Developing a new business idea, and then turning that idea into a reality, is one of the most exciting events in an entrepreneur’s career. However, starting a new business venture can be extremely difficult, even when it might be something you are knowledgeable and passionate about. When a company struggles with any one aspect of the business, recognizing the need for a change of direction can be referred to as pivoting. Failing to have an accurate understanding of the market for your product can lead to problems that cannot be fixed easily.  Pivoting for a company can be a dramatic or small change, with either way having the overall goal to change the business model for a product, strategy, or idea that promotes company growth.

Market research serves as a helpful tool and an integral part of education in academic institutions. Whether at a large public university or a small private college, all institutions of higher education use research products in a variety of ways. To understand how your institution can best utilize market research, you should analyze who will require access and how they will be using market research, as well as consider the benefits of using a syndicated market research solution. In this blog post, we'll share some of our insights into the benefits and best uses of market research by colleges and universities.

Since the world first started integrating electricity into everyday life, electricity and power has been based around “the grid.” The grid is the system that creates, transforms, delivers and even stores all of the electricity and power that we use, while also transferring power from suppliers to consumers.  Including wires, switches, transformers, substations, meters, gages and more, the grid’s infrastructure is vast and broad (the size of the entire continent), yet also intricate and detailed (each individual consumer is connected). It powers everything in our society, from power plants to homes, and everything in-between. The grid is our national engine and keeps our society running at all times.

Futuristic, the adjective, means “having or involving very modern technology or design.” The term was once used to describe how the world would be centuries down the road. Yet, we now find ourselves living right in the midst of futuristic times. As with many areas that revolutionize along with technological advances, the term, futuristic, has become a staple in the area of market research methodologies. Indeed, 2014 has never seen more opportunity for analysis of data. The total global amount of data is now estimated at approximately 4 zettabytes, with a zettabyte being 1000^7th bytes. As such, techniques for managing analysis of this massive global population of data must dynamically evolve as well.

As the market has developed and grown, the Advanced Materials and Chemicals sectors of the manufacturing industry have been two of the fastest growing sectors. Chemicals is one of the oldest industries within manufacturing and has continued to play an important role in the day-to-day needs of the population as well as the industrial and economic needs. Trends in new technology, emerging markets, and the need to “go green” have transformed the chemical and advanced materials market.

Whether it's used by professors to educate the next generation of research, business and marketing professionals, or it's used to help offices of technology transfer and commercialization centers research and develop new products, academic institutions have a vital need for current and comprehensive market research. However, many traditional academic market research solutions do not offer the flexibility and diverse coverage necessary to accommodate the various needs of multiple departments within an institution. MarketResearch.com's Profound solution is now being offered to the academic community in order to provide the capabilities and content needed to maximize institutions' budgets while providing the high-quality content that academia requires.

When your company launches a product, the marketing needs are going to evolve alongside the product as it progresses through its life cycle. There are four main stages of the product life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Each stage of a product’s life cycle will require different forms of market research to most effectively market your product in the industry.

As the calendar has now moved into the summer months, many professionals in the beer industry have their efforts focused on one thing: the 4^th of July, one of the biggest days of the year for the U.S. beer market. More than 103 million Americans drank beer on Independence Day in 2013, with 68.3 million cases of beer sold over the course of the weekend, which is a significant increase over previous years. In 2008, beer sales only recorded 24 million cases sold during the holiday weekend. But, as of 2012, Independence Day has claimed the top spot over Memorial Day and Labor Day as the most popular holiday for beer purchases.

Businesses all have their own ethical obligations. As a market researcher, you too have ethical guidelines you need to keep in mind when preparing to conduct research or start looking for secondary data. To fully understand business ethics, we have provided an ethics checklist, along with a list of common unethical market research concerns that may arise during the research process.

MarketResearch.com partners with over 700 publishers to offer customers the most comprehensive collection of diverse business intelligence. Each publisher has its own story and offers unique and insightful perspective into the industries they cover. This week, MarketResearch.com is spotlighting global, multi-industry information provider MarketsandMarkets. Read on to learn more about MarketsandMarkets and their products.