From Concept to Creation: Useful Techniques for Developing Market Research Questionnaire

We often notice on TV, media or news that some companies always mention that they do market research to understand consumer needs and evaluate market potential before launching new products or adjusting strategies. Smart companies attach great importance to market research, and questionnaires are an effective way to obtain quantitative and qualitative data.

So how to design an efficient market research questionnaire? This requires us to master a variety of question types and their application scenarios. The following will introduce several commonly used questionnaire question types in detail, and provide professional explanations and application suggestions to help you conduct market research better.

1. Multiple-choice Questions

Multiple-choice questions are the most common form of questionnaires, and respondents choose one or more answers from the given options. If I get a questionnaire that is mostly multiple-choice questions, I will feel no pressure, because multiple-choice questions often give people a simple feeling. In fact, multiple-choice questions are one of the most popular questionnaire survey question types for the majority of respondents. In other words, for respondents, multiple-choice questions are simple questions that do not require too much energy to think about, and can quickly feedback questions and judge preferences.

From the perspective of data analysis, this type of question can be single-choice or multiple-choice, which can effectively quantify data and facilitate subsequent analysis. In addition, when setting questions, companies need to clarify the main purpose of the survey. Generally speaking, practical and logical questions and options will be liked by respondents.

For example, if the previous and next multiple-choice questions are related, we should pay attention to the logical order of these related questions.

For example, in the content of the consumer preference survey questionnaire, in order to understand the preferences of the target group for different product types, we can refer to the following to design related multiple-choice questions:

1. Which cosmetics series do you like best this season?

A. Eyeshadow series B. Lip gloss series C. Blush series D. Glitter series

2. Which improvement do you like most in this series?

A. Packaging design B. Ingredient optimization C. Brand endorsement D. Personalized customization

This multiple-choice question method is also often used in brand awareness assessment market research, asking respondents about their awareness of the brand through multiple-choice questions. This is a very common and effective questionnaire design.

2. Open-ended Questions

We know that although multiple-choice questions are simple and easy to use, they are not suitable for all questionnaire scenarios.

Sometimes we need to design some open-ended questions to obtain users' individual ideas. When designing open-ended questions, we should pay attention to guiding respondents to express their ideas and opinions freely to ensure that more abundant data can be collected.

Generally speaking, when we need to obtain user suggestions or feedback, we can use this type of question suitable for exploratory research to help researchers understand the true thoughts of respondents.

For example, open-ended questions are often used for product improvement suggestions. We can collect user feedback on existing products through questionnaires to understand their needs and expectations.

For example, common questionnaire questions can be designed like this: "Do you have any suggestions for improvement of our products?", "What do you think can be improved in the functions of our products?"

This open-ended question is also very suitable for market trend analysis. We can discover new trends and potential opportunities in the market through users' free answers.

For example, you can ask users about their product preferences: "Which feature of our product do you like most? Why?" You can also lock in users' future needs: "What new products or features do you hope we will launch in the future to meet your needs?" At the same time, you can investigate users about the comparison between products and competitors: "Compared with similar products of other brands, in what aspects do you think our products are more attractive? What other aspects need to be improved?" So open-ended questions are very useful questionnaire methods.

3. Rating Scale

When we make a questionnaire, we often encounter situations where we need to quantify the target. At this time, we can use the questionnaire survey method of rating scale. Rating scale can measure the attitude or satisfaction of respondents to things. We usually use a rating system of 1 to 5 or 1 to 7 to design questionnaires. We can use this type of question appropriately because it can quantify subjective feelings and facilitate statistical analysis.

Rating scale is suitable for customer satisfaction surveys and can be used to evaluate user satisfaction with products or services.

Read also: Likert Scale in Online Surveys: Definition and Example

For example, if we want to ask about the overall satisfaction of customers, we can ask:

"Please rate your overall satisfaction with our products (1-5 points), where 1 point means very dissatisfied and 5 points means very satisfied."

If we want to ask customers about their views on the quality of service, we can ask them to rate:

"Are you satisfied with the quality of our customer service? Please rate (1-5 points), 1 point means very dissatisfied and 5 points means very satisfied."

If we want to ask customers about their willingness to repurchase, we can also use a rating scale to design a questionnaire:

"How likely are you to buy our products again? Please rate (1-5 points), 1 point means very unlikely and 5 points means very likely."

Similarly, when we do employee satisfaction surveys and understand employees' views on company policies and environment, we can also use a rating scale to design questionnaires.

Conclusion

Questionnaire design has important applications in different industries, and the types of questionnaire questions are not limited to the above content.

On the SurveyPluto online questionnaire making platform, you can find the questionnaire design survey method types introduced above and many other questionnaire design components that have not been introduced yet, and this platform is completely free! We can easily create targeted questionnaires by using one-click or dragging components on the platform!