3.2: Qualitative and quantitative research
Data can be categorized as either qualitative or quantitative. Exploratory in nature, qualitative research aims to learn what prospective customers believe and feel about a particular topic. It also helps identify potential hypotheses, while quantitative research seeks to validate these claims with hard data. Finally, quantitative research depends on numerical data to show statistically significant results.
The main differences between quantitative and qualitative research are represented in table below.
| Quantitative | Qualitative | |
| Data gathered | Numbers, figures, statistics objective data | Opinions, feelings, motivations, subjective data |
| Question answered | What? | Why? |
| Group size | Large | Small |
| Data sources | Surveys, web analytics data
Tests known issues or hypotheses |
Focus groups, social media
Generates ideas and concepts – leads to issues or hypotheses to be tested. |
| Purpose | Seeks consensus, the norm
Generalizes data |
Seeks complexity
Puts data in context |
| Advantages | Statistically reliable results to determine if one option is better than the alternatives | Looks at the context of issues and aims to understand perspectives |
| Challenges | Issues can be measured only if they are known prior to startingSample size must be sufficient for predicting the population |
|
Sometimes market researchers will use a combination of both methods, and this approach is called mixed methods. For example, using a survey to gather information on the research topic and then using that survey to recruit participants for a focus group to probe the topic in more depth can be used.
This resource doesn’t go deeply into mixed methods, but the video below by Grad Coach goes into depth about qualitative, quantiative and mixed methods for any research project.
References
Albrecht, M. G., Green, M., & Hoffman, L. (2023). Principles of Marketing. OpenStax. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Grad Coach. (2021, September 27). Qualitative vs Quantitative vs Mixed Methods Research: How to Choose Research Methodology [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hECPeKv5tPM
