Qualitative research practices are growing parallel to quantitative research applications as the market today has been largely influenced by intangible variables, which could be better researched through in-depth inquiries. Consumer behavior is continuously changing, and social media is playing a critical role in determining marketing decisions. Research in the areas of consumer behavior, grapevine effect of social media, and organizational culture can be well studied through qualitative methodology. Qualitative research has emerged today with an enhanced scope in business management in conjunction with the social media driven digital marketing, which is increasingly getting complex and multidimensional. The strength of qualitative research has been evidenced in understanding context and interrelationships of cognitive human factors with decision sciences in business and management. It continues to represent a broad and prevalent set of challenges extended beyond business research to political, economic, and social domains. Qualitative research faces some challenges like quantitative research techniques in terms of validation and generalization of research findings. Qualitative research therefore has increasing potential to determine the human involvement in business and related disciplines. Managers face major challenges in accepting the findings of qualitative research, as they are heterogeneous in analysis and descriptive in nature. The hidden challenge with the qualitative research is to conduct it in a scientific manner and justify claims for its own significance, effectiveness, and derived meaning. It requires a highly active engagement from the researchers, respondents, and managers to conduct qualitative research scientifically and drive a great deal of effort to encapsulate intellectual, practical, physical, and emotional information analytics.
Although contemporary market research practices are scientifically carried out using effective statistical techniques and interpretation of results to support the development of appropriate strategies, qualitative research has high value as explorative research tool for moderating intangible information. Of these, questionnaire structuring, area sampling, and trend analysis are widely adopted techniques in marketing research. An effective information system makes the marketing research a more analytical, fact finding and prolific decision-making exercise. The scope for marketing research is very wide, and it is carried out by identifying potential markets and determining the marketing mix. There are many typologies argued by the marketing research scholars. Marketing research orientation shifts according to different typologies. Motivational research is very significant, and it studies the psychographics or qualitative perspectives of value and lifestyle of consumers. This is a continuum of new skills and ideas that are accredited to marketing research concepts and practices. Marketing research, thus, provides important help to management by supporting decision-making to set objectives, developing an action plan, executing the plan, and controlling its performance.
Despite wider concerns in academics for effective application of qualitative research in the area of marketing, it has been argued that the full potential of qualitative inquiry is not being effectively used. The reason for low preferences to evaluate consumer cognition and managerial perspectives with qualitative inquiry relates to the tendency to promote quantitative methods, though they might not explain clearly the perceptions and values of consumers and employees. These tendencies explain why researchers should choose qualitative methods to address foundational issues. To address the need for qualitative research, this book discusses qualitative research modeling and new approaches of qualitative data collection, interpretation of results, reporting, and deriving managerial implications. Accordingly, this book identifies the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research methods and argues for the need to reorient business research toward the qualitative inquiry. The discussion model of the book is elaborated in Figure P1.
This book examines the improved qualitative research methods, and emphasizes the application of qualitative research in consumer-centric companies of various categories ranging from multinational companies to niche business organizations. Qualitative research designs discussed in the book refer to decision-making across consumer cultures, analyzing the changing preferences, vogue, and marketplace environment. The book deliberates the role of qualitative research in carrying out customer-oriented strategies, like Shakti experiment (2003) of Hindustan Lever Limited in India, which empowered rural women for community marketing of its brands. One of the core arguments presented in this book is to use qualitative methodologies to study brand-associated anthropomorphic analysis, ethnographic research for mapping social needs, desires, and preferences for multinational brands, and phenomenological research to measure the brand reputation in the community.
Figure P1 Discussion paradigm of the book
Marketing strategies can be derived based on qualitative research in reference to the social values, business ambience, and consumer attitudes to understand the consumer cognitive drivers meticulously, and develop synergy with the business strategies. In the growing market competition in the 21st century, corporate success depends on consumer-oriented business strategies formulated by analyzing the consumer psychology. This book presents new insights on conducting and applying qualitative market research. It helps business researchers in drawing contemporary interpretations to the behavioral complexities of consumers. The book also guides corporate managers in developing marketing strategies in reference to time, territory, thrust, target, and tasks (five Ts) focused on the consumers and market competitiveness. Qualitative research helps companies in understanding the emerging consumer behavioral perspectives, developing marketing and operations dexterity, and managing economies of scale, distribution, pricing, and promotion advantages. New enterprise in the global marketplace needs strong management skills for consumer-driven strategies, competitiveness, and assuring sustainable growth. Hence qualitative research needs to be applied in business as a tool for developing consumer-centric strategy. Qualitative research manages the fundamental challenge in interpreting the complexities associated with consumer behavior, particularly in large diversified marketplace and guides managers.
Epistemologically, positivism in qualitative research has diversified to take a cursory or careful look on phenomena or issues of organizational needs, interest, and growth. These phenomena have driven positivism in qualitative research and led through the diversities of knowledge over the past streamlined and rhythmic course of philosophical thinking. In contemporary perspective, globalization has opened many options to manage consumer-oriented business, which prompted companies to understand consumer behavior both intrinsically and extrinsically. Qualitative research has always been found to be the right methodology to understand consumer behavior. Thus, most companies need to understand consumers by associating them in the global marketplace in order to develop collateral work dynamics. The book blends consumer behavior perspectives with qualitative research designs to converge effective business performance and societal values. The book argues that companies need to consider a broader perspective of marketing research to support marketing decisions derived by understanding consumer behavior. This book bridges the methodological perspectives in marketing research with applied marketing decisions putting the consumer first in the business management process.
