you conducted this study

Participants - who you've talked to. Break down the type of personas and/or customers you've spoken with.

Executive summary - what was the most interesting stuff you've learned? What do you plan to do about it?

Customer journey map - map out the specific motivations and behavioral insights you've gained from each stage of the customer journey (awareness, consideration, and decision).

Action plan - describe what action steps you're going to take to address the issues you've uncovered in your research and how you are going to promote your product/service to your target audience more effectively.

Market research template

Not sure where to begin? Need some templates to help you get started? We got them for you.

1. Market survey template

First and foremost, you need a template to run your market survey. In this template, you will find all the types of questions you should be asking - demographic, product, pricing, and brand questions. They can be used for market surveys, individual interviews, and focus groups.

We also present a variety of question formats for you to use:

• true/false questions
• multiple choice questions
• open response questions

2. SWOT analysis template

A strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis is one of the best ways to do competitor research. It's a really simple analysis. There are four squares and you write down all four of these attributes for each of your competitors.

3. Focus group template

Not sure how to conduct focus groups? Here is a comprehensive template that will help you to take better notes and record your findings during the focus group meeting.

4. Marketing strategy template

The plan of action from your market research should become a vital part of your marketing strategy. We've actually created a marketing strategy template that you could download and use to update your marketing personas, your SWOT analysis, and your marketing channel strategies.

Market research examples

Here are some examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly in market research. Some brands thrive on research and some ignore it completely. Take a look.

McDonald's

McDonald’s sells its food in 97 countries around the world. Their secret? They do a lot of market research before they launch anything. The company uses four key questions in their research process:

• Which products are performing well?
• What prices are most affordable to customers?
• What are consumers reading and watching?
• What content do they consume?
• Which restaurants are most attended, and why?

They also extensively use customer feedback to improve their products. They even put some products up for a vote to see which ones are most loved by their customers.

The iconic coffee brand is valued at almost $30 billion and has over 30,000 coffee shops around the world and part of that success comes from their obsession with customer service. They launched a brilliant idea called “My Starbucks Idea” to try and make the customer feel a part of the journey.

It was an open innovation platform where customers could post their idea for a new coffee drink or food item and if it was good a company representative would actually reach out to them. It had a leaderboard and every year the company would develop some of these ideas.

In 2012, Starbucks launched 73 coffee products from ideas they received from customers. Cake pops and pumpkin spice lattes were born out of this platform, all thanks to market research. Can you imagine a world without pumpkin spice lattes?

For all its innovation Facebook had an epic market research failure. In 2013, Facebook partnered with HTC to launch a smartphone called First. It had Facebook’s interface on its home screen and that was a really jarring change for most people. Instead of taking you to a home screen with your favorite apps, Facebook really took center stage.

To be fair, you could turn it off and get a regular Android home window but that would be missing the entire reason you bought the phone in the first place. So it was a complete mismatch to consumers’ wants and the phone flopped.

Turns out, that nobody wanted to see Facebook when they first opened their phone 😅.

Bloom & Wild

Bloom & Wild is a UK flower delivery brand that was looking for their next campaign. They did some research and found out that people think red roses are cliche and prefer to buy something else as a gift on Valentine’s Day. So the brand chose not to sell roses for Valentine’s Day 2021 and made it into a “No Roses Campaign”.

The results - they saw a 51% increase in press coverage year after year.

Top tools used for market research

Here are some of the top market research and digital analytics tools you should try out for your next research project.

Answer the Public

Answer the public is a free market research tool that helps marketers figure out what questions people ask online. It's really easy to use. You put in a keyword or topic and it spits out a whole variety of questions and subtopics.

Spyfu is a search engine analytics platform that gives you data on where your competitors get their traffic from. It provides info on the kind of both organic traffic and PPC channels down to the specific keywords people used to find each site. It's a great tool to use to map the competitive landscape.

Think with Google

This is an online publication from Google's team where they publish consumer insights from real-time data and their own insights. It uses Google Analytics but presents it to you as a library of information. You can find industry data on a whole array of businesses from educational institutions to counseling services.

Want to do the most extensive market research possible? Use SimilarWeb. It's a competitive analysis and data tool that provides you with literally everything you need.

It has data on:

• Digital marketing data - SEO, traffic, advertising
• Economic trends - economic indicators like annual growth rate, audience, benchmarking
• eCommerce, investing, and even sales data

BuzzSumo is a great tool to use to get actionable insights from social media and content marketing. It aggregates data from various social media channels and shows you the type of content that users engage with and share on their pages.

Typeform is a survey tool that can help you make surveys and fun interactive forms. It's a great tool to use to make your forms more engaging for your audience. The tool has a bunch of easy templates and a ton of integrations to help you visualize that data and share it with your team.

Latana is a brand research tool that helps you understand consumer perception of your brand over time. It helps you answer some key questions about the type of values your customers have, and the type of audiences your competitors are targeting and helps you to focus your campaigns on the right audience for your business.

Statista is one of the most popular consumer data platforms around. It has a wealth of information about consumer markets, business conditions, and industry trends around the world. It's easier to use than most business publications because it aggregates all the data you need in one place. The downside is that it's a little pricy but perfect for teams that have the budget for it.

Dimensions.ai

Dimensions is a search engine for academic publications. It is a great resource if you're looking for deeper insights into things like psychology, micro and macroeconomics, and business trends. A lot of the articles are free to view just make sure you select the " All OA " option which stands for Open Access research.

Otter is an AI-powered transcription software for interviews and meetings. It sits in the background and transcribes your meeting for you and then provides you with a digitized conversation that can be stored, search for specific keywords, and analyzed. It's a great tool to use for doing interviews.

Yelp is a search engine for reviews of local businesses. It's one of the best sources of opinions about a whole variety of products and services. It's a great place to get ideas about the kind of interview questions you want to ask, to find out the pain points of your ideal customer, and to find deeper insights into your target audience.

You have to conduct your market research regularly if you want to see significant results. Try the different methods that we’ve outlined, see what works for you, and remember to keep your team’s focus on the customer. The more knowledgeable they are of your target customer’s needs and wants the better your targeting and marketing strategy will be.

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How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

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Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry.

What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

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Discover, Analyze, Succeed: 10 Best Market Research Templates

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

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When promoting your products or launching new ones, it’s essential to understand the market, size up your competition, and have a crystal-clear picture of what your customers want. Once you’ve got that insight, you’re ready to set the stage with a marketing plan .

Market research might sound intimidating, considering the laborious process of collecting and analyzing data. But don’t fret—market research templates swoop in to save the day. They provide a structured roadmap that covers all the vital market research steps, from pinpointing your objectives to gathering and interpreting the data. 🗺️

Come along as we delve into the top 10 free market research templates . We’ll walk you through their unique features, making it a breeze to pick the perfect template that suits your needs.

• What Is a Market Research Template? 

What Are the Key Components of a Market Research Template?

1. clickup market research template, 2. clickup market analysis template, 3. clickup business plan template, 4. clickup business development plan template, 5. clickup new product development template, 6. clickup product positioning template, 7. clickup competitive analysis template, 8. clickup customer journey map template, 9. word market research plan template by flexmr, 10. word general market survey template by businessinabox.

What Is a Market Research Template?

Market research is a vast, often time-consuming process that involves gathering essential information about a target market through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. It’s crucial for anticipating trends and maintaining a competitive edge over your rivals.

A market research template is a pre-designed framework to bring structure to your research processes. It comes with questions and fields for collecting data relevant to specific markets or objectives.

It simplifies the whole exercise by providing a standard format that you can customize to align with your research goals.

Market research templates help you:

• Save time designing and planning your research project
• Save money by removing the need for external research firms
• Ensure consistency in data collection, analysis, and reporting

A market research template is like a recipe for conducting research. It tells you what you need and how to use it. Here are the key components you can find in this template:

• Research objectives : Clearly defined goals of the research project
• Data collection methods : Specific methods and tools for gathering information, such as surveys, interviews, or observations
• Research questions : A set of well-crafted questions to address the research objectives
• Sample selection : Guidelines for choosing the right target audience or sample group
• Data analysis : Instructions on how the gathered data will be analyzed and interpreted
• Reporting : A format for summarizing and presenting the research findings
• Timeline : A schedule that outlines when you will conduct each research activity
• Budget : Estimated costs associated with the research project
• Contact information : Details of the individuals or teams responsible for the research

10 Best Market Research Templates

We’ve handpicked the most innovative market research templates from Word and ClickUp to help you discover, gather, and analyze data effortlessly. Now, let’s see what makes them stand out! 💖

Market research is your first ally when you want to enhance your brand management and gain insights into your competitors’ strategies. With the ClickUp Market Research Template , you get a user-friendly tool that simplifies the task of gathering and presenting crucial information about your target audience, the state of your product or service, and the broader industry landscape. 🌄

This Task template takes you through the ins and outs of research, covering your approach, data collection techniques, and the valuable insights you’ve gathered from your current or potential customers through Custom Fields.

Adapt the fields to document any information you see fit—add data links and attachments, or choose a research stage like Design , Preparation , and Execution .

Each task comes with a to-do subtask list to keep a record of research steps, like defining a research scope and setting up a research team. The assignees can use it to monitor each subtask’s progress through Custom Statuses like Open, Under Review, or Closed.

If you’re curious about where your product stands among its competitors, look no further than the ClickUp Market Analysis Template . This tool assists you in identifying and assessing key market trends, gaining insights into customer needs, and examining competitor strategies and performances. ♟️

This extensive market research template sorts competitors into five main types: direct , indirect , potential , future , and replacement (for competitors offering a substitute product).

Use the Growth Share Whiteboard view to evaluate competitor products and decide where to invest your resources. Simply pick the competitor type from the legend, create a sticky note of the corresponding color, and place it on the desired spot. Use the horizontal Quality axis to measure the competitor’s Relative Market Share and the Y-axis to measure their Growth Rate.

The Price vs. Quality Whiteboard view functions similarly, but this time, you’re using a matrix to measure the relation between product quality and price. It gives you a visual grasp of your competitors’ pricing strategy, helping you tactically position your product in the market.

The Competitors List view is your central hub for competitor information, neatly categorized by analysis status like Direct , Indirect , or Potential . Additionally, leverage the Advertisements Board view to see your competitors’ promotional strategies.

Replace traditional, lengthy business plan documents with the ClickUp Business Plan Template and speed up the process. It’s a comprehensive toolkit for documenting every aspect of your business plan and streamlining the drafting process to ensure it’s polished on time. ⏰

This one-page Doc template is neatly divided into several key sections:

• Company description : Provides a company overview, your mission, and vision
• Market analysis : Explains the problem you’re solving, its solution, and the target market
• Sales and marketing strategy : Outlines products and marketing plans
• Operational plan : Covers aspects like your location, equipment, and financial forecasts
• Milestones and metrics : Displays targets and KPIs

Customize the template with your brand logo and contact information. Each section comes with helpful prompts suggesting how to present your data—through bullet lists, pictures, charts, or tables.

Open the Topics List view to see all the sections and subsections included in the comprehensive market research Doc, allowing you to assign them to team members, set due dates, and attach relevant documents.

To track task statuses, switch to the Status Board view and categorize them as To Do, In Progress, Needs Revision, or Complete. Open the Timeline view to monitor potential plan deviations.

Expanding or starting a business is like embarking on an adventure of challenges and surprises. However, a carefully laid-out plan can make this journey much more manageable.

No need to start from scratch, though! Introducing the ClickUp Business Development Plan Template —your business roadmap, equipped with pre-designed sections that will lead you through the entire process, making your path to success smoother. 🛤️

Whether you’re a startup or a growing business, this template offers handy Doc pages to help you document the following:

• Executive summary : For providing an overview of the business you’re growing, outlining the issues you’re addressing, and suggesting solutions
• Key people : For explaining who’s on the executive team and what each person does
• Operations : Lists your business locations and employee count. You can outline the cost of equipment and facilities and map out manufacturing processes on a Whiteboard
• Marketing : Enables sharing the market’s history and growth to foresee potential opportunities, decide on the target audience, and analyze the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses
• Financial plan : Gives an estimate of your cash flow and balance sheet, identifying the revenue point where you break even

Of the market research templates in this list, the one comes with ready-made tables and sheets with guidelines on how to fill them in. Feel free to customize any template section to match your business requirements.

Or you can include images to illustrate your plan, add or remove rows, choose your preferred color pallet, and rename the pages to make them your own—all within the target market research template.

Unlocking the path to a successful product launch boils down to one word: preparation. And guess what? The ClickUp New Product Development Template has got your back! 🙌

This comprehensive market research template streamlines the product development process , ensures alignment between your team and milestones, and keeps all tasks organized for seamless collaboration. All this is possible through Custom Fields, allowing you to explore your project from various viewpoints.

The Project Summary List view neatly organizes your tasks by their project phase , from Idea Generation to Product Launch , making it a breeze to track your progress. The list also clearly displays details like Task Complexity and Impact Level through Custom Fields that you can tailor to your needs.

To observe your tasks like a hawk, open the Process Kanban Board view , which turns tasks into cards and groups them by their phases. It’s your go-to spot to quickly identify which tasks are in the pipeline from conceptualization to launch.

