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Market Research Provides Valuable Insight

Selling your services or products requires an in-depth knowledge of your customer, regardless of industry. This need becomes even more apparent when a company plans to roll out a new product and/or service and wants to find out what the target audience thinks. This is where market research comes in. The process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data about the target market, consumers, competitors and the industry offers several benefits.

One of these is to help companies understand their customers’ needs and characteristics, such as: age, gender, race, ethnicity, education, income and employment status. By segmenting the audience, businesses can tailor their messaging to appeal to each group. Market research also helps companies understand what their competitors are doing, thus discovering a competitive advantage.  Last but not least, market research helps businesses identify opportunities and avoid costly mistakes.  For example, there would be no point in introducing a new product if the data showed that such a product wouldn’t be well received in the market.

At Bernard & Company, we recently obtained and analyzed market research data on behalf of our German spindle manufacturer and repair client. They wanted to see if there was a potential U.S. market for their line of small, high precision spindles used in industries such as: mold and die, medical, semiconductor, optics, watch/jewelry and aviation/defense.  To reach machine builders and end users effectively, our agency distributed a short online survey through two publications, Manufacturing Center and Manufacturing Engineering. Questions included industries served as a high precision spindle manufacturer, technical aspects of the spindles, machine tool brands currently used, number of spindles in use and biggest challenges. Both publications provided a click report, with Manufacturing Center also generating a huge list of leads.

While the survey indicated there was modest market potential for the company, a second survey was sent out to uncover OEMs making machines in the U.S. that could use the German spindle line. The second survey was sent out through Manufacturing Center and contained only five questions, as opposed to nine in the first survey. Furthermore, participants had to list their name, company address and email to qualify for a $10 Amazon gift card. These questions were more specific, with participants asked to name the brands of machines that currently used our client’s spindles, machine manufacturers they’d consider for future purchases, well-known North American machine tool builders, as well as technology leaders in the industry. Results of the second survey still showed a low market potential and confirmed that a majority of the well-known machine tool builders were either Asian or European companies. Thus, the agency confidently recommended that the company focus on increasing exposure to the full line of capabilities offered in North America by their Racine, Wisconsin office.

Market research is just one of the many ways we help our clients get ahead of the game.

Thank you!

Ioana Benea is a Marketing Information Specialist at Bernard & Company, an industrial advertising/marketing agency. Her responsibilities include translating technical press releases (English-Spanish) for magazines in Latin America, interviewing clients for stories, writing product releases, ads and success stories, conducting client research on the market/ competitors and managing and posting to clients’ social media pages.

She has worked at Bernard & Company for 10 years and is based Palatine, Illinois (Chicago). Ioana is a graduate of Benedictine University, holding a Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies and Spanish. She received her Masters in Integrated Marketing Communications from Roosevelt University.

For more information, please contact:

Tim Daro, President
BERNARD AND COMPANY
1540 E. Dundee Road
Suite 250
Palatine, IL 60074
Phone: 847-934-4500
tdaro@bernardandcompany.com