May 13, 2019
By Felicia Asiedu

“Know thy customer”.

Several marketers think that customer research is about exploring more nuances about your product, your marketing strategy, or your business. However, the fact is, any kind of market or customer research should be completely geared towards knowing your customers and prospects better.

Determining the right questions to ask helps both the entrepreneurs who are launching a new product or service in the consumer space as well as the established businesses trying to better understand their target audience.

In case you are unsure of where to begin, highlighted below are key questions you should ask potential customers to determine if your business idea or new product or service is feasible. The correct curated set of questions can help you identify the right opportunities to improve your strategy and operations.

Here are 25 questions to consider for your consumer market research survey:

Demographic Questions

No matter what industry you are in, doing a demographic survey is crucial for the success of your business. Data on age, gender, location, ethnicity, education can provide critical insights on how to design a market segmentation strategy to reach the right audience. Here are the questions you should ask:

  1. What is your age?
  2. What is your gender?
  3. What is your household size?
  4. What is your household income?
  5. What is your profession?
  6. What is your education level?
  7. Where do you live?

Psychographic Questions

As the term indicates, psychographic is concerned with studying the psyche of the customers e.g. their interests, hobbies, opinions or anything else that will help you learn more about your customers. Psychographic data offers soft, subjective information to help you gain a deep knowledge of your audience and to help you create targeted customer profiles.  For example:

  1. What was your motivation to buy our product?
  2. Did choosing our product eliminate your pain points?
  3. Will you recommend our product to others?
  4. Were there any factors that made you switch to us?
  5. How often do you use a product like ours?

Buying Pattern Questions

How consumers purchase their products and the factors that influence their purchase decisions can be determined by asking different questions, such as:

  1. Do you ever purchase _______?
  2. If so, who in your household makes the buying decision?
  3. Where do you go when you are looking for _______?
  4. How often do you purchase _______?
  5. How long does it take you to make a buying decision?
  6. What is your typical budget for _______?
  7. How far would you travel to make the purchase?
  8. How important is it for you to buy only a specific product from a certain brand?

Benefits Questions

These questions can provide a jumping point for your consumer market research efforts.

  1. What features do you look for when you purchase _______?
  2. What specific benefits do you look for in _______?
  3. What problems motivate you to purchase _______?
  4. What needs are you trying to meet when you purchase _______?
  5. How do you hope _______will make your life better?

Creating better surveys will help you gain in-depth insights that will ultimately propel the success of your business – improve your customer survey efforts today!

Felicia Asiedu

Felicia Asiedu

An experienced CIM qualified marketing professional, Felicia is the European Marketing Manager at Cvent and has nearly 15 years’ sales and marketing experience in fast-moving technology businesses. She's responsible for the strategic direction of the marketing team in Europe, including expansion planning, campaign execution, demand generation and event management.

Before joining Cvent, Felicia held multiple marketing and business development positions with technology providers including Rackspace, Telecity Group (now Equinix), Infinity Data Centres and Merrill Corporation (now Datasite). Having had a healthy appetite for events for many years, she also has experience in planning and hosting both corporate and private events as well as speaking at both live and virtual events.

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