What is Quantitative Market Research?
Market research provides insights that help us define our products’ place in the market, measure marketing activities, analyze brand awareness, and more. It is essential to understanding how our products are perceived and how they work in the life of our consumers. There are two types of market research—qualitative and quantitative. The method you use depends on the specific priorities, goals, and questions you want answered. Qualitative market research relies more on focus groups and individual feedback and focuses on collecting non-numerical data usually from smaller groups. On the other hand, a Quantitative approach focuses more on collecting numerical data, feedback, and uncovering insights from a representative segment of the population. An example of this methodology is online surveys.
Quantitative Market Research is a technique used by marketers to ask questions to a target audience in an organized and methodical manner. The most common methods used by quantitative researchers are surveys, polls, and questionnaires that are meant to find numerical data on specifics about the market you are in, the customer population you should be targeting, and even your company itself. The responses to these questionnaires are then analyzed to help you make the best decisions for your business. The best way to build your business around the needs of your consumers is to listen to their feedback and research.
Why Conduct Quantitative Market Research?
The first step to a successful marketing campaign, whether it’s for a new product launch, company positioning, or reaching a new target audience, is research. When you conduct Quantitative research, you can pinpoint insights about specific areas of your marketing activities, such as your website and social media, as well as specific questions about your product itself and who is buying it.
Quantitative Market Research answers questions like:
- “Are customers looking for a product like ours?”
- “Who is currently buying our product?”
- “Why are others not buying our product?”
- “How should I reach out to potential clientele?”
- “What convinces our target market to buy?”
- “What do people know about our market and our product?”
- “Is the perception of our product changing? How should we respond?”
Market research is arguably the most effective practice available to you if you are just looking to refine or expand your brand, start a new venture, launch a new product or service, or simply maintain your competitive edge. While you may be able to get a long way with intuition and creativity, quantitative market research is what tells you definitively what will and will not work. It lays out a reliable path for greater success. Quantitative research helps your business understand preferences, attitudes, behaviors, and even potential requirements by collective feedback from audiences including clients, employees, prospects, suppliers, stakeholders, and more.
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How Do We Conduct Quantitative Research?
EMI is unique among panel sample companies. As an online market research sample consultancy, we are closely partnered with more than 100 different online panels spanning internationally and domestically, with reach among consumer, business to business, and healthcare audiences. This breadth and depth, along with more than 20 years of quantitative research experience, allows us to customize a solution unique to you with a human element. Our goal is to bring the right panel to your project specs rather than making your project specs fit an available panel. We leverage our capabilities to develop the highest-quality, most cost-effective sample results in the shortest amount of time—on behalf of you and your company.
Methodology
Quantitative Market Research is a mixture of art and science. It takes a methodical approach to ensure that you get the best, most representative data to create actionable insights for you and your company. To do this, we use feedback from respondents from various panels. Panels are different and are always changing, so in order to get the most accurate data, we use strategic sample blending.
The best practice of utilizing online sample for a quantitative study is to strategically blend sample, which takes blending a step further. Not only do you use three or more sample providers, but the selection and blending of the selected providers is done in an intentional and controlled manner.
By strategically blending your sample, you can ensure the consistency and reliability of your surveys and the data they provide, allowing you and your company to make the best business decisions possible.
Surveys
As mentioned above, the most common methods of collecting quantitative data are online surveys, polls, and questionnaires.
Our ability to gather insights through surveys has evolved with the development of online survey mediums. Most questions included in these surveys are closed-ended as those types of questions are more effective for quantitative data analysis. However, qualitative data can still be collected in surveys with the use of open-ended questions; although, it is best to limit those questions to ensure the survey does not become too lengthy. Surveys work best for gathering feedback from large audience sizes which is critical for quantitative research because this data is used to represent an entire population with no significant discrepancies.
Questions
Quantitative Market Research questions give us answers for “who” and “what.” Quantitative questions are usually closed-ended and simpler to answer and analyze. If you want statistics and quantifiable results, quantitative market research is the right fit for you.
Some of the most used market research questions fall under these categories:
Net promoter score: This is a 0-10 scale that shows brand recommendation. It is used to evaluate customer satisfaction and likelihood of brand sharing.
Likert scale: This psychometric question evaluates consumer opinions toward something with polarities on either end. A statement is generally followed by 5, 7, or 9 responses, such as “strongly agree,” “agree,” “neutral,” “disagree,” and “strongly disagree.”
Semantic scale: This rating scale is like the Likert scale, but uses quantitative questions rather than statements.
Multiple choice: Multiple choice is a staple method of quantitative research and can help provide an array of choices, with the exact options a company wants their respondents to select from.
Others: Researchers are constantly trying to better capture the emotions of their target audiences. While there are announcements of new tools being released to assist with this every day, we have recently done scaling research to test the use of emojis and other modern ways of collecting thoughts and feelings from consumers in contrast to more traditional options. While this may not be the right option for all studies, it is worth considering when designing your quantitative market research questions.
Analyzing the Results of Quantitative Market Research
Quantitative results are easier to analyze than they have ever been with the onset of automated tools and programs such as Qualtrics. While automation can improve accuracy, drive efficiency, and increase agility, quantitative research still requires a human aspect. One of the reasons for this is that most tools won’t be able to remove outliers or create questions to weed out people who might not give the best data. Some red flags for potential issues are inconsistent answers, duplicate open-ended answers, and patterns across data points. We call the questions that help us flag these respondents, screeners. They help us ensure that we are providing the best, most accurate data possible so that you get the best customer satisfaction feedback.
We have partnered with Research Defender to ensure that we have all the means necessary to create reliable data you can count on. By integrating Research Defender’s capabilities into SWIFT, our proprietary sample management platform, we can gather higher-quality data and eliminate fraud. Research Defender’s technology adds an additional layer of protection to prevent bots, bad actors, and click farm-based respondents from entering our clients’ surveys. Coupled with our proprietary digital fingerprinting system, stringent Partner Assessment Process, and other data quality measures, we can offer our clients the highest level of confidence in their quantitative data. Tools like this still require a human element to review and clean data so we can better understand the population of respondents and predict their behavior.
While gathering quantitative market research data seems like a simple and straightforward business once in field, this is not always true. Beyond the humanistic approach needed when it comes to data quality and preventing fraud, EMI backs up our sample with our world-class project management services. The team provides 24/7/365 coverage and works with you as an extension of your own team, providing you with a single point of contact, utilizing responsiveness, creativity, and flexibility to help you navigate any issues at all stages of the research process.
Quantitative data results can help you understand the right market for your product and consumer awareness of your brand and product. It also helps you determine the type of people who are your best customers and how many people are interested in what you offer. You can then analyze their buying habits and how their needs are changing so that you can adapt and stay ahead of trends and shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviors, making the best decisions for your business.