Use the Timeline view for a linear display of your tasks, grouped by the teams working on them and color-coded by phase. This view allows you to efficiently monitor your task schedules and durations by giving you control over your workflow!

You can drag a task to reschedule or tweak its duration by dragging its edges.

Your product’s value directly reflects what your customers think, right? That’s why it’s crucial to figure out where your product slots into the marketplace and how you want your customers to perceive it .

Discover the perfect shortcut to those answers—the ClickUp Product Positioning Template —to implement into your business strategy. This tool helps you better understand your product and find that ideal niche in your target market.

Start by evaluating the product you want to launch in the Product Positioning Assessment view , with pre-made fields like:

• Product name and description
• Market segment
• Target launch date
• Unique selling points
• Pain points

Customize the form by renaming the available fields or adding custom ones.

Distribute the form to your team members, and once completed, all the valuable information automatically appears in the Product List view . This view is where you can review the details covered in the form, assign tasks to team members, set priorities , and group tasks by status.

This template also offers a Product Positioning Map Whiteboard view . It features a graph as a visual aid for showcasing how your upcoming product stacks up in terms of value for money compared to the competition.

Competitive analysis isn’t just a fancy term—it’s your secret weapon if you’re gearing up to introduce a fresh product or service. The ClickUp Competitive Analysis Template is your trusty sidekick for this mission. It assists in revealing competitor strengths and weaknesses, providing a comprehensive industry overview , and cooking up strategies to outshine the competition and nail down your target audience. 🌟

To start your competitive analysis , brainstorm a list of potential competitors. Think about where your customers might go if they didn’t choose your company. Keep it realistic—aim for a list of up to 10 names, leaving time for thorough market research.

After you’ve completed the research, use the provided Matrix to place the competitor’s product concerning the Market Presence and Satisfaction axes. Use the Legend to help you understand the product type , including:

• High market presence and high satisfaction
• High market presence and low satisfaction
• High satisfaction and low market presence
• Low satisfaction and low market presence

Duplicate a color-coded sticky note that matches your product type and drag it over to the quadrant where it fits the best. The Matrix is split into four sections to help you decide whether a product is a Contender , a Leader , a Niche , or a High Performer.

This business strategy template gives you the ultimate freedom to play around with its elements. Add, tweak, and place them wherever you like in the interactive Whiteboard view.

Have you ever found yourself scratching your head, wondering what your customers want? The ClickUp Customer Journey Map Template is a handy tool that can help you out! 🛠️

Think of it as a guide to better understanding your ideal customer’s user persona . By mapping their journey, you can uncover their needs and expectations and come up with sensible strategies to improve your products and services for your target audience.

This Whiteboard template brims with handy question prompts about customer actions, experiences, touchpoints, and solutions. The template leads you through three key stages:

• Awareness : You introduce customers to your business and what it offers
• Consideration : They start considering your business as a solution to their needs, leading them to research your products or services and compare them to other options
• Conversion : They go from pondering to action and become paying customers

Each of these stages comes with pre-made sticky notes to get you started, but you’ve got the creative license to add more. Give the Whiteboard a personal touch with freehand drawing, create shapes, insert images, use connectors, and add text from focus groups, customer research, or any market research examples you own.

If you’re looking for a structured framework to streamline market research, the Word Market Research Plan Template by FlexMR is a handy solution. It’s divided into well-structured sections for every step and features tips and instructions on how to use them.

This Word template is fully customizable, allowing you to modify colors, change font and letter size, add rows and columns to pre-made tables or include graphs and charts. ✍🏻

Use its first section to provide a brief business background. Then, define the project’s scope and specify what you expect to achieve at the project’s conclusion, including target response numbers, data presentation guidelines, and the influence of data on future decision-making .

Additional details the template covers are:

• Target Audience : Describe the customers you aim to research, considering age, demographics, and interactions with the company or product
• Sample Plan : Detail the number of participants you intend to research
• Research Methods : Include qualitative and quantitative methods
• Timeline : Present a project timeline, breaking down tasks and accounting for variations in response rates
• Budget : Outline the budget, providing a cost breakdown and highlighting areas requiring investment
• Ethical Considerations : Address ethical and other considerations that may arise during the project, like conflict of interest with suppliers

To finish up, add Further Considerations to include anything the previous sections don’t cover.

One way to conduct effective market research is through a survey. If you’re unsure about the questions to include for optimal results or need a structured framework to streamline the process, try the Word General Market Survey Template by BusinessInABox.

This two-page Word document contains open-ended and multiple-choice questions for an effective customer case study . They provide all the essential information to understand the market you’re involved in or planning to enter.

The questions in the template cover customer information like:

• Age and gender
• Education level
• Marital status
• Total annual income

As this is a Word template, customize it however you like ! Add or tweak questions to dig into the specifics you’re curious about, and make the survey longer or shorter. Feeling fancy? Give it a personal touch by using a different font or changing the background color!

Crack the Code to Market Domination with These Essential Market Research Templates

Market research can be a wild ride, but these top-notch market research templates make it smooth sailing. From gaming insights into customer preferences to uncovering your competitor’s strategies, they provide a structured solution for every research step.

If you’re hungry for more research assets, dive into the ClickUp template library , where you’ll find over 1,000 user-friendly templates waiting to guide you on areas like mapping out customer journeys , performing competitor analysis , and nailing down product positioning with minimal effort. ✌

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Market research templates

Find out what your customers want and their pain points with Miro's market and business research templates. Target the right audiences and design better customer experiences consistently across all platforms.

Empathy Map Template

Works best for:.

Market Research, User Experience, Mapping

Attracting new users, compelling them to try your product, and turning them into loyal customers—it all starts with understanding them. An empathy map is a tool that leads to that understanding, by giving you space to articulate everything you know about your customers, including their needs, expectations, and decision-making drivers. That way you’ll be able to challenge your assumptions and identify the gaps in your knowledge. Our template lets you easily create an empathy map divided into four key squares—what your customers Say, Think, Do, and Feel.

Fishbone Diagram Template

Operations, Diagrams, Workflows

What is the best way to solve any problem your team faces? Go straight to the root. That means identifying the root causes of the problem, and fishbone diagrams are designed to help you do it best. Also known as the Ishikawa Diagram (named after Japanese quality control expert Kaoru Ishikawa), fishbone diagrams allow teams to visualize all possible causes of a problem, to explore and understand how they fit together holistically. Teams can also use fishbone diagrams as a starting point for thinking about what the root cause of a future problem might be.

Likert Scale Template

Desk Research, Decision Making, Product Management

It’s not always easy to measure complex, highly subjective data — like how people feel about your product, service, or experience. But the Likert scale is designed to help you do it. This scale allows your existing or potential customers to respond to a statement or question with a range of phrases or numbers (e.g., from “strongly agree” to “neutral,” to “strongly disagree,” or from 1 to 5). The goal is to ask your customer some specific questions to turn into easy-to-interpret actionable user insights.

Buyer Persona Template

Marketing, Desk Research, User Experience

You have an ideal customer: The group (or few groups) of people who will buy and love your product or service. But to reach that ideal customer, your entire team or company has to align on who that is. Buyer personas give you a simple but creative way to get that done. These semi-fictional representations of your current and potential customers can help you shape your product offering, weed out the “bad apples,” and tailor your marketing strategies for serious success.

UX Research Plan Template

Market Research, Desk Research, User Experience

A research plan communicates the fundamental information that stakeholders need to understand about a user experience research project: who, what, why, and when. The plan ensures everyone is aligned and knows what they must do to make the UX research project a success. Use the research plan to communicate background information about your project; objectives; research methods; the scope of the project, and profiles of the participants. By using a UX research plan, you can achieve stakeholder buy-in, stay on track, and set yourself up for success.

Job Map Template

Design, Desk Research, Mapping

Want to truly understand your consumers’ mindset? Take a look at things from their perspective — by identifying the “jobs” they need to accomplish and exploring what would make them “hire” or “fire” a product or service like yours. Ideal for UX researchers, job mapping is a staged process that gives you that POV by breaking the “jobs” down step by step, so you can ultimately offer something unique, useful, and different from your competitors. This template makes it easy to create a detailed, comprehensive job map.

Research Template

Education, Desk Research, Product Management

Teams often need to document findings from usability testing sessions and customer interviews into a systematic, flexible user research template. Collecting everyone’s observations into a centralized location makes it easier to share insights company-wide and suggest new features based on user needs. Research templates can be used to record quantitative or qualitative data.. When it’s your job to ask questions, take notes, learn more about your user, and test iteratively, a Research Template can help you validate your assumptions, find similarities across different users, and articulate their mental models, needs, and goals.

Jobs to be Done template

Ideation, Design Thinking, Brainstorming

It’s all about a job done right — customers “hire” a product or service to do a “job,” and if it's not done right, the customer will find someone to do it better. Built on that simple premise, the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework helps entrepreneurs, start-ups, and business managers define who their customer is and see unmet needs in the market. A standard job story lets you see things from your customers’ perspective by telling their story with a “When I…I Want To…So That I …” story structure.

Low-fidelity Wireframes Template

Desk Research, Product Management, Wireframes

When you’re designing a site or building an app, the early stages should be BIG — seeing the big picture and communicating the big idea. Low fidelity wireframes empower you to see it and do it. These rough layouts (think of them as the digital version of a sketch on a napkin) help your teams and project stakeholders quickly determine if a design meeting meets your users’ needs. Our template lets you easily use wireframes during meetings or workshops, presentations, and critique sessions.

User Persona Template

A user persona is a tool for representing and summarizing a target audience for your product or service that you have researched or observed. Whether you’re in content marketing, product marketing, design, or sales, you operate with a target in mind. Maybe it’s your customer or prospect. Maybe it’s someone who will benefit from your product or service. Usually, it’s a whole collection of personalities and needs that intersect in interesting ways. By distilling your knowledge about a user, you create a model for the person you hope to target: this is a persona.

Service Blueprint Template

Desk Research, Operations, Market Research

The Service Blueprint template is a visual tool for designing and optimizing service experiences. It provides a structured framework for mapping customer journeys, identifying touchpoints, and aligning internal processes. This template enables teams to visualize the entire service ecosystem, uncover pain points, and innovate solutions to enhance customer satisfaction. By promoting customer-centricity and collaboration, the Service Blueprint empowers organizations to deliver exceptional service experiences and drive sustainable growth.

Scenario Mapping Template

Desk Research, Mapping, Product Management

Scenario mapping is the process of outlining all the steps a user will take to complete a task. The scenario mapping template helps you create a visual guide to what different personas are doing, thinking, and feeling in different situations. Use scenario mapping to outline an intended or ideal scenario (what should happen) as well as what currently happens. If you’re trying to outline the ideal scenario, user mapping should take place very early on in a project and can help inform user stories and the product backlog. If you’re just trying to get a better sense of what currently happens, you can do user mapping when conducting user interviews or observation.

Lean UX Canvas Template

Desk Research, Product Management, User Experience

What are you building, why are building it, and who are you building it for? Those are the big pictures questions that guide great companies and teams toward success — and Lean UX helps you find the answers. Especially helpful during project research, design, and planning, this tool lets you quickly make product improvements and solve business problems, leading to a more customer-centric product. This template will let you create a Lean UX canvas structured around eight key elements: Business problem, Business outcome, Users and customers, User benefits, Solution ideas, Hypothesis, Assumptions, Experimentation.

Website Wireframing Template

Wireframes, User Experience

Wireframing is a method for designing a website at the structural level. A wireframe is a stylized layout of a web page showcasing the interface elements on each page. Use this Wireframe Template to iterate on web pages quickly and cheaply. You can share the wireframe with clients or teammates and collaborate with stakeholders. Wireframes allow teams to get stakeholder buy-in without investing too much time or resources. They help ensure that your website’s structure and flow will meet user needs and expectations.

Screen Flow Template

UX Design, Product Management, Wireframes

A screen flow (or wireflow) brings together a multi-screen layout that combines wireframes with flowcharts. The result is an end-to-end flow that maps out what users see on each screen and how it impacts their decision-making process through your product or service. By thinking visually about what your customers are looking at, you can communicate with internal teams, stakeholders, and clients about the decisions you’ve made. You can also use a screen flow to find new opportunities to make the user experience frictionless and free of frustration from start to end.

Low-Fidelity Prototype Template

Design, Desk Research, Wireframes

Low fidelity prototypes serve as practical early visions of your product or service. These simple prototypes share only a few features with the final product. They are best for testing broad concepts and validating ideas. Low fidelity prototypes help product and UX teams study product or service functionality by focusing on rapid iteration and user testing to inform future designs. The focus on sketching and mapping out content, menus, and user flow allows both designers and non-designers to participate in the design and ideation process. Instead of producing linked interactive screens, low fidelity prototypes focus on insights about user needs, designer vision, and alignment of stakeholder goals.

