Two, we love helping students and giving away all (well, at least most) of the tips and tricks of the trade our staff has learned over the years in this space.
That's why we've compiled a list of 46 Market Research Resources for Students.
Like to skip ahead? Here is what our education market research firm covers in this resource guide:
Enough chit chat, let’s get to it. Here is your ultimate guide organized by a variety of topics.
Who will this resource guide will help? 📓
Heck, if you don’t fit one of those buckets, you’ll still find value in this post.
We created these market research resources for students. However, this advice applies to anyone in the world engaged in or thinking about market research.
Even for a friend, career, or project.
Sharing is caring.
The more people who have access to this resource guide, the better! We encourage you to post this link on your school website or sharing this link with students and those interested in learning more.
We will be updating this guide with new resources as they come across our desk.
Drive Research hopes this will help! Our site is riddled with over 1,000 articles on market research tips, tricks, insights, and helpful guides.
We educate and have many followers.
We also have friends on Google. We mixed some of those posts on this list of 46 too.
Career Tips for Market Research 👔
Do you think about a career in market research? Smart man/woman.
I always say it is the perfect blend between the analytical mind and the creative mind.
We get to work with marketing messaging, creative, and advertising (often testing the effectiveness) while at the same time, crunching numbers and running charts.
Here are some pieces to help.
From anticipating questions to working smarter, asking for input, staying organized, leveraging your sources, and remembering your audience, it’s all here. There are daily lessons in a market research career, and it’s all about continuous improvement.
Did you know? Market research is more than just stats. It’s about listening, interpreting, and asking, “why?” There are so many levels to a career in market research beyond the surface duties. It’s a bit like peeling back the onion and digging deeper. It’s for the curious ones who want to know more.
As MarketResearch.com states, its about building out your education and skills, gaining experience and expertise, and having a deep understanding of business. Don’t forget to network too. It’s essential for any job market research or non-market research related.
Here we answer some frequently asked questions about the career. It includes the outlook, a typical day, the pros and cons of the industry, job impacts, getting into the field, background necessary, and a ton of other tidbits and nuggets of information. Pay it forward when you make the big dance.
What better way to understand the market outlook than to look at some U.S. news Reviews and Advice. A 6.7 out of 10 rating, you say? Hogwash. But hey, it does have some good advice on how to get a job, job satisfaction, and salary information at a broad, high-level estimate, which varies by market.
Welcome to the show rook. Follow these tips to climb the ladder quickly. It includes asking questions, doing your research on your research, staying late, studying your industry, adding value, creating checklists (more to come on that: spoiler!), and checking your work.
Our friends over at Monster.com walk you through some critical steps, including breaking into market research, winning an interview, and acing that interview. Remember: Never go to an interview empty-handed. Have notes, questions, work examples, and even copies of your resume.
A thoughtful article on 4 reasons I love working in this field. The topics cover listening (you have 2 ears and one mouth for a reason), interpretation, asking why (like the annoying kid in the back seat), and just simply helping clients. Day-in and day-out, we help.
What is Market Research and What You Need to Know 🔍
Still here? Alright. Let’s continue my young padawan.
The career advice not doing it for you? Need something more.
Here are some excellent articles around general market research information and what you need to know—definitions of market research, how to see if you need it, and other cost-saving considerations.
Entrepreneur Magazine goes through everything for you here. From primary and secondary information to understanding response rates, writing a good script, surveys versus interviews, and much more. They even provide some helpful U.S. .gov links to data sources. Win.
Oberlo.com shares its definition, how businesses can use market research, how to do market research and sources of primary and secondary market research. It’s a brief overview that gets to the point and relays what you need to know quickly. Heck, this is market research resources for students.
When we say the ultimate guide, we mean it. It is like the Ultimate Warrior of methodology posts. Man, I miss the early 90s wrestling. Judge away. Seriously though, this mega-blog post covers every methodology you could be thinking about. Get a coffee refill first.
You can tell if you need it or not by running through these scenarios. They include not meeting customer expectations, missing insight on crucial competitors, increased risk of business sales plateauing, or plummeting. Sounds familiar. It’s a sign!
