What are the market research process and steps?

In general Market Research process consists of 7 major steps. 

Step1

Write down the business problem/opportunity as a question

Step2

Define the research objectives

Step3

Determine the research design: The research design could be Exploratory, Descriptive or Causal, it could also be a combination

Step4

Design and prepare the Research Instrument: For exploratory design a discussion guide is normally used as the research instrument as exploratory research as the names suggests needs to be addressed through open ended questions, for the later two research design a questionnaire with a combination of open ended and closed end questions can be used

Step5

Collect the data: The data collection methodology could be qualitative, quantitative or a combination of both

Step6

Analyze the data: The data collected through Quantitative research will be analyzed using statistical methods, content analysis is conducted on qualitative data

Step7

Visualze the data and communicate the results: Since year, companies have started to give more emphasis on data visualization and simplicity, due to a drastic reduction in our attention span