Marketing research is essential at all points of time for a business. It can help you with launching a new product, designing an advertising campaign, or creating a budget. However, in thinking about marketing research, you need to answer a few questions.
First, determine if you actually have a research need.
Is the information that you would gather from research necessary to have, or would it just be nice to have?
If the answer is: “Yes, it is needed information!”, the next step is to ask: What you would do with the data? Will this information lead to action?
If yes, next ask if the information already exists somewhere. If it does, then you probably do not need to conduct research.
Lastly, ask: When does the decision need to be made? Ensure that you have weeks or months available to conduct research.
If you have thought through all of those questions, you should know whether or not you need research. The next step is to formulate the correct research question so that you can design an experiment to get the data that you need.