This article helps businesses with getting started. We list some easy ways to get started, including starting with a competitive assessment and conducting a market survey—two straightforward ways to launch your efforts and collect feedback for a business.
Our friends at HubSpot lay out a 6-step guide here. It includes: (1) Define your buyer persona. (2) Identify a portion of that persona to engage. (3) Engage your market research participants. (4) Prepare your research questions. (5) List your primary competitors. (6) Summarize your findings.
Need a multitude of reasons the best companies use research? We got you covered. They include gathering unbiased feedback, using benchmarks, identifying drivers to satisfaction, running a SWOT, comparing results across categories, and just doing something. Anything. Hello?
Can we say "always" and move on to the next point? Yes, yes, we can. But feel free to read more about trigger points for research. Declining sales. Marketing campaigns. New products. Measuring performance. Understanding customers. That's just a few.
Don't just take our word for it. Hey, David - is market research necessary?
Small purse? No worries. We offer some cost-saving tips for your market research. These include choosing the right methodology, understanding the timeline, knowing how to decrease fees, and just how to ask for a quote or estimate. It will help.
Small purse? No worries. We offer some cost-saving tips for your market research. These include choosing the right methodology, understanding the timeline, knowing how to decrease fees, and how to ask for a quote or estimate. It will help.
Maybe the most challenging question in market research to answer. We attempt to. We walk you through some points, including improving messaging, honing in on a target market, reducing the risk of failure, improving the customer experience (CX), and eliminating poor strategies.
We finish on a proper note. If you embark on market research, do it the right way. Tips including making a fair trade, being honest, and the right to refuse. Confused? Don’t be. Read more to get the details. Ethics should always come first.
How-To Guides and Helpful Tips for Conducting Market Research 🗂️
It is a list of articles and information which describe what the study is, how it works, and the types of data and answers gathered through each. We outline a mini description of each study below.
A customer email survey is one of the least expensive and best starting points in market research. Understand the benefits, how to run the study, and what potential problems to be aware of. We cover everything you need to know about this.
Jackpot. We offer free checklists for you. Use them in your school project. Use them at your job. These checklists are full of bullet-by-bullet points to review before sending an online survey, running analysis, or starting your report. Your teacher/boss will be impressed by the final product. It catches a lot.
So many bad surveys. So many. Don’t be one of them. Read this post about being mobile-friendly, limiting survey length, limiting response options, not using challenging question formats, double-checking for errors, sampling plans, and more. We turn evil into good.
Spoiler alert if you don’t want to read this article, but shoot for 400 if you can. Why is 400 the magic number? It comes down to the margin of error, cross-tabulations, and the cost/trade-off and diminishing returns. It is an insightful post behind the magical 400.
No money? No problemo. Here we give you explicit options to collect data on the cheap. They include desk research, micro-surveys, customer research, website data, and using social media tools—all heavy on the insights but light on the wallet.
Thanks, sitepoint.com, for putting this together. It’s 21 quick tips on everything from being transparent with objectives to asking your clients for suggestions, developing charts for visuals, and ensuring your survey is objective. It’s a quick bullet point read because who has the time?
Are you worried about data quality and good responses? Read this article. The 5 tips cover dropping cookies, checking the IP address, collecting contacts and checking for duplicates, checking for speeders, and drop a herring question. Excellent insights here when you write and analyze your survey.
It is one of the most common questions we receive as a market research company. While the answer is complicated, the information will help. Think about your industry, stay away from holidays, avoid weekends, and pick the best time of the day. The answers are within (this blog).
Our friends at MarketResearch.com are back with 8 leading expert tips. They include such things as context being everything, making it personal, and stepping up your market research skills—some great insights from experts in the market research space for students at colleges and universities.
Writing Better Survey Questions and Question Examples ✍️
As we say in market research: garbage in, garbage out. Writing a good survey is the most crucial step in the entire market research process. If you don’t ask the right questions, you will not get good answers. Your analysis will not be great. Your report will be subpar. It has incredible trickle effects.
