Knowledge controls access to opportunity and advancement. This saying is especially true in business, where information is the foundation for successful strategies and models.
But in a world brimming with all types of information, extracting the most relevant insights on a specific market or audience can be challenging.
This is where market research comes into play – it allows you to understand your target audience better, fill any gaps in your market, learn about your competitors, and allocate your resources in the most profitable ways.
To conduct market research, you must be well-versed in marketing research techniques. This comprehensive blog breaks down ten major quant qual research methods for different project needs to help you gather actionable insights.
Primary Vs. Secondary Research
Primary
Primary research is original research you conduct yourself or employ a third party to carry out for you. It involves going directly to the source and getting in touch with your target market to ask questions and collect data. Examples of this are interviews, focus groups, and mobile market research.
When conducting primary research, you can gather two types of information:
Exploratory research - This approach aims to investigate a problem through independent exploration. It is extensive and open-ended, mainly focusing on lengthy discussions with a small but validated group of respondents, otherwise known as a sample.
Specific research - This approach is more precise and seeks answers to previously identified problems often discovered through exploratory research.
Primary market research has the advantage of helping you gather first-hand information about the needs of your customers and prospects. It also enables the company or individual to control the ownership of their data.
Secondary
Secondary research is the act of seeking out existing data and research for your project – this means that researchers aren’t required to amass their own intelligence. Your job as a secondary researcher is to find information that can be used for your specific project. This research is beneficial if you have limited resources to conduct your market research.
Secondary sources include the following:
Public Sources - These sources offer a lot of good information free of cost so that researchers can document any available information.
Examples: government agencies, business departments, and public libraries
Commercial Sources - Although reliable, these data sources usually involve cost factors such as subscription and association fees.
Examples: research and trade associations, financial institutions, and publicly traded corporations.
Educational Institutions - Collecting data from these sources is often overlooked. However, the academic sector generates more research than any other sector.
Examples: colleges, universities, and technical schools
Media Sources - These sources provide both first- and second-hand accounts on topics such as economic development, politics, market research, and demographic segregation.
Examples: newspapers, journals, magazines, TV channels, and radio stations
Internet Sources - This is one of the most popular ways of collecting information due to its accessibility and convenience. Data is readily available on the internet and can be viewed or downloaded at the click of a button.
Examples: websites, forums, and social media
Quantitative Vs. Qualitative Research
Quantitative
Quantitative research measures respondents' opinions, attitudes, and experiences by generating numerical data. This data is then collected to produce statistics, identify trends, and find prevalence.
Quantitative research aims to quantify and generalize results so the market researcher can conclude the best course of action. It can also be utilized to test a theory or hypothesis, detect causal relationships between variables, predict outcomes, and create generalizations on broad populations.
Qualitative
In contrast to quantitative research, qualitative research is more descriptive in nature. It is designed to gain deeper insight into the opinions and motivations of consumer purchases. As such, this research doesn’t aim to describe a situation or occurrence – instead, it seeks to establish the reasoning behind it.
This research relies on psychological, ethnographic, and sociological approaches to gather insight from their target audience. Qualitative research usually occurs in a natural environment, either online or offline, wherein participants can provide thorough responses to any questions or prompts the researcher may have.
10 Marketing Research Techniques You Should Know
1. Interviews and Focus Groups
In-depth interviews and focus groups are key qualitative research methods that provide valuable insights into consumer behavior. According to Statista, online in-depth interviews (34%) and focus groups (28%) are the two most commonly used methods by researchers.
In-depth interviews involve one-on-one conversations where the interviewer asks open-ended questions to encourage detailed responses. Though time-intensive, this approach yields deep insights into what consumers value. This format is ideal for understanding consumers’ thoughts and behaviors more deeply.
Focus groups gather people under predetermined criteria for a moderated discussion. Unlike interviews, This approach allows participants to brainstorm ideas and share their perspectives based on a discussion guide. Qualitative research focus groups are beneficial for exploring a range of opinions on a specific topic.
2. Surveys
Surveys are a widely known and utilized method for gathering a large volume of data for analysis. This technique involves distributing survey questions, either open-ended or close-ended, to respondents through a questionnaire – this can be done either in person, over the phone, through email, or online.
This type of market research method is highly versatile due to the range of question formats it can offer. Some examples of these formats are:
- Dichotomous (two choices, such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’)
- Multiple choice
- Checkbox
- Rating scale
- Likert scale (standard version is five options between ‘strongly agree’ and ‘strongly disagree’)
- Matrix (options presented on a grid)
- Demographic (asking for info such as gender, age, or occupation)
- Question and answer (open-ended question with written or verbal answer)
Conducting a survey is advantageous if your goal is to question a relatively large sample, measure something objectively, or recruit participants for your quantitative and qualitative research. It can also be used effectively in employee or customer satisfaction research, pricing research, and fact-gathering.
3. Online Communities
Market research online communities (MROCs) involve participants recruited into a private online space to engage in research activities over a specific period. These communities can be categorized into two main types: long-term and short-term, each with unique characteristics and applications depending on your research objectives.
Long-term MROCs consist of hundreds to thousands of participants who engage in lengthy projects on an online community engagement platform. These communities span several years, exploring interlinked topics and observing how opinions evolve over time. Although participants are not required to contribute as frequently as in short-term MROCs, they provide feedback according to a schedule set by the researcher to ensure insights remain relevant and actionable.
