Business Data Collection Methods
The ways in which a business collects data are diverse. The following are some examples of how that data may be collected.
- Competitive intelligence tools— Competitive intelligence is a field of data collection that involves understanding businesses that operate in the same industry and are competing for the same customers. Competitive intelligence tools are resources aggregated by third-party sources that allow a business to study the trends and actions of its competitors to see where the business can increase market share.
- Online surveys — Online Surveys have been a long-standing method of collecting customer insights. They can collect both qualitative data and quantitative data in the same breath by the way that questions are worded. Questions must be written carefully however as bias can be introduced which can skew the data collected.
- Website analytics — Customer behavior is easy to track based on website analytics. Seeing who is visiting a website, where they are visiting from, and how they got there are all some of how these analytics can help track behavior. How people interact with the website also provides insights to a business.
- SEO Analysis — Taking web analytics a step further, search engine optimization or SEO analysis helps businesses understand the trends and keywords that people using search engines like Google employ to find what they are looking for. Based on SEO trends, a business can alter its website in ways that a search engine crawler would find in order to give the website a higher rank, or how close to the first suggestion on a search page the site gets.
Data collection tools are practical ways of employing data collection methods. There are many different tools available to a business to accomplish whichever method they choose to use. Google Analytics has become a gold standard for collecting and interpreting data for SEO analysis, and provides a way to track data online. In addition, there are databases devoted to competitive intelligence that also store data for historical use. The tool needed for a particular job depends on the method of data collection being used. Sometimes simple tools such as observation or taking pictures are data collection as well.
Examples of Data Collection in Business Research
Here are some examples of data collection in business research and how they benefit the companies using them.
- A small business uses data collection in order to determine if its social media marketing has been effective. They first determine the best methods for collecting this data will probably come from web analytics and SEO analysis. Monitoring the source of where their web traffic is coming from shows that visitors have been clicking on links provided on social media. For those that glanced but did not directly click on links, certain keywords were used in typing a search into their search engine, which an analytics platform was able to show how the keyword trended compared to others.
- After purchasing products from a physical store location or online, a business wants to see how a customer's shopping experience was in order to determine if it needs improvement. The company opts to use online surveys as a way to gather this data. Depending on where the customer purchased their items, a link to a specific survey will be provided. In-store shoppers will have one opinion about the ease of shopping compared to online shoppers, so the surveys are worded in such a way as to elicit specific responses without biasing the customer. The answers will help to make the service and ease of shopping even better.
Lesson Summary
Business data collection is the manner in which companies discover information about themselves and their customers. It is important to be able to collect data as it helps with planning for strategic growth as well as effectively marketing to the correct consumer. Competitive intelligence is a method of data collection that helps businesses study other businesses in their industry and what share of the market they occupy in comparison. Another method of data collection is online surveys, which help to gather different forms of data for a company to decide how customers receive them. This helps to better market products and services. There are a wide variety of tools available to collect and store data with each being used for different methods.
