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.
Quantitative Market Research helps businesses make decisions based on data rather than assumptions. Whether you’re validating a new product concept, optimizing marketing campaigns, or exploring new markets, quantitative data provides measurable insights that reduce risk and improve return on investment.
What Makes Quantitative Market Research Work
Several fundamental characteristics distinguish quantitative research from other methods:
- Large Sample Sizes: Statistical significance requires sufficient respondents to represent your target population
- Structured Data Collection: Standardized questions across respondents create consistent, comparable data
- Measurable Results: Numbers that can be tracked, compared, and visualized over time
- Objective Analysis: Facts and statistics minimize personal bias in decision-making
- Broad Application: Findings can be applied to larger populations beyond your sample
Quantitative Market Research Methods
Different research objectives call for various data collection approaches:
- Online Surveys: The most scalable method for gathering structured feedback
- Polls: Quick, focused questions for rapid insights
- Experiments & A/B Testing: Compare different versions to identify what performs better
- Observational Studies: Track actual behaviors in real environments
- Secondary Data Analysis: Leverage existing datasets for new insights
Why Conduct Quantitative Market Research?
The first step to a successful marketing campaign, whether it’s market research for new product development, 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. Whether you’re conducting B2B market research or consumer studies, the structured approach delivers actionable insights for decision-making.
Benefits of Quantitative Market Research
The measurable nature of quantitative data delivers several business advantages:
- Statistical Foundation for Major Decisions: Numbers provide the objective backing needed when presenting recommendations to executives or boards. Rather than relying on hunches or small focus groups, quantitative research gives you statistically significant evidence that supports budget requests, product launches, or market expansion plans.
- Precise Audience Segmentation: Large sample sizes reveal meaningful differences between customer groups that smaller studies might miss. You can identify which demographics respond best to specific messaging, determine price sensitivity across different income levels, or spot emerging buyer personas before competitors notice them.
- Performance Tracking Over Time: Quantitative metrics create benchmarks that show whether your strategies are actually working. Track brand awareness quarterly, measure customer satisfaction changes after service improvements, or monitor how marketing campaigns affect purchase intent across different time periods.
- Predictive Market Intelligence: Historical quantitative data helps forecast future trends and behaviors. Identify seasonal patterns in buying behavior, predict which product features will drive adoption, or estimate market size for new offerings based on stated purchase intent and demographic analysis.
- Competitive Benchmarking: Standardized metrics allow direct comparisons with industry standards and competitors. Measure your Net Promoter Score against industry averages, compare customer satisfaction ratings with leading brands, or evaluate how your pricing strategy performs relative to market expectations.
- ROI Justification: Quantifiable results demonstrate the financial impact of marketing investments. Show how advertising campaigns affect brand recognition, measure conversion rate improvements from website changes, or calculate customer lifetime value increases from service enhancements.
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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.
Steps to Conduct Quantitative Market Research
A systematic approach produces the most reliable results:
- Set clear objectives: Define what questions you need answered
- Choose your methodology: Select the approach that fits your goals and timeline
- Design your sample plan: Determine who you need to reach and how many responses you need
- Create your survey: Write clear, unbiased questions that generate actionable data
- Collect responses: Execute your study through the right mix of sample sources
- Analyze findings: Use statistical analysis to identify patterns and trends
- Apply insights: Implement changes based on what the data reveals
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.
Quantitative vs Qualitative Research
These two research approaches complement each other in several important ways:
- Data Focus: Quantitative research produces numbers and percentages. Qualitative research captures opinions, motivations, and detailed feedback.
- Sample Requirements: Quantitative studies need large, representative samples for statistical validity. Qualitative research works with smaller groups for a deeper understanding.
- What You Learn: Quantitative answers “what” and “how many.” Qualitative explains “why” and “how.”
- Results Format: Quantitative delivers charts, graphs, and statistics. Qualitative provides themes, quotes, and detailed insights.
The most effective research programs combine both approaches. Quantitative data shows you what’s happening in your market, while qualitative research explains the reasons behind those patterns.
Real-World Quantitative Market Research Examples
Organizations across different sectors apply quantitative research to solve various business challenges:
- Consumer Brands: A company might survey 2,000 customers to identify which product features drive purchase decisions
- Technology Companies: A software firm could test two website designs to measure which generates higher conversion rates
- Healthcare Organizations: Patient market research helps hospitals track satisfaction scores across different service touchpoints
- Financial Services: Banks frequently analyze customer survey data to understand mobile app adoption barriers
- B2B Companies: Organizations commonly study decision-maker preferences across different industry segments
Making Quantitative Research Work for Your Business
Whether you need a quantitative market research company for a one-time study or ongoing tracking research, the quality of your sample strategy determines the reliability of your insights. Quantitative market research provides the numerical foundation needed for confident business decisions. Through structured data collection, you can measure consumer behavior, track brand perception, and test marketing approaches before full implementation.
However, sample quality determines insight quality. Different panels can produce results varying by 25 percentage points for awareness metrics or 30 percentage points for concept ratings, because each panel recruits and manages respondents differently.
EMI solves this through strategic sample blending—combining three or more carefully selected sample providers in controlled proportions. This reduces bias while improving data consistency. Our SWIFT platform manages everything from digital fingerprinting to real-time quality monitoring, while our Quality Optimization Rating system ensures each provider meets reliability standards.
With 20+ years of experience and 150+ global sample partners, we build custom sample plans that fit your specific research objectives. Our transparent approach means you always know which sources contributed to your data.
Ready to leverage quantitative insights for your business growth? Request a Consultation with our team today.
FAQs
What are the 4 types of quantitative market research?
- Descriptive market research documents current market conditions, customer demographics, and brand awareness levels systematically
- Correlational market research examines relationships between variables like price sensitivity and purchase behavior or advertising spend and brand recognition
- Causal-comparative market research analyzes differences between customer segments, comparing satisfaction levels across demographics or purchase patterns between regions
- Experimental market research tests specific marketing interventions under controlled conditions, such as A/B testing different ad campaigns or comparing product variations
What makes a good quantitative market research question?
Strong quantitative questions can be answered with numbers and statistical analysis. Examples include measuring customer satisfaction changes, comparing conversion rates between marketing campaigns, determining market size for a new product, tracking brand awareness over time, or evaluating price sensitivity across different segments.
What are the limitations of quantitative market research?
Quantitative research excels at measuring “what” and “how much” but may miss the “why” behind consumer behavior. Pre-written survey questions can limit the discovery of unexpected insights, and statistical summaries may oversimplify complex human motivations. Combining quantitative findings with qualitative research typically provides the most complete picture.