With all the hype around Big Data, one could be forgiven for thinking that qualitative research has been retired and put out to pasture. Across the globe, insights teams appear obsessed with numbers and are packed full of analytics people, crunching data in an attempt to deduce the answer to everything. Qualitative research seems to be out of the spotlight. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of shopper marketing, qualitative shopper research techniques are squeezed out by the more prevalent quantitative techniques such as exit interviews and observations, as well as reams of loyalty card, panel and scan sales data. In amongst all of this, what room is left for qualitative shopper research?
Why is there so little qualitative shopper data?
Most marketers I know realize that both qualitative and quantitative techniques play a role, but in the area of shopper research there seems to be a strong tendency towards the use of quantitative techniques, and quantified data. Before we go on to discuss the value that qualitative techniques can bring, let’s first attempt to understand some of the reasons why qualitative techniques might be ignored:
Proximity to the events: The most prevalent qualitative research technique must surely be the focus group: easy to run, relatively cheap, and really quick to get an output. Yet focus groups are often not used for shopper work because of the “proximity rule”. Put simply, the further away (in distance or time) from the shopping occasion, the less accurately a shopper is able to tell you about what they did. Focus groups, traditionally run in central locations, often fall foul of this. Whilst it is possible to run groups in or close to stores, often this is harder, and more expensive to do thus negating many of the benefits of running groups in the first place.
Cost: Many qualitative shopper research techniques overcome this brilliantly. Accompanied shops, where researchers literally go shopping with the respondent get about as close to the action as you can get: but an accompanied shop can take several hours to run, and that’s without writing it up and interpreting it. Eye tracking glasses, again get right up close to the shopping action, but again can be expensive (depending on where in the world you are). In many parts of the world the cost can be prohibitive, or the technology might not even be available.
A combined lack of imagination: Sometimes it seems to be as simple as the client, and the agency, opting for a generic approach. We often see very broad research briefs; which are then followed by equally broad and generic proposals: focus groups or in-depth interviews, accompanied shops, in-store observation, and exit interviews (or, in other words, everything the agency is capable of doing!). The proposal far exceeds the budget, and so something needs to be cut. The observations and the exit interview are seen as essential, so it is the qualitative phases which get trimmed, sometimes to nothing.
The (perceived) need for numbers: In the consumer world, once a great insight is clear, then the marketing team has the power to enact that insight and implement their activity. In the