In today’s competitive landscape, businesses can’t afford to rely on hunches when making critical decisions.
To thrive, organizations must embrace data-driven decision-making. Conducting quantitative research can provide businesses with the concrete numbers and facts needed to guide strategy.
This type of research ultimately allows businesses to stay competitive and offer better products and services for consumers.
What Exactly Is Quantitative Market Research?
Using numerical data, quantitative research provides insight about consumer behaviors, preferences, and overall market trends.
Quantitative research involves collecting enough data to be statistically representative of a group of people, ultimately allowing researchers to uncover valuable insights.
As a result of this, businesses can feel confident when making important decisions instead of playing guessing games. This can lead to better customer satisfaction rates and even increased loyalty.
Methods To Collect Quantitative Data
Surveys are the most common method for collecting data from target audiences.
By asking pre-defined questions you can gain insights into customer satisfaction and loyalty, purchase behaviors, brand equity, and much more. Surveys are a powerful form of market research due to their versatility and efficiency in collecting data.
However, surveys aren’t the only form of quantitative research available. Some other methods for collecting data include the following.
Mining Existing Datasets
Most organizations already have quantitative datasets on hand that can be leveraged to provide valuable insights and various functions of their business.
These datasets could include customer records, transaction data, or website traffic, among others. Analyzing these datasets can reveal interesting trends and patterns of behavior.
Observing Real-World Behaviors
Observational research provides an opportunity to capture real-world behaviors.
While observational research can be considered qualitative in many circumstances, it’s possible to structure data collection in a way to capture numerical and measurable results. Observational data collection might include counting specific consumer behaviors, interactions, and/or durations.
For example, in retail research, this type of data collection could include analyzing consumer foot traffic, counting interactions with certain shelf displays, or measuring the duration consumers spend in different sections of the store.
Analyzing Quantitative Data
When analyzing quantitative data, it’s important to follow a few essential steps to ensure you can generate actionable insights. Below, we'll break down each of those steps.
Data Cleaning & Preparation
The first step is cleaning raw data and preparing it for analysis.
This step should include conducting quality reviews (to ensure respondents are legit and attentive), removing duplicates, and correcting errors or missing values in the dataset.
Analysis
Once the data is prepared, a researcher can begin analysis with the goal of summarizing the data and uncovering key patterns and relationships within the dataset.
This analysis may involve calculating basic figures (such as the percentage of respondents to select each response option) or performing more advanced analyses (like correlation, regression, or segmentation). The analysis should also dive into key segments to see how the results may vary for different groups of people.
Reporting
After conducting analysis, the reporting stage aims to present the key findings in a clear and concise manner, ensuring the results are actionable.
Visualizations should be developed to communicate key takeaways. Implications of the research should also be considered to help guide strategy and next steps.
The Good and Bad of Quantitative Research
While quantitative research is incredibly beneficial, it still has certain limitations. Below, we’ll review the top advantages and disadvantages and what they mean.
The Advantages
More Reliable Data
Quantitative research involves larger sample sizes (vs. qualitative research), which leads to more reliable data and reduces the risk of outliers that skew research results in one direction or another.
Objectivity and Minimized Bias
By developing and using pre-defined questions and response options, quantitative research minimizes bias and ensures every research participant experiences the study in a similar way.
Reaching Key Subgroups
The ability to reach a large and diverse audience allows researchers to dive deeper into survey results and uncover findings for specific subgroups (i.e., different generation, genders, income ranges).
This granular view helps organizations uncover valuable insights and tailor strategies for different segments of consumers.
Repeatability and Benchmarking
Quantitative research allows for research to be repeated in a reliable manner. Keeping the methodology consistent and standardizing questions from one survey to another allows researchers to monitor trends over time and compare the results from one study to another.
This is incredibly valuable for monitoring progress (such as with a tracking study) or using the results from one study to provide context in another (develop a benchmark or norms).
Clear and Actionable Insight
Quantitative research delivers clear answers in the form of familiar metrics. These insights are ideal for making data-driven decisions and will resonate with stakeholders.
