Commentary

Quality Vs. Quantity: Defining The Value Of Qualitative Research

By any definition, qualitative research seeks to understand attitudes and emotions. What people think of a product, service, concept, or idea. And of course, in marketing--what the target thinks of brand positioning or an advertising campaign.

Frankly, brand marketers use qualitative research because they have to. Their objectives are to shift attitudes, cause feelings and drive perceptions, and they simply have no other way to determine whether their significant investments in the brand and the advertising campaigns will be effective against their objectives.

With quantitative tracking studies, they can measure some dimensions after the fact, after they have invested millions of dollars in branding and media. But before they invest, they are pretty much stuck with unquantifiable qualitative measures to determine the potential of their marketing investments.

In terms of predictability, measurability, and flexibility with testing, they would love to be in our shoes.

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As direct marketers, we are held to a different standard because the objective of our marketing is singular--to cause money to change hands between the prospect/customer and the sales organization.

Furthermore, our objectives are measureable. We operate in an environment in which every strategy we devise and every investment we make can be tested, quantified, forecasted, and measured. We are not forced to depend on attitudinal data, because we have something much more powerful: Behavioral Data.

We know what our prospects and customers have done in the past. When we set up the right tests, we know why they did it. And we can predict what they will do in the future by gathering consumer reaction from multiple tests to prove or disprove our hypotheses.

And we're not talking about 10 or 20 or 50 qualitative research respondents. We're talking about hundreds or thousands or millions of behavioral data points that drive our marketing decisions.

That makes a few focus groups where a self-described prospect says "I like it" or "I don't like it" pale by comparison.

Attitudinal qualitative research is simply never going to return good data regarding "what works" in direct marketing. In fact, it can net results that are just plain wrong. If you have ever observed focus groups, where participants were asked to comment on direct marketing, you have no doubt heard "I ignore all direct marketing" or "I would never respond to that." It is not uncommon to hear the latter said of a DM campaign that turns out is your best-performing campaign.

For direct marketing investments, it seems almost irresponsible to make decisions using qualitative insights when you have the opportunity to hypothesize, test, measure, and learn using behavioral data.

Compared to designing and executing qualitative research, in-market testing is relatively easy and inexpensive. In the online environment, you can execute multi-variable tests that allow for simultaneous testing of hundreds of variables for a quick learning. The results from the online testing can then inform offline direct marketing. A coordinated effort will drive quantifiable returns that you will never see from qualitative research.

Does all of this mean that as direct marketers we think that the research done by brand and advertising agencies isn't valuable, useful and insightful? Of course not. We think it is all of those things, and it helps them accomplish their objectives. But we have something much more powerful that assesses the power of our direct communications, and we should not have a knee-jerk reaction of "let's do a focus group" unless we have thoroughly interrogated our behavioral data first.

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