The concept of qualitative research culture has received widespread attention as a strategic decision tool in marketing management. It is necessary to understand the thematic ambience of research in reference to the rationale of the study, its fitness to the study area, available potential for acquiring information, and anticipated outcome of the research for carrying forward a quality research study. Setting qualitative research scenario is a challenging task for researchers in which research questions, propositions, and constructs of the study need to be developed upon reviewing previous studies. Then, the field research operations of the study could be managed by defining samples for qualitative study, locating the data collection region, developing profile of respondents, and scheduling meetings with the identified samples for acquiring information.
Market research also involves direct observation of customers who are buying and using the products. This method allows companies to know the consumer behavior toward the existing products and develop competitive marketing strategy accordingly. The behavior of consumers toward the existing products gives important clues to customer preferences, especially in mature markets. In markets, where access is free, and the customers have well-developed preferences, the sales records of the various products constitute a shortcut to understanding customer preferences. This method is very useful during the prelaunch stage for the foreign firms to develop an appropriate launch of their products in the segmented markets. The method of observation also faces some practical difficulties if certain assumptions are made to interpret the observed issues. A firm may assume that the current products reflect customer preferences, and such assumption is likely to hold only in mature markets with no entry barriers. However, in markets, where customers have been deprived of products because of trade barriers, consumers might display a preference for something different. Such latent preferences cannot be uncovered through observation. On the other hand, the causal marketing research is sometimes combined with experimental methods of research and causal models. This book serves as a managerial guide to work with the new perspectives of qualitative marketing research.
Understanding the need for qualitative research, business houses today realize that it is essential to support a set of key decisions that collectively determine how companies can develop marketing decisions, perform in the competitive marketplace, and mitigate consumer-led risks. This book argues new dimensions associated with the implications of qualitative research to measure the changing perspectives of consumer preferences, knowledge, values, and organizational decision-making abilities, and addresses several pertinent questions that include the following:
- Why is qualitative research necessary for marketing decision-making?
- How to interpret behavioral and intangible dimensions related to market environment?
- Why should companies make business decisions based on the consumer experience?
- How to make right cognitive analytics for making right decisions in consumer-centric business?
- Why do key decision makers need to read the minds of the stakeholders, and struggle to create value?
This book connects managers to behavioral domain of all the role players in the marketplace and offers a strategic direction in marketing decisions. A faster, cost-effective, and most commonly used method to learn about customers in a market is to do a trade survey by interviewing people in the distribution channels and trade associations. In trade surveys, types of buyers, types of buying processes used, and the sources of buyer information are clearly defined. Professional market research firms can also provide a solution to the multinational companies seeking trade surveys on who the respondents should be, when to administer the questionnaires, what should be the nature of questions, and how many questions should be used in the trade surveys. These market research firms provide a good starting point for further data gathering and analysis. This book also offers qualitative research design for analyzing consumer psychodynamics through peer-to-peer communication, and suggests the decision path. Effective business management begins with selecting and prioritizing the stakeholder needs to support the company’s mission and strategy. This book builds knowledge and skills on the theoretical and applied aspects of the qualitative research methods to guide consumer-led business strategies.
This book guides qualitative researchers to learn to see, hear, perceive, and understand in new ways. Students need to learn to move themselves out of the center of their own attention, and clearly observe social settings and the individuals within them. The book guides researchers to learn qualitative research designs to analyze consumer experience. They need to develop a finely tuned ethical sense and negotiate ethical dilemmas encountered in the research process. This book systematically directs researchers to analyze and perceive patterns in the data they collect, so that they can conduct thematic analysis. This book bridges the myths and realities on qualitative research and suggests cognitive analytics-based marketing strategies for building stakeholders value. In the dynamic and competitive marketplace today, a manager’s key challenge is coping with frequently changing preferences of consumers and market demand. This book methodologically presents the process of conducting qualitative research with focus on contemporary resources such as digital qualitative analytics, text-data mining, image and verbal data analytics, user-generated content analysis, and opinion breakdown analysis in an organization or a community.
This book provides the knowledge and skills on qualitative research that managers can use to develop consumer-driven marketing strategies. The details on qualitative research theories, study design, information analysis, interpretation of verbal information, and reporting have been explained systematically. Most growing companies have the vision to consistently create or introduce new business initiatives with customers and suppliers, and incorporate consumer opinion database into their enterprise resources planning systems. This book offers knowledge and skills also about developing market-centric and competition-oriented models using qualitative research models. It illustrates the power of qualitative research in managing sensitive market interventions through marketing-mix strategies, innovation, and technology application for expanding and establishing business in competitive markets. The broad foundation of this book is laid on conceptual discussions on qualitative research, and applied arguments toward decision-making in developing marketing strategies. This book categorically reviews qualitative research theories, concepts, and previous researches, and discusses the applied tools and techniques for business decisions. This book significantly contributes to the existing literature and serves as a learning post and a think-tank for students, researchers, and business managers.
Rajagopal
November 09, 2018
Mexico City