Short-term MROCs, on the other hand, are typically composed of up to 50 participants who are grouped by common interests to focus on a single research objective. These communities are time-limited and usually last up to four months. Designed for more intensive exploration, short-term MROCs aim for participants to engage more frequently and provide spontaneous insights on the research topic.
4. Social Media Listening
This method involves searching for various topics on social media platforms and analyzing relevant social posts. For example, a company might search for mentions of their brand on Facebook or X to see the opinions of their buyers and potential customers. Since people share a lot of content on their social media accounts, there is an abundance of data to tap into and evaluate.
Social media listening is an effective market research method because it democratizes consumer insight. In fact, 61% of companies have adopted social listening tools to track keyword mentions. Since the responses are unprompted, you can be fairly sure that the person is sharing an unfiltered account of their thoughts and feelings regarding the topic.
Market research attained through social media monitoring provides fast, accurate, and current information about your brand. Companies can determine trends and brand sentiments in real time through this method to help guide future enhancements and product development.
5. Observations
An observative research method allows researchers to watch customer behavior instead of user-reported behavior. This method involves observing consumer behavior and occurrences in natural environments like their homes and shopping stores.
Compared to other qualitative marketing research techniques, an observational study is a direct reflection of your consumer’s “real life,” so the insights you gather are often relevant and reliable. While this method is traditionally conducted in person, it can also exist online using a mobile market research tool.
Here are a few examples of observational research:
- Mobile Usability Testing – Involves respondents evaluating a product or service through testing while observers watch, listen, and take notes.
- Eye Tracking – Researchers study their participant’s eye movement during various activities. It reveals what grabs consumers' interest or attention.
- Contextual Inquiry – Involves interviewing subjects as the researcher watches them work or play in their natural environment.
- At-Home Observation – Watching respondents go through their morning routine in their homes might uncover valuable insights into pain points that need solving.
- In-Store Observation – The interviewer accompanies the consumer while they browse and shop for items, asking questions as they tag along.
- Mystery Shoppers – This technique involves hiring a secret shopper to act as an actual customer to evaluate their customer experience in person, over the phone, or online.
Observational research is instrumental in helping you interact with consumers to get deeper insights during the shopping process, understand usage patterns, measure the time it takes to make a purchase decision, and get feedback on package design.
6. Field Trials
Field trials or experiments involve scientific testing wherein a hypothesis and variables are tested. They can be conducted in a controlled environment, such as a laboratory or in natural settings.
These experiments rely on independent and dependent variables – the researcher controls the independent variable to test its effects on the dependent variable. The key here is to try and establish whether there is a causal relationship between the two and how it can be applied to improve marketing strategies.
The best application of this method can be seen in A/B testing, which involves having consumers evaluate and dissect different versions of the same products or services to determine which is more effective.
7. Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is a strategic market research method where a company analyzes how it stacks up against its competitors in the market.
This method starts by identifying and categorizing every competitor within your industry. After pinpointing your biggest competitors, it’s time to evaluate different factors of their business model. For instance, this can be from a marketing perspective (content, SEO structure, PR coverage, social media presence) or a product perspective (types of offerings, pricing structure).
Used by 90% of Fortune 500 Companies, competitive analysis helps businesses assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It gives you an idea of your rank within the industry, provides valuable insight into successful business models, and helps you determine effective business strategies.
8. Public Data
Public data involves seeking and analyzing market-related data open to the public. Often, this research is available free of cost on the internet or at the library. There are plenty of sources for this information, including research centers, polls, and government databases.
Data from public sources is often used to supplement primary market research. It can also confirm information and be measured against other data.
This method is ideal for researchers strapped for resources or those needing additional information to support their research. With more and more data produced over time, researchers can build upon and create new studies from publicly accessible data.
9. Purchased Data
Purchased data is a method by which researchers can buy and analyze relevant industry and research reports to inform business strategies.
For example, a small e-commerce company looking to expand into the beauty industry could purchase a report from a business intelligence platform to access valuable data on global beauty industry revenue.
Aside from this, some market research firms also offer subscriptions that allow users to access research databases that span various industries and locations. This option can be helpful for small or medium-sized businesses that lack the time or resources to conduct a primary study.
10. Sales Data Analysis
Analyzing sales data is a useful method that can complement other marketing research techniques, such as competitive analysis, to evaluate the relationship between business strategies and sales. It offers valuable insight into the buying patterns of consumers in your market and assists you in spotting consumer trends.
Analyzing your sales performance provides insights about top-performing and underperforming products and services, selling problems, market opportunities, sales forecasting, and sales activities that generate revenue.
Choosing a Suitable Market Research Method
Choosing the most suitable market research method is not a one-size-fits-all decision. Your approach should be tailored to your specific research objectives, available resources, and the type of data you need to gather. With each technique having its strengths and limitations, selecting the most suitable ones for your project is crucial for achieving meaningful insights.
To ensure your methods align with your research needs, consider partnering with an experienced restech provider, such as Civicom MRS. These providers offer customizable solutions that streamline every step of the research process, from recruitment to report writing.
Execute Your Market Research Projects Seamlessly with Civicom® Marketing Research Services
Civicom® Marketing Research Services is the global leader in providing web-enabled qualitative tools for market research. Our full-service solutions include online IDI and focus group facilitation, mobile research, online communities, respondent recruitment, an AI report generating tool, plus other customizable solutions for your research needs. Contact us to see how we can help you achieve project success.