10.3 Types of Research Design

By understanding different research designs, a researcher can solve a client’s problems more quickly and efficiently without jumping through more hoops than necessary. Research designs fall into one of the following three categories:

1. Exploratory research design
2. Descriptive research design
3. Causal research design (experiments)

Exploratory Research Design

An exploratory research design is useful when you are initially investigating a problem but you haven’t defined it well enough to do an in-depth study of it. Perhaps via your regular market intelligence, you have spotted what appears to be a new opportunity in the marketplace. You would then do exploratory research to investigate it further and “get your feet wet,” as the saying goes. Exploratory research is less structured than other types of research, and secondary data is often utilized.

One form of exploratory research is qualitative research. Qualitative research is any form of research that includes gathering data that is not quantitative, and often involves exploring questions such as “why”, as “much”, as “what,” or “how much”. Different forms, such as depth interviews and focus group interviews, are common in marketing research.

The depth interview—engaging in detailed, one-on-one, question-and-answer sessions with potential buyers—is an exploratory research technique. However, unlike surveys, the people being interviewed aren’t asked a series of standard questions. Instead, the interviewer is armed with some general topics and asks open-ended questions, meaning that they allow the interviewee to elaborate. “How did you feel about the product after you purchased it?” is an example of a question that might be asked. A depth interview also allows a researcher to ask logical follow-up questions such as “Can you tell me what you mean when you say you felt uncomfortable using the service?” or “Can you give me some examples?” to help dig further and shed additional light on the research problem. Depth interviews can be conducted in person or over the phone. The interviewer either takes notes or records the interview.

Focus groups and case studies are often utilized for exploratory research as well. A focus group is a group of potential buyers who are brought together to discuss a marketing research topic with one another. A moderator is used to focus the discussion, the sessions are recorded, and the main points of consensus are later summarized by the market researcher. Textbook publishers often gather groups of professors at educational conferences to participate in focus groups. However, focus groups can also be conducted on the telephone, in online chat rooms, or both, using meeting software like WebEx.

A case study examines how another company solved the problem being researched. Sometimes, multiple cases or companies are used in a study. Case studies, nonetheless, have a mixed reputation. Some researchers believe it’s hard to generalize or apply the results of a case study to other companies. Nonetheless, collecting information about companies that have encountered the same problems your firm is facing can give you a certain amount of insight into what direction you should take. In fact, one way to begin a research project is to study a successful product or service carefully.

Two other types of qualitative data used for exploratory research are ethnographies and projective techniques. In an ethnography, researchers interview, observe, and often videotape people while they work, live, shop, and play. The Walt Disney Company has recently begun using ethnographers to uncover the likes and dislikes of boys aged six to fourteen, a financially attractive market segment for Disney but one in which the company has been losing market share. The ethnographers visit the homes of boys, observe the things they have in their rooms to get a sense of their hobbies and accompany them and their mothers when they shop to see where they go, what the boys are interested in, and what they ultimately buy. (The children get seventy-five dollars out of the deal, incidentally.) (Barnes, 2009)

Projective techniques are used to reveal information research respondents might not reveal by being asked directly. The person might be asked to finish a story that presents a certain scenario, and word associations are also used to discern people’s underlying attitudes toward goods and services. Using a word-association technique, a market researcher asks a person to say or write the first word that comes to his or her mind in response to another word. If the initial word is “fast food,” what word does the person associate it with or respond with? Is it “McDonald’s”? If many people reply that way, and you’re conducting research for Burger King, that could indicate Burger King has a problem. However, if the research is being conducted for Wendy’s, which recently began running an advertising campaign to show that Wendy’s offerings are “better than fast food,” it could indicate that the campaign is working.

In some cases, your research might end with exploratory research. Perhaps you have discovered your organization lacks the resources needed to produce the product. In other cases, you might decide you need more in-depth, quantitative research, such as descriptive research or causal research, which are discussed next. Most marketing research professionals advise using both types of research if it’s feasible. On the one hand, the qualitative-type research used in exploratory research is often considered too “lightweight.” Remember earlier in the chapter when we discussed telephone answering machines and the hit TV sitcom Seinfeld? Focus groups initially rejected both product ideas. On the other hand, relying solely on quantitative information often results in market research that lacks ideas.

