Market research76 (also called marketing research) is the action or activity of gathering information about market needs and preferences. This helps companies understand their target market — how the audience feels and behaves. There are variations of market research in our lineup that we’ll explore in more detail.
1. Qualitative research
Qualitative market research is the collection of primary or secondary data that is non-numerical in nature, and therefore hard to measure.
Researchers collect this market research type because it can add more depth to the data.
This kind of market research is used to summarise and infer, rather than pin-points an exact truth held by a target market. For example, qualitative market research can be done to find out a new target market’s reaction to a new product to translate the reaction into a clear explanation for the company.
2. Quantitative research
Quantitative research is the collection of primary or secondary data that is numerical in nature, and so can be collected more easily.
Researchers collect this market research type because it can provide historical benchmarking, based on facts and figures evidence.
There are a number of ways to collect this data — polls, surveys, desk research, web statistics, financial records — which can be exploratory in nature without a lot of depth at this stage.
Quantitative market research can create the foundation of knowledge needed by researchers to investigate hypotheses further through qualitative market research.
Learn more about qualitative and quantitative from top 10 market research company68