Qualitative Market Research

A Practitioner's and Buyer's Guide

Wendy Gordon, Roy Langmaid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351907392
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book opens the black box of qualitative market research and reveals the inner workings of the qualitative process. The influence of group dynamics on the data itself, the significance of body language in the interaction between researcher and respondent and the application of techniques to discover the private world of the individual are all exposed. So too, is the least visible part of all research projects - the interpretation of content given the fact that people often 'don't say what they mean' and 'don't mean what they say'. This book brings together a detailed overview of procedures and techniques in contemporary qualitative market research. These evolving techniques are making qualitative research increasingly influential. A clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses is therefore vital to anyone involved in research - whether market, industrial, social, governmental or medical.

1	Problems and Methodology

WHAT IS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?

At the most simplistic level the answer is as follows:

Qualitative research answers such questions as ‘What’, ‘Why or ‘How’ but it cannot answer the question ‘How many?’.

Qualitative research can be defined in a number of ways. It is frequently defined by methodology, and in fact, for many buyers it is synonymous with the group discussion.

In general terms, qualitative research:

• • involves small samples of consumers which are not necessarily representative of larger populations;
• • employs a wide variety of techniques to collect data, not simply a structured question-and-answer format;
• • relies on interpretation of the findings which is an integral part of the data collection and indeed begins well before the fieldwork commences at the briefing;
• • allows access to the ways in which consumers express themselves.

Ten to 15 years ago, qualitative research was frequently criticized on the grounds of its small sample methodology. Compared to survey methods, it was considered to produce ‘soft’ data and therefore lacking in both reliability and validity. Furthermore, its antagonists were and indeed still are suspicious of the influence and involvement of the moderator and unwilling to rely on his interpretation, which was seen to be highly subjective rather than objective (that is, not scientific).

For these reasons, qualitative research was the poor relation of quantitative research and was used, on the whole, as a first-stage pilot study prior to quantification. Its poor image also resulted from large motivation studies which yielded information which the end user often found fascinating, but which was complex and difficult to translate into marketing action.

In the last ten years in the UK there has been a boom in qualitative research and it now enjoys a status which previously used to be the prerogative of quantitative research. The main reason for this has been its proven effectiveness in increasing understanding of a particular market, brand, pack or advertising campaign.

This then is the crux of the definition of qualitative research. It is centrally concerned with understanding things rather than with measuring them.

The pursuit of understanding is a complex ‘searching’ type of procedure which cannot be rigid. Thus, qualitative projects are characterized by:

• • a flexible interview structure;
• • an evolutionary interview structure (which changes in response to growing understanding and hypotheses);
• • a data base that is not entirely accessible to those who have only listened to the tapes or read the transcripts, since it includes

• o the verbal interchange between respondents and moderator (questions and answers);
• o the spontaneous verbal emissions of all those present whether in response to research stimuli or not;
• o the verbal omissions and silences of those present;
• o non-verbal communication – ‘body language’;
• o data from specialized generating techniques such as projective or enabling techniques (see Chapter 8).

Unlike quantitative research where the questionnaires form the data base (and can therefore be analyzed and interpreted by those who did not conduct the interviews but who are trained to understand figures and statistics), the tape recordings of interviews or groups in qualitative research are not a complete and objective data record. Often what is strongly expressed verbally by respondents on the tape recording of the discussion or interview, may have been discounted by non-verbal cues such as looking away or breaking eye contact. The transcript may read as if the product or advertising being discussed was condemned by respondents, yet it may have been only one or two dominant and articulate people who expressed their views frequently. Hence it is essential that the person(s) who conducted the qualitative interviews or groups interpret the database.

It should be pointed out that the pattern of results obtained in any survey (both qualitative and quantitative) may be open to several interpretations. There is never ‘a right way’ or ‘the only way’ of interpreting the findings. This will be discussed in a later chapter on ‘Interpretation’ (see Chapter 10).

QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE – FRIENDS NOT ENEMIES

Happily, the days of endless and sterile debates about the superiority of quantitative research over qualitative and vice versa are now over. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and most buyers and practitioners of research will discuss the two in terms of ‘horses for courses’. In fact many hybrid methodologies have now been developed (see Chapter 15).

The strengths of qualitative and quantitative research, generally speaking, are summarized below:

Qualitative • Open-ended, dynamic, flexible. • Depth of understanding. • Taps consumer creativity. • Database – broader and deeper. • Penetrates rationalized or superficial responses. • Richer source of ideas for marketing and creative teams.

