Manufacturing Information Solutions Forum Index Manufacturing Information Solutions
Your Place for Support and Discussions
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

Quantitative Research Overview

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Manufacturing Information Solutions Forum Index -> Sales & Marketing
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
mistux
Site Admin


Joined: 25 Jun 2004
Posts: 1042
Location: South Bend, Indiana USA

PostPosted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:36 pm    Post subject: Quantitative Research Overview Reply with quote

Quantitative Research Overview

By Mark Carpenter


What Is Quantitative Research
The term quantitative research covers a range of techniques that can be used to quantify - with some statistical confidence - categories, evaluations, opinions and attitudes that potential or current customers bring to any market.

Quantitative research usually involves administering a pre-scripted questionnaire to hundreds or thousands of people. The goal is to produce projectable information to guide marketers in decisions such as when to go to market, the appeal of a new product, or how to best communicate a brand identityBasic questions often take the form of:



‘Into which of these categories do you fit?’
From which you can derive percentages of people in each category
‘How many do you buy?’
From which you can generate mean scores or group people into volume bands

‘Give a score from 1-10 to indicate how satisfied you are’
Generate mean scores that can be related to other scores the respondent has given or be compared with other groups of respondents.



Because respondents often rate everything between a seven and eight out of ten in importance, more sophisticated quantitative techniques use trade-off questioning. In trade off questioning, a respondent has to sacrifice one benefit in order to secure another to which they attach greater importance.
Quantitative research is one of the two main branches of marketing research. Its counterpart, qualitative research, focuses on a relatively small number of people and uses loosely structured questioning directions. The goal of qualitative research is to answer the "why?" questions behind consumer activity.


Data Collection Techniques
Quantitative data can be collected in essentially two ways – respondent self-completion and interviewer administered.




Respondent Self-completion
Mail surveys and questionnaires included with products or left in customer areas (e.g. hotel rooms) are examples of self-completion techniques. Recently, Web-based questionnaires have joined this category.

Questionnaire design needs to be simple for the traditional techniques in order to minimise the risk of making mistakes. Web-based questionnaires can be more complex because the Internet enables marketers to use more sophisticated questioning techniques while still keeping the survey structure simple and user friendly.

All self-completion techniques share fundamental characteristics. While they all represent low cost methods of data collection, response rates are inevitably low -- 15%-20% is considered good.

Because of the low response rates, researchers must deal with response bias. People who feel very positive or very negative about a subject are the ones motivated to respond to a survey. There is a significant risk, therefore, that self-completion studies represent the extremes of opinion rather than being truly representative of a market as a whole.


Interviewer Administered
Questionnaires can be administered by interviewers either face-to-face or over the telephone. The role of the interviewer goes beyond simply being a ‘voice-over’ of the questionnaire. A trained interviewer can use more complex questioning routines and can keep the respondent focused on the subject. By contrast, there is no guarantee that a respondent doing a self-completion questionnaire will pay full attention to the directions.

Face-to-face interviews can be carried out in a number of different places. A Central Location Test (CLT) is a means of setting up a dedicated research environment where product or advertising can be displayed. The CLT is generally set up in a location where it will be relatively easy to find and invite eligible respondents to participate in the research study. Typical locations include, shopping malls, hotels and retail outlets.

Face-to-face interviewing can also take place in-home, at a place of work or, for very short interviews, on pedestrian walkways.



Sampling
Because marketers cannot survey an entire population, they use a technique called sampling to work with smaller, more manageable groups. Although some complex statistical laws govern sampling, there are a few common sense principles that will help you in deciding on appropriate sample design.



Sample Sizes
The bigger the sample the more confident we can be that it represents the target market.

For example, if we ask one person their opinion, it is unlikely that his view will represent the views of the market as a whole. If we interview 100 people, we can be more confident that the breadth of opinion in the ‘real market’ is reflected in our sample.

Statistical laws will recommend sample sizes that provide a representative view of the diversity and size of the market universe. However, sample size is usually a trade-off between accuracy and cost.

For example, in order to double the accuracy of your results, you need to use a sample that was four times bigger. Since research budgets can rarely support an unlimited number of respondents, researchers gear a sample size to producing statistically significant results.