Online Sketching Template

UX Design, Desk Research, Design Thinking

Before you go full steam ahead with a promising idea, look at it from a high level — to know how it functions and how well it meets your goals. That’s what sketches do. This template gives you a powerful remote collaboration tool for the initial stages of prototyping, whether you’re sketching out web pages and mobile apps, designing logos, or planning events. Then you can easily share your sketch with your team, and save each stage of your sketch before changing it and building on it.

iPhone App Template

UX Design, Desk Research, Wireframes

Incredible percentages of smartphone users worldwide have chosen iPhones (including some of your existing and potential customers), and those users simply love their apps. But designing and creating an iPhone app from scratch can be one seriously daunting, effort-intensive task. Not here — this template makes it easy. You’ll be able to customize designs, create interactive protocols, share with your collaborators, iterate as a team, and ultimately develop an iPhone app your customers will love.

App Wireframe Template

UX Design, Wireframes

Ready to start building an app? Don’t just imagine how it will function and how users will interact with it—let a wireframe show you. Wireframing is a technique for creating a basic layout of each screen. When you wireframe, ideally early in the process, you’ll gain an understanding of what each screen will accomplish and get buy-in from important stakeholders—all before adding the design and content, which will save you time and money. And by thinking of things in terms of a user’s journey, you’ll deliver a more compelling, successful experience.

Look Mock Analyze Template

Design, Desk Research, Product Management

Doing your homework (aka, the research) is a key step in your design process, and the Look, Mock, Analyze approach helps you examine, structure, and streamline that step. With this powerful tool you’ll be able to identify your strengths and weaknesses, what you did right or wrong, and whether you spent time efficiently. Our Look, Mock, Analyze template makes it so easy for you to discover inspiration, mock up designs, and get feedback — you can start by setting up your board in less than a minute.

Newsletter Template

Design, Marketing, Desk Research

Using a newsletter template allows you to create a structured and eye-catching newsletter for your subscribers. Add images, text, a call-to-action, and anything else that’ll keep your audience engaged. Take a look at Miro’s newsletter template to start creating unique and distinctive emails today.

Visual Story Map Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Mapping

Some people like to think of a visual story map as a stylized to-do list, but it’s a lot more powerful than that. Visual story mapping allows your product management team to visualize multiple dimensions of information.

Remote Design Sprint Template

Design, Desk Research, Sprint Planning

A design sprint is an intensive process of designing, iterating, and testing a prototype over a 4 or 5 day period. Design sprints are conducted to break out of stal, work processes, find a fresh perspective, identify problems in a unique way, and rapidly develop solutions. Developed by Google, design sprints were created to enable teams to align on a specific problem, generate multiple solutions, create and test prototypes, and get feedback from users in a short period of time. This template was originally created by JustMad, a business-driven design consultancy, and has been leveraged by distributed teams worldwide.

Official 5-Day Design Sprint

The goal of a Design Sprint is to build and test a prototype in just five days. You'll take a small team, clear the schedule for a week, and rapidly progress from problem to tested solution using a proven step-by-step checklist. Steph Cruchon of Design Sprint created this template for Miro in collaboration with design sprint gurus at Google. This Design Sprint template is designed specifically for remote sprints so you can run productive and efficient sprints with colleagues around the world.

User Story Map Template

Popularized by Jeff Patton in 2005, the user story mapping technique is an agile way to manage product backlogs. Whether you’re working alone or with a product team, you can leverage user story mapping to plan product releases. User story maps help teams stay focused on the business value and release features that customers care about. The framework helps to get a shared understanding for the cross-functional team of what needs to be done to satisfy customers' needs.

Mood Board Template

Design, Brainstorming, Ideation

When you’re kicking off a creative project, it’s sometimes important to communicate the mood you’re trying to evoke — but it’s so hard to do it with words. So create a mood board and use images, color palettes, textures, and typography. Mood boards are also perfect for gathering inspiration and sketching out and pitching ideas, and they’re not just for designers — your content writers, sales teams, and product teams can use them too, and this template makes it easy for all of you to get started.

Website Flowchart Template

Flowcharts, Mapping, User Experience

A website flowchart, also known as a sitemap, maps out the structure and complexity of any current or future website. The flowchart can also help your team identify knowledge gaps for future content. When you’re building a website, you want to ensure that each piece of content gives users accurate research results based on keywords associated with your web content. Product, UX, and content teams can use flowcharts or sitemaps to understand everything contained in a website, and plan to add or restructure content to improve a website’s user experience.

Customer Journey Map Template

Ideation, Mapping, Product Management

A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual representation of your customer’s experience. It allows you to capture the path that a customer follows when they buy a product, sign up for a service, or otherwise interact with your site. Most maps include a specific persona, outlines their customer experience from beginning to end, and captures the potential emotional highs and lows of interacting with the product or service. Use this template to easily create customer journey maps for projects of all kinds.

Use Case Diagram Template

Marketing, Market Research, Diagrams

A use case diagram is a visual tool that helps you analyze the relationships between personas and use cases. Use case diagrams typically depict the expected behavior of the system: what will happen and when. A use case diagram is helpful because it allows you to design a system from the perspective of the end user. It’s a valuable tool for communicating your desired system behavior in the language of the user, by specifying all externally visible system behavior.

Affinity Diagram Template

You can use an affinity diagram to generate, organize, and consolidate information that comes out of a brainstorming session. Whether you’re building a product, working through a complex problem, establishing a process, or piecing apart an issue, an affinity diagram is a useful and simple framework that gives each team member the opportunity to pitch in and share their thoughts. But it’s not just ideal for brainstorms—this is a great template and tool when you need to reach consensus or analyze data such as survey results.

Feature Planning Template

Desk Research, Agile Methodology, Product Management

Features are what make a product or service fun, but adding new ones is no walk in the park. It takes many steps—ideating, designing, refining, building, testing, launching, and promoting—and just as many stakeholders. Feature Planning lets you put a smooth, sturdy process in place, so you can add a feature successfully, and spend less time and resources doing it. That makes our Feature Planning Template a smart starting point for anyone looking to add new product features, especially members of product, engineering, marketing, and sales teams.

Target Audience Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Prioritization

Understanding your target audience is vital to business success. How can you market yourself effectively if you don’t know who you’re targeting? Using the Target Audience template, you can review valuable data about who your customers are and what they want from your product or service.

App Development Canvas Template

Market Research, Product Management, User Experience

Ever noticed that building a successful app requires lots of players and moving parts? If you’re a project manager, you definitely have. Lucky for you, an app development canvas will let you own and optimize the entire process. It features 18 boxes, each one focusing on a key aspect of app development, giving you a big-picture view. That way you can fine-tune processes and get ahead of potential problems along the way—resulting in a smoother path and a better, tighter product.

Perceptual Map Template

To shape your messaging, tailor your marketing, improve your product, and build your brand, you have to know your customers’ perceptions — what they think of you and your competitors. You can gain those insights by exploring a perceptual map. This simple, powerful tool creates a visual representation of how customers rank your price, performance, safety, and reliability. Put this template to work and you’ll be able to size up your competition, see gaps in the market, and understand changes in customer behavior and purchasing decisions.

Features Audit Template

Add new features or improve existing features—those are the two paths toward improving a product. But which should you take? A features audit will help you decide. This easy, powerful product management tool will give you a way to examine all of your features, then gather research and have detailed discussions about the ones that simply aren’t working. Then you can decide if you should increase those features’ visibility or the frequency with which it’s used—or if you should remove it altogether.

Feature Canvas Template

When you’re working on a new feature that solves a problem for your users, it’s easy to dive right in and start looking for solutions. However, it’s important to understand the initial user problem first. Use the Feature Canvas template to do a deep-dive into the user’s problems, the context in which they will use your feature, and the value proposition you will deliver to your users. The template enables you to spend more time exploring the problem to anticipate any potential blind spots before jumping into solutions mode.

Customer Problem Statement Template

Ideation, Design Thinking, Product Management

Put yourself in the shoes of your consumers with a customer problem statement. Figure out their problems and how your product or service can solve those problems and make their lives easier. As a bonus, you’ll better understand your customers throughout the process.

UX Project Canvas Template

User Experience, UX Design, Market Research

Inspired by Alexander Osterwalder's 2005 business model canvas, the project canvas will help your team visualize the big picture of your UX and design projects, providing a convenient structure that holds all of your important data. This innovative tool enables you to transform an idea into a project plan, stimulating collaboration and communication between collaborators. Unlike alternative models, the project canvas is a simple interface. There are few startup costs, and employees can easily be brought up to speed to start using the canvas quickly.

Proto Persona Template

UX, UX Research, Product Design

The Proto Persona Template is tailored to capture the essence of hypothetical user segments. It encapsulates key attributes such as user needs, behaviors, and potential pain points. One of its standout benefits is its ability to foster empathy. By visualizing and understanding these preliminary user profiles, design and strategy teams can tap into a deeper connection with their target audience, ensuring that solutions resonate authentically and address genuine needs.

Supply and Demand Graph Template

Market Research, Mapping, Diagrams

How do you price your product so that you make a profit while keeping customers and manufacturers happy? By finding a fair price. A supply and demand diagram is a graph that visualizes how much demand there is for your product and how many products you need. This, in turn, helps you with product pricing.

Kano Model Template

Desk Research, Product Management, Prioritization

When it comes down to it, a product’s success is determined by the features it offers and the satisfaction it gives to customers. So which features matter most? The Kano model will help you decide. It’s a simple, powerful method for helping you prioritize all your features — by comparing how much satisfaction a feature will deliver to what it will cost to implement. This template lets you easily create a standard Kano model, with two axes (satisfaction and functionality) creating a quadrant with four values: attractive, performance, indifferent, and must-be.

Prune the Product Tree Template

Prune the Product Tree (also known as the product tree game or the product tree prioritization framework) is a visual tool that helps product managers organize and prioritize product feature requests. The tree represents a product roadmap and helps your team think about how to grow and shape your product or service by gamifying feedback-gathering from customers and stakeholders. A typical product tree has four symbolic features: the trunk, which represents the existing product features your team is building; the branches, each of which represents a product or system function; roots, which are technical requirements or infrastructure; and leaves, which are new ideas for product features.

Strategy Diamond Template

Leadership, Operations, Strategic Planning

To achieve key objectives, every business assembles a series of strategies. But what elements should you consider when building a strategy? A strategy diamond is a collection of elements forming a coherent business strategy. These elements include: Arenas, Differentiators, Vehicles, Staging, and Economic Logic. Most strategic plans focus on just one or two of these elements, creating gaps that might cause problems for your business later on. A strategy diamond can help you stay focused and ensure you’re fulfilling all of your business’s needs rather than one or two.

Go-to-Market Strategy Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Strategic Planning

It doesn’t matter how innovative or effective a new product is — if it doesn’t get noticed and adopted by the right audience, the product won’t get off the ground. That’s where your Go-to-Market Strategy comes in. It’s a single resource that houses all of your research, insights, and data, and includes your business plan, target audience, marketing approach, and sales strategy. A GTM is especially important for any startups who grow fast, have to make split-second decisions, and have to be fully in sync.

Design Research Template

UX Design, Design Thinking, Desk Research

A design research map is a grid framework showing the relationship between two key intersections in research methodologies: mindset and approach. Design research maps encourage your team or clients to develop new business strategies using generative design thinking. Originally designed by academic Liz Sanders, the framework is meant to resolve confusion or overlap between research and design methods. Whether your team is in problem-solving or problem space definition mode, using a research design template can help you consider the collective value of many unrelated practices.

Product / Market Fit Canvas Template

Market Research, Strategic Planning, Product Management

The product/market fit canvas template is used to help product teams meet customer and market needs with their product design. This template looks at a product in two dimensions: first, how the product fits user needs, and second, how the fully designed product fits within the market landscape. This combined metric understands a product holistically from the way customers use and desire a product, to the market demand. By comparing customer and product qualities side by side, users should better understand their product space and key metrics.

Product Positioning Template

Marketing, Product Management, Desk Research

For better or for worse, your company’s chances for success hinge partially on your market. As such, before you start building products and planning strategies, it’s a good idea to conduct a product positioning exercise. A product positioning exercise is designed to situate your company and your offering within a market. The product positioning template guides you to consider key topics such as defining your product and market category, identifying your target segment and competitors, and understanding your key benefits and differentiation.

Working Backwards Template

Desk Research, Strategic Planning, Product Management

Find out how to use the Working Backwards template to plan, structure, and execute the launch of a new product. Using the template, you’ll figure out if the product is worth launching in the first place.

HEART Framework Template

Desk Research, Project Management, User Experience

Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. Those are the pillars of user experience — which is why they serve as the key metrics in the HEART framework. Developed by the research team at Google, this framework gives larger companies an accurate way to measure user experience at scale, which you can then reference throughout the product development lifecycle. While the HEART framework uses five metrics, you might not need all five for every project — choose the ones that will be most useful for your company and project.

Voice of the Customer Template

Identifying the voice of the customer is a crucial part of any customer experience strategy. Your Voice of Customer is simply a framework for understanding your customers’ needs, wants, preferences, and expectations as they interact with your brand. Evaluating your Voice of Customer allows you to dive into what your customers are thinking, feeling, and saying about your products and services, so you can build a better customer journey. Use the Voice of Customer template to record answers to key questions about your customer, including: What are they saying about our product? What do they need? How can we fulfill that need? And who is this persona?

Infographic Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Documentation

As we bet you’ve experienced, data can get pretty dense and dry. But you need it to be compelling, memorable, and understandable. The solution? Infographics. These are tools that let you present information in a visually striking way and turn quantitative or qualitative data into stories that engage and resonate. Whoever you’ll be presenting to — customers, donors, or your own internal teams — our template will let you design an infographic that combines text and visuals to break down even the most complicated data.