Wow. Really? 44 tips? You got it. We don’t spare any details either. There’s some meat to these (sorry Vegans). It’s not real meat, but meat in terms of words and explanation. Of all of the resources for students, we list here. It might be the most actionable.
Who even knew there were this many question types? We did, I suppose, since we wrote it! There are so many questions to cover in this and many options for you to take a look at. Because even we get bored with the same old radio buttons and comment boxes in surveys. Be free.
No one likes boring surveys. Do you know engaged survey respondents spend more time in your survey, offer more comments, and take it more seriously? It’s in your best interest to heed our advice here and enact these tips we offer to improve your online survey experience.
Are you making any of these 3 mistakes? We hope not. But if you are, that’s okay. No one is perfect. What are the 3 mistakes? The survey is too long, questions are company-centric, not customer-centric, and you are not offering any value to the survey-taker. Finger wag.
We love offering up some of our best-practice questions, especially in this post on market research resources for students at colleges and universities. They include importance and satisfaction questions, net promoter score (NPS), and much more. Steal them for yourself. We won’t arrest you.
We love designing survey questions so much, we made a whole video about it. Check it out!
There are good survey questions and bad survey questions. The intentions are usually good, but the wording can be bad. Constant Contact offers tips to write better survey questions that you can take and apply to your next work of art.
HubSpot, back in the house on this list. Think writing good survey questions is not good enough? What about great? They make their attempt here to walk you through the tips and tricks to survey writing. Some, more basic, some more immediate.
Red herrings are one of the most valuable but underutilized survey techniques nowadays. With rampant bots and survey speeders out there on panels firing through surveys, these examples show you how to single out poor quality respondents quickly easily. Use them.
Avoid leading your respondents in your survey. You want truthful answers, objective data, and non-leading responses. It all comes down to wording. Learn how to ask questions in a manner that does not push respondents in one direction or the other here.
Everything About Focus Groups 🗣️
Perhaps the most popular qualitative form of market research, focus groups are exploratory discussions about a product, service, brand, or organization. They allow you to dive deep, whereas a survey focuses more on measurement.
We lean on our friends over at Actionable Research for this one. They offer some critical tips, including identifying and stating the goals, creating a safe environment, blaming it on the clock, and asking probing questions. Focus groups are an excellent tool to collect feedback. Use them wisely.
Angelfish Fieldwork also offers some moderating tips to follow for you here. They span from developing a schedule, doing an ice-breaker, creating activities, asking open-ended questions, seeking clarity, and watching body language. All of these will help you run a successful focus group.
You were wondering how focus groups work? All of your answers are here. It takes you through the process, including a kickoff, work plan, location, recruitment, moderator’s guide, reminders, hosting the groups, writing a report, and debriefing on the results. All of your answers are here.
Need some example focus group question. By now, you should know the routine. We’re going to give them to you. So many great ones to choose from to help build out your moderator’s guide as a student. Focus groups are one of the best qualitative methodologies.
Are you just getting started with focus groups? It’s okay. Everyone has their first. Tips include being familiar with the guide, setting the tone for the conversation, giving listening cues, and responding with questions. You are not there to lead answers but to challenge answers.
If you are skeptical about focus groups, this post should help you understand the true benefits of qualitative market research. They include diving deeper, group dialogue, watching live, and undivided attention. There’s even a little video to break up to monotony of words. We got you.
Getting participants to show to your qualitative market research project can be a real challenge. We know from experience. Read through this post to hear from our expert higher education market research firm to help your recruits show up to your sessions. Nothing is worse than an empty room.
Need a real facility to host your focus group with a one-way mirror and recording capabilities? Here are the items you need to look for and ask about. They include convenience, parking, A/V capabilities, and so much more which separate the best focus group facilities from the rest of the pack.
Here's a peek at the Drive Research focus group facility in Syracuse, New York.
Need a real facility to host your focus group with a one-way mirror and recording capabilities? Here are the items you need to look for and ask about. They include convenience, parking, A/V capabilities, and so much more, which separate the best focus group facilities from the rest of the pack.
Phew! You made it.
If you got through that list, pat yourself on the back. We weren’t kidding about the extensiveness of the market research resources for students.
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