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by Katie Harris

on Jan 27

The ROI for qualitative research: nothing to sneeze at

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The value of market research - whether we’re talking about qualitative or quantitative research - is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify.

That’s because market research rarely, if ever, works alone in shaping strategy. It’s just one of many tools in a marketer’s tool bag.

In addition to this, market research is only ever:

  • As good as the research brief and the questions it asks
  • As good as the analysis and the debrief
  • As useful as its end users make it; it’s what they do with the output that can determine success or otherwise

Given the variables listed above (so called because they vary), it’s pretty much impossible to put a figure on its value per se.

Relevance

Let’s look at it in another way.

If a particular product or service or piece of communication is relevant, it’s far more likely to end up in the shopping basket (so to speak). So the absolutely fundamental, most basic question for marketers should be:

“How can we make our products/services/communications more relevant to our customers/potential customers?”

And there are two ways marketers can go about answering this question:

  1. They can ask their customers/potential customers
  2. They can guess

Ask them

If marketers ask their customers/potential customers (and listen to them), they’ll be in an excellent position to create relevant products, services, communications etc.  

The value of qualitative research here is obvious; it’s a very good way of asking, and listening, to your customers/potential customers to find out what’s relevant to them.

By being relevant, you’re optimising the chance of collecting the sale. Therein lies the return on your investment.

Guess work

If marketers decide not to ask and, in effect, guess what the market wants, they run the risk of getting it wrong.

Consider the time, resources and money wasted when bad guesswork delivers a dud. Go one step further; cost it out. And add the opportunity cost.

When you have that figure, my work here is done. Because that figure gives you a very good estimate of the ROI for good qualitative research.

Nothing to sneeze at, is it?

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3 Comments

katetribe
  • Wrote on 27 Jan, at 02:05PM
Another great post Katie.

It is amazing the number of times I have been chatting to someone and they say: 'We don't do market research because we know our customers'.

They then go on to say what they believe they know about their customers and I often think, well I am a customer of yours and don't think that, or the people I have spoken to don't think that.

You never know until you ask them.

Kate Tribe
@katetribe
Tribe Research
Editor | Kate
  • Wrote on 27 Jan, at 02:17PM
Thanks Kate - thats a great point. I dont believe anyone truly knows their customer. They might know who their customer was two years ago and who they want them to be but in reality, often the customer couldn't be further from what was initially thought.

Thanks Katie too - I left you a little gushing message in your first post - http://www.marketingmag.com.au/blogs/view/tell-me-what-you-know-about-qualitative-research-in-bite-size-822.
Duncs
  • Wrote on 29 Jan, at 11:48AM
I totally agree with you kate.

From my own 20 years of experiece in qualitative research I often found the true worth of the work I did for my clients would become apparent months or even years later. In several cases I was able to identify new opportunities for my clients where they though none had existed.

Conversly on several occasions I prevented my clients from losing money by warning them of a problem they had with their customers which had the potential to hurt their business, but which was under their radar. This is because customers will often say things to a market researcher that they would not say to their supplier for fear of hurting the business relationship. But then one day those same customers suddenly go elswhere with out warning.

Duncan Buchanan
Principal
Adept Research

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