How do you do market research?

Question

My boyfriend has started a new business with his boss. It is to do with I.T and computers. They mainly go to different companies and set up computer systems for them, to make work a bit easier for a company. They have been doing work for holiday companies mainly because this is where they have contacts as they used to work for one holiday company and do the same thing. My boyfriends boss has asked me to do some market/sales research....what the h**l do i do? Im a media student, but we havn't been taught this...help!

Answer 1

It depends on what kind of market research he wants you to do.  Sometimes it could be simply going out and surverying people.  But as a marketing grad I can tell you that it is much more intricate than that.

I don't know how formal your boss wants it done, but usually marketing research includes graphs, variables, bell curves, normal distribution.  

You can buy some marketing research books to find different ways you can get the work done.  Sometimes a simple focus group will suffice.  

Also don't be afraid to ask your boss, many times they want you to ask in order to ensure that the work will be completed the right way.  Ask him exactly what hes looking for and it will make the task that much easier.