By Kate Zuritsky | 08/04/2025
The best brands don’t guess – they plan. Whether you’re launching a new product or refining your service offerings, market research plays a crucial role in the strategic planning process. It turns great ideas into informed decisions, ensuring your business moves forward with intent and purpose.
How Does Market Research Support Business Growth?
“Nearly every industry uses market research methods to stay competitive in increasingly complex and demanding marketplaces,” says Dr. Michelle Burton, a faculty member at the Dr. Wallace E. Boston School of Business at American Public University (APU). “In the retail sector, for example, you might use it to understand various consumer preferences and test new products before expanding to the larger store base.”
At its core, market research is the foundation for informed decision-making. It helps brands uncover emerging trends, understand consumer behavior, and identify new market opportunities. These insights enable businesses to fulfill unmet needs, refine their messaging, and align marketing efforts with broader business goals.
“Market research methods are the techniques used to gather, analyze, and interpret information about a market,” says Dr. Burton. “These methods allow businesses to make informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies, pricing, and customer needs.”
“A company might research its target market to gain valuable insights into competitors, industry trends, and potential customers,” Dr. Burton explains. These insights allow organizations to better align their offerings with consumer needs.
Market research also guides strategic planning regarding brand positioning, pricing, and product promotion. Business leaders review research findings to identify consumer pain points and create a foundation for informed decision-making. Consequently, research is integral to long-term, sustainable growth.
A veteran of the retail industry, Dr. Burton has seen the benefits of market research firsthand. “As a merchandise planner and allocator for a department store, I leveraged market research to assess whether a product line had the potential to succeed in our top-performing locations.
“For example, we closely tracked weekly sales performance by color and style for a new collection across our top 100 stores. This approach, driven by data, allowed us to identify which colorways and styles resonated most strongly with customers.
From there, we could refine future assortment strategies and make informed allocation decisions to maximize profitability and minimize excess inventory.”
Essentially, market research gives a business a competitive edge. Decision-makers use data to refine marketing strategies, forecast market shifts, and support long-term success.
What Is Strategic Planning?
Strategic planning is the process that organizations use to define, identify, and accomplish their goals. This process consists of three steps:
- Evaluating the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses
- Understanding external market conditions
- Aligning business objectives with their mission, vision, and values
Strategic planning also requires decision-makers to analyze data to better understand buying patterns within their target market.
“At the very heart of the most successful brands is a genuine desire to know why people connect with certain products, services, and messaging content,” observes Dr. Burton. “Successful brand marketers are ready and willing to continually learn and evolve to keep their brands relevant and authentic in a rapidly changing market.”
Businesses often assess their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, using a process known as a “SWOT analysis.” It helps decision-makers to evaluate the factors influencing business performance. Strengths and weaknesses represent internal advantages and vulnerabilities, while opportunities and threats stem from external factors, like competitors and customers.
Strategic planning may also involve another form of market research called a “gap analysis.” To conduct a gap analysis, a business will collect data and compare current performance to its desired goals.
The Role of Technology in Strategic Planning and Making Informed Decisions
Technology is rapidly transforming the business landscape, especially when it comes to working with raw data. While traditional methods of collecting and analyzing data can be time-consuming, advancements in technology have optimized these processes.
“Overall, technology improves the market research process by making it faster, more accurate, and more efficient,” explains Dr. Burton. “Additionally, it reduces costs, improves overall data quality, and allows businesses to make informed, data-driven decisions.”
In today’s competitive landscape, data-driven decision-making is indispensable. Data enables businesses to gather valuable insights into customer behavior, market trends, and potential threats, so it is critical for creating an effective strategic plan.
Primary and Secondary Data Helps Companies Meet Consumer Needs
There are many steps involved in building an effective business strategy, and analyzing data is among the most important steps. Organizations use data to gain a profound understanding of the “who,” “what,” and “why” behind consumer desires and competitors’ business practices. The methods they use to collect data varies.
“With primary data, one collects the data directly, often through surveys, observations, and product testing,” explains Dr. Burton. “With primary market research, you have greater flexibility over how your data is collected. You can also address the unique needs of your business or overall research objective.”
“Secondary market research is analysis collected by others for varying purposes. It includes sources such as industry reports, news articles, company financial statements, academic articles, and government reports,” she adds.
Primary data offers a closer look into customer behavior, while secondary data provides actionable insights into market trends, market share, and your competitors. Generally, companies use secondary findings to develop their own market research strategies. This process allows business leaders to uncover deeper insights.
