Quantitative market research

In today’s challenging business environment, managers have to continuously find new ways to improve the performance of their company in the market in order remain competitive and to manage their company better. Managers need to implement new tactics at all times to increase their market shares as well as their profits. They manage in doing this by being constantly aware of the market and the dynamic nature of needs wants and demands of their customers. The tool that they use in order to understand these factors is the quantitative market research.

Why Quantitative market research is used?

1. It helps collect quantitative data about the current market environment.
2. The quantitative data can be used as a base for various marketing tools like SWOT, strategy and designing the marketing mix
3. It can result in out of the box innovation and improvements in products and services
4. It helps in understanding customers needs, wants and demands
5. The company can get all the answers it wants to improve its product or services from a specific set of questions
6. It can be used when secondary market research has not proved fruitful and additional, original data is needed to take a decision

As the name suggests, Quantitative market research involves analysis of a quantitative sample of data. Thus, quantitative market research mainly focuses on the customer itself and involves surveys and questionnaires. These questions help in determining the opinion of our target audience in a structured manger. This in turn can provide the managers with hard facts and statistics to guide them in improving their products or services.

One of the main rules for the success of surveys and questionnaires is to target a fairly large amount of the population which comprises a relative sample of your target market. By taking a large sample size of existing or potential customers, the managers can get an in-depth perspective on how the customers are more likely to behave in terms of the respective product or service that it is being offered.

Also, for the most effective use of the surveys and questionnaires, they should be conducted repeatedly. The first time that you conduct a quantitative research, you are going to be provided with information.

Based on this information, you will be capable of coming up with different strategies in order to improve the quality of the products or services. After the implementation of these strategies for a period, another set of surveys or questionnaires should be conducted.

The second quantitative market research will indicate whether the new implemented strategies have been effective or not. And for the result of the second set to be relevant, some of the questions from the first set should be maintained as control in the second one. In this way, managers can have a static base on which to compare the results.

Most of the times, quantitative market research can take variable time frames. The duration of the process is dependent on the size of the sample which is being targeted, whether the sample is a representative of multiple markets or one single market as well as the numbers of metrics that are going to be studied.

Quantitative market research also covers market intelligence related to competitors, new trends in the market, the evolution of supply and demand etc. The process itself can be seen as a rather expensive method to gain the necessary knowledge, but at the same time, it represents an investment in the development of the company. It allows managers to get an accurate snapshot of the market.

Quantitative market research can succeed only if you are asking the right questions in your questionnaire, which in the long term can give the right answers from your target market. Companies employ quantitative market research when they need to prepare marketing plans, strategies for further development or improvement, SWOT analysis, product development, branding and pricing strategies as well as internet marketing strategies.

Before investing in quantitative research most of the companies start by secondary market research, by using data which is already available in trade publications, newspapers or any other such secondary sources. In this way managers can have a perspective of what is already known and what it needs to be found out.