Qualitative Research

With this type of market research a business would gather data of a non-quantifiable nature i.e. it would focus on asking questions that related purely to behavioural, attitudinal, emotional or the particular likes and dislikes of the individual. It is used heavily to drill deeper meaningful information from a series of numerical statistics.

Quite often you will see questions asked within surveys about frequency (quantitative):

• How often do you travel by bus and at what times of day?

But these may be followed by (qualitative):

• Please describe your experience of travelling by bus, and what would encourage you to travel by bus after 10pm?

In essence this type of questioning provides an understanding of the 'character' within the survey, and enables researchers to draw conclusions from the results which can then be used to make predictions.

However, there are certain circumstances where a business may choose to conduct a separate qualitative piece of research beyond any initial survey. In this case it would be appropriate to undertake such research with limited numbers of people, either on a one-to-one basis, or within small groups controlled by a moderator to ensure the sessions did not lose focus.