Descriptive Research

Anything that can be observed and counted falls into the category of descriptive research design. A study using a descriptive research design involves gathering hard numbers, often via surveys, to describe or measure a phenomenon so as to answer the questions of who, what, where, when, and how. “On a scale of 1–5, how satisfied were you with your service?” is a question that illustrates the information a descriptive research design is supposed to capture.

Physiological measurements also fall into the category of descriptive design. Physiological measurements measure people’s involuntary physical responses to marketing stimuli, such as advertisements.

A strictly descriptive research design instrument—a survey, for example—can tell you how satisfied your customers are. It can’t, however, tell you why. Nor can an eye-tracking study tell you why people’s eyes tend to dwell on certain types of banner ads—only that they do. To answer “why” questions, an exploratory or causal research design is needed (Wagner, 2007).

Casual Research

Causal research design examines cause-and-effect relationships. Using a causal research design allows researchers to answer “what if” types of questions. In other words, if a firm changes X (say, a product’s price, design, placement, or advertising), what will happen to Y (say, sales or customer loyalty)? To conduct causal research, the researcher designs an experiment that “controls,” or holds constant, all of a product’s marketing elements except one (or, using advanced techniques of research, a few elements can be studied at the same time). The one variable is changed, and the effect is then measured. Sometimes, the experiments are conducted in a laboratory using a simulated setting designed to replicate the conditions buyers would experience. The experiments may also be conducted in a virtual computer setting. You might think setting up an experiment in a virtual world, such as the online game Second Life, would be a viable way to conduct controlled marketing research.

An experiment conducted in a natural setting, such as a store, is referred to as a field experiment. Companies sometimes do field experiments either because it is more convenient or because they want to see if buyers will behave the same way in the “real world,” as in a laboratory or on a computer. The place where the experiment is conducted or the demographic group of people the experiment is administered to is considered the test market. Before a large company rolls out a product to the entire marketplace, it will often place the offering in a test market to see how well it will be received. For example, to compete with MillerCoors’ sixty-four-calorie beer MGD 64, Anheuser-Busch recently began testing its Select 55 beer in certain cities around the country (McWilliams, 2009).

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

Qualitative research explores ideas, perceptions, and behaviours in-depth with relatively few research participants. It aims to answer questions with more complex, open-ended responses such as, “What does this mean to you…?” or “Why do you believe…?” or “How do you like to…?” Qualitative research doesn’t yield easily tabulated data and translated into tidy percentages. Instead, provides information that can help marketers understand the big picture of how customers perceive or experience something.

Qualitative research can also give an organization directional information. That is, it can help an organization tell whether it’s on the right track with its approach or solution to a problem. Qualitative research techniques tend to be loosely structured and less formal since the topical exploration may head in very different directions depending on the person or group participating. These techniques can provide great insights to marketers, but because they involve relatively few participants, the results can be very subjective and idiosyncratic. The risk is in assuming what you learn from a handful of individuals pertains to your target audience as a whole.

In contrast, quantitative research collects information that can easily be counted, tabulated, and statistically analyzed. Quantitative research is necessary when organizations need to understand (or quantify) the exact percentage of people who believe or act in a certain way. Quantitative methods allow researchers to test and validate a hypothesis or what they believe is the best course of action. These methods collect enough data to provide statistically valid results, and managers use them to inform the choices they make.

Marketing research projects often start with qualitative research activities to get a more complete picture of an issue or problem and how customers/consumers think about it. With a better understanding of the issue, they follow up with quantitative research that provides more specificity about what proportion of the population shares common preferences, beliefs, or behaviours. This information provides insights to help marketers refine their segmentation and targeting strategy, the marketing mix, or other considerations related to marketing effectiveness.

“10.2 Steps in the Marketing Research Process” from Principles of Marketing by [Author removed at the request of original publisher] is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.—Modifications: Used Types of Research, Descriptive Research, Casual Research sections; removed focus group steps, cartoon completion technique, stone wheel example, Second Life example, flag example.

Quantitative vs Qualitative Research: “Reading: Primary Marketing Research Methods” from Introduction to Marketing I (MKTG 1010) by NSCC & Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.