Qualitative Market Research Techniques for Consumer Insights

Qualitative Market Research Techniques

1. Imaging Studies

Imaging is a qualitative market research method that investigates the internal, emotional, and profound aspects of consumers' perceptions of products, brands, and advertising. To perform an imaging study, follow these steps:

• Identify competitive products under a brand or company.
• Create a list of attributes for qualitative analysis.
• Determine the level of product knowledge, brand, or company awareness.
• Determine the importance of attributes and how they influence purchase decisions.
• Obtain comparative results of the competition for brand, products, and company.
• Gather information about your company's brand and purchase intent.
• Collect demographic information descriptive of the study segment.
• Analyze the collected information.
• Draw conclusions and prepare the report.

2. Motivational Studies

Motivational studies are exploratory qualitative studies that aim to discover why consumers behave in a particular way towards a product, brand, or the company itself. These studies also uncover unconscious motives that influence the behavior of consumers or users (e.g., buying potatoes for €0.3 instead of €0.8). This type of study is most effectively developed through small group or personal interviews, which attempt to identify the sociological and cultural factors that influence consumers to purchase certain products or choose a particular brand or company.

Motivational research seeks to clarify every concept related to influencing consumer behavior. The main theoretical methods used in motivational research are:

a. Observation

This involves the perception of facts without the researcher being directly involved in the process. Observation is useful because:

• People may not be able to provide certain information.
• People may not provide information because they are not fully aware of it.
• The information provided could be exploited by an advertising agency.
• Information about spending habits can be obtained.

Techniques for collecting information through observation include videos, pictures, and people counters.

b. Focus Groups

A focus group consists of a meeting of a group of people who discuss a previously defined topic (e.g., packaging tests, product characteristics). The goal is to find a solution to a problem or gather information about a particular topic. Focus groups usually consist of 8-10 people in the presence of a moderator or analyst. The subject can be a product, brand, packaging, etc. Participants should discuss their interests, attitudes, lifestyles, feelings, and experiences related to the subject.

Focus groups are very important for marketing because they allow for:

• Concept development and testing
• Product testing
• Attribute evaluation
• Competitiveness assessment
• Package and price evaluation
• Generation of new product ideas

c. Projective Techniques

Projective techniques seek information through spontaneous responses from the interviewee to certain stimuli. These techniques are designed to uncover patterns or behaviors related to unconscious consumer actions. In other words, the respondent has to interpret a role in response to a figure, symbol, story, or incomplete sentence. Projective techniques are indirect methods related to psychology, and their main objective is to find the "genuine reasons" or hidden reasons that people have in response to certain stimuli. Word association and brainstorming are frequently used projective techniques.

d. Mystery Shopping

Mystery shopping consists of simulating a purchase to assess the attitude of sellers towards their customers. It is a planned visit to different points of sale by a research team that interacts with regular customers who want to buy a product or service. Information obtained through mystery shopping includes:

• Quality of customer service
• Problems that can be observed
• Training of the people who serve customers
• Attitudes of sellers