I want to target firms who want market research done Can I?

Answer 1

Depends who you are and what sort of service you can offer.

Normally companies go to major, trusted and well known market researchers like GlobalTestMarket, Lightspeed Research and others but you may be lucky.

It's like bidding for an item on eBay, you would have to show them you're the right person to hire for them to carry out their needed research.

You'd need a large server to handle all the participants, and plenty of bandwith again to handle all the participants.

By all means you can try and contact firms and ask them but generally firms would come to you.

Ideally you need to set yourself up as a reputable market research person, show of your skills, get a portfolio by hiring small companies and work your way up.

Feel free to give it a go and/or contact me for help&advice.

Answer 2

The Techie makes some good points, but is obviously only looking it at from one angle. Yes a database would be a damn good thing to have (you don't need that big a server, unless maybe you want people to fill forms in online?). I know several companies who still do tele-research using a script and a paper form. It's a lot cheaper and still gets the job done.

It's a saturated field though, so anything that gives you the advantage is good.

You could even start with yourself, a PC, an Excel Spreadsheet and a telephone. (Or ditch the PC and Excel and use paper). Obviously you won't single handedly be able to make many calls a day.

Next up, get a powerful PC (you DON'T need a proper server), with lots of RAM and HD space, rig up a network of 5 - 10 PCs and run an Access database from the powerful server (in effect you could call it your server). Have the scripts and questions in the Access system and get 5-10 people calling at the same time.

Then of course you could expand and increase to real servers and a bigger network, maybe even look at getting SQL server in (although I've successfully ran Access databases with over 30 staff accessing them at once with no problems), more PCs, more Staff, integrated phone systems etc...

Then add online capabilities, and well by now you should be getting the picture.

Answer 3

Judging by the way you ask this I can tell your not all that up on how research like this is done.

Yes you can
However most of this is done within peer or focus groups.

lets say I want to "brand" a product
As a mid to large size firm I'm likely to ask employees to sit in on a focus group to explore the merits of the brand.
as a small business I'll take it to my small business peer group.
ie, chamber of commence, small business owners...

but Still if you have good marketing skills
you might want to target small business at first.
if your good you can turn that small business into a bigger one and there's your in to major contracts.

Answer 4

Yes, sure, as long as you have the education and the knowledge for it, combined with your capacity of well research and managment.