Of greater practical consideration when deciding on sample size is the desired level of sub-group analysis you want to do. Drilling down into smaller sub-groups in a study requires a larger pool of respondents.

For example, to carry out meaningful comparisons between the yes/no responses of men and women in a study, you would need a minimum of 40-50 respondents in each sub-group. If you needed to drill down further to identify differences in response between older and younger people within each sex then you would need 40-50 of each of young and old men and young and old women.

Sampling Techniques

The majority of quantitative research studies use one of two sampling techniques: random interval and quota sampling.

The best way to imagine random interval sampling is to imagine all of the customers of a particular market in a single line. The researcher decides to speak to every tenth person. Although the selection approach is structured, the respondents selected will be random because the researcher does not control who gets in line. We are not choosing to interview just tall people or blue-eyed people.

Quota sampling is a more pragmatic approach to achieving sufficient diversity of representation in a study. Quotas can be set to achieve certain representation levels among demographic groups, brand users or other behavioural categories.

Although not as representative in the true sense of random sampling, setting quotas means that you can choose to over-sample groups that would only generate a small number of interviews through a random sampling method or, more broadly, guarantee the overall composition of the sample.



Quantitative research can be put to a variety of uses such as:




Product Development

Pricing Research

Segmentation Research

Customer Satisfaction Studies

Advertising Research


Product Development
The early stages of concept development are often best served by qualitative research.

Quantitative techniques can be used at various stages of the product development process as a form of quality control. For example, researchers could conduct a survey to determine if a new product idea fits a market need.

In some categories, it is appropriate to test the new product in a competitive context. In such instances, a typical approach would be a survey at a central facility. Respondents would be able to compare a new product side-by-side with competitive products. Researchers could then rate each product in various categories such function, ergonomic use and aesthetics.

In other instances, researchers need potential buyers to simply focus on the characteristics of the product itself such as with taste tests or home product trials.


Pricing Research
Perhaps the most important issue for any marketer is “what price should I charge?”

There are ranges of quantitative techniques that can be used to help set the price structure. The key principle is to use the pricing technique that best replicates the marketing environment.

Most product categories these days are highly competitive with a number of closely matched, closely priced alternatives. Where consumers are likely to be in a ‘cherry picking’ mode, it is important to use a technique such as Brand Price Trade-Off.

In a Brand Price Trade-Off, respondents must decide whether to stick with their preferred brand as the price increases, or to switch to another brand. The data from such a study indicates the potential premium price that the product will support.

The outputs from this technique also show ‘pseudo brand shares.’ Marketers can estimate the market share effects of price changes. It also is possible to model anticipated reactions of competitors to any price movement.

Especially in technology markets, brand new product categories emerge where there are no precedents or pricing benchmarks. In these instances, the marketer needs to set a price that maximises profitability without discouraging customers from an experimental purchase.

A valuable technique for this scenario is Price Sensitivity Measure. The analysis outputs from Price Sensitivity Measure studies provide the marketer with a clear indication of what proportion of the target market find each price point attractive and unattractive. As a result, marketers can set an optimum price range for the new product or service.



Segmentation Research
Every product category has a unique mix of potential customer types.

Segmentation research creates a map of customer attributes that the marketer can use to divide a large market into smaller, identifiable customer categories. The specific attributes measured vary from product to product, but can include age, sex, and education level or company size.

Through this process, segmentation research highlights the territories where the climate is most conducive to the marketer’s product/service. Furthermore, segmentation research helps a marketer decide how to contact those potential customers.

Traditionally the key driver to the segmentation study would be a set of attitude statements that covered the full spectrum of opinions that all customers might bring to the category.

Respondents then decide how much they agree or disagree with each statement. The resulting data is put through a statistical process called cluster analysis in order to create groups of people who respond in similar fashion to these statements.

To bring these groupings to life, further profiling analysis determines their demographic or firmographic characteristics together with purchase and brand selection behaviour.

