When you start from nursery and reach class 12, the complexity of numbers increases over time. You never know that what started as 1,2 and 3 will become Sin, Cos, and Tan. But, as these numbers enter the business world, they have the opposite effect.
Instead of confusing you about them, they make your business more understandable, but how? The answer is with the help of quantitative market research. But what's it, or how does it work? We have covered everything in this blog about quantitative research.
What is Quantitative Market Research?
Quantity best describes quantitative market research. However, this is not enough to understand what it exactly means. To understand it in detail, let's break it down based on its purpose, methods, and results.
To begin with, quantitative market research is done to quantify particular data and analyze it to get insights that answer business-related questions like the current trends or the audience's behavior for any product or service or anything else.
In simpler terms, it allows you to take input from a relevant audience for your questions in the form of data that can easily be structured and analyzed statistically.
So, that takes us to the methods of quantitative research. As we just learned, the data must be as structured as possible, so the formats or methods used are mostly surveys and polls.
Moreover, in the end, when the data gets analyzed, and insights come out, it gives you results like a relationship between two more things or trends identifying patterns or other insights defining something about business.
But what can be the motivations for conducting quantitative research can not be defined in a few lines. So let's cover the reasons to conduct quantitative research in detail.
Reasons to Conduct Quantitative Market Research
From a business perspective, there are multiple reasons why you can be involved in quantitative research. Here are some of the reasons you will be reading below:
● Understanding Customers
Quantitative research can easily answer what your customers need or what their preferences are. There is always a need to identify the pain points for both so that you can target them and make their experience better when they finally do business with you. It's possible through interviews, focus groups, and observation.
● Product or Service Development
Through techniques such as surveys, questionnaires, and statistical analysis, quantitative research helps businesses understand the size and characteristics of their target market, identify potential demand, and evaluate the feasibility of new ideas. By collecting and analyzing numerical data, companies can make informed decisions about product features, pricing strategies, distribution channels, and marketing campaigns.
● Market Opportunities Identification
Expanding is important to remain in a competitive market and keep growing. But it is always better to expand on market opportunities. With the help of quantitative research, you can learn about these opportunities on time and take advantage of them as well.
● Brand Perception and Positioning
Let's say you have launched a brand that you want to position as a premium brand. So, you can invest in its quality and can also keep its price higher. But most people may learn about your brand's name first and then about your product, its quality, and price. In simple words, your name must also look premium. That is where quantitative research helps to understand the audience's perception of your brand and whether it is positioned right.
● Competitive Analysis
Learning about competition from time to time is important for making necessary changes and improvements, as well as for determining how close they are to you or how far you are from them. That's why it's a solid reason to do quantitative market research.
Importance of Doing Quantitative Market Research
As you read about why you should be involved in market research, we can conclude that it's important based on these two points.
1. Without quantitative research, you may be unable to make informed decisions about your business. So, it will make you run a business by making random decisions.
2. It allows you to act on upcoming trends and problems to keep yourself multiple steps ahead.
In summary, if you have to answer anything about your business instead of "why," you can do it through quantitative research. However, it doesn't mean it is ineffective for "why," as the complementary research methods make quantitative research even more descriptive and detailed.
Examples of Quantitative Market Research Questions
Let's now explore a question bank that includes various types of questions about quantitative research.
● Close Ended Questions
This type of research question is created so that the respondent only leaves with a few responses. Such questions are really very useful for gathering structured and opinion data. So, they are easier to process and get insights.
Example: Do you have a TV in your house?
1. Yes
2. No
● Open-ended questions
The opposite of close-ended questions, open-ended questions allow for a detailed analysis as they let the respondent respond in detail in their natural language. However, the analysis of open-ended questions can be tricky, but with sentiment analysis techniques, it's also getting easier.
Example: What is the motivation behind the rating you gave us?
● Rating Scale Questions
A rating scale question is a type of close-ended question in which the respondent has to choose a rating from 0 to 10 or 0 to 5 to rate their experience with the product, service, or customer service. Rating scale questions are mostly asked indirectly, as given below.
Example: On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend us to your friends?
Example: On a scale of 0-5, how would you rate our product?
● Likert Scale Questions
Just like rating scale questions, Likert Scale questions also have a scale to answer. However, the scale does not contain any number but looks like this.
Example: The colors of the TV are very Vibrant.
1. Strongly Agree
2. Agree
3. Neutral
4. Disagree
5. Strongly Disagree
● Demographics Questions
Demographic questions are a way to get a person's personal information discreetly. It makes the respondent feel safe to share their demographics as a range is asked instead of the exact and accurate details. It may ask about age, income, gender, education qualification, etc. It mostly helps categorize the respondents for surveys. So if a person lies in the category that aligns with the company's need for a survey, they continue to answer the main survey. Otherwise, the respondents are not allowed to continue.
Example: What is your annual income?
1. 0-2.5 Lacs
2. 2.5-5 Lacs
3. 5-7.5 Lacs
4. 7.5-10 Lacs
5. More than 10 Lacs
Impact Quantitative Market Research Can Bring in Your Industry in 2024
In 2024, quantitative research is going to help businesses a lot with their market analysis and research for other business segments. However, what is going to make a real difference is the use of AI and GenAI in quantitative research. From synthesizing the data to automating the processes, GenAI and AI will make quantitative research more accessible to the business.
The impact of this will be a higher use of research in business operations like product development, product-market fit, competitor analysis, and many more. Moreover, it will enable businesses in any industry to make more informed decisions rather than playing hit and trial. In totality, competitive research is going to have an undeniable impact on any industry in 2024.
