Market research. It’s not exactly the sexiest subject out there, we’ll admit it. Plus, this blog post is next in line after our ‘data’ blog post. I mean, come on!! Right? Well, although market research is not (yet) listed as the sexiest job of the 21st century, like Data Analyst for example, market research is actually an essential tool when it comes to understanding your customers, your target audience and their reaction to your products.

Marketing insights are mega-important

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: marketing insights – such as market research - are mega-important to ensure that you understand your audience and to make sure your campaigns and content are hitting the (right) mark, in the right place, bullseye?!

In its most basic terms market research is all about gathering information about consumers’ needs and preferences. You probably already knew that. But do you know enough about the different types of research and how you can combine them to make sure that your marketing insights are doing what they need to? If not, then keep reading!

Quantitative data deals with numbers, stats, and cold hard facts

First of all, let’s talk about the two main different research methods: qualitative research and quantitative research. What is the difference? Quantitative data deals with numbers, stats, and cold hard facts. It can easily be incorporated into multiple-choice surveys and can be used to answer questions like “which advert do our customers prefer?” or “do you prefer company A or company B?”. It’s also more likely to get more respondents, as it’s easier for someone to complete (as well as being easier to apply a statistical analysis to).

Usually, this type of research is collected through a survey – either online, on paper or in-person – and the sample size is important. It makes sense to have a fairly large sample size in order to glean useful insights from the results, and it’s good to have a sample size in mind before you start.

There’s almost (depending on the quality of the questions and survey of course) no room for subjective interpretation or navel-gazing here, which is why quantitative data can really only be used to draw general, broad conclusions. Of course, you already have all your data (have you started Table Thursday yet? :-)) available, and combining these two sets of information will give you a broader sense of your consumer’s needs and preferences and will help determine your next moves. This brings us to qualitative data.

Qualitative data provide depth of knowledge

Qualitative data brings the details and can provide you with the needed depth of knowledge. It focuses on collecting information like opinions, attitudes, impressions, feelings, and views – which can be really open to interpretation and so much harder to analyze than quantitative research. This is why it’s best to look at this type of data in conjunction with quantitative data to build a full picture.

Qualitative data can also be really useful for gathering quotes and testimonials that you can use in your marketing activity, which can be a great side effect! This type of research tends to be best collected through interviews, case studies, expert opinions, focus groups, open-ended survey questions or observational research. If you have the time and means to do so, it’s well worth it to organize a World Café setting for your qualitative research. The World Café methodology is a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group dialogue. It’s a powerful social technology for engaging people in conversations that matter and brings about enormous amounts of data to then work with.

Social media monitoring can also be a great way to collect qualitative, primary data – albeit it’s unlikely that it will answer an exact question you have in mind, but it will give you a feel for how people are talking about your brand. We’ve mentioned it before, social listening basically is a must!

Why and how to combine qualitative and quantitative research

If qualitative data is the human side, then quantitative is its robot counterpart. These two research methods make a dream team when it comes to insights. Qualitative research is almost always the starting point with quantitative data coming right behind it to back up your findings and help to get a better understanding of it all.

Here’s a quick example of how the two types of research can work together:

Let’s say you held a product launch and wanted to get some feedback from those who attended. You could measure the attendance rate, overall satisfaction, presenter quality, how relevant the information given actually was. These are all quantitative, as they’re closed questions that can be measured and compared against one another.

However, this research might not give you a full picture, so you might want to add some qualitative questions into the mix too, like “what did you enjoy most about the event?” or “what could be improved at this event?” or even “how did this event live up to your expectations, and could you please elaborate on your answer?” From reviewing the results, you can find out if there are any themes emerging, categories that stand out which you can then address for the next event. Looking at the collected qualitative data from a bird's-eye view will help you see the forest for the trees, so to speak. It will help to determine which quantitative information you'll need to collect to develop towards the future.

Get the full picture

So, you'll need both types of research to get the full picture after thorough analysis, which will then hopefully enable you to answer the question or problem you were seeking answers to through your research. If you’ve engaged a market research agency to carry out the research for you, well, they’ll usually pull this together for you. If you are about to go on this venture by yourself, and you are looking for ways to gather super useful quantitative content statistics, we’ve got you covered at Embrosa! We provide you with smart statistics straight from our app.

Find out more on www.embrosa.com and while you’re at it, make sure to download our app, available in the App Store and Google Play.

Either way, your market is waiting, research it, and then slam dunk it to meet your consumers’ and customers’ needs and preferences!