Growth Experiments Template

Leadership, Desk Research, Strategic Planning

Many ambitious companies are eying the future and aiming to grow. But growth decisions can be leaps of faith that are risky and costly. That’s why growth experiments make so much sense. They offer a systematic six-step method that reveals which strategies are most effective, how they’ll affect your revenue, and how they compare to your past approaches. By helping you test out your strategies for scaling your business before you fully commit, growth experiments can save you serious time, resources, and money.

Flyer Maker Template

Design, Marketing

Whether it’s a client party or a nonprofit fundraiser, your event needs one key thing to be a smashing success: people to show up. That’s why promoting it is such an important part of the planning—and creating and sending a flyer is the first step. These single-page files will grab your guests’ attention and give them the key details, such as the time, date, and location (and if it’s a fundraiser, who/what the funds will benefit). This template will let you lay out text and customize a flyer design.

User Interview Template

Desk Research, Product Management

A user interview is a UX research technique in which researchers ask the user questions about a topic. They allow your team to quickly and easily collect user data and learn more about your users. In general, organizations conduct user interviews to gather background data, to understand how people use technology, to take a snapshot of how users interact with a product, to understand user objectives and motivations, and to find users’ pain points. Use this template to record notes during an interview to ensure you’re gathering the data you need to create personas.

3C Analysis Template

Marketing, Strategic Planning

The 3C Analysis Template is a powerful tool that can help you analyze your business environment, identify opportunities for growth, and guide your business strategy. By using the template, you can collaborate with your team in real time, customize the template to fit your needs, and save time, making it an essential tool for any business looking to stay ahead of the competition.

Business Case Template

Leadership, Marketing, Market Research

Impress stakeholders and get buy-in with this complete Business Case Template. Cover all key elements of a business case and ensure your pitch is successful.

Audience Persona Template

Research, UX, Design, Product, Marketing

The Audience Persona Template is an essential tool that helps gain valuable insights into the target demographic. It ensures that every strategic decision is tailored to meet the specific needs and preferences of the audience. The template is designed to cover areas like Background, Hobbies and Interests, Goals, Biggest Fears, Challenges, Common Objections, and Demographics. This detailed approach enables the creation of a nuanced and multi-dimensional audience profile. By understanding the basic demographic information and the target audience's deeper motivations, challenges, and apprehensions, teams can develop more empathetic, effective, and targeted strategies. This depth of understanding leads to more resonant and successful product developments, marketing campaigns, and customer engagement initiatives.

Rebranding Presentation

Presentations, UX Design

Out with the old, in with the new! Showcase your brand’s newly revised strategy with this dynamic Rebranding Presentation Template.

Storyboard Presentation Template

Presentations, Design Thinking

Use this Storyboard Presentation Template to visualize the structure, content, and flow of your presentation. Make sure that your presentation covers all the key points and hits the mark.

Join thousands of teams collaborating and doing their best work on Miro.

About the Market Research Templates Collection

Miro's market research templates collection is designed to streamline the process of gathering, analyzing, and presenting market data. These templates cater to various stages of market research, from initial data collection to final reporting. Whether you're conducting a comprehensive market analysis or a focused survey, our templates provide a structured approach to ensure thorough and accurate results. The collection includes templates for market research reports, market research analysis, and more, making it easier for teams to collaborate and share insights.

Why you'll love our market research templates

Our market research templates are designed to enhance your research process from start to finish. Here's why you'll love using them:

User-friendly design : Our templates are intuitive and easy to navigate, allowing you to focus on your research rather than the formatting. This user-centric approach ensures that even beginners can quickly get up to speed.

Customizable : Tailor the templates to fit your specific needs and branding, ensuring that your reports and analyses are uniquely yours. This flexibility allows you to adapt the templates to various research scenarios and organizational requirements.

Collaborative features : Miro's templates facilitate teamwork, enabling real-time collaboration and seamless sharing of insights. This means that team members can work together simultaneously, providing immediate feedback and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Comprehensive structure : Each template covers all essential aspects of market research, from data collection to analysis and reporting. This thoroughness helps you maintain a structured approach, ensuring no critical element is overlooked.

Time-saving : By providing a structured approach, our templates help you save time and streamline your workflow. This efficiency allows you to focus more on analyzing data and deriving actionable insights rather than spending time on formatting and structuring your research.

How to use the market research templates in Miro

Using the market research templates in Miro is straightforward. Follow these step-by-step instructions:

Select a template : Browse our extensive library and choose the market research template that best fits your needs. The variety ensures that you can find a template suitable for any research project.

Customize the template : Add your data, adjust the layout, and incorporate your branding elements to make the template your own. This customization ensures that the final output meets your organization's standards and requirements.

Collaborate with your team : Use Miro's collaborative features to invite team members to contribute in real time, ensuring everyone stays aligned and informed. This real-time collaboration enhances productivity and fosters a more cohesive team effort.

Integrate other tools : Enrich your research by integrating other tools and data sources directly into the template. This integration capability allows you to pull in data from various sources, providing a more comprehensive view of your research findings.

Present your findings : Use Miro's presentation features to effectively share your insights and recommendations with stakeholders. These features help you create compelling presentations that clearly communicate your research outcomes and support data-driven decision-making.

By following these steps, you can maximize the potential of Miro's market research templates and achieve comprehensive, data-driven results.

The Ultimate Guide to Conducting Market Research [+Templates]

Table of Contents

What is market research.

• How to Do Market Research: 10 Best Tips

4 Useful Market Research Report Templates

Key takeaways.

Before you start a business venture, it is important to understand the market you are entering. And the only way to do that is by conducting thorough market research. Detailed research about your intended market and understanding the demographics of your potential clients can help you build a successful and sustainable business. This market research guide will cover every aspect of conducting market research for your business.

Market research is the process of collecting information about your target market and potential customers to validate the demand for a new product. Additionally, a business may conduct this research to understand its brand’s perception among the customers or even help its team iterate on an existing product.

It is crucial to note that formulating a market research strategy is not an instant task. Sometimes it may take weeks or even months for a business to gather deep insights into its target market and audience. However, conducting this research can make you more intuitive about who your buyers are and how to deliver value that none of your competitors are offering at the moment.

Succinctly, market research helps you find out answers to the following questions. 

• Where do your target customers search for products or services?
• What is trending in your industry?
• What are your target customer’s preferences? Which of your competitors are they turning to?
• Is there a demand for your new product?
• Who makes up your market, and what challenges do they face?
• What is the consumer attitude towards a specific topic, product, or brand?
• Are there any underserved customer needs that can become a huge selling opportunity?

Market research allows you to get factual data about your target audience without any bias and assumptions. Consequently, it helps make better and more informed business decisions.

How to Do Market Research: 10 Best Tips 

This market research guide will help you understand how marketers gather and assess their industry and target audience. Essentially, the process involves the following steps. 

1. Define your buyer persona 

The first step in formulating an effective market research strategy involves understanding who your customers are. And this is where buyer personas come in handy.

For those wondering, buyer personas are fictional or generalized representations of your ideal customers. There are several online tools that help you develop your buyer persona.

Some key aspects included in a buyer persona are age, gender, location, job type and title, income, family size, major life challenges, etc. The main idea behind defining buyer personas is to learn about the real audience in your industry, and understand ways to effectively reach them.

2. Identify a group to engage 

The next step in how to do market research involves identifying a group to engage to conduct your research with. Remember, the group you choose must possess the same characteristics and purchasing habits as that of your target customers. It is a good idea to conduct your research on people who recently purchased your product or service, or those who decided not to.

Sometimes, companies feel the need to develop multiple buyer personas. Try to aim for ten individuals per buyer persona. Moving on, there are two effective ways to identify a persona group. 

• Choose individuals who recently interacted with you

You can select a group of individuals who interacted with you in the past six months, or up to a year. A period that goes beyond this is not recommended, as you will be asking detailed questions, and the user experience must be fresh.

• Gather a mix of participants

By gathering a mix, we mean a group of people who purchased your product, bought a competitor’s product or refrained from purchasing at all. Gathering people out of your network will help you gain a balanced view of the market.

3. Send out surveys to understand customer sentiment

Online surveys are among the most common and effective tools for audience analysis. Many survey platforms are available for free or meager rates, which allow you to easily export data for interpretation. So, whether you are just asking a couple of quick questions or directing your customers to an extensive market survey questionnaire with open-ended questions, you can have a treasure trove of valuable first-person data in a few days.

4. Analyze what visitors are doing on your website

Several online tools enable businesses to tap into online market research without disrupting the customers. And one such tool is Google Analytics. You can use the tool to monitor customer behavior and engagement rates. You can further use the information to make smart business decisions based on proof of customer interests.

5. Track your website demographics

Website demographics are another crucial aspect of audience analysis. They help you understand who is actually purchasing your product and why they are visiting your website. When done right, they can form the basis of your entire market research strategy. Google Analytics offers exhaustive and customized demographics reports. Apart from that, you can check out the Insights tab on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram.

6. Understand your audience’s interests

There are many online tools that enable you to see which other websites your audience frequently uses. For instance, tools like SEMrush and Audience Overlap Tool provide reports that display a visual map of other websites that share a similar audience. This is a great way to identify trends on the websites they frequently use.

7. Research top competitor search terms

To develop a robust market research strategy, you need to look at your audience as well as competitors. And thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do that. Tools such as the Competitive Keyword Matrix can help you compare up to ten sites at the same time, and identify keywords that are driving your audience to your competitor’s sites. This way, you can understand the problem your competitors are addressing, and derive valuable insights.

8. Evaluate the digital footprint of your competition

There are online tools that further improve your market research by letting you gain insights into your competitor’s footprint. For instance, the Competitor Backlink Checker enables you to see how your competitors are using backlinks . In this manner, you can know more about their marketing and link-building strategies.

9. Perform market analysis

By now, you have gathered lots of unstructured data. But before you can use it, you need to analyze it carefully. And this involves putting all the gathered data into structured formats that can ease the process of decision-making. There are different market research templates that you can use to analyze your data. We will study four important templates in the next section of this market research guide.

10. Take action

You don’t conduct comprehensive market research to simply let it sit on your work desk, gathering dust. So the next step certainly involves taking action based on what you have learned. If done correctly, your analysis will uncover a few campaigns that you can run to get your brand in front of the buyers. It is a good idea to create a list of priorities and give them a proper timeline to make the tracking process easier.

A market research report template is an editable document that offers an outline for conducting market research. Typically, the template includes details about the research framework, focus group size, questions to be asked, and how the data should be analyzed. Here, we will look at some of the most common market research report templates you can use while conducting your research.

1. Porter’s Five Forces template

Porter’s Five Forces model is an excellent strategy to understand an industry by examining five different criteria. It enables businesses to make key decisions when it comes to entering a specific market. These five criteria elements are as follows:

• Competitive rivalry
• Supplier power
• The threat of new entry
• Buyer power
• Threat of substitution

2. SWOT analysis template

This is another powerful market research template. SWOT refers to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This analysis helps identify a company’s potential threats and opportunities, as well as all internal strengths and weaknesses. It also helps determine if the company is aligned with target growth trajectories and success milestones.

3. Market survey template

Market surveys help find out significant details about your buyer personas, current and potential customers, competitors, and the market on the whole. These surveys contain a vast range of questions that are multiple-choice, rankings, or open-ended queries. It is advisable to ask short-answer questions, as they motivate more and more users to take the survey. Here are some categories of questions you can ask in your survey. 

• Business questions
• Competitor questions
• Industry-based questions
• Demographic questions
• Brand questions
• Product/service questions

4. Focus group template

Focus groups present the best way to gather qualitative data. These forms can help researchers understand consumer behavior through open-ended questions. It is one of the most effective templates to create more meaningful and in-depth conversations. Moving on, some ground rules for conducting a focus group are as follows:

• Choose the right participants.
• Prepare effective open-ended questions.
• Motivate participants to have long and meaningful conversations.
• Ask participants how they feel about price and competition. 
• A methodical market research process allows you to learn about your customers, understand their requirements, and position your products or services to serve them better.
• With market research insights, you can boost your marketing tactics and rise above your competitors who do not fully understand their target customers and market. 
• Conducting market research is a complete process that begins with identifying your buyer persona. Based on that, you choose a focus group to engage with.
• There are many ways to gather qualitative data, such as sending out surveys to customers, analyzing website demographics, learning about your audience’s interests, researching competitors, etc.
• Once you have gathered all the necessary data, it is time to summarize your findings and derive valuable insights from the data.
• No matter the type of research you wish to conduct, there are templates to ease the complexity of the task and empower businesses to gather more from their data.

Conducting market research is an incredible and eye-opening experience. Even if you think your buyers are pretty satisfied with your business, performing this research can help you uncover new findings and channels for growth. Make sure you gather qualitative data and summarize your findings to identify trends, and shape your advertising strategies and brand positioning accordingly.

Market research is the process of understanding your audience. It involves determining the viability of a new product or service through research conducted directly via potential customers.

The five most commonly used types of market research techniques include interviews, surveys, customer observation, field trials, and focus groups.

