Image matters, especially in the world of business. Every organization is trying to stand out from the crowd and grab our attention as a consumer. Without a strong brand image, it’s tough to gain traction. You may run an excellent company with strong products and services, but if people don’t have a positive association with your brand, your business will face negative long-term consequences.

Profound is a fantastic cost saving tool for any organization that purchases information on a regular basis, but for the independent consultant, Profound opens up whole new ways of using syndicated research to improve your business. Here are some of the biggest advantages of the service:

B2B market research is defined as the systematic collecting, recording and analyzing of information in support of decision making in business-to-business (B2B) commerce. Almost all businesses conduct some type of market research, whether formal or informal, as input in support of making informed and sound business decisions. By far, the most common form of B2B research is focused on sizing markets, projecting market growth, competitive intelligence, and understanding market dynamics. This information is typically used in the company’s strategic planning process and is only conducted on an annual basis.

Start-up businesses can easily fall short of their dreams and goals by not making the right business decisions. There are so many factors that go into creating a successful enterprise that a lot of businesses don’t think about because they get too focused on their product or idea and don’t look at what could happen in the future.

Driven by a dramatic increase in the global internet penetration, online surveys are becoming a popular method for collecting primary research. Delivering faster responses and higher response rates at substantially lower costs, online surveys streamline the methodology of collecting survey data versus traditional telephone and print surveys.

The ability to purchase individual sections of syndicated market research reports on our Profound solution is a powerful tool for getting the exact information you need from a report. Because you can section many of the reports all the way down to the chart and table level, it is important to consider exactly what answers you are trying to get before making your purchases. Below is a general set of recommendations for choosing how much of a report you should be purchasing based on your information need and industry experience.

Market research is critical to the overall success of any organization. The trick is in finding a way to acquire the amount and depth of research your business needs in the most cost-effective manner. There are a number of ways to purchase market research, so, in order to increase ROI, organizations must determine which type of research solution best fits the frequency of their research requirements.

To deepen the understanding of a market, custom research employs extensive or targeted primary research to go beyond what can be uncovered through secondary research alone. In-depth interviews are the most versatile form of primary research and are appropriate when targeting detailed perceptions, opinions, and attitudes. In-depth interviews are particularly effective when the goal is to capture feedback that is sensitive. These interviews can be conducted in-person or over the telephone to gain deeper insight to specific objectives by probing for quality responses. This offers an advantage over self-completion methods, such as surveys, because the respondent is more likely to give their full attention and the interviewer can deduce the quality of each response.

Working in market research, I often hear people say "what exactly is market research," or "I don't need it." But, what many people don't realize is you certainly need market research even if you don't realize it, and especially if you want to secure funding from investors.

If you've ever watched an episode of ABC's hit show "Shark Tank," you've seen numerous hopeful entrepreneurs walk into the tank and deliver their pitch. Then, the questioning begins: What are your sales? Who is your competition? What will you use the money for? How can you scale your business? How & where will your product be distributed? Who is your target market and what are their spending habits?