Using Mind Mapping to Easily Organize Marketing Research Projects
When undertaking any marketing research project, the first step the market researcher needs to take is to determine exactly how the project will be carried out. Questions such as: “Will this be a phone survey or a computer survey?”, “How many respondents will be surveyed?”, and “How long will the survey be in field?” are crucial to answer before beginning the research project. It is often at this point that researchers can get a bit overwhelmed; successfully organizing a research project requires the fitting together of many components. Mind Maps can provide an easy and workable way to organize a research project. By clearly “mapping out” the research project, from beginning to end, using visuals, key words and pictures, the intuitive process of finding out what the consumer thinks can naturally emerge.
An Example of Mind Mapping a Research Project
Consider, as an example, a market researcher who has been hired by her client to find out how well his fast food product rates among fast food consumers. The researcher wants to organize how the study will proceed using a Mind Map. She begins by listing the main research objective of the study in the center of the Mind Map, which, in this case, is to find out how fast food consumers rate Product X. Next, he or she lists the main points he or she will undertake in the study, such as “recruit panel”, and “field survey”. These steps are attached to the central topic via “branches” that flow from the topic. Here, the researcher may want to insert any pictures, colors or visuals she chooses to make the Mind Map more intuitive. For example, she may insert a graphic depicting people next to the step “recruit panel”, to represent the people in the panel.
After listing the main steps of the attached Mind Map diagram, all of the steps he/she needs to conduct the study are clearly laid out. Compare this method of organizing a research project with the method of simply taking notes on a piece of paper. Absent the visual imagery and spatial layout of the Mind Map, the second method would likely be more tedious to comprehend, and thus, work with. The researcher now has the distinct advantage of conducting the study using information that is easily organized and intuitively processed. The research project is ready to commence.