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  Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies To Online Market Research
 
Companies spend millions of dollars a year conducting market research to better understand their customers. As time goes on, more and more of these companies are turning to online solutions to gather faster and more accurate information. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a small business, utilizing online market research is steadily evolving into the most effective way to ensure a successful advertising or marketing campaign.
 
The first generation of online market research solutions have taken a good step forward in producing time and cost savings in conducting research. They are typified as online versions of traditional survey and focus group methods that had been in use for many years. This was a very necessary first step in the transition to a web based market research solution but they did little in terms of offering better insights, techniques or facilitating a faster decision making process. Even so, these methods realized significant advantages in terms of speed of execution over traditional methods.
 
Second generation online research solutions are now beginning to emerge that take advantage of the natural capabilities of the Internet to produce new ways of communicating that are more engaging for respondents and more insightful for marketers. The most successful of these second generation solutions are those that are able to combine the two major components of market research - qualitative and quantitative methods into a single solution. In order to understand the benefits of combining the two techniques, we need to understand their respective approaches.
 
Quantitative research focuses on the testing of ideas, concepts, ads, etc. and the project-ability of the results. Quantitative research is a key component for market researchers to understand where the key preferences and trends of their target customer's lie in reference to the proposed marketing initiative they may be considering. This method scales very well to large geographically dispersed samples that are representative of the population as a whole. Online quantitative surveys have been a highly effective extension of traditional surveys. With the aid of the Internet you can now get your survey in the hands of your target sample and get the results very quickly.
 
Qualitative research is focused on the rich verbatim responses of consumers. It concentrates less on quantifiable measures and looks at the reasons "why" someone may approve or disapprove or like or dislike a marketing initiative. Focus groups have been a highly effective method of qualitative research because they provide rich insight in the customers' own words. For advertisers and marketers, qualitative research has been a key method to gain a fuller understanding of consumers.
 
Taken separately, both quantitative and qualitative methods are vital in any marketing or advertising initiative. Together, they produce the "full-circle" view of your potential customers. For years, the ability to combine qualitative and quantitative methods required market researchers to conduct numerous focus groups as well as extensive surveys that would take months to complete.
 
Additionally, both quantitative and qualitative research pose their own independent limitations. While quantitative solutions are very good at providing large scale statistically valid information they do little to reveal the reasons behind the information, which is often critical to diagnosing failures and reinforcing successes.
 
Qualitative research methods face similar problems. While they can generate ideas rich in the consumers' own language, they are often ineffective at dealing with issues like dominant personality bias, small sample size or isolated geographic coverage.
 
The key to the success of second generation online market research solutions is that they effectively combine the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative research in a seamless real time Web session to produce both the 'What' and 'Why' of consumer insights. Done correctly, this methodology goes beyond the speed and cost benefits of first generation solutions to drive better insights and faster decision making.
 
The key to a second generation online solution delivering superior results over traditional methods or even first generation online solution lies in the way it leverages the unique strengths of the Internet. It is important to leverage the Internet to:

• Eliminate group bias and dominant personalities
• Get unrushed and thoughtful answers from each respondent
• Provides the reliability of a large national sample
• Gain instant responses from your entire sample
• Be able to test, change and retest on the fly