Practical tips for a successful market

research in the horticultural and

agricultural sector

A market research is a great tool to collect information about (potential) markets, clients or products, but it can also be used to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. These insights contribute to a successful agrimarketing campaign. Quantitative research means that a sample of agricultural companies out of the target group will be examined. The results that come forward are representative, accurate and reliable for the total research population. For example: the following information can objectively be observed by conducting a market research: • The customer satisfaction about your product or service; • Your current market share; • The brand awareness of your brand, business or product / service; • Your company image; • etc. A thorough market research can be a good indicator for your marketing policy. If your current image differs from your preferred image, you need to take action to achieve your preferred image. The results of a market research may point you in the right direction. A customer satisfaction survey can provide you of new insights in aspects of your product or service that customers are satisfied or unsatisfied with. Which aspect do you need to work on and which aspect could give you an advantage on your competitors? A market research also makes it possible to discover what your clients care about in your product or service and which companies are your biggest competitors. The possibilities within market research are enormous. Before starting a quantitative market research, it is important that you´ve well considered your research design. Below you can find some steps out of the process to create a practical research plan.

1. What do you want to accomplish with your research? This question seems easy to answer, but unfortunately it is not so obvious. A research can only be successful if you know what you want to accomplish in the end. That’s why it is important to think thoroughly about your research goal and the questions you want to get answered by doing your research. Your goal: In the research goal you describe what kind of information you would like to obtain out of the research and how this information can help you with undertaking concrete marketing actions. Your research questions: The research questions depend on your research goal. These are the questions you want to get answered by doing your research. For example: ‘Who buys my product?’, ‘How can I improve my product/service?’ or ‘Is my preferred image equivalent to my existing image?’. If you don’t have enough insight in the opinions of your clients, it is hard to set up an effective questionnaire for your quantitative research. Then we can advise you to perform a qualitative pre-phase. This pre-phase can be a useful way to obtain more insight into the minds of your clients. A group discussion or a few indebt interviews are two examples of these qualitative pre-phases.

Practical tips for a successful market

research in the horticultural and agricultural sector

2. The target group What is the target group that you want to approach? Does this target group only involve your existing customers or are your potential clients also involved? You can define your target group as precisely as you like. For instance; your target group can involve the complete population of dairy farmers in the Netherlands. But it is also a possibility that you are just interested in the behavior of the larger agricultural companies or dairy farms in a certain province of the Netherlands or another country. If you want to observe the differences between several parts of a country, you have to be aware of the sample sizes. To be able to make reliable and representative statements, you have to make sure that the sample sizes are large enough for every part of the country. This means that your sample sizes have to be large enough so you can make statements about your preferred target group (for example: if you want to see the differences between dairy farmers with a minimum of 50 dairy cows in the Dutch provinces Friesland and Limburg). For representative results you need at least 100 respondents per target group. Sample sizes and their reliability can be calculated by a sample calculator (for example www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm). In addition, it is also important to think about the period you want to approach your target group. For instance; if you want to conduct your market research among potato farmers in spring, you probably won’t reach the preferred response rate. Spring is for potato farmers one of the busiest times of the year. Try to approach the farmers in the for them ‘more quiet’ periods as much as you can.

3. The research method There are several different methods to conduct a quantitative research. Every method has its own advantages and disadvantages. The most used methods are: 1. A phone survey 2. A survey sent by post 3. An online survey The (dis)advantages and the expected response rates are different per method: 1. If you conduct a phone survey, you are guaranteed of the highest response rate. Normally, you can count on a response rate of approximately 40% - 60%/70%. If the phone numbers of the people out of the target group are known, a reliable sample size can be drawn out of the total population. Besides, the telemarketers can anticipate on the answers of the farmer during the phone call, so reliable answers can be ensured (not just any answer can be given). 2. If a questionnaire is sent to your clients by post, the response rate will be more limited (about 10%). You have to approach a lot of your clients (ca. 1.000 persons per target group) to be able to make any representative statements about your target group. If all the addresses of the clients are known, a representative sample can be drawn out of the total population. The response rate can be increased if an incentive is promised. A disadvantage of a postal survey is the danger that only those clients react whom already have a certain opinion about the research subject. That can be a reason why certain responses might not be representative. Furthermore, with a postal survey you have less control on the given answers. Another disadvantage is the manual processing of the completed questionnaires.

Practical tips for a successful market

research in the horticultural and agricultural sector

3. If you send out an online survey (including an e-mail reminder which will be sent to the people out of the target group that did not react on your first e-mail), the expected response rate is 3% - 15%. In the worst case scenario (a response rate of 3%), at least 3.300 client have to receive the e-mailing. The disadvantage of this online method is the fact that you only reach the online oriented population. This online population is not representative for the complete population. Thereby, with this method it’s also possible that only the clients react whom already have a certain opinion about the research subject. This can badly influence the research. The big advantage of the online research method is that it’s a faster and less labour-intensive method and is much cheaper and quicker than a phone survey. Another benefit of an online survey is the fact that photo / video material can be used in the survey (like showing a commercial).

4. The questionnaire To conduct a quantitative research, it’s important to have a structured questionnaire. This way you can easily compare the given answers. Therefor the questions need to be pre-coded (multiple response questions). It’s possible to use scales for this (like an answer on a scale of 1 to 5). The questionnaire needs to contain clear questions that can’t be interpreted in different ways. This can be more difficult than it seems, because you might think different about certain things than your clients. Certain cases might be very clear for you, while your client has no idea what you mean.

5. The results The results of a quantitative research are mostly displayed in tables, graphs and percentages. This makes it possible to compare the different target groups (are the farmers with the larger companies more satisfied than the agrarians with the smaller farms?). A report usually consists of a presentation of figures (the charts and graphs) followed up by a conclusion and a recommendation. These conclusions and recommendations can be used in your marketing policy. For example for the introduction of a new product/service, the positioning of an existing product/service or to improve your companies image.

6. Monitoring (zero- and repeated measurements) If you’ve conducted a customer satisfaction research and you’ve made some specific actions to improve the customer satisfaction on this basis, of course you would like to know the effect of these actions. You can measure the effect by conducting the same research a year later (a repeated measurement) and compare the results with the outcome of the first research (zero measurement). This also works for a brand awareness research if you measure the brand awareness before and after the campaign. Of course, you need agricultural addresses to compose your target group to be able to conduct an effective market research. Agrimarketing- and market research agency AgriDirect owns the most comprehensive, detailed and updated agricultural database of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Furthermore, we have access to databases of Poland and France. This makes it possible to select a target group very accurately and to draw a representative sample size. This saves a lot of money and time. Moreover, AgriDirect takes several variables into the analysis without any extra costs.

Practical tips for a successful market

research in the horticultural and agricultural sector

AgriDirect has been a specialist in agricultural market research for about 20 years. Of course, we are willing to help you with the setting up of an effective questionnaire for several different kinds of researches, like: • a customer satisfaction survey; • an image research; • a brand awareness research; • etc. Moreover, at AgriDirect we have our own call center, where we can conduct phone surveys the whole year. This way, we can conduct your market research from the beginning (drawing a sample size and setting up a questionnai-re) until the end (the fieldwork and the analysis). Do you need any support with setting up and conducting an effective market research? Then you’ve come to the right address at AgriDirect!

Practical tips for a successful market

research in the horticultural and agricultural sector

More information about our market research possibilities?

Please contact us through info@agridirect.nl or +31 (0)475 492549 and ask for the document

‘Briefing market research’. We are pleased to do you a non-committal offer!