Qualitative and Quantitative Market Research
Simply stated qualitative and quantitative market research methods are two very different types of market research, that often fulfill different objectives and can help to discover different conditions in a marketplace.
Quantitative Market Research
Quantitative research is a rigid research tool that typically asks every respondent an identical set of questions, generally allowing the respondent only to select from a group of pre-defined answers. In general quantitative market research include far more respondents, and therefore tends to cost more money than do qualitative studies.
Quantitative Market Research - the Benefits
- Quantitative market research can help to identify statistically different expectations or feature preferences, customer satisfaction levels or other differences that may help to better understand whether two groups are essentially identical in certain facets, or if there are differences that could be capitalized upon.
- There are a wide variety of types of analysis that can be done on quantitative research results.
- Quantitative research studies generally include far more respondents - often hundreds or thousands of respondents and are not typically done face to face. Examples of standard quantitative market research methodologies include: phone interviews, web or mail questionnaires..
Quantitative Market Research - the Disadvantages
- Quantitative market research projects often include larger numbers of respondents (quantity, as the name implies) and for that reason tend to cost significantly more than qualitative market research does.
- Quantitative Market Research requires that the market researchers have a good understanding of what types of answers customers would want to select, because the respondent is typically asked to select the best answer from a number of pre-defined options.
Qualitative Market Research
Qualitative research is generally much less structured, and is often described as being more "exploratory" or "directional" because it seeks to reveal new attitudes or perspectives that may help to reveal something new about the respondent's motivations or pain-points that may help to improve a current product, or even develop a new product category entirely.
Qualitative Market Research - the Benefits
Qualitative could be described as more freeform, often with broad questions such as "what do you like about that?" or "what would your ideal product look like?" Often questions asked of respondents in qualitative research don't include specific answers; instead they simply prompt the respondent to answer the questions in their own words. Allowing customers to answer in their own words, without constraint or suggestions, does tend to uncover factors that may be working underneath the surface. This can lead to an "a-ha" moment in which there is an insight into their customer's needs and motivations.
Qualitative Market Research - the Disadvantages
- Qualitative market research does not allow for statistical analysis.
- The cost per opinion in qualitative market research is significantly higher than it is in quantitative market research, typically because the economics of scale is not helped by the typically lower numbers of respondents used in qualitative research.
- Qualitative market research is sometimes followed up with quantitative market research in order to understand what percentage of the target customer group feels the different ways that were discovered in the qualitative phase.
We hope that this has helped to make some sense of the differences between qualitative and quantitative market research methods. If there are still some questions, don't worry about it, it will become more clear as you conduct a research survey or two. And if you would like to discuss it in more detail please feel free to send me an e-mail.