For example, suppose a marketer must design a marketing plan for an investment product such as a mutual fund. The segmentation research showed that 'empty-nesters' are the customers most likely to have the cash available for investment. Furthermore, with retirement just down the road, the main priority of this customer segment is security. Those two information points will form the base of the marketing plan.


Customer Satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction surveys enable companies to gauge how well they are doing in the marketplace. Happy customers are less likely to switch brands or find new service providers. Such surveys are particularly useful in finding weak spots that can be corrected.

In its simplest form customer satisfaction research involves dividing the customer's overall experience into key ‘moments of truth.’ Respondents then use a rating scale to express how satisfied they were with the product or service’s performance on each of those criteria.

More sophisticated customer satisfaction research techniques will determine the relative importance customers attach to each criterion. When the cost of changes and relative importance information is combined, the research helps identify ‘easy win’ and ‘high cost-low return’ situations.

That way, managers can implement the easy win items to boost satisfaction without spending too much money.

For data collection, mail surveys and telephone interviewing are most common techniques for customer satisfaction research. Face-to-face interviews are sometimes used as well, but they are more costly.

The frequency of customer satisfaction research depends on the industry. Generally, marketers need fresh enough information to influence customers before the next purchase, but the marketers also need it early enough in the cycle to make any changes.



Advertising Research Measures
The purpose of advertising is to be influential. Ads are supposed to increase awareness, change opinions or motivate people to ‘buy now.’

Quantitative research can be used to monitor the communication impact both of your own advertising and that of a competitor.

There are four main measures of the impact of advertising:



Brand Awareness
This measures the 'share of mind' of a brand.

It should follow that during and immediately following a campaign, awareness of the brand should increase because potential customers had greater exposure. Researchers can use quantitative research to compare brand awareness across campaigns by looking at peak levels of awareness during the campaign and at the end.

When advertising is tracked on a more frequent basis it is also possible to measure awareness ‘decay’ -- the time it takes for peak awareness to drop back down to benchmark levels. Such information helps marketers determine the long-term effectiveness of a campaign and schedule follow-up efforts.

Advertising Recall

Recall measures how memorable a marketing campaign was for consumers. Test of recall is often based on advertising content – checking to see if customers remembered what was happening in an ad – and message -- what did the advertising say.

Brand Image

The aim of more strategic advertising should be to increase the degree to which the brand is associated with key image dimensions. Brand image is measured against benchmark levels to determine whether the advertising has changed opinion.

Copy Testing
Copy testing is a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the words in an ad, whether in print, broadcast or on the Internet. Companies conducting copy testing on an ad ask respondents if various text will increase or decrease their chances of purchase, or how the ad influences perceptions of value, price and quality.




Advertising Research Tracking
There are three ways of conducting advertising tracking:



Weekly Tracking
In markets where there is high spending on almost continuous advertising, researchers carry out continuous research to monitor movements in brand awareness and image that could influence sales.

At sophisticated levels, such data is used to build advertising stock models to help marketers plan media purchases and phasing. While more comprehensive than just tracking awareness, this form of advertising tracking is very expensive. Companies that use it have already high levels of marketing and communications activity to justify the cost.

Interval Tracking

For brands or categories not so heavily committed to heavyweight media campaigns, there is the option to carry out single waves of advertising tracking research at pre-determined time intervals.

This approach provides a series of snapshots that illustrate underlying trends over time. Those trends then influence future marketing strategy.

Most intervals tend to be monthly or quarterly. However, the interval between research waves mainly depends on the marketing activity around the brand.

Pre & Post Tracking

When a marketer's interest is focused entirely around the effectiveness of a brand’s campaign, pre & post tracking is the most effective method of advertising tracking.

This technique works by using an almost identical questionnaire in waves of research immediately before the campaign starts, followed by another wave immediately after it finishes. The results from the ‘pre’ wave act as a benchmark for the ‘post’ wave. The differences in brand awareness, brand image and advertising recall can be attributed attributable to the impact of the campaign.

(Advertising awareness questions are asked in the ‘pre’ wave despite the fact that the campaign has not been aired because there is nearly always overclaim of recall)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Manufacturing Information Solutions Forum Index -> Sales & Marketing All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group