Market research is a great tool that can be leveraged by all businesses. The process helps you gather valuable information that offers insights into customer thinking, their purchase patterns, and location. Additionally, market research can help you decipher important market trends, as well as keep an eye on what your primary competitors are doing.

A typical market research process includes the following steps.  1. Developing buyer personas 2. Identifying a focus group to engage  3. Sending out surveys to understand customer sentiment 4. Tracking website demographics   5. Conducting market analysis 6. Taking action

A market research template is a document that outlines the main objective of the research, key questions, target audience and size, budget, timeline, and other crucial variables.

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Market research template: DIY guide, tips and examples

What is market research , why do you need to do market research , type of market research , market research methods , how to conduct market research, market research template .

We’ve covered specific areas of market research, for instance aimed at successful product development and for startups . But there are many more reasons to conduct market research, so today we’re taking a step back and looking at the complete picture.

What does solid market research project entail in 2021, when we’re using metrics and tools that are relevant nowadays?

In this article, you’ll find the basic concepts of market research linked to handy tools and a free market research template and survey templates that’ll help you put the knowledge into practice.

Market research comes in many different shapes and sizes. You’ll look at all or some aspects of the market: market share, competitors, trends, target audience and more.

You’ll combine these based on the goal of your research, to inform your marketing strategies. You can also focus on one aspect of market research. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but market research templates give you an awesome starting point.

You can identify gaps and opportunities by analysing consumers’ needs and preferences and comparing that to what is currently on the market. Or you evaluate trends to come up with a new business idea.

To guide your market research, or the parts of it, it can be helpful to divide it into different topics to make the scope of your research clear.

Here are some topics that are often used in market research:

• Analysing distribution : to find cheaper or faster alternatives, or enter new markets
• Consumer behaviour : how has this been developing over the years? What can you expect going forward, and how do you prepare your business for this?
• Competitor analysis : who is leading your market, and how are they perceived? How can you position your brand to win territory?
• Market Segmentation and Targeting : are there any target groups that are being overlooked? How can you reach your ideal customers more effectively?
• Internet Marketing : learn to work with the search engines — what keywords are important in your market? What social media channels and types of content are working well?

As you can see, market research doesn’t just involve marketing. It can be used for your logistics as well, your product development department and even your sales people will need it, if they want to be effective sellers. All in all, successful market research is your gateway to product, sales and marketing strategies that really work.

New to market research? Here’s our whistle-stop intro!

Even the biggest, most successful and established companies are still conducting market research. Coca-Cola doesn’t just assume their position, Apple stays on top of consumer behaviour and Mercedes needs to know how they can get millennials to drive the cars their parents used to own.

Market research can be done in different stages. Below we’ll look at two scenarios in which market research is relevant, and how you can use it.

Before starting a business or developing a product

In this case, market research is used to find out how likely you are to succeed and what needs you should address to put a successful product or service on the market. You gather data, using market research templates or your own research drafts, to minimise risks and potentially to convince investors that this idea of yours is worth pursuing.

Some things market research in this stage can help you with:

Minimising risks

Think your idea for a new product is great because you’ve never heard of it before? Going in blindly is a risk – even if you want to move fast. With market research, you can determine what competition really looks like and if there’s enough demand for you to benefit from.

Plus, it will help you calculate the real costs you are going to make upon entering the market to find out if the idea is really viable in the long run.

Attest gives us reliable and direct access to all of our audiences across 11 markets, reducing our risk by reliably delivering against all of our needs. Beatrice Ramelle-Rigollet, Research Manager, WorldRemit

Attracting investors

Try convincing investors of your idea without giving them some numbers. Even though market research doesn’t exactly predict the future, past trends and thorough research into consumers and competitors will give investors a clear picture of how likely you are to make some profits from your idea.

What is the sweet spot when it comes to pricing? By looking at your competitors and surveying your ideal customers, you can pinpoint the right price for your product or service.

Positioning

What areas of the market are crowded and what spots are still available – and are they interesting to look into? Market research can help you choose a strong positioning.

Product features

Don’t develop a product without ever talking to your target customers. They know what they really want, and market research surveys will help you find out how to create that.

Shaping your marketing mix

Your communication and messaging should come from your values, but it should also match the needs of the market.

Defining strategy

Combining everything above will help you create an unbeatable strategy for every aspect of your business.

Keep up to speed with your market

Attest’s intuitive platform helps showcase where and how you can win market share and unlock new sources of growth.

Ongoing market research

It might seem like an unnecessary extra workload, to have someone keep an eye on the market on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. But the alternative is more dangerous and, potentially, more costly.

If you don’t keep up to speed with the market, you will only notice changes when your sales are dropping. It’s important to be proactive, especially when you’re in a competitive market. Stay on top of what your rivals are doing, so you can make decisions and react accordingly faster.

Some things market research templates in this stage can help you with:

Keep an eye on how your own campaigns and ads are performing, but also check on your competitors. How does your target respond to their campaign? What can you learn from their successes and failures?

SEO and social listening

Search engines have become such an important part of ‘the market’ that they are a real part of market research. Keywords and search queries will teach you a lot about your market’s questions and needs.

Identify new opportunities

What’s the most dangerous phrase for any business? ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ With market research, you can proactively find gaps and opportunities in your market.

Keep the focus on current customers

Think you know your customers? Keep in mind that they are also growing older, and are being influenced by other things in your market and society. To stay relevant to them, check in regularly and perform ongoing buyer persona research and survey customer satisfaction.

We track shifting key metrics, like awareness and consideration very carefully and also how our brand is perceived… it helps us to identify areas of opportunity Charlotte Langley, Brand & Communications Director, Bloom & Wild

De-risk market expansion

Spot opportunities to maximise the effectiveness of your marketing strategies in new territories, by understanding the differences between consumers in each market.

Product improvement

In product reviews, and it doesn’t even have to be your own product, you can figure out pain points that customers have. With that information, you can build an unbeatable product.

Did your marketing research team or product designer pitch a crazy idea and you, kind of, like it? Dive into your target market to find background information that can help you find out if it’s worth further investigation.

Market research templates can be used in many ways — and there’s usually not one that is best. The trick is to combine the different types of market research, depending on the availability of data and what you already know about your industry.

We’ll break down some of the types of market research before we dive into the methods and a step-by-step plan. We’ll be comparing primary and secondary research and explain how quantitative and qualitative market research complement each other.

Quantitative market research

Quantitative market research is perfect for the data analysis part of your research. If focused on anything that can be measured, like market statistics, price developments and search volume.

Qualitative market research

You give your quantitative research more meaning and context with qualitative research, This supplements the dry data with motives and emotions, often from your customers.

Primary market research

Any data that you gather first-hand, whether directly from customers or by conducting completely new research, is considered primary data. This can come from surveys, focus groups or fresh research.

Secondary market research

Secondary research is done by data collection and analysing existing reports. You can look at historic data, surveys performed by other brands or trend reports from trusted sources.

Luckily, there are all kinds of tools and different types of methods you can combine to gather all the data on your target market using your market analysis template . We’ll dive into the methods that are commonly used in market research and give some suggestions on tools that make this a little easier.

Interviews 

You can interview either industry experts or customers, or even both – depending on what your research focuses on. This is a type of primary research that gives you in-depth information on things like buying reasons and preferences.

Experts on the other hand can help you give more context to dry market statistics and give you more information on the meaning of some of the market trends you spotted.

Focus groups 

With focus groups, you sit down with your potential customers and listen to what they have to say. You can either observe or actively engage with them. How do they use certain products? How do they react to different marketing campaigns? This method can help you optimise what you’re offering, either in your product or in your communication.

Trend reports and public domain data

What trends in the world can affect your market? If you use the right sources, market trend reports will give you invaluable insight on things like demand, and factors that influence your target group.

Social listening

When doing market research and brand tracking in 2021, you can’t skip social media. This is where customers are actively talking about brands and products, their needs and wishes and also what bothers them. Twitter and the comments under Instagram posts are incredibly valuable for some brands.

But it can seem impossible to keep track of all of that. Luckily, there are some handy tools that will help you stay updated on relevant keywords and topics within your market. In this blog, we list some of our favourite social listening tools.

Market research without surveys is a lot like guesswork. If you want to know what your target audience is really thinking, hoping, wishing and seeing, all you have to do is ask.

You can use a survey template for all types of market research. Find out what your target audience thinks of other brands, what product features they would love to see, and how much they’d be willing to pay for a certain product.

Don’t let the market get ahead of you

Understand your target market with our ready-to-use survey templates, global audience of 125 million and results in days, not weeks.

Observation

Whether staged or unstaged, observation can be a great tool to see how your product would perform in the real world. How do they react to marketing visuals? How do they behave in a store? These details can help you fine tune your product and tactics to a t.

Experiment and testing

If you never try, you never know. Experiments can be incredibly useful, especially with product development. Create a minimal viable product (MVP) and see how your target audience likes it. A/B tests can be used for a wide variety of things, from social media campaigns to discounts – so use them! Read more about concept testing.

Competitive analysis

One of the most important parts of market research is undoubtedly an analysis of your competitors . You can’t really analyse your target market without looking at who else is in it. If you think you’re alone, look at how markets similar to yours are developing to become aware of market trends to look out for.

If only you could tell an AI-powered robot your objectives and sit back and relax while he surveys and analyses your market.

While we’re not there yet, we’re certainly equipped with a wide variety of tools that will make conducting market research a whole lot easier.

While it’s important to note that there are several approaches to market research templates, depending on your specific situation, we’ll give you a generic framework to work within. If you follow these steps and add the methods you need for your research goals to it, you surely won’t miss a thing.

• Define the problem
• Define how you’re going to approach the problem
• Design your research
• Identify information types, gaps and sources
• Perform field work and collect data
• Prepare data
• Analyse insights
• Create a report on your market research 
• Communicate the results
• Turn your insight into action points

Step 1. Define the problem

Before you start, find out what you really need to know and why. The latter is very important. Sometimes you think you want to know more about what your competitors are doing to be successful, while in fact your customers are the one who could close the knowledge gap by telling you what features they are missing in a product.

Step 2. Design your research

Think about what path you should follow to find the knowledge you need. What types and methods of research templates should you combine to find the right data and give context to it?

Step 3. Identify information types, gaps and sources

For what parts of your research will you need to talk to customers, and what can be found in reports for market trends? Make this part of your research design. Identifying this beforehand will save you a lot of time in the process.

Step 4. Fieldwork and collecting data

Get to work! This is the part where you’ll be launching surveys and analysing data from tools and trend reports.

Step 5. Prepare and organise data

It can get a bit messy, so take your time to structure the insights you’ve collected – especially if you used a mixture of tools and methods. Don’t draw any conclusions just yet – you want to have the full picture.

Step 6. Analyse data

If you combine what your customers said during the focus group sessions with the market trends you’ve spotted in reports, what can you say about the market? What keywords have become increasingly important? How have the actions of your competitors influenced and changed the market?

Make decisions based on high-quality consumer insights

With Attest you can run multiple surveys across different markets and see results in days, not weeks.

Step 7. Create a report

Include all the relevant data in a report and also determine what needs further research.

Step 8. Communicate the results

Present the results of your research to whomever it’s relevant to. Investors, marketers, designers – make sure the information is readily available so they can make well-informed decisions.

Step 9. Turn your insights into action points

Nobody conducts a full market research to just let it sit on your desk gathering dust. If you go into the whole process with the intention of changing or improving, base your next steps on this report.

We’ll make market research a little easier for you with our market research templates. Our market analysis template is free and can be used in basically any market research plan, and is a key ingredient in a comprehensive market research program.

With this free market analysis template, you can ask your target customers up to 5 hyper-relevant research questions. You can reach people in the US or UK, or upgrade your plan to talk to the customers in the other 50+ countries we work in. And don’t worry about creating reports – we’ll help you analyse it within our platform.

Here’s what that’ll look like for your target audience:

Get started with your DIY market research templates – our free template could be the key to unlocking your next successful product or service.

The Experts’ Guide to Brand Tracking

How to look at the impact of things like audience reach, panel diversity, and survey design to help you decide whether your current brand tracker is up to scratch.

Nikos Nikolaidis

Senior Customer Research Manager 

Nikos joined Attest in 2019, with a strong background in psychology and market research. As part of Customer Research Team, Nikos focuses on helping brands uncover insights to achieve their objectives and open new opportunities for growth.

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How to Write a Market Research Plan (+ Free Template)

Chris martin, choosing when to invest in research & insights.

First, a little insight: at FlexMR, we work with 50 different brands on an ongoing basis, all lookin...

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A market research plan, similar to a brief, is a vital document that details important information about your market research project. Though it is often an overlooked step of the market research process , an effective plan is often a critical factor in determining whether or not your market research efforts are successful.

Why? Because a well-thought through plan, more so than objectives alone, can be a vital instrument in focusing your investment. It ensures you know, ahead of the commencement date, the timeline, budget and desired outcomes from the project. It can even be used as a tool for receiving quicker sign-off from management when embarking on a new venture.

But it’s also important to remember that the research plan is not just for your team. To make full use of this document, it should be written in a way that can be distributed to agency partners as well – ensuring that your insight team and specialist partners are all working towards the same goal.

