What is Qualitative Research? How is it different from Quantitative Research?
Many companies are familiar with quantitative research and value the way doing such research provides the company numbers. Quantitative research seeks to render customer’s attitudes, shopping habits, etc. into statistically relevant data. Since the data from well-executed quantitative research offers this assurance, it can help a company confidently decide whether to invest in a product, set production rates to reflect how much of the product will sell and when, as well as choose the most advantageous pricing for the product.
While all of this is undoubtedly beneficial information to have, many companies miss out on the benefits available through performing qualitative research. Doing qualitative research does not result in statistically significant data, but it does provide your company with great directional insight into your customers, your markets and the dynamics of your product interacting with your markets and customers.
What Does It Look Like?
In order to gain these insights, qualitative research requires interactive communication with customers. While quantitative research generally involves one-way communication through surveys, qualitative research often involves conversation. This dialogue can take place in the form of focus groups or in-depth one-on-one interviews (often referred to as IDIs), depending on a number of factors.
Read the white paper “Focus Groups or IDIs? Which should I choose?”
As with all good research, qualitative research begins with objectives and hypotheses regarding potential outcomes and their likelihoods. This input is used to design an interview or discussion guide (depending on whether IDIs or focus groups are used), as well as an effective “screener” which is used to choose the right respondents for your qualitative research effort. Since qualitative research makes use of far fewer interviewees than a typical quantitative research study, choosing participants wisely is of paramount importance.
As interviews are conducted, they are recorded, transcribed, summarized and then analyzed. Researchers analyze the transcripts for emerging patterns, redundant answers, and unique insights that aim to understand not only opinions, but also why these opinions are held. This is one of the most important reasons why to conduct qualitative research; it may be the only place where a company can get truly objective feedback and information from customers and potential customers.
When Should You Do It?
In nearly every step of the innovation process, qualitative research can help you and your company. In the early development process, it can recognize customer goals and challenges they face achieving their goals, helping to show you what problems your product solves or needs to solve. When you use it to test a prototype, it can help you to see how customers perceive the product – their degree of interest, how urgently they desire the product and how the product can still be improved. Later in the process, qualitative research can aid in marketing efforts, as it can reveal the language customers use to describe the product, as well as messages and images that catch the attention of clients.
Qualitative Research can be just as beneficial to a company for a product already on the market; it can provide feedback on product performance, branding, marketing initiatives in use and give insight to the nuances surrounding purchasing decisions.
Why should you be doing it?
Doing qualitative research can help your company to gain a variety of extremely beneficial insights to the market in which you interact, your potential customers and your product, which are not available through any other objective methods. By shaping your product development efforts and innovation processes based on qualitative research, you give your product a better chance at success once it reaches the market.
Inputs to Forecasting
Doing qualitative research can improve forecasting success rates as well. Qualitative research can help you understand what affects how, how much, why and when your customers will buy.
When you know how a customer makes a purchase decision, you know what their buying journey looks like. You can understand the steps a customer takes from initially hearing about a product, to making a final purchase decision.
Knowing how much customers will buy is a little more nuanced. Is your product a single use, multi-purchase product? Is it a one-time buy? Does it wear over time? Do customers have an interest in a trial period with this product? What does a trial look like for your product?
The big question that is difficult to answer from quantitative research is why customers make the purchase decisions they make. What problems can your product solve for them? Are they switching to your brand from another? Why are they making the switch?
Qualitative research can help answer when will your customers buy, which all links back to the product adoption model. The decision making process strongly influences when customers will buy, and understanding this process is a critical piece of information for forecasting. Will they wait to hear how others feel about the product? Is there family demanding they buy now? How do they determine when it’s time to switch products or upgrade?
All of these insights, gained from qualitative research, can help to shape an effective quantitative marketing research study. Having some solid insights behind your quantitative data reduces the potential for guess work, the enemy of a new product introduction and volumetric forecast.
How We Can Help
Actionable Research has developed research approaches and methodologies specific to the markets our clients are housed within. For more than two decades, we have helping companies to develop deeper understandings about their markets, customers and products. We’re ready to help you too!