Market+Research

= Market Research =

Designers need to know what consumers want to buy so that they can design products that will sell and therefore make money for their business.

To find this out they need to do research which includes: One product cannot be suitable or appeal to everyone. Therefore designers have to identify a specific target group for their products or sometimes they are given a target group to design for. Target groups are defined by age, gender, job, social, group, class, hobbies, lifestyle, money and anything else.
 * Target Market **

Once designers are clear about their target market they can then ask them questions to find out what they want from the product. This can be done with questionnaires, surveys,interviews, focus groups. Questions that could be asked include: Once you have done the research a designer would be confident whether the product would succeed or not.
 * Do they already buy your type of product?
 * Do they like a particular style or colour?
 * How much will they pay?
 * Where would they buy it from?
 * How could existing products be improved?

Once initial research is done showing a need for the product a designer would then make a prototype. This would also be tested by market research to see if the product was what people wanted. Questions that could be asked are:
 * Is it the right size?
 * Does it function as expected?
 * Do you like the colour / style / patter / decoration?
 * How much would you pay for it?
 * Do you like the materials it is made from?
 * How could the product be improved?

Once a designer is completely sure that a product is right for a target market it would go into production.

ICT can be used to help with the market research. It can be used to produce the questionnaire, put it on a website, create a spreadsheet to organise and sort the data, present graphs and charts, do a presentation showing the data, look up sales figures.

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