How Much Time Does A Market Research Project Take?

So, to be honest- it really depends.  But I know that’s not an answer to a very pragmatic question, so let me give more details here, bearing in mind that it really does depend on your specific project. 

A typical market research project takes six weeks. This is pretty standard for a small to mid-sized project, say 10-30 in-depth interviews or 4-8 focus groups.  Larger projects take longer, of course.  And we’ll talk about Web surveys later.

Here’s a pretty typical schedule for a single stage project with one series of focus groups or in-depth interviews - excluding unforeseen “bumps” or unique requirements:

Week 1: Project go-ahead. Write and approve recruiting guide. Identify source for recruiting participants - internal or external.

Week 2-3: Recruit participants. Write and approve interview guide or moderator’s guide.

Week 4-5: Conduct research. This may take less than two weeks, depending on your goals. Four to six focus groups all in the US are usually done in just one week.

 Week 6: Write and present market research report.

WARNING: The biggest schedule slippage that happens, aside from getting all the approvals in place for the project go-ahead of course, is with identifying internal participant contacts.  Using in-house lists or asking account managers to give us their contacts for recruiting may be time consuming and the schedule should be adjusted as needed.  

Web surveys are usually faster. A typical schedule for a web survey project is three weeks:  

Week 1: Project go-ahead. Determine goals. Identify lists for participation.  Write and approve questions. Upload them to survey tool.

Week 2: Field survey.

Week 3: Close survey. Do analysis including filtering and correlating findings. Write market research report.

If the survey is being conducted as a collateral piece to support outbound marketing efforts such as PR or lead gen, add another week for copy-editing and layout.