Market Research-Qualitative Research

When should a company consider using qualitative research?  Qualitative research may be used by organisations to identify the attitudes of consumers' attitudes feelings and to examine them in greater detail.


There are a number of reasons why organisations may use qualitiative methods:These include

1. It may be cheaper due to the fact that the size of the sample will be small.  E.g. 6-12 respondents.
2. It enables the organisation to gain an understanding of consumer motivations through open-ended and probing questions.

However, in some cases organisations may combine but qualitative and quantative methods to improve the overall effectiveness of the market research.


There are a number of disadvantages to be considered as well:

1. Qualitative research does not always detect small differences in the marketing mix.
2. Due to the small sample size it may not reflect the attitudes and views of the population of interest.
3. Some experts may lack experience and may therefore provide low quality work.

There are three main types of focus groups

1. Exploratory groups
2. Clinical focus groups
3. Experiencing focus groups

Advantages of focus groups

1. Snowballing
2. Can observe the respondents for non-verbal communication
3. Very easy to organise the focus group
4. Easy to tabulate findings

Disadvantages of focus groups

1. The respondent may not be a 'typical' customers
2. Setting may make the respondentes feel uncomfortable.
3. Some participants may dominate the discussion.

There are other forms of qualitative research.  These include:

• Depth interviews
• Projectives techniques

Depth Interviews

These are one to one interviews that allow the respondent to
talk in detail about their feelings. 

There are many advantages of depth-interviews

1. No one person is going to dominate teh disucssion
2. The interviewer can probe in greater detail
3. Discussion can be flexible and allow the respondent and the interviewer to explore issues.
4. Interviewer can be more sensitive to non-verbal communication.

However, there are many disadvantages to this method as
well:

These include:

1. It is more expensive to conduct depth interview to focus groups
2. It can be physically exhausting
3. Moderators do not have other group members to help stimulate the discussion

Projective Tests

These tests are used to try and get an insight into the
deepest feelings of respondents.  Respondents tend to
project these feelings into an unstructured sutation.

There are different types of projective tests that

organisations can use.

1. Word association
2. sentence completion and story completion
3. Cartoon Tess