• by Hart Weichselbaum , June 4, 2009

Do you find yourself having to defend the decision to conduct qualitative research? Looking back over the almost 25 years I've been in marketing, I'm struck by how often the insights that drove true competitive advantage came from qualitative, rather than quantitative, research.

Some marketers believe that qualitative methods are somehow inferior to more "rigorous" quantitative methods. But in fact, for a wide range of problems, qualitative methods are vastly superior to quantitative methods for consistently delivering deeper and more actionable insights into brands and behavior.

Dollar for dollar, qualitative research is more likely to produce rich insights that lead to breakthrough marketing and creative ideas.

Why is that? Here are five features that make qualitative superior to quantitative approaches:

• Qualitative research lets decision makers intimately participate in the research process. Watching consumers talk about their brand or their ads in real time is an important a stimulus to thinking and decision making. Marketers come to understand the emotional response to a creative idea and can use the opportunity to make collective decisions in real time.

• The dynamic nature of group interviews engages respondents more actively than is ever possible in a more structured survey. Even open-ended survey questions often generate merely perfunctory responses. But qualitative allows probing that dismantles rationalizations and reaches beyond initial responses.

• The synergy created in group interviews allows respondents to build on each other's thoughts and ideas. In good qualitative research, respondents get caught up in the conversation and want to work harder at solving the problem before them. A good interviewer can create an atmosphere in which self-revelation is the norm, so respondents reveal more of themselves.

• Qualitative research uses projective techniques that overcome the self-consciousness that inhibits spontaneous reactions and comments. These open-ended exercises use metaphor and storytelling to get at consumers' deeper reality.

• Only qualitative research offers the opportunity to observe and interpret non-verbal responses. In group interviews, this adds another dimension to consumer understanding. In ethnography, systematic observation of behavior in homes, offices, cars, and stores, is the whole point of the exercise. Qualitative research reveals how product and services are really used, how customer interact with a product or a retail environment, and other aspects of behavior that quantitative research can't access.

The reality of consumer research is that people have feelings, attitudes, and values they may be reluctant to reveal, may have difficulty communicating, or may not even be consciously aware of. Qualitative consistently yields greater dividends because it is open-ended and dynamic, harnesses consumer creativity, and penetrates rationalized or superficial responses.

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