How Quantitative Market Research Can Drive Business Growth

Many brand initiatives, from product line expansion to testing new marketing channels, begin with quantitative market research. It’s also a vital tool for enabling the continual improvement of existing business strategies and tactics.

With its focus on numbers, quantitative market research is useful for determining the viability of an initiative. It can answer questions like: What’s the size of the potential audience for the product? What percentage of customers have expressed interest in this feature? How many competitors are in this sector? If this objective, numbers-based research reveals that the potential audience is too small or the sector is already crowded, the brand can stop pursuing the initiative then and there, without any further investment. And quantitative market research typically requires less cost and labor than other types of market research, making it a practical first step when considering any new product or initiative.

Quantitative market research provides the necessary data to answer questions of who, what and how many. Its findings can also facilitate the measurement of less-tangible aspects of marketing. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a case in point. By having customers rate their likelihood to recommend a product on a scale of 1-10, the NPS quantifies customer satisfaction and loyalty, enabling organizations to view “soft data” elements through a “hard data” lens.

Reasons to Conduct Quantitative Market Research

Because quantitative market research collects objective data that can be presented numerically, organizations use it for statistical analysis to guide decision making. A/B testing, a very common kind of quantitative brand research, measures consumer response to variations in ads, prices, designs or other elements – so that businesses can better understand what works and what doesn’t. Quantitative research can measure consumer actions over time to identify market trends. This helps brands anticipate demand and tailor product development to match consumer behaviors and preferences. Quantitative market research can also help organizations measure their conversion rates, engagement and campaign reach, so they can determine their marketing effectiveness and ROI.

None of this research would clarify the reasons for consumers’ actions. When brands want to answer “why” questions, they need to conduct qualitative research. But quantitative market research is the gold standard for identifying “who” and “what” with minimal risk of bias.

How to Conduct Quantitative Market Research

• Define the goal. This has to be the first step in the quantitative market research process. Without a clear, well-defined goal, there’s no way to accurately determine how to achieve it or what methodologies you should use. For example, if your goal was to find out if there’s a market for a new candy bar, you’d use different methodologies than if you were gauging the effectiveness of CTV advertising.

• Determine the research audience. To assess satisfaction among current customers, a brand obviously needs a sample of customers – one that matches its overall customer base in terms of demographics and other characteristics. If men make up 70% of the organization’s audience, it’s important that the research audience also significantly skews male. If that same brand wants to see if marketing more to women would be profitable, it would want an audience sample of women who statistically represent the relevant geographic areas, age groups and other characteristics. It’s also important to ensure the sample is large enough to be statistically reliable.

• Decide on the methodology. Surveys, questionnaires and polls are the most common primary research methodologies in quantitative market research. Experimentation, such as conducting A/B tests of differing website designs to measure consumer response, is also common. Some types of observational tests fall within quantitative market research as well – for instance, tracking foot traffic and time spent in a store. Compiling secondary data from government sources, previously published studies and the like can also add value and context, particularly when assessing market size and characteristics, or when determining relevant competitors.

• Formulate the questions. The first questions you ask should be directed at the researchers. What are they hoping to discover? What do they want to measure? Once these are answered, craft audience questions with care. How they’re structured is critical; vague of leading questions will likely result in inaccurate or biased data, and open-ended questions typically generate subjective rather than objective data. That doesn’t mean questions must be a binary yes or no. They can be multiple-choice or ask for ratings on a scale of 1-10 or “very likely” to “very unlikely.”

• Gather the data. Will you be emailing questionnaires to your audience sample? Conducting phone surveys? A/B testing a randomized percentage of visitors to your website? Choose your channels and gather your results.

• Clean and analyze the data. After this, you can draw conclusions and determine what, if any, additional actions to take.

Unlock Quantitative Market Research Impact with Material

At Material, we know that quantitative market research is critical to success. And because market research is one of our foundational offerings, our experts work with businesses worldwide to develop and conduct quantitative market research and analysis. We also assist organizations in acting on research findings to improve sales, user experiences and customer loyalty – as well as drive product development and market expansion.

Our years of experience have proven that quantitative market analysis is often more effective when conducted in conjunction with other methodologies and data, such as qualitative insights, behavioral science and cultural context. Contact us today to learn what approaches and research methods best support your business goals.

FAQs

How does quantitative market research differ from qualitative market research?

Quantitative market research seeks to answer “what” and “who” questions. What is the size of your market? Who is buying your lower-priced products and who is buying your top-of-the-line items? What percentage of customers would recommend your products? Who is responding to your new campaign vs your previous one?

Qualitative research tries to find the reasons for those results – why customers would or wouldn’t recommend a product, for instance. While questionnaires, surveys, polls and A/B tests are common quantitative market research methodologies, qualitative research relies on focus groups, one-on-one interviews and other methods likely to generate more subjective, and less easily analyzed, results.

How can quantitative market research assist in benchmarking a brand’s performance against competitors?

Quantitative market research reveals facts and figures that are easily measured, analyzed and presented in numbers. The resulting data may encompass NPS and annual sales, ranges of price points and brand awareness, and other standardized metrics that allow for easy comparisons and, over time, benchmarking.

What types of data are commonly collected in quantitative market research?

If data can be measured and communicated numerically, it can be collected via quantitative market research. Among the most commonly gathered data are demographic and firmographic information about customers and prospects, statistics about market sizes and share of market, consumer behavior information such as frequency of purchases and average order size, customer satisfaction and loyalty scores, website traffic and email clickthrough rates.