Tips for Crafting a Successful Plan

The first rule of writing a successful market research plan is to keep it short. The perfect length is between 1-2 pages, but as an absolute maximum try to ensure that it never exceeds 3. This will give you enough space to explain the background, scope and practicalities of the project while ensuring it is concise enough to be read in full. Throughout these few short pages, the tone of your plan should be informative. Remember that you are outlining information that you already know.

Write in a way that holistically encompasses all aspects of the project. Throughout the duration of your scripting, data collection, analysis and reporting stages of your project you should always be referring back to this document in order to remain focused. As any researcher knows, one of the biggest challenges in any research project is staying true to your original objectives.

With both exploratory and confirmatory research alike, new information is likely to arise which may spark other ideas or bring light to previously unknown issues. Remember these, but set them aside for further investigation at a later date. Travelling too far down the rabbit hole is the quickest way to overspend and under deliver on your original goal.

The 10 Elements of the Best Research Plans

First, let me preface this with a reminder: every project is different. A long term co-creation community will have different needs and requirements to a customer feedback survey or ad testing project. However, despite this – it is important to give equal consideration to all projects, and plan each with the same high degree of meticulous care. With this in mind, these are the 10 key aspects we recommend that all research plans should include:

1. Overview

Use this first section to outline the background to the problem that you are attempting to solve. Include background information on the business to provide context, as well as the circumstances that have led to the need for research. Overviews should be limited to 200 words at most, with most of the word count dedicated to the business circumstances & challenges surrounding the research.

2. Objectives

Arguably the most important aspect of the entire document, objectives should be in bullet point format. List 3-5 of the decisions or initiatives that the research will inform – this will become the remit of the project. Below are a few examples of both well and poorly written objectives:

Well written research objectives:

• Understand the channels in which our customers are most comfortable shopping, in order to decide which should be prioritised in the 2017 Q1 budget
• Develop an active co-creation community that contributes 2 user-generated product improvements for testing to the R & D team per month
• Learn what is leading to an increase in customer churn so that a new retention strategy can be put in place within 12 weeks

Poorly written research objectives:

• Survey 1,000 potential customers to find out how our products can be improved
• Develop a panel of employees that are able to provide answers to research questions on an ad-hoc basis
• Learn how our company is perceived in comparison to competitors and how we can stand out in the marketplace

3. Deliverable outcomes

This section acts as a list what you expect to be produced at the end of the project. This can include, but is not limited to: a target number of responses you expect to receive, descriptions of how the data should be presented and the extent to which the data will be used to inform future decisions. In long term projects such as panels or communities, this may include a target for the amount of decisions that research is expected to inform and/or a pipeline for new ideas in exploratory studies.

4. Target audience

Different to sample, your target audience describes the population that you wish to research. This can be defined by a number of factors depending on the nature of your project. Some of the most common include: demographics, psychographics, life stages and company/ product interaction.

5. Sample plan

The sample plan should be used to indicate the amount of participants you wish to research, as well as a breakdown of each group. This will be affected by the choice to use qualitative, quantitative or multi-method approaches, as well as the estimated size of the target population.

6. Research Methods

List the different research methods that you plan to use in your project. This will be used by your team and agency partners to ensure that the insight you need comes from the most appropriate tools. Be sure to include any non-traditional methods you plan to use as well – it’s important that your team are aware of how data will be captured, even if it is being gathered by an experimental technique.

7. Timeline

These usually take the form of a Gantt chart, but can vary depending on the scope and length of your project. Try to break down tasks as much as possible but be wary of dependencies within your chart. Be sure to schedule enough time in case some research tasks over-run or response rates are lower than expected.

Perhaps the most dreaded aspect of any research plan, budgeting is never easy. But by providing a breakdown of costs and outlining which elements of the project require most investment, a well-planned budget can be a benefit rather than a hurdle.

9 & 10. Ethical and Further considerations

Finally, you should outline any ethical/ other considerations or issues that may arise throughout the course of your project. Whether these are as simple as a conflict of interest or a concern about supplier relationships – this is your chance to address any problems that may arise before they do.

Free Market Research Plan Template

Use this link to download our   free market research plan template . The template comes complete with each of the sections outlined above, with instructions on usage and tips on how to make the most out of it. Currently available in .docx format, please email   [email protected]  if you have any problems with the download.

What do you believe should be included in a successful market research plan? Share your advice with us in the comments below and join the conversation.

About FlexMR

We are The Insights Empowerment Company. We help research, product and marketing teams drive informed decisions with efficient, scalable & impactful insight.

About Chris Martin

Chris is an experienced executive and marketing strategist in the insight and technology sectors. He also hosts our MRX Lab podcast.

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6 Market Research Template Questions

1. what pain point does your product solve, and is your customer aware of this pain point.

Most businesses either improve upon an existing solution or provide a truly new solution. In the second case, you need to know whether customers are aware of the problem you’re solving.

Do they consciously identify this pain point as a problem? If not, you’ll need to educate them before you can make a sale.

Take the Squatty Potty, for example. Most people didn’t know the ideal posture for eliminating body waste, but the company incorporated (humorous) education into their marketing. Once customers learned how much better their bathroom experience could be with the Squatty Potty, it became a tremendous success.

2. Who are your competitors?

If you don’t think you have direct competitors… you’re wrong. There are other solutions to the pain point you’re trying to solve.

Answer this question from your customers’ perspective. Who else could solve their problem? Who do they consider as alternatives?

3. What makes you unique?

How is your solution different from your competitors’ solutions? List three factors that set your solution apart.

4. Who is your target customer?

This goes beyond demographic information. You need to understand your target customers’ behavior and habits and how they’re influenced (through what channels and what other brands).

5. How well-known are you?

Are you a well-known brand? How much trust do you currently have with your audience? How much do you need to educate your target buyers?

6. How will you accomplish your goals?

What resources do you need? What team do you need to build? What channels should you focus on? What budget do you need?

How to Find Data for Your Market Research Template

Where should you go to answer the questions in the above market research template? Use three key channels:

• Associations and networking groups. For example, if you’re starting a business related to healthcare, visit the American Medical Association to learn about the latest developments within the healthcare industry.
• Government databases. Access these to learn about population density and trends, income levels, and even the weather. (For instance, if you’re trying to sell snowboards, Hawaii won’t make your shortlist of target states.)
• SEMrush.com
• Facebook (specifically their targeting and insights within advertising)
• Ads.Google.com (for keyword research)

Your Market Research Template: Final Thoughts

A market research template provides a helpful structure to guide your efforts. By investigating your target customer, competition, market size, and unique positioning, you’ll be well-equipped to make sound business decisions.

So, before launching a new product or venturing into a new market, do your due diligence and invest time in thorough market research. Your success depends on it.

Market Research Template

Paint a clear picture of your market

When designing a brand or rebranding a company, it's important to know your market inside-out. What are the trends, technologies and opportunities? And how can you position your brand to take advantage of them?

The market research template is the perfect way build a complete picture of your industry and audience. Use it to collect insights about the competitors, customer research, trends and more in one place.

In Milanote, your market research can be much more than a static document. You can add text, images, video, sketches and more to bring your work to life. When you're done, share it with your team and client to collaborate or get feedback.

• Add notes, images, video & more

Organize visually

• Share with your team
• Gather feedback
• Export to PDF

Collect everything in one place

Milanote is the visual way to collect everything that powers your creative work. Simple text editing & task management helps you organize your thoughts and plans. Upload images, video, files and more.

Milanote's flexible drag and drop interface lets you arrange things in whatever way makes sense to you. Break out of linear documents and see your research, ideas and plans side-by-side.

Collaborate with your team

Milanote boards can be a private place to think, or a shared workspace for collaboration—you're in total control of who sees what. Instantly see your team's changes, leave comments, and never miss a thing with smart notifications and alerts.

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Market Research Kit

Free Download

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

What's Inside Your Market Research Kit?

• Instructional Guide
• SWOT Analysis Template (available as a Word doc or interactive designed PDF)
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template
• Presentation Template
• Five Forces Industry Analysis Template

Need help planning your next round of market research?

There are more than 24 million businesses in the United States alone, meaning that no matter what industry you do business in, there's likely a lot of competition. What's a company like yours to do in order to stand out?

The most effective ways to learn more about your customers, industry, and competition is to do thorough market research – diligent research to help you develop pricing strategies, understand your target market, and strengthen a business. 

In this kit, we'll equip you with the necessary templates to conduct market research at every turn – from competitive analysis to understanding your prospective buyers. Whether you're an emerging business or an existing one, this kit is for you. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is a market research analysis.

Market research analysis is the process of collecting and examining the data to decide whether there is a viable business opportunity with a certain product or service. To get started on market research analysis, download HubSpot's Free Market Research Kit.

Why do I need to fill out the information requested?

We will always keep your personal information safe..

We ask for your information in exchange for a valuable resource in order to (a) improve your browsing experience by personalizing the HubSpot site to your needs; (b) send information to you that we think may be of interest to you by email or other means; (c) send you marketing communications that we think may be of value to you. You can read more about our privacy policy here .

How do you write a market research document?

A market research report often includes a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats) analysis and Porter's Five Forces Industry Analysis. By using HubSpot's Five Forces Industry Analysis Template you can describe your buyers, suppliers, competitors, future competitors, and industry substitutes in your market research report. The SWOT analysis highlights how your business can compete in the market.

Is this really free?

Absolutely.

Just sharing some free knowledge that we hope you’ll find useful. Keep us in mind next time you have marketing questions!

What should be included in market research?

Market research should at a minimum address several factors:

• Industry & Market Factors. Find out the market size and trends, the regulations, gaps in the market, market demographics, etc.
• Buyer Profile. This will include age, gender, race, income level, lifestyle trends, needs, and attitudes.
• Competitor Research. Look at pricing structures, market share, marketing & branding. HubSpot's Free Market Research Kit includes an Industry Analysis template to kickstart your market research.

What are the 4 types of market research?

• Surveys. These may be brand awareness surveys, customer satisfaction surveys, product market research surveys, or competition research surveys
• Focus groups. Great for uncovering qualitative market research data.
• Polls. Polls are great for sentiment and engagement, but may lack scientific rigor.
• Interviews add a lot of depth to your market research.

What are the 7 steps in marketing research?

• Define the problem
• State your goals
• Plan the research
• Collect the data (using HubSpot's Market Research Kit)
• Analyze the data
• Formulate the results
• Prepare and format the report

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The Complete Guide to Market Research for Startups

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Discover your competitors' strengths and leverage them to achieve your own success

The importance of doing market research for startups is often underrated by those who need it most. The number one reason most startups fail is a lack of market understanding; it’s easy to see how so many new businesses don’t succeed in the early stages.

Success becomes an uphill battle when going to market without fully understanding who a target audience is and how to meet their needs.

Before we show you why and how to do market research for your startup, look at these stats.

The benefits of doing market research for a startup

You’ve seen the stats, and likely, you’re going to want to do everything possible to ensure you don’t end up being one of the many businesses that don’t make it through the early years. As you’ve started learning how to do market research for your startup, you’re on the right track to future-proofing your business – giving it (and you) the best chance of success.

Here are seven things startup market research allows you to do:

• Identify target market
• Understand customer’s needs
• Tailor marketing or a product launch
• Choose the best channels to market your business
• Understand the competitive landscape
• Formulate an effective pricing strategy
• Identify your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The information you need to succeed (in almost any market) is at your fingertips – ready and waiting to be discovered. With the right intel, you can refine your go-to-market strategy, remove the guesswork from your marketing, and plan activities based on what you know is working.

What’s more, with software like Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence , you can access instant insights that tell you where opportunities exist in your market.

How to do a market analysis for a startup

In this section, I’m going to show you six of the best ways to do market research for startups. Whether new to a market or a seasoned expert, these activities will give you the insights you need to formulate a successful plan.

If you’re still in the pre-planning stage, you can read more about how to do market research for a business plan here.

1. Size your market

Before entering a new market, it’s crucial to size up the opportunity. Market sizing allows you to see the potential share of your reachable market. The three metrics you need to work out are listed below, along with relevant formulas for each.

• Total Addressable Market (TAM)
• Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM)
• Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM)

2. Research the competition

Startups can use market research to get a clear picture of the competitive landscape . With the right tools, you can analyze a market and evaluate industry leaders and emerging players in just a few hours. Any new business can use this information to shape its strategy and benchmark itself against competitors.

• Select between 2-4 competitors to analyze.
• Systematically collect data for each business that considers company, product, marketing, and customers, to build the ultimate competitive blueprint.
• Take advantage of our free market research templates to save time. Each is designed to help you better understand your market, customers, and competition. Use a template to record your findings to compare and benchmark easily.

To quickly get a handle on your nearest and dearest rivals, sign up for a free trial of Similarweb . Next, head to the industry overview tab of the Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence solution to start grabbing the data you need.

Industry Overview : The best place to begin any competitive research is here. View website traffic and engagement metrics for your industry to see industry-standard benchmarks. 

A quick click on Industry Leaders module (below) will immediately show you industry leaders and rising players. Here’s where things start to get interesting.

Use Industry Leaders to view your industry leaders and any rising stars that have been gaining traffic at pace. These rising stars are just as important to analyze as market leaders.

