[Student Institute]
Qualitative Research:
Qualitative research is more of an exploratory research where researchers wish to investigate different factors in the phenomena. Researchers use qualitative research methods in order to understand the meanings or identify the beliefs, ideas and values .
Situations:
- Qualitative research can be used in developing new product idea. As for the new product the researchers struggle to find the right target audience qualitative research can help in testing the new product ideas in different market situations. Qualitative research is applicable in this situation because researchers don’t know about the market and its characteristics.
- Within the field of Social Sciences, qualitative research is used to study emotions and attitudes of the people toward varying situations. For example to check to brand loyalty, a company can use qualitative method because the responses will be subjective based on the experiences of the customers.
- Qualitative research should not be used when the researcher tries to find the results in quantifiable and measurable form. The number of people who have similar patterns can be studied using quantitative research method .
Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is about collecting numerical data to describe a phenomenon using quantitative measurement tools. Quantitative research is used when the aim of the research is to answer a question through numerical evidence .
Situations
Quantitative research is used at a large scale because of its reliability and objectivity. Following are different situations where quantitative research can be used. Originally quantitative research methods were used to study the natural phenomena .
- When the aim of the research is to find the nature of the relationship between two variables or to identify the extent of the relationship between existing variables, quantitative research is used.
- Marketers who wish to identify the percent of the customers, who would use a particular product in a given period of time, are required to use quantitative research to get results in verifiable quantitative terms.
- Quantitative research can also be used to find the success of an advertising campaign by calculating various factors such as purchase decision, buyer behavior or intention to purchase etc.
- Researchers in social science use quantitative research methods to see the impact of one factor on one or more other factors.
- Consumer surveys, market reports and industry analysis are also carried out using quantitative research.
Merits and De-merits:
Both of these research types apply in different situations. Qualitative research in situations discussed above can help to get an insight about customers’ perceptions about the company and brand. However it is often very difficult to justify this objective data in a reasonable form.
On the other hand quantitative research method is considered more objective and valid because it proves the results using various statistical tools. These numerical results are verifiable. However more often quantitative data is difficult to comprehend and analyze.
References
Amora, M., 2010. Survey Gizmo. [Online] Available at: http://www.surveygizmo.com/survey-blog/quantitative-qualitative-research/[Accessed 7 December 2014].
Explorable.com, 2009. Quantiative and Qualitative Research. [Online] Available at: https://explorable.com/quantitative-and-qualitative-research[Accessed 7 December 2014].
Hohmann, U., 2006. Quantitative Methods in Education Research. [Online] Available at: http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/quantitative/quanthme.htm[Accessed 7 December 2014].
Urban Wallace Associates, 2014. Urban Wallace Associates. [Online] Available at: http://www.uwa.com/mk_b_003.asp[Accessed 7 December 2014].
