Qualitative Vs Qantitative Research

The AMA (American Marketing Association) defines market research as "a function that links consumer, customer & public to the marketer via information."

So what kind of information do we need? And is one better than another?

Qualitative research is just like it sounds. Quality information over quantity. This method focuses on just a small number among the target audience, but probes deep into the buyer attitudes and opinions. Examples of this type of research would be focus groups, one on one interviews, direct observation, open ended questionnaires designed to gather deep responses, even personal diaries.

The information is then gathered together and through content analysis, organized into major categories and themes. It can be examined by itself or combined with quantitative data.

Quantitative research is data collection. We would be trying to find out what drives a buyer to choose a particular product or service. Examples would be online surveys, mail questionnaires and phone interviews. Quantitative research many times is the second phase of research.

Streetwise.com provides an example to clarify the difference and uses of the two methods.

A convenience store called QuickStop used exploratory qualitative research and interviewed 24 women individually about what they like or disliked about the convenience store. The results were very surprising to the company.

Evidently women felt the stores were designed for men, with little or no consideration for women. The bathrooms were dirty. And it did not have products in store that women would "conveniently" want to purchase. This information was eye opening. But what to do with it?

Now the quantitative research phase began. They conducted 250 telephone interviews with a combination of female respondents. The results from the quantitative phase showed over 76% of all female customers were women under 30 years old, without children, while women with children and with higher incomes were 5 times less likely to shop at QuickStop

They discovered that of those women