Quantitative • Statistical and numerical measurement. • Sub-group sampling or comparisons. • Survey can be repeated in the future and results compared. • Taps individual responses. • Less dependent on research executive skills or orientation.

Thus, qualitative research is best used for problems where the results will increase understanding, expand knowledge, clarify the real issues, generate hypotheses, identify a range of behaviour, explore and explain consumer motivations, attitudes and behaviour, identify distinct behavioural groups, provide input to a future stage of research or development.

It is not feasible to describe nil the problems qualitative research is employed to solve, but the most frequent problem areas will be discussed in this chapter. These are:

Basic exploratory studies

New product development

Creative development

Diagnostic studies

Tactical research projects

PROBLEM AREAS BEST SUITED TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Basic market exploratory studies

Qualitative research is frequently conducted to examine consumer attitudes and behaviour in relation to a product category or service, usually (but not always) with the specific aim of understanding consumer relationships to a brand.

Basic qualitative studies are most frequently conducted in the following cases:

• • When detailed information is required about the nature and elements of a market in order to look for opportunities for new product development.
• • When consumer markets change and/or develop and up-to-date information is required to understand changing attitudes and behaviour. For example a trend towards ‘health consciousness’ has emerged in most Western countries. This has affected the ways in which consumers think and act in relation to food products.
• • When new markets require descriptive information in order to aid marketing or advertising development programmes. For example, technology markets, such as cellular telephones or computers, are relatively new and therefore lack information.
• • When manufacturers, for reasons related to acquisition or new product development, require information on a market which is new to them.

These types of study are required to yield information of different types.

To define consumer perceptions of the market or product field

It is extremely important for manufacturers to know how their markets sub-divide into sectors and how these sectors are differentiated from one another.

Often manufacturing companies segment a market according to historical developments in the company, or according to production, distribution or marketing criteria. In some cases it may be a widely held belief that a product category competes with another, whereas consumer research indicates a completely different situation.

For example, the distinction between confectionery countlines’ and ‘biscuit countlines’ (for example Mars versus Penguin) matters little to consumers who are in the process of making purchase decisions about what to pack in lunch-boxes, whereas the distinction between the two is critically important to a manufacturing company.

Levi’s believed competitors were Wrangler and Lee, but in fact in a recent study in the USA we discovered that a major jeans manufacturer whose sales were slowing down among certain age groups was only monitoring the perceived image and attributes of his brand against other jeans. Out on the streets casual sports gear from companies like Nike and Reebok were drawing sales from his brand, unknown to him. For teenagers, for example, it was a very real choice between a new pair of denims and a pair of track shoes from Nike or a windcheater from Reebok – not just between one brand of jeans and another.

A qualitative study helps to understand the competitive relationships between different types of product and/or brand in any product category – from the consumer’s point of view rather than the manufacturer’s.

To define consumer segmentations in relation to a product category or brand

There have been many fashions in research since the 1960s in classifying types of consumers, not simply by demographic criteria but by more complex attitudinal or behavioural descriptors. Two, which continue to crop up in research documentation, are psychographics and life-style segmentations.

The first aims to increase understanding of consumer relationships to a product category or brand by describing psychological typologies which cut across demographic characteristics, such as age, social class or region. It draws on psychological (especially psychoanalytical) concepts, for example the purchase of high-performance cars may be much more closely related to aggression and the need to display than to any scientifically based notions of technical efficiency or engineering precision.

The second aims to increase understanding by describing typologies of consumers in sociological or social anthropological terms (again cutting across pure demographic descriptors). For example, purchase of a muesli-type cereal may be far more firmly based in a person’s view of herself as modern and health-conscious rather than on any liking for fruit and nuts.

Many different theoretical starting points are used today to describe typologies (Transactional Analysis, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP),¹ etc.) but these are integrated into the qualitative approach. They are no longer heralded as great advances in research techniques which ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface: The Reason for the Book
• Introduction
• 1. Problems and Methodology
• 2. Planning and Designing Qualitative Studies
• 3. Group Discussions: Philosophy, Mechanics and Process
• 4. Group Dynamics
• 5. Interviewing – Getting Better
• 6. The Individual ‘Depth’ Interview
• 7. Non-verbal Communication
• 8. Projective and Enabling Techniques
• 9. One-way Mirror
• 10. The Interpretation of Qualitative Research
• 11. Recruitment
• 12. The Presentation of Qualitative Research
• 13. Research with Children
• 14. Research Stimulus Material
• 15. Qualitative and Quantitative Hybrid Methodologies
• Bibliography
• Index