Collecting Customer Background Data

Market research is not just about collecting data – it’s about collecting the right data. You need your data to drive business decisions, and you need to look for relationships that can help you meet customer needs and build customer relationships.

One of the primary sources of data to drive your market research – especially into customer relationships – is your background data. The more you know about a customer’s background, the more you can find relationships that may otherwise not be apparent.

For example, perhaps your data shows that men do not appear to be buying your products as much as women. So you decide to focus your marketing efforts on women. This may seem like a good business decision.

However, if you had more data, perhaps you found that men in their late 30s to early 40s actually purchased at a higher rate than women. Without that added age data, you may not have known about an additional relationship. Why Stop at Collecting Only the Basic Data? This brings up an interesting question: Why stop at collecting the basic data points, such as age, marital status, ethnic background, and so on? The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a great example of how additional data can be used to formulate opinions.

The famous psychology test uses some more basic questions, like asking about health, etc. But it also found that there were relationships to other data points, such as: True or False: I like mechanics magazines. One might wonder why a question about a magazine preference would be included in a scale designed to find psychological disorders, but research found that whether or not an individual liked mechanic magazines – when combined with other data in the survey – had various indications that implied the presence of some type of psychological disorder.

Collecting Customer Data It may not be feasible to collect such a vast amount of data on your customers looking for relationships, but there is benefit to collecting greater amounts of data on your customers than the basics that relate to your business. You may find that there are links and relationships to all types of other products, businesses, etc., and you can use that information in your business decisions. There is no such thing as too little data, and limiting yourself only to the traditional background information may be leaving out important data points that may be beneficial for your company to explore.

Collecting considerable customer background information is not without its weaknesses. Let's explore the weaknesses of collecting considerable customer background data .