Introduction to Market Research

There are varying levels of understanding in regards to what constitutes market research, and what its applications are.

Overview

A brief introductory guide is included below, covering the major terms and areas that we have found to be applicable. Please click on the appropriate link/s to read the relevant answer/s.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research allows you to explore perceptions, attitudes and motivations and to understand how they are formed. It provides depth of information, which can be used in its own right, or to determine what attributes will subsequently be measured in quantitative studies. Verbatim quotes are used in reports to illustrate points and this brings the subject to life for the reader. However, it relies heavily on the skills of the moderator, is inevitably subjective and samples are small.

Techniques include group discussions/workshop sessions, paired interviews, individual in-depth interviews and mystery shopping (where the researcher plays the role of a potential student, etc in order to replicate the overall experience).

Applications include defining and exploring brands, understanding decision-making, course concept testing, exploring reactions to advertising and design concepts, defining elements of student satisfaction, and exploring issues surrounding mergers.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research is descriptive and provides hard data on the numbers of people exhibiting certain behaviours, attitudes, etc. It provides information in breadth and allows you to sample large numbers of the population. It is, however, structured and does not yield the reasons behind behaviour or why people hold certain attitudes.

Techniques commonly used include postal, telephone surveys, on-line or web-based surveys (very cost-effective for reaching audiences where e-mail penetration is high, such as students and university/college staff) and mystery shopping (in this case to test quantifiable aspects of the service).

Applications include student satisfaction surveys, applicant information gathering and decision-making, testing course names, benchmarking awareness against competitors, testing satisfaction with non-academic services such as accommodation, catering, etc.

Secondary or desk research

The collating and analysis of secondary data is called desk research. Secondary data is data that already exists and may be found within your own organisation or is published by another party and readily available. A vast amount of data is available for the marketer in terms of trends in applications and acceptances, applicant profiles, student profiles, subject of study trends, etc – much of this information is collected for external agencies and may be and scattered around the organisation.

Qualitative and quantitative research is complimentary. For example, qualitative can be used to define and explore issues which are important to customers, and quantitative research can subsequently provide the hard data on the relative importance of them. Alternatively, qualitative research can usefully be used as a follow-up to quantitative to provide a greater understanding of behaviour.

Acknowledgement and thanks for these article to Deepak Pareek, Head – Indian Research Advisory Group. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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