What Are Tracking Studies & Why Are They Important

No matter what kind of a company you are running, there is one thing that you won’t be able to deny. Researching the market will become your responsibility and you will have to do it on a regular basis in order to understand how the consumers behave and if there might be some things that you should change in order to attract them. Market research is undeniably highly significant in every business. You can read more about that on this site.

Now, there are undeniably several different important researching methods that you should use and it goes without saying that some of them are more suitable than the others for specific things. In short, it all depends on what it is that you are trying to research. Tracking studies are among the most important, quantitative research methods that have a wide range of application these days.

They are used by large brands, retailers, consumer goods companies and many other businesses that want to track the customers’ sentiment around their brand and their products and services. Additionally, they also use them to check the effectiveness of certain advertising plans and other marketing related techniques. It is safe to say that these studies are quite popular and that they have been successfully used for a long time now by practically all the business owners out there.

Before you decide if they are right for you and before you can understand why they are so important in the first place, you need to do one simple thing. Basically, you need to learn what tracking studies actually are. After all, there is no point in you trying to make a decision on whether you want to use these research methods if you don’t really know what they are. If you are ready to find out, then you have come to the right place, because we are now going to check those studies out, as well as explain their importance.

Perhaps this can help you understand as well:

What Are Tracking Studies?

Tracking is a term for all of those studies that are designed to provide measurement overtime with the aim of determining brand performance, as well as competitor performance. No matter how frequently it is run, every single study that updates performance over time can be considered a tracking study. So, it can be run rather frequently, it could be conducted once a year, or it could be used even less frequently than that. Its purpose remains the same and it remains effective.

These longitudinal studies are designed to survey a large number of people at a specific point in time in order to check changes in their behaviors and attitudes. Of course, the trick is in surveying the target group and not just any audience that you come across. The actual questionnaire used here rarely changes and the actual time intervals are most usually kept constant. So, these can be conducted bi-weekly, monthly, yearly, or in any other time-frame, but that time-frame usually remains constant. This allows companies to measure the actual results wave-to-wave.

Why Are They Important?

You now most likely understand what tracking studies are, meaning that you have a much better idea about them. There is, however, a different question that has now popped into your mind. Basically, you want to understand why it is that these specific market research techniques are so important. Well, if that’s what you are wondering, then you should definitely continue reading, because that is exactly what we are going to have a look at right now. In short, I’ll try and answer that specific question for you and thus help you understand the importance of these studies.

When making decisions, all companies and brands use various different types of information that they have gathered, starting with internal data and ending with external insights that they have previously gathered from clients or from potential customers. Well, tracking studies help people brands gather those external insights from large groups of people. These specific insights are extremely important when it comes to making highly responsible decisions, since the studies are used to help brands measure and check the performance of their marketing strategies, as well as consumer sentiment and changes in behaviors.

The above explanation must have made it quite clear that tracking studies are extremely important and that they are used by all huge and serious brands. Those brands don’t make any business decisions based on a hunch, as that is usually a huge mistake. Instead, they conduct the necessary research and get all the important measurements and insights in order to be able to make the best possible decision that will lead their business towards success. And, of course, success is the goal of every single business out there.