The Disadvantages
Lack of Depth
Quantitative research excels at capturing the “what” but can often miss the crucial “why” behind consumer behaviors. To better understand the “why”, qualitative research (such as in-depth interviews or focus groups) is leveraged.
Qualitative research allows for a much deeper exploration of motivations, emotions, and context surrounding consumer choices.
Oversimplification of Complex Consumer Behaviors
A key advantage of quantitative research is the structured approach, however, this can lead to researchers misunderstanding the complexities of human behavior.
Qualitative research with its open-ended approach allows these nuances to surface naturally, leading to a more complete understanding of the research results.
Limited Flexibility
Quantitative research follows a pre-determined path which can limit its ability to uncover and explore themes as they emerge.
Qualitative research allows moderators to dive deeper into the answers provided by research participants and potentially uncover insights that would have gone unrecognized with a traditional quantitative study.
Finding Difficult-to-Reach Audiences
Reaching and obtaining a representative sample size from niche audiences can sometimes be challenging with quantitative research.
These difficult-to-reach audiences can present issues when it comes to the feasibility and costs of a large-scale quantitative study.
Less Engaging Results
While quantitative insights can resonate with some stakeholders, other stakeholders might prefer to see or hear feedback directly from individual consumers.
With this in mind, larger research projects often involve a mix of quantitative and qualitative research components. Quantitative research provides precise numbers, while qualitative research will help bring the findings to life through high-quality quotes or audio/video snippets of research participants.
When to Use Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is a go-to approach when you need hard numbers and measurable facts to guide decision-making.
Surveys and other forms of quantitative research can be excellent for quantifying metrics like customer satisfaction, brand awareness, or the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
Testing
If you’re an organization looking to test a hypothesis, such as if a new product offering will expand your company’s reach in the market or if your target audience responds well to a custom-tailored marketing message, this approach to research can deliver valuable insights.
Ultimately, if your research objectives entail questions such as "how many," "how often," or "to what extent," quantitative research is likely the right tool for the job.
Advanced Techniques
Looking past simple measurements, quantitative research can also support more advanced analyses by leveraging the statistically significant datasets they generate.
Do you need to forecast future sales trends, segment customers into distinct groups based on behaviors, or develop predictive models or market simulators? These tasks all require robust datasets that quantitative research can provide.
By using statistically reliable data to make important decisions, you can minimize risk, optimize strategy, and achieve your business goals.
Why a Third Party Is the Best for Quantitative Research
Partnering with a third-party market research firm like Drive Research offers several key advantages to quantitative research projects.
First, an outsourced team will provide unmatched objectivity, which eliminates any lurking bias that could negatively impact data.
Furthermore, respondents are more likely to provide candid feedback when their anonymity is guaranteed by an independent firm.
Secondly, a third-party team simply offers specialized expertise you won’t find anywhere else.
Specialized Expertise: Benefit from research analysts who have years of experience conducting similar studies and navigating industry best practices. Research firms also have access to specialized tools and knowledge to ensure your research is conducted successfully.
Broader Reach: Professional research firms excel at reaching wide pools of research participants and finding difficult-to-reach audiences, ensuring your study has a representative sample.
Resource Efficiency: Free up your internal team by utilizing a third-party firm for the entire research process, from design and data collection to analysis and reporting.
Enhanced Quality: Leverage the third-party firm's expertise in data quality standards and current industry knowledge to identify and address potential issues before they happen.
By leveraging a third-party firm to conduct a quantitative research study, you can gain a deeper understanding of your market, customers, and competitors, ultimately leading to better business decisions.
Contact Our Quantitative Market Research Firm
Interested in conducting a quantitative research study? Our experienced research team can support your project from end-to-end, working with you through each step of the process and helping you draw meaningful and actionable insights from the data.
Reach out through any of the four methods below to learn more about our market research services.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Chris Coville
As the Director of Research of Drive Research, Chris has 10 years of experience in the market research field and has completed projects with organizations across the globe. He was also named a 2017 40 Under 40 Award winner.
Learn more about Chris, here.