Further reading: This post covers seven types of Competitive Analysis Frameworks and includes a free template to help you record and compare findings.

3. Discover what marketing channels work

Whether you’re bootstrapping or have a healthy budget, managing your marketing spending is key. Market research helps you quickly see what channels work for others in your space and uncover competitors’ marketing strategies.

• Take or create a list of competitors.
• Evaluate their marketing channels, including direct, social, email, referrals, and ads.
• Determine if competitors are neglecting any high-value marketing channels.
• Document findings and analyze which channels offer the best ROI.

Use this intel to develop a marketing strategy tailored to today’s market. With Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence, you can do this element of startup market research in under an hour.

With a free trial of Similarweb, you can see granular insights about your rival’s most successful channels. This includes affiliates and referral partners, high-performing ads, upwards and downward turns, mobile app analysis , and more.

4. Identify best-performing pages and keywords

Discover which pages get the most traffic and conversions to find the keywords that drive traffic to competitors’ sites. This will help inform your keyword and content strategy. To create a list of relevant keywords (both long and short-tail), follow these pointers. The key to success is taking a broad view and not just going for the most obvious keywords everyone else is targeting.

• Analyze high-traffic keywords of your rivals, looking at both high and low keyword difficulty (KD).
• Avoid the apparent wins, and do a quick keyword gap analysis to reveal hidden gems.
• Evaluate search trends relevant to the industry you want to enter. Consider keyword seasonality too.
• Review rival sites and dig into their highest-performing pages. This will show you what keywords to use and provide a more informed view of what good content looks like in your market.

Pro Tip: When looking at top-performing pages, visit them and note the different calls to action your rivals use, as this will help you decide which to implement on your site.

With the pages element of Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence, you can analyze up to 10,000 pages per site. In an instant, you can unpack and track their highest-hitting pages as well as those growing or declining over time.

5. Analyze audience demographics

Knowing your target audience is critical for any startup market research.  Establish the following factors to build a picture of your potential audience.

• Use geographical data to see relevant gender and age distribution
• Review audience loyalty metrics to understand how people behave – e.g., do they shop around
• See what search terms they use to discover sites in your niche
• Do they view sites like yours on a mobile device or desktop?

As you can see, you can learn many things about your target audience before starting a business. With this data, you can refine your marketing activities like advertising, outreach, strategy, positioning, and more.

Further reading : Read our guide on how to identify your ideal niche audience

6. Monitor social media engagement and presence

Establishing a social media presence takes a lot of work, and you must evaluate how useful it is at the beginning before deciding how to allocate your resources.

• Review both industry leaders and new players in your industry
• List what channels they have a presence on.
• Look at the number of followers vs. the level of engagement.
• Record how many posts they make daily and weekly.

You can create a spreadsheet to track this or add this to your competitive framework. Don’t try to overdo things. Choose the best channels based on what you already see working for others.

Market research questions for startups

When doing any type of market research for a new business, you need to ask the right questions. There’s no point delving into company research and competitive analysis in a market without first considering what you’re trying to learn from the research.

Here’s a list of market research questions that you might want to consider:

• Do you know who your direct and indirect competitors are?
• Have you sized your market – and do you know your total addressable market (tam), serviceable available market (sam), and share of market (som)?
• What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
• How much are people willing to pay for your product or service?
• Will you go to market with a promotion, such as a free trial or discounted offering?
• How much do your competitors charge, and do they offer a like-for-like service?
• What trends are currently emerging or impacting your market?
• Do seasonal trends impact your business?
• How do your rivals onboard new customers? Will you do this in the same way or not?
• Do your competitors offer any loyalty or new-customer discounts?
• What are the most effective marketing channels in your industry?
• Are your rivals active on social media? If yes, which channels are the most successful?
• What type of customer support channels will you offer? Consider what your competition offers at present.
• What are your trading hours going to be? Consider the competition here too.
• What keywords are the most successful for your market?

Doing Startup research with Similarweb

Conducting thorough market research and analysis as a startup will help you direct your resources and sharpen your business plan to ensure you take advantage of market opportunities.

With Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence, you’ll access comprehensive industry data in real-time. This way, you’ll be able to track industry trends and the demographic makeup of your target audience to reach them better.

Because we provide real-time data, you get to see emerging market trends as they open. When you’re ready to launch your startup, you can use all that knowledge to your advantage.

Because we provide real-time data, you see emerging market trends as they happen. When you’re ready to launch your startup, you can use all that knowledge to your advantage and ensure your business is prime for the market you’re about to enter.

Don’t delay – start your market research strategy today. Try Similarweb’s Research Intelligence tool for free!

How do you do market research for a startup?

First, measure your market share, then identify best-performing pages and keywords, investigate marketing channels, analyze your audience demographics, compare metrics, and monitor social media.

What is the best type of market research for a startup?

When time and money are key considerations, the best type of research for any startup is secondary market research, AKA desk research . It’s low-cost, can be done with little-to-no market research experience, and the data is readily available online.

What are the 4 types of market research?

The four core types of market research are primary research , secondary research , quantitative research, and qualitative research .

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

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Market Research Template

Define the target audience.

• 2 Introverted
• 3 Adventurous
• 4 Conservative
• 5 Tech-savvy
• 1 Online shopping behavior
• 2 Brand loyalty
• 3 Social media usage

Identify research objectives

• 1 What are the customer preferences?
• 2 What are the market trends?
• 3 What are the competitors doing?
• 4 What are the pricing strategies?

Define type of market research

• 2 Focus groups
• 3 Interviews
• 4 Observation
• 5 Secondary research

Design research questionnaire

• 3 Occupation
• 4 Income level

Pilot survey to small demographic sample

Approval: pilot survey evaluation.

• Pilot survey to small demographic sample Will be submitted

Revise questionnaire based on pilot feedback

Carry out main survey to broad demographic.

• 3 Income level
• 4 Geographic location

Collect and analyse survey data

• 1 Statistical analysis
• 2 Qualitative analysis
• 3 Comparative analysis

Identify key findings from data analysis

Draft initial report, approval: initial report review.

• Draft initial report Will be submitted

Revise report based on feedback

Prepare final market research report, approval: final report.

• Prepare final market research report Will be submitted

Present findings to stakeholders

• 1 PowerPoint slides
• 2 Charts and graphs

Develop marketing strategies based on research findings

Implement marketing strategies.

• 1 Online advertising
• 2 Email marketing
• 3 Content marketing
• 4 Social media
• 5 In-store promotions

Monitor effectiveness of implemented strategies

• 1 Website traffic
• 2 Conversion rate
• 3 Social media engagement
• 4 Sales revenue

Approval: Strategy Evaluation

• Implement marketing strategies Will be submitted

Take control of your workflows today.

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Market Research Report Template

A formal report template that will help you communicate findings from a market research project.

• Estimated time required: 4 hours
• Skills required: Research writing

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Market Research Playbook

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Market research survey templates

Get to know the intricacies of market trends, consumer behavior, and competitive landscapes with our meticulously crafted market research survey templates. Armed with valuable insights, you can formulate effective business strategies and unlock a profound understanding of your target audience that help identify new growth opportunities. With these templates, you're not just navigating the trends of your industry, you're staying ahead of the competition. Launch your survey now!

B2C Survey template

This survey template helps you evaluate and capture data on customer satisfaction and pinpoint areas for improvement.

Software evaluation survey template

This template helps you evaluate your software's performance and features by capturing critical user feedback.

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This survey template allows you to measure and evaluate your organization's standing within the industry, unlocking opportunities for growth and improvement.

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This survey template helps you evaluate and understand user experiences with your latest product features.

Product lifecycle survey template

This survey template helps you gain key insights into the entire lifecycle of your products, transforming user feedback into valuable data.

Product packaging feedback survey template

This template helps you capture data to measure and understand customer preferences for product packaging.

Product concept survey template

This survey template helps you capture data to evaluate and understand user experiences with your product concept.

Post-purchase evaluation survey template

This template empowers you to capture data and measure customer satisfaction post-purchase, helping identify areas for improvement.

Product pricing survey template

This comprehensive product pricing survey helps you capture data to identify optimal pricing strategies.

Product comparison survey template

Get feedback and evaluate different products to better understand your preferences.

Brand perception survey template

This survey template helps you measure customer perceptions of your brand and unlock key insights to drive brand improvements.

Product Satisfaction Survey Template

This survey template enables you to capture data and understand your customers' first impressions and detailed experiences with your product.

Advertising Concept Test Survey Template

Elevate your advertising strategy with this comprehensive template allowing you to gauge the impact and appeal of your new advertising concept.

Brand Concept Assessment Survey Template

Elevate your brand's effectiveness with this insightful template that handsomely captures customer interaction and perception of your brand.

Brand Name Evaluation Form Template

Unleashing the potential of brand identity, this template aids you to gain comprehensive customer feedback on your brand name, helping you gauge its market relevance and understand the emotions it evokes.

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Market research Survey Template Builder

Staying ahead of the competition requires more than just tracking trends – understanding the reasons behind ongoing brand support is crucial. Use LimeSurvey's market research survey builder to collect valuable feedback on market trends, consumer behavior, and the competitive landscape. You’ll gain insights that go beyond surface observations, enabling you to craft strategies that resonate deeply with your audience.

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A business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

How Carry Trade Exposure Impacts Asset Price Movements

September 10, 2024 • 7 min read.

Research co-authored by Wharton’s Amy Wang Huber introduces a new metric to measure the risk-bearing capacity of foreign exchange market intermediaries and the implications for asset prices.

• Finance & Accounting

The spectacular unwinding of the Yen carry trade raises the question: How big is the carry trade ? This is a difficult question to answer. Foreign-exchange traders can simultaneously buy and sell multiple currencies. Exposures in one currency can be quickly hedged or diversified by trading other currencies. In other words, just tallying who traded which currency will not reveal the true extent of carry trades. Not all sales of Japanese yen indicate positions in a carry trade, for example.

Finance professors Amy Wang Huber at Wharton and Yu An at Johns Hopkins University propose to use risk to measure the extent of carry trade exposure in the financial system.

In their new research paper titled “ Intermediary Elasticity and Limited Risk-bearing Capacity ,” Huber and An developed a method to sort foreign exchange (FX) trades into those that cannot be further diversified and thus create risks to dealers and hedge funds that accommodate these trades. They identified “intermediary elasticity” as a way to measure the price compensation financial intermediaries require to bear such trading-induced risks. This intermediary elasticity, they argued, reflects financial intermediaries’ limited risk-taking capacity and shows why trading demand shocks in one currency propagate to other currencies and even other asset markets.

Measuring Risks and Their Price Response

In their paper, Huber and An showed that almost all FX trading-induced risks fall into three categories: the U.S. dollar portfolio, the carry portfolio, and the euro-yen portfolio. Together, these three risks account for 90% of the risk borne by intermediaries in FX trading. The U.S. dollar portfolio is one where investors buy the dollar and sell all other currencies. In the euro-yen portfolio, investors sell the Japanese yen and buy the euro. Finally, the carry portfolio buys all currencies of countries with high-interest rates and sells those of low-interest rate countries; essentially, it exploits arbitrage opportunities between currencies.

These risks capture what is non-diversifiable when dealers and hedge funds accommodate FX trades. Therefore, net flows into these risks measure the intermediaries’ trading-induced risk exposure. For example, the authors found that intermediaries accumulated $0.8 trillion in risk exposure to the carry trade between 2012 and 2023.

Why is it important to measure non-diversifiable risks in FX trading? Huber offered an example: The currencies of Australia and New Zealand tend to move similarly because these two countries share similar economic conditions. Therefore, if some investors buy Australian dollars and sell New Zealand dollars, the risks faced by intermediaries who accommodate these trades are largely diversified away.

“The amount of risk that the intermediary needs to absorb is not the same as the amount of securities traded.” — Amy Wang Huber

Huber stressed that because much of FX trading can be diversified, it is more meaningful to measure price movements in response to changes in the quantity of risk than changes in the quantity of currencies traded. This is the motivation behind intermediary elasticity, which offers an intuitive way to measure the intermediary’s risk-bearing capacity. If the price response to trading-induced risks is zero, then the intermediary is able to perfectly share risks from accommodating trading and the question of limited risk-bearing capacity does not arise. Conversely, the larger the intermediary elasticity, the more limited the risk-bearing capacity.

With intermediary elasticity, it is easy to uncover the impact of trading demand shock in one currency on other currencies or even other asset markets, Huber said. “It all comes down to common risk exposure,” she explained. “When a customer sells a large quantity of Japanese yen, the intermediary who accommodates this trade must hedge out the non-diversifiable risks induced by this trade. This hedge affects the risk price according to the intermediary elasticity. Then, all other currency prices are affected because each currency has some exposure to these non-diversifiable risks.” The same logic uncovers how trading demand shocks in FX propagate to other asset markets.

Highlights from the Paper

The study used a sample of foreign exchange transactions between intermediaries, such as dealers and hedge funds, and their customers from September 2012 to December 2023. The sample covered 17 currencies, including the U.S. dollar, the Australian dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Korean won. There are three types of customers: funds, which include mutual funds, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds; non-bank financial entities, including insurance companies and clearing houses; and corporations.

