Quantitative Research Techniques (2/2)
– understand the main characteristics of quantitative research
– learn when you should use quantitative research
– discover the advantages and limitations of quantitative techniques
Market research surveys are a way to gather any sort of market information. The aim is to gather data from a small sample of a market in order to be able to predict what the whole market wants.
Quantitative surveys mean getting people to answer fixed questions in questionnaires. These questionnaires can be completed online, on mobile devices, over the telephone, face-to-face, through the post, in-house, on the street, ‘in-hall’ or any combination.
Because the objective of quant research is measurement, it is important that the questions and questionnaire is standardized. Changes to wording, or order of questions can dramatically change the measurements.
For self-complete style online surveys, where individuals read the questions themselves, this is not a problem. But where there are interviewers on the phone, or face-to-face, good quantitative interviewers have to be trained not to stray from the script.
2) Market Segmentation: Identify customers and non-customers, and why they are or are not your customers.
3) Customer Satisfaction: Depth of consumer attitudes formed about the product and/or company.
https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/types-of-marketing-surveys/
Usage
– What brands can you name? (spontaneous awareness)
– Have you heard of any of these? (prompted awareness)
– Have you ever used product x? (trial)
– Which is your regular / main brand? (loyalty)
– Are there any others you use occasionally?
– Which will you use in the future?
– Are there any you would never use? (consideration)
Loyalty
– Out of your last 10 purchases, how many have been of each?
– How likely is it that you would recommend…to a friend? (NPS) *
Purchasing Behaviour
– Where do you usually buy?
– What price do you usually pay?
– How often do you buy?
– How much do you buy on each occasion?
1) Avoid Leading Questions: To create objective questions, make sure you’re crafting questions that don’t lead to a specific response. For example: “Isn’t it true that … have increased in the past year?”
2) Prevent Assumptive Closes: Avoid writing questions that assume an answer at the outset. Your question won’t capture that data.
3) Don’t Imply Answers: Questions shouldn’t lead people toward a specific cause-and-effect response.
4) Never Coerce: Questions that explicitly coerce answers will also skew your data. For example, with a question like “Will you buy your mother flowers to prove you love her on Valentine’s Day?”, your survey won’t produce truly valid results.
5) Pay Attention to Scale: Even without blatant directional signals, your question scales can imply a “right” answer. To produce statistically valid results, include a range of options such as “completely agree,” “somewhat agree,” “somewhat disagree,” or “completely disagree.”
6) Clarify Your Language: Keep the language in your questions as simple as possible. Confusing language will ultimately produce either garbled data, or survey abandonment. Check to make sure your questions generally make sense, and that you aren’t using industry buzzwords that people won’t understand.
If you’d like to refer to this later, you can find the link in the Additional Material section.
Below are some ways to ensure an effective questionnaire:
– List questions in a logical order
– Specify wording
– Define reply categories
– Use an appropriate layout
Things to keep in mind:
1) Can the respondent understand the question?
2) Is the respondent willing to answer the question?
3) Is the respondent able to answer the question?
– Each question should have a specific purpose or should not be included in the questionnaire.The goal of the questions is to obtain the required information.
– This is not to say that all questions must directly ask for the desired data. In some cases, questions can be used to establish rapport with the respondent, especially when sensitive information is being sought.
– Questionnaires are typically administered via a personal or telephone interview or via a mail / e-mail questionnaire.
Some question types include fixed alternative, open-ended, and projective:
1) Fixed-alternative questions provide multiple-choice answers.These types of questions are good when the possible replies are few and clear-cut, such as age, car ownership, etc.
2) Open-ended questions allow the respondent to better express his/her answer, but are more difficult to administer and analyze. Often, open-ended questions are administered in an in-depth interview. This technique is most appropriate for exploratory research.
3) Projective methods use a vague question or stimulus and attempt to project a person’s attitudes from the response.The questionnaire could use techniques such as word associations and fill-in-the-blank sentences.
Here’s a quick recap.
What is Observational Research?
It is a social research technique that involves the direct observation of phenomena in their natural setting. This differentiates it from experimental research in which a quasi-artificial environment is created to control for spurious factors, and where at least one of the variables is manipulated as part of the experiment.
By using observation-based methodologies, information can be gathered from respondents through an analysis of their behaviour.
This method of capturing primary data can be used to either complement a question-based methodology or stand alone as a methodology in itself and can be used with both qualitative and quantitative techniques.
When combined with a survey-based approach, this methodology can be used to understand the type of behaviour exhibited by the target audience, and then questioning can be used to probe the drivers of these actions – i.e. the researcher gains a picture of what actually happened, and the respondent’s reasons for choosing something.
Other common uses of observation are to:
– View products being used in-situ in order to understand usage patterns and any potential problems.
– Understand consumers’ views on packaging.
– Measure the time it takes the target audience to make a purchase decision in a specific setting.