Predictive Market Research Trends for 2018

The global market research industry is expanding at an accelerated pace and business companies across the world are aggressively investing in researching and collecting data about upcoming and existing market trends. The global revenue of the entire market research industry in 2015 exceeded 40 Billion US Dollars, and as per the current market trends this revenue will show annual growth year after year.

Market research has now become one of the most integral parts of major business enterprises, as this research helps them to understand the expectations of their customers. Considering the immense growth in market research and the benefits it offers the companies which invest in it, we have compiled a list of the most prominent drifts that are expected to become the mainstream trends in 2018.

How Businesses Benefit Through Predictive Market Research?

Market research refers to the objective and systematic analysis and collection of data pertaining to a business's competitors, target market, and the business environment. The main goal of market research is to enhance the overall understanding of all these aspects. There are many benefits offered by market research, including -

• It helps you identify the diverse opportunities in the marketplace
• It uncovers the potential issues due to which your business may not be able to deliver optimum performance
• It helps you to plan ahead and leverage opportunities as and when they come
• It helps in minimizing risks when undertaking new business decisions

Top 6 Predictive Market Research Trends for 2018

Market research can reveal a plethora of resourceful information, which, when utilized by an organization correctly can help it deliver better services and achieve customer satisfaction goals. But, market research should not be considered as a onetime activity; rather it is an ongoing process which should a part of the organization's work culture.

Here are the top 6 predictive market research trends 2018 -

1. Significant Growth in Artificial Intelligence and Automation Oriented Products/ Services

   As technology advances at a fast face, one of the major trends in predictive market research in the year 2018 that will see mass acceptance is artificial intelligence and automation. Soon companies would be seen embracing AI assisted services to strengthen their decision making while enhancing productivity and augmenting their ROI. Also, as such newer technologies would gain acceptance, it would become easier to deploy automation in different scenarios. Automation would not only find industrial but commercial usage as well. As per industry experts, AI and automation related applications would become cheaper, faster, easily accessible, and more standardized. Thus, Artificial Intelligence and Automation will be among the most dominating predictive market research trends this year.

2. Amplified Demand for Desk Research

   Among the latest trends in predictive market research, increased demand for desk research would be a significant one. As per industry experts, desk research would be in high demand owing to the following major reasons -

   • There will be a considerable shift towards digital desk research methods by marketers in order to glean insights about the behavior of their consumers and other key market trends. This will help companies to comprehend the requirements of their customers, which can then be utilized to make improvements in their offerings and increase sales
   • In order to combat the economic stagnation which has been predicted for 2018, businesses would seek cost-efficient ways for conducting research, and this will give desk research an edge over its counterparts
   • As access to published information has got better over the last few years, the desk researchers will have a better opportunity to conduct comprehensive research with ease, while being able to verify and double-check facts

3. Increased Demand for Result-oriented Business Research

   2018 will witness an increased demand for market research that can accurately predict business results. Thus, result-oriented predictive market research is going to be one of the most dominating trends in the upcoming years.

   Most experts in market research highlight that they have seen the clients seeking the research results that establishes a connection between the attitudes of customers with the actual financial performance of the firm. The bottom line is that competition has become highly stiff and thus, the companies look for research results that can help them to enhance their sales and productivity.

   Therefore, companies are increasingly being seen demanding the tools which can facilitate lucid information pertaining to customer reviews text analysis, in-the-moment research, actual store traffic, etc. However, many companies nowadays are preferring market research which can actually predict their business results. This is so that the risk involved in experimenting with strategies developed on the basis of market research trends can be minimized.

4. Emphasis on Personal Dimension

   Tech-savvy marketers today are demanding more from the technology tools being implemented by their firms for conducting market research. So, instead of just deploying technology tools for gathering more data on the behavior of customers, they are seeking solutions with which they can strategically deploy qualitative research focused on customer behavior first and foremost. This will help them to -

   • Experience the real world conditions in which their consumers use their products or services
   • Better observe the actual behavior of consumers
   • Develop an emphatic connection with their consumers
   • Better understand the interests, values, beliefs, and mindset of the customers

   So, significant emphasis on the personal dimension during market research is going to be one of the most prominent trends in predictive market research in 2018, and many more years to come.

5. Research will be focused towards Product Development

   Among the key predictive market research trends 2018 is the substantial focus on product development. This is because market researchers are increasingly gravitating towards economic, better, and faster research which would allow them to develop new and exciting products attuned to their customers' requirements. Today, every company is pushing for more collaborative, faster and rapid iterations-oriented research focused on product development, so that companies can develop the products which can then become an instant hit among the customers.

6. Reliance on Automated Research Amalgamated With Human Filtering

   The soaring usage of big data and the tools related to it are expected to drive the implementation of newer platforms and reports based on automated market research. This in turn would make available for researchers the colossal amount of data that is available today, collected from a broad array of sources such as data mining, social media activity analysis, online surveys, and internet crawling.

   At the same time, the volume of the available data is so large that automated software would have to be developed specifically to suit the customized market research needs. Soon, this would become the only preferable way to take optimum advantage of the existing data and for deriving insights from it. However, as per experts, such automated software aid in finding valuable insights from the data, but don't reveal the exact details if a layer of human filtering is not applied.

   So, one of the predictive market research trends in 2018 would be that research experts will stop completely relying on automated software, and will amalgamate the automated research results with human filtering to deliver value-added analysis while weeding out bad results. This would take out the anomalies from the research results.

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So, these are some of the most prominent predictive market research trends that will dominate the market research industry in the 2018. We, at Flatworld Solutions offer the best-in-class market research services, as our research results are compiled by seasoned experts who possess years of experience in this niche.

So, if you have been seeking a reliable market research firm that can deliver quality-focused services at affordable prices and within short turnaround times, you can contact us right away. Our executives would be happy to help you with all your market research requirements.