What is Quantitative Marketing Research?

By using the tool of quantitative marketing research, companies can improve their products and services by making informed business decisions. Surveys and customer questionnaires are a couple of techniques used in quantitative research. These help in asking customers about their thoughts and opinions in a structured manner so that relevant facts and statistics can be obtained to guide the management in its decision making.

In order to receive authentic statistical results, it’s important to survey customers in large numbers. A company should ensure that this number is a representative sample of a market that are targeting. Hence, quantitative research is the first crucial step a company should take before making a marketing plan, or conducting a SWOT analysis, or even beginning work on product development.

Quantitative research typically comprises of customer surveys and questionnaires that are normally conducted either in face to face discussions, or via email, or over the phone, or even via a company website. The questions included in these should be created cautiously so that these yield purposeful data.

That being said, here are certain things that you should keep in mind while considering to conduct a quantitative marketing research.

1. Asking questions – Structured questionnaires will invite close-ended answers. There will be a set of questions and the respondents will have to select their response from a given number of answers. They will not be allowed to elaborate on your chosen answer. By asking people the same questions, researchers can create a better picture of how customers behave. Also, by regularly conducting surveys, you can keep yourself abreast of the changing attitudes and perspectives of your customers towards your products and services.
2. Surveying customers – Selecting the right way of conducting your survey is important. Face to face discussions work when you need to explain something in detail or show a product to your customers. Surveying customers over the phone is another effective way but at times it can prove difficult to get hold of people. An alternative to this can be to send out surveys through post or via email. In this case, however, you should be open to offering incentives in order to persuade customers to participate in the surveys.
3. Evaluating results – Gathering data constitutes as only one part of the research task. The next steps involve collating it and analyzing it. Complex surveys would require extrapolation of the findings and narrowing the data down to see how different sample groups of customers have responded. On the other hand, simple surveys can act highly effective and reveal important facts that ultimately help you in knowing what the customers think.

Hence, conducting quantitative research is important to delve deeper into the psyche of your customers and find out what they think about your products and services.

Hire a marketing research company in India and outsource your research requirements to experts.

Author Bio:

Daina Martin is a freelance author and writes for a variety of online publications like Wamda.com and Launch.it. She actively writes blogs and articles related to marketing, business and technology. When she’s not working, she likes to cook, dance and travel.