In an era where information is abundant, there is a belief that technology or widespread information availability makes additional research redundant. While it is true that many traditional research processes are being impacted by technology, we still need to validate information, understand key trends and a variety of qualitative factors that can only be derived by speaking with industry participants. Moreover, depending on the research question, very often, complete data is not available in any report or database.

The larger community of stakeholders – channel partners, customers, dealers, influencers, ex-employees, suppliers or competitors – will invariably have deep insights on various aspects of your business – and there is no other way to gather this, other than speaking with a sample of such people. Of course, primary research (especially in B2B) tends to be challenging and often costly, so it’s critical to design your primary research well.

Recently, while working on a market re-entry study for a multinational firm manufacturing industrial mixers, we had in-depth conversations with nearly 200 respondents to gain insights into price-quality trends, key competitors, dynamics in the supply chain, etc.