The study estimated the intermediary elasticity for each of the three risks — the dollar, the euro-yen, and the carry. Using sovereign bond auctions in the U.S., Australia, the U.K., Canada, Japan, Germany, and France, the study estimated that intermediaries raise the price by about 1% in response to a $20 billion trading demand shock to the dollar risk, a $10 billion trading demand shock to the carry risk, and a $3.5 billion trading demand shock to the euro-yen factor. Huber explained why the price responses are so large: “We are talking about shock to risks that are non-diversifiable risk. Price responses to trading demand shock in a single security could be much more muted because dealers can diversify across securities. In other words, the amount of risk that the intermediary needs to absorb is not the same as the amount of securities traded. This is the whole point of the paper.”

For the six commonly traded currencies of advanced economies — the Australian dollar, the Canadian dollar, the Swiss franc, the euro, the British pound, and the Japanese yen, the study determined that for every $1 billion in inflows, the price response ranges from 5 bps (basis points) to 16 bps.

“All asset markets are connected. Trading demand shocks originating from the FX market could spread to other asset markets, and vice versa.” — Amy Wang Huber

The study found large cross-elasticity between the Australian dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the British pound. That is, when there is a trading demand shock in the Australian dollar, the Canadian dollar’s price also moves. In contrast, the cross-elasticity is small between the Japanese yen and the Australian dollar, for example, because these two currencies hedge each other in terms of the carry risk exposure.

Finally, the paper showed that common exposure to non-diversifiable FX risks causes spillovers in asset markets such as CDS (credit default swap indices), commodities, corporate bonds, equities, options, and U.S. Treasury bonds. The study estimated that a $1 billion trading demand shock in corporate bonds raises its own price by 5 bps and that for CDS and commodities by similar magnitudes. In contrast, trading demand shocks to U.S. Treasury bonds reduce the price of CDS and corporate bonds.

Three Surprising Findings

The study produced surprises on three fronts, which Huber listed:

• The first is that the intermediary elasticity, or the price response to shocks to non-diversifiable risks, is very high.
• Secondly, the pattern of how currencies are related, particularly the relationship between the yen and the euro. “Both of them are low-interest rate currencies, but they are actually opposite each other in one of the key non-diversifiable risks that we identify,” Huber said.
• Thirdly, the study showed and quantified how trading in the forex market could affect prices in six other asset markets. “All asset markets are connected. Trading demand shocks originating from the FX market could spread to other asset markets, and vice versa.” Huber said.

For regulators, the big takeaway from the paper is that regulations are best designed vis-à-vis the exposure to the amount of risk, as opposed to simply counting the number of securities in a portfolio, Huber said.

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Labor market conditions improved slightly for recent college graduates in the second quarter of 2024. The unemployment rate edged down to 4.5 percent and the underemployment rate inched lower to 40.5 percent.

This web feature tracks employment data for recent college graduates across the United States since 1990, allowing for a historical perspective on the experience of those moving into the labor market.

• compare the unemployment rate for recent college graduates with that of other groups
• monitor the underemployment rate of recent college graduates

A table tracks outcomes by college major with the latest available annual data.

How to cite this report:

Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, https://nyfed.org/collegelabor.

Related reading:

The data do not represent official estimates of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, its President, the Federal Reserve System, or the Federal Open Market Committee.

We describe the framework for this analysis in “Underemployment in the Early Careers of College Graduates following the Great Recession” (NBER Studies in Income and Wealth ) and “Are Recent College Graduates Finding Good Jobs?,” a 2014 article in the New York Fed’s Current Issues in Economics and Finance series. These papers examine more than two decades of data on the employment outcomes of recent college graduates across the United States, and contain more details and historical perspective.

We launched this web feature to make some of the data featured in these papers available on a timely and updated basis. New unemployment and underemployment data for recent college graduates post on a quarterly basis (typically in February, May, August, and November), and wages and outcome data for college graduates are released on an annual basis (typically in February). Data extend from 1990 to the present. Periodic analysis of these data are published on the Liberty Street Economics blog.

Our definition of underemployment is based on the kinds of jobs held by college graduates. A college graduate working in a job that typically does not require a college degree is considered underemployed. We use survey data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET) Education and Training Questionnaire to help determine whether a bachelor’s degree is required to perform a job. The articles cited above describe our approach in detail.

Some additional research that utilizes these data include “Working as a Barista After College Is Not as Common as You Might Think” ( Liberty Street Economics ).

Our underemployment figures are calculated as a percentage holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, so they do include those with graduate and professional degrees. See the notes below the x-axis on the Underemployment chart for more detail.

The “Share with Graduate Degree” column in the table represents, for each college major, the percentage of workers with a bachelor’s degree that also possesses a graduate degree of any kind. For example, 50.2 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree in history also possess some kind of graduate degree, based on February 2022 data.

All data presented here are national measures.

Unfortunately, we do not.

No, we only publish data that encompass the most recent year period available to utilize from the American Community Survey, which serves as the source for our analysis.

We do not have updated data by gender available in this web feature, but we did provide some gender analysis in “Underemployment in the Early Careers of College Graduates following the Great Recession.”

Unfortunately, at this time, our analysis only pertains to those with at least a bachelor’s degree.

No. Through 2023:Q2, we examined the types of jobs held by those who are underemployed, categorizing jobs broadly by skill level and pay to generate time series data for the percentages of graduates holding “good non-college jobs” and “low-wage jobs.” Starting with the 2023:Q3 update, the web feature will no longer include the data series for "underemployed job types," although historical data remain available for download .

In our definition, early career graduates are those aged 22 to 27, and mid-career graduates are those aged 35 to 45.

Boyarchenko, N., R. K. Crump, A. Kovner, and O. Shachar. 2021. “ Measuring Corporate Bond Market Dislocations .” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports , no. 957, January, revised July.

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• | “Et ‘two,’ GAO?”: Recent Sustain on the Rule of Two Reminds Agencies of the Importance of Accurate Market Research

“Et ‘two,’ GAO?”: Recent Sustain on the Rule of Two Reminds Agencies of the Importance of Accurate Market Research

What you need to know.

Key takeaway # 1

The Rule of Two and its interplay with the nonmanufacturing rule can have implications for all government contractors—not just small businesses.  Although most Rule of Two protests are lodged by small businesses, there are situations where large businesses may leverage Rule of Two arguments to advocate in favor of competing a procurement on an unrestricted basis.

Key takeaway # 2

Small businesses should also keep in mind that Rule of Two protests can be used to challenge set-aside restrictions that are overly burdensome, as was the case in Knudsen.

Client Alert | 3 min read | 09.11.24

For the first time in nearly a decade, GAO in Knudsen Systems, Inc. sustained a protest challenging an agency’s decision to set aside a procurement for small businesses.  The decision involves the so-called “Rule of Two”:  under FAR 19.502-2(b), agencies must set aside for small businesses a procurement with an anticipated dollar value of more than $150,000 where the agency’s market research demonstrates there is a reasonable expectation at least two responsible small business offerors can meet the agency’s requirements at a fair market price.

Rule of Two protests can come in two flavors.  The more common variety is a small business challenging an agency’s failure to conduct adequate market research and issue a procurement as a small business set aside pursuant to the Rule of Two.  The less common variety involves an “other than small” protester alleging the procurement should be competed on an unrestricted basis, and that an agency’s decision to set aside the procurement is not supported by a rational Rule of Two analysis.  Over nine years ago, GAO sustained such a protest in Triad Isotopes, Inc. , concluding that the agency’s market research was insufficient to support the agency’s conclusion that it would likely receive quotes from at least two responsible small business concerns at a fair market price.  In Triad , GAO noted that an agency’s analysis must address not only the existence of small businesses that might submit proposals but also their capability to perform the contract.  That analysis may also require consideration of whether the nonmanufacturer rule applies to the procurement.  (The nonmanufacturer rule generally requires that, in procurements set aside for small businesses, if the awardee does not manufacture the product itself, it must provide products from a domestic small business manufacturer or processor—or obtain a waiver of the requirement.)  As explained in Triad, if the nonmanufacturer rule applies to the procurement, then the agency’s assessment must consider the companies’ ability to comply—small businesses unable to comply with the nonmanufacturer rule may not be considered capable of performing the contract.

 GAO’s recent decision in Knudsen Systems, Inc. involves similar facts.  In Knudsen , the Navy sought to buy SONAR equipment under a small business set-aside.  The Navy believed initially that a nonmanufacturer rule waiver had been issued for the equipment and, accordingly, the agency’s Rule of Two market research included sources-sought notices that (incorrectly) advised potential offerors that the nonmanufacturer rule did not apply.  After receiving information from three small businesses indicating that they could meet the solicitation’s requirements at a fair market price, the agency decided to set aside the procurement for small businesses. 

In the midst of the procurement, the Navy learned that the nonmanufacturer rule waiver did not apply to the procurement— i.e. , the nonmanufacturer rule did apply.  The Navy amended the solicitation to include the nonmanufacturer rule but decided that the procurement would remain a small business set-aside.

 Knudsen was a small business offeror who planned to supply equipment it sourced from a Canadian manufacturer but, following the Navy’s solicitation amendment to include the nonmanufacturer rule, could no longer bid on the procurement.  Knudsen filed a protest with GAO, challenging the Navy’s decision to conduct the procurement as a small business set-aside.  Knudsen argued the Navy’s Rule of Two analysis was flawed because it failed to consider the “capability” of small businesses to comply with the nonmanufacturer rule.  GAO agreed, noting that the Navy’s initial decision to set aside the procurement for small businesses was premised on an erroneous assumption (that the procurement was eligible for a nonmanufacturer rule waiver), which resulted in flawed market research.  In the end, GAO sustained the protest because there was “no support for the contracting officer’s assumption that any of the companies identified in the market research report were capable of performing the amended solicitation requirements.”

We would like to thank Cherie J. Owen, Consultant, for her contribution to this alert.

Amy Laderberg O'Sullivan

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Client Alert | 5 min read | 09.11.24

California to Empower Attorney General with Increased Authority to Ensure Cities Comply with State Housing Laws

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced his plans to sign Senate Bill 1037, a bill designed in response to the “statewide housing shortage crisis” that will give Attorney General Rob Bonta new civil penalty authority to hold municipalities accountable from the moment they purportedly first violate the state’s housing laws. This marks a significant change in the law. ...

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Hindenburg’s first reaction on Congress allegations on Sebi chief Madhabi Buch: ’Complete silence for weeks’

Hindenburg's first reaction on congress allegations on sebi chief madhabi buch, 'buch has maintained her complete silence for weeks on all of the emerging issues.'.

“New allegations have emerged that the private consulting entity, 99% owned by SEBI Chair Madhabi Buch , accepted payments from multiple listed companies regulated by SEBI during her time as SEBI Whole-Time Member. The companies include: Mahindra & Mahindra, ICICI Bank, Dr. Reddy’s and Pidilite. These allegations apply to Buch's Indian consulting entity with no details thus far on Buch's Singapore-based consulting entity," Hindenburg said in a reaction to Congress' allegations.

Here's what Congress alleged on Sebi Chief

Earlier on Tuesday, Congress made "shocking" revelations, claiming that Buch and her husband had earned crores of rupees from six publicly listed companies, including Mahindra and Mahindra.

Congress stated that, despite her claim that the advisory company she owns became inactive when she took office, Agora Private Limited continued to operate and earned revenue of ₹ 2.95 crore between 2016 and 2024.

Congress stated that Agora's clients include Mahindra and Mahindra Limited, Dr. Reddy's, Pidilite, ICICI, Sembcorp, and Visu Leasing & Finance.

“Strangely, of the total ₹ 2.95 Crores received by Agora Advisory Private Limited, 2.59 Crores has come from one entity alone - the Mahindra & Mahindra Group. It accounts for 88 per cent of the total money that Agora Advisory received,” it said.

The party further went on to say that, “If this was not shocking enough, the SEBI Chairperson’s husband - Dhaval Buch received ₹ 4.78 Crores as income in a personal capacity from the M&M. This is in addition to the ₹ 2.95 crores received by ‘Agora Advisory Private Limited’ through its consultancy/advisory services.”

Hindenburg's allegations on Sebi Chairperson

Recently, US-based short seller Hindenburg Research leveled accusations against SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch, alleging a conflict of interest. Last month, Hindenburg claimed that Buch and her husband, Dhaval Buch, held stakes in "the obscure offshore entities involved in the Adani money siphoning scandal." The allegations were based on documents provided by a whistleblower and investigations conducted by other organizations, according to Hindenburg Research.

Sebi chief 's statement on the allegations

Shortly afterward, the SEBI Chairperson and her husband, in their personal capacity, released a detailed statement refuting the allegations.

“In the context of allegations made in the Hindenburg Report dated August 10, 2024, against us, we would like to state that we strongly deny the baseless allegations and insinuations made in the report. The same are devoid of any truth. Our life and finances are an open book. All disclosures as required have already been furnished to SEBI over the years. We have no hesitation in disclosing any and all financial documents, including those that relate to the period when we were strictly private citizens, to any and every authority that may seek them. Further, in the interest of complete transparency, we would be issuing a detailed statement in due course,” both said in the joint statement released to the media.

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