“To inform the launch of a new cosmetics line, for instance, you must first conduct secondary research using industry trend reports and competitor sales data to identify market opportunities,” says Dr. Burton.
Focus Groups and Surveys Help Support Favorable Business Outcomes
Focus groups dig deep into the emotions, motivations, and other factors that drive customer behavior and purchasing decisions.
“Focus groups, which are a qualitative research method, provide an opportunity to gather detailed, in-depth feedback directly from customers,” explains Dr. Burton. “Typically involving 6–10 participants and guided by one or two moderators, these small-group discussions explore participants’ feelings, motivations, and personal opinions.”
By contrast, surveys provide a wide array of insights. “While they help reveal the ‘why’ behind consumer behavior, surveys – a quantitative research method – allow businesses to measure opinions. They also help to identify trends across a much larger audience spanning different regions, states, or even countries,” states Dr. Burton. “Surveys enable the segmentation of customers based on demographics, behaviors, and preferences, providing precise data to inform strategic decisions.”
Social Media and Trend Tracking Inform Marketing Strategies
Social media has become one of the most valuable emerging technologies for marketers. By monitoring online consumer engagement, brands can conduct a more comprehensive analysis of their consumer bases and attract more potential customers.
From uncovering new trends to assessing market share and identifying new growth opportunities, social media can fuel smarter marketing campaigns and content development.
Social Listening Tools Play a Crucial Role in Engaging Your Target Audience
Social listening tools like Brandwatch® and Sprout Social® allow businesses to monitor real-time conversations, track sentiment, and identify emerging market trends. “Social listening tools can also be used to identify any rising influencers, popular topics, and shifting consumer interests,” says Dr. Burton.
By tracking social sentiment and analyzing what people search, share, and say online, marketers can make necessary adjustments to their product offerings, content, and pricing strategies to meet demand.
“Social media provides demographic information such as age and ethnicity and behavioral data such as online browsing patterns,” explains Dr. Burton. “Directly engaging with customers on these platforms provides the opportunity to assess opinions, preferences, and overall negative experiences with the product or service.”
Understanding Trends Helps Businesses Design Effective Marketing Campaigns
Researching trends provides critical insights into opportunities for business growth. Technological advancements like Google Trends® provide an easy way to measure interest in specific terms and topics.
As Dr. Burton explains, “Google Trends is a helpful search trend analysis tool that allows marketers to see what people are searching for across any length of time desired.
“It is a free tool, making it manageable and easy to use for small, start-up brands that might not have the finances to support other paid tools. You can see popularity by region and seasonality and also compare various search terms.”
With such insights, Google Trends is a powerful tool for understanding consumers and target audiences, she notes.
Turning Research into Results for Decision-Making
Research is an indispensable tool for making informed decisions. By transforming raw data into insights, businesses can reduce risks, increase brand awareness, and develop products or services with confidence. Market research not only improves marketing tactics, but it also informs sales strategies. It enables companies to better align with customer desires and market conditions.
“At the very heart of the most successful brands is a genuine desire to know why people connect with certain products, services, and messaging,” says Dr. Burton. To keep pace with evolving technology, customer expectations, and economic shifts, Dr. Burton emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning.
“Continuously build your skills in storytelling, market research, and data analysis, since successful brand marketers combine creativity with evidence-based strategy to stay ahead,” Dr. Burton advises. She recommends staying current on social media trends, industry news, and technology tools like AI.
She also encourages marketers to be hands-on: “Actively experiment with tools for AI content creation. Test new features on these platforms, such as analytic dashboards or other ad features, so you have firsthand knowledge on how to use them.”
The Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing at APU
For adult learners interested in learning more about the role of market research in strategic planning, APU offers an online Bachelor of Arts in Marketing. In their courses, students will examine why data is such a critical part of a company’s marketing efforts and the importance of thoroughly researching a target audience. Learners will also study the data collection methods companies use to gather valuable insights on market size, buyer behavior, and competing products or services.
This bachelor’s degree has earned specialty accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP®). ACBSP accreditation ensures that the bachelor’s degree in marketing has been carefully examined to fulfill high academic standards.
For more information, visit APU’s business and management degree program page.
Brandwatch is a registered trademark of Runtime Collective, Ltd.
Sprout Social is a registered trademark of Sprout Social, Inc.
Google Trends is a registered trademark of Google, LLC.
ACBSP is a registered trademark of the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs.
