‘Market research’: Way to India's inclusive growth and sustainable success of SMEs

‘Marketing Research’ is one of the weak areas in the SME sector, having major issues mainly due to unavailability of finance and lack of awareness. The SME sector still needs to learn the best of global marketing research practices. This is evident from the fact that mere 1% of the total SMEs are exporting units. There are a few SME owners who are using web and social media tools to promote brands, create related communities, and conducting surveys, however, the result of such a campaign is largely focused on enhancing sales rather than improving customer loyalty or gaining market insights. Hence, the major challenge for the SME sector today is to update and act upon the changes in marketing dynamics arising out of globalisation and technological up-gradation in every sphere of marketing, brand building, after sale service, and building clientele.

Over the last decade, market research industry has shifted its focus from asking to observing, questioning to discussing, collection to analysis, insight to foresight, large surveys to data streams, quarterly trackers to 24/7 insights communities and geographically fixed to mobile locations etc. The traditional marketing research methods are considered time consuming, non feasible and expensive from point of view of SMEs; but with the market research industry's transition towards the digital market research methods, there are hopes for the cost effective, value added and timely research benefits for this sector. The development of digital market research methods is certainly going to be a boon to the SMEs in the years to come.