What to do first? Qualitative or quantitative market research?

Question: Last Aug. 7, 2015, you ended your column by saying that when “both quantitative research and qualitative market research have to be done, the issue is not if one is better than the other. Often the debate is with the question of which should be undertaken first and which should come next. If you raise this question, I will take it up.”

We’re the same group that asked you the question you answered in that column. We learned our market research from you when you used to be our market research consultant at Colgate-Palmolive. The four of us are no longer together but we see each other every month.

So may we now raise that question: “Which should be undertaken first and which should come next? Qualitative or quantitative market research?”

Answer: If you start by drafting first the “market research brief” for your research requirement, you’ll save time and have lesser troubles. As you know from the in-house Applied Marketing Research seminar-workshop I gave then, the correct market research brief begins with a definition of the marketing problem that you want research to help solve.

From that problem definition, you then draw out the specific market research objectives that will define what specific market information you should gather plus what all other research decisions need. Then, you spell out those other market research decisions like research respondent definition, respondent sample size, sampling plan, data collection method, questionnaire formulation, data analysis plan, timetable, and then the research budget.

Most new and even old market research users like your group start with the questionnaire formulation. As you can see, that’s step #7 in the process of drafting the research brief. That means you’re already clear about the preceding six steps especially the first two steps. In most cases you’re not that clear and that’s why you’re uncertain about what to do first, quantitative or qualitative research.

The first two steps are critical to correctly answering the question of which to do first. Step #1 is about the particular marketing problem you want the research to solve. The related step #2, defining the specific research objectives, defines what questions to ask your target consumers. Those questions are more about qualitative or more about quantitative data.

Let’s take a specific case.

You did not mention one in your Aug. 7 need “to provide a budget for a market research program” that your newly hired market research director will prepare. But suppose you’re back at Colgate-Palmolive and you are the Colgate toothpaste brand manager. Lately, you’ve noticed a return to the cavity-prevention positioning by 2 or 3 competing toothpaste brands. In your recent brand review meeting, you were asked to explore via research the idea of returning to the cavity-prevention positioning. So what market research do you do first? Qualitative or quantitative?

Take the route dictated by the market research brief. Think first about the marketing problem that your market research will help solve. You are managing Colgate toothpaste, the market leader brand. It pioneered the cavity prevention positioning in the country and became a formidable market leader.

Now, half a century later, competition has succeeded in effectively positioning in cavity deterrence. Colgate decided to position in several other toothpaste values. And so did competing brands. The positioning cycle is currently now back where it started. That’s with cavity prevention. Question: Will this work?

You know quite well that it won’t work if you position your brand in the same way that Colgate did way back. So you have to recast the positioning question according to the new core marketing concept. That says that you should start where your consumers are and not from where you are as the marketer. So where are the toothpaste consumers now about cavity prevention? Does cavity prevention mean the same thing to all toothpaste consumers?

These are probing questions. In market research, they are open-ended questions.

When probed, each open-ended cavity and cavity prevention question can lead to several and differing dimensions of cavity and cavity prevention.

These questions characterize the qualitative market research like the FGD (Focus Group Discussion) or the IDI (In-Depth Interview). Therefore, if these are the questions you need to answer to help solve your marketing problem, then start the market research process with a qualitative research.

But suppose you already knew those different kinds and dimensions of cavity and cavity prevention.   How can you know them without a qualitative research? Let’s say that you are a daily Facebook, YouTube, and other search engine user. In Facebook, you even read about what Filipino toothpaste users consider as different kinds of tooth cavity and different kinds of cavity prevention both organic and synthetic. So you concluded that there are enough cavity prevention values to test against 2 or 3 brand positioning models. If you want to re-acquaint your groupmates’ familiarity with the 6 brand positioning models, please read those past issues of PDI where I’ve explained each of those models and how to apply them to your brand’s positioning issue.

So, in this case, start with a quantitative positioning research. Any research result or finding whose “why” question you cannot answer because you could not probe, then uncover the answer via a qualitative research on about 4 to 6 respondents who gave the answer needing probing. Is just 4 to 6 respondents enough? Find the answer in the qualitative research chapter of my market research book.

Keep your questions coming. Send them to me at [email protected].