Qualitative research

The Power of Qualitative Research

Introduction

The Power of Qualitative Research 2

Qualitative research is regularly used widely by companies to provide insight into customers’ true needs and wants. These insights go far beyond standard quantitative work like surveys.

Here’s why…

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Qualitative Research


•  Involves an in-depth understanding of human behavior.

•  Categorizes data into patterns as the primary basis for organizing and reporting results.

•  The need is for smaller but focused samples rather than large random samples.

Qualitative research is one of the two major approaches to research; the other is quantitative research, which relies on surveys and statistics. Qualitative work provides more:

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Qualitative Research


•  Investigates the why, how, what, where, and when of decision making. Quantitative research cannot address “why” and “how,” yet “why” and “how” provide the actionable results and the reasons behind people’s actions.

•  Ethnographic methods are the most powerful of the qualitative techniques.

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Famous Results…


Mini Cooper Fridge pack

Miller Lite Huggies Pull-Ups

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A Comparison


You want to know how your

customers use voicemail so you can

refine your marketing strategy. You are

thinking of creating an automated

voicemail system to deliver messages

to customers. To find out about

voicemail use, you hire both a

quantitative researcher and a

qualitative researcher.

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A Comparison


The quantitative team pulls together a 10-question survey about voicemail use and sends it out to 1000 customers. The team comes back in two weeks and shares these results:

•  85% of customers use voicemail at different times; some listen during the morning commute, some around lunchtime, and some throughout the day.

•  90% of customers listen to voicemail in different places; some in their car, some only at work, and some anywhere.

•  Over half of customers sometimes don’t listen to their voicemail at all.

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A Comparison


A qualitative researcher has been asked the same question: How do customers use voicemail? •  The researcher recruits 15 participants in

three regions of the country to participate. Each respondent is “shadowed” for an entire day, and for the week following the shadow sends a text message and snapshot of where they are at that moment to the researcher every time they answer voicemail.

•  After completing the fieldwork and analyzing the resulting 200-pages of transcripts, 50 hours of video, and 1,000 photographs, the qualitative team comes back with these results…

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A Comparison


•  Customers nationwide go through a very detailed decision-making tree when interacting with their voicemail, though there are some regional differences.

•  Many customers don’t like to listen to their voicemail simply because it’s too much of a pain. Instead, they just look at the call log to see who they missed, then call back directly. There are business exceptions to this.

•  Customers who listen to voicemail while commuting avoid talking to some people by instead leaving a return voicemail in the early morning hours.

•  Customers who need to listen to voicemail for business purposes prefer to listen to it either throughout the day, or in one chunk. The deciding factor is needed responsiveness (i.e. sales people feel that they need to get back to customers more quickly while cubicle jockeys feel they can wait a few hours).

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A Comparison


•  The main conclusion from the qualitative team was that using voicemail for marketing wouldn’t be useful since customers might not listen to the message. In fact, they would probably be irritated at you for doing such a thing.

•  However, during the study it was noticed that text messaging was something that customers responded to immediately because it was easy and perceived to be non-confrontational. And all text messages were read.

•  In the end, the results from the qualitative team moved the marketing strategy away from voicemail and towards text messaging. In addition, voicemail was redesigned to better meet the needs of customers.

•  Overall, the extra time investment and cost of the qualitative work helped avoid a costly mistake and also provided “double-duty” by addressing other important customer needs.

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Customer Contact Hours


020406080

100120140160

Quantitative: 1000customers

Qualitative: 15customers

The qualitative researcher studied 15 customers around the country intimately. This “deep-dive” approach produced twice as much data, all of which was actionable.

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Benefits of Qualitative Work…


Ethnography On-site Interviews

Group Discussions

Level of Insight In-depth Generalizable Overall

Area of Application

Innovation and Planning

New & Modified Designs/Services

Evaluation of Existing Products

Time & Cost High Medium Low

All qualitative research is not created equal. Ethnography is the most intensive of techniques but provides the most valuable information. Group discussions (or focus groups) are quick and easy, but provide much more limited information:

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Benefits of Qualitative Work…


•  Avoid costly mistakes by addressing real needs and wants before you take action.

•  Know what the people you serve want before they do.

•  Improve speed to market for products and services.

•  Realize greater innovation potential.

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Working with You


•  More than the interview. •  Uncovering the unexpected. •  Not just interesting information, but

actionable findings. •  Research and analysis grounded in

30 years of experience. •  Research grounded in actual social

science training.

Everyone does “ethnography” these days. So the reasonable question is, how does this approach differ?

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Working with You


People Path will work with you to select the best method and deliverable based upon your research question, time constraints, and budget.

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People Path Provides…


•  Ethnographies •  Needs assessments •  Customer modeling •  Personas & profiles •  Cultural profiles •  Semiotic analysis •  Cross-cultural comparisons •  Neighborhood characterizations •  Outreach & development plans •  Life-stage overviews •  Shopping behavior and trigger analysis

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Some Methods…


•  Participant observation •  Contextual inquiry •  Individual interviews •  In-home activity mapping •  Environment/neighborhood activity

mapping •  Ethnographic videography •  Material culture analysis •  Usability Studies: in-context •  Design research •  Online journaling •  Photo journaling •  Behavioral patterning

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The Power of Qualitative Research 18 [email protected]

Christina Keibler, MS, MA Anthropologist & Principal

720-474-3488

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Gavin Johnston, MA, MA Anthropologist & Principal

720-474-3489

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www.people-path.com

Business

Qualitative research