Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research

Introduction

Marketing research is an important tool of marketing that helps organizations and people gather valuable information regarding the markets or customers, for that matter. Marketing research is considered important for a business strategy, (McQuarrie, Edward, 2005). It is a key factor that helps almost every business organization to counter their business rivals, to survive in the ever increasing cut throat competitive world of business. Marketing research enables organizations to better know the trends in the market. Over the years, marketing research has been able to analyze the market need, market size and most importantly, competition. Marketing research is crucial for decision making; it is supported by social sciences and other analytical methods, (ICC/ESOMAR, 2008).

Marketing research once completed can reveal how people act and can be used to market a product. Marketing research is the essence of marketing, (Ducker, 1974). Market research serves its importance by identifying its need, when business organizations need to come up with a new product development. Business organizations have a separate department for this very purpose. Businesses spend a lot for this purpose. What the customers want and how can an organization go about fulfilling their demands, the reasons behind failure or success of the product; all these questions can be answered through a proper marketing research.

Marketing Research can be broadly divided into two categories; qualitative research and quantitative research. We would be focusing on the qualitative research methodologies used; however, we will also be defining both the categories and discussing them briefly.

Quantitative research

It is a part of research that involves a systematic empirical investigation of social circumstances with the aid of mathematical, statistical or computational techniques, (Lisa M, 2008). It is so called because it shows a relation between the experimental or empirical observations and mathematical expressions. The purpose of such a research is to form theories, hypothesis and mathematical models relating to the phenomena. Quantitative data is in numerical form like percentages or statistics etc, (Lisa M, 2008). In simpler words it means that the researcher collects data in numerical form in order to answer specific questions. Application of quantitative techniques pertaining to research in the field of marketing is called quantitative marketing research. Quantitative research is extensively used in social sciences and information technology.

Qualitative research

It is the part of research that pertains to a method of inquiring information in various disciplines, like social sciences, (Alder P.A, Alder P, 1987), and market research, for that matter. Qualitative research, a generic term investigates research methodologies such as ethnography, anthropology, naturalistic or participant research; (Carr, 2008). Qualitative research involves researchers to deeply understand the behavior of humans by studying reasons that spark such behavior. The qualitative methods applied tend to investigate why humans make a particular decision and how they make that decision. The research requires small focused samples than large samples. Qualitative researchers have various choices pertaining to data collection, (Boas, Franz, 1943). Qualitative methods produce relevant information only on the cases under study. The quantitative approach can then be ...