"Start with the end in mind." The late Stephen Covey was not necessarily referring to business when he wrote this thought in his popular book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. But, the sentiment still rings true, particularly when talking about launching a start-up. Developing good habits and outlining smart steps are crucial to achieving entrepreneurial success, and beginning your endeavor with solid market research habits will much better equip you to reach your end goals. So, we've briefly outlined seven market research habits to help you launch your start-up effectively and successfully.

More product offerings and a larger audience seem to be the dynamic duo when it comes to expanding a business and increasing its revenue, and it's no different in the world of market research publishing. Internally, publishers work dilligently to continually producing new products, publishing reports on the latest in their covered industries. But, what if additional efforts could be made externally to extend your reach to entirely new audiences? Partnering with a market research marketplace can do just that.

After purchasing a market research solution, in order to get the most value from your investment, you need to evaluate your usage. But, how do you optimize your platform most effectively? Whether you have a subscription-based solution or a buy-by-the-slice platform, you need to fully understand its features and how to take advantage of them. That is why at MarketResearch.com, we have multiple Application Specialists who work closely with our platform customers to ensure you are optimizing your usage and the solution's features to reach the highest potential value for your business.

Whether your goal is to grow your brand, company size, or profits, growing your business is an essential, yet difficult, process to tackle. Recently on our blog, we discussed three market research questions that will fuel your business growth. The gist was to analyze how you monitor your target audience, competition, and your company's technological advances (or lack there of). Because looking at questions like these from a fresh perspective is sometimes necessary to improve, I wanted to revisit this idea of growing your business with a few more strategic question suggestions. 

Looking ahead at the new year, the food and beverage industry is slated to experience both new and continued trends. While overall retail sales will continue to climb, some dynamic shifts will also occur. To find out some of the projected upcoming trends for 2014, we reviewed The Future of Food Retailing in the U.S.: Shopper Insights and Market Opportunities, 4th Edition, a report published by leading food and beverage industry experts Packaged Facts.

As we say goodbye to 2013 and ring in the new year, it's important to look ahead at what we can expect throughout 2014. Continuing on the ideas of the 2013 trends, the pet industry should experience slight, but steady, growth across the board in in the upcoming year, according to pet industry experts and MarketResearch.com publisher Packaged Facts. In Packaged Facts' report U.S. Pet Market Outlook, 2013-2014, they project a wide variety of industry trends that will gain momentum next year.

The mark of any successful business is growth. No matter how small or large a company may be, you must always strive to improve, to grow, to endure. But, that's certainly easier said than done, right? The trick is to focus your market research strategy around questions that are geared towards fueling your business growth. So, which questions really cut to the heart of true expansion? Here are a few suggestions to get your strategic wheels turning:

By the year 2017, nearly 2.5 billion people across the globe will be engaged in social networking. That's nearly a third of the earth's current population. So, regardless of how trivial people once considered social media to be, the truth is the social realm has become a truly viable resource for the business world. With this rapid progression of usage and its evolving reputation, it's becoming increasingly important for market researchers to take advantage of the unique networking opportunities social platforms provide. But because of preconceived notions, many professionals are at a loss when it comes to actually harnessing social media's capabilities in an advantageous way. Before this can be done, market researchers must understand social media in terms of practicality and application. So, how can social networking actually benefit your market research efforts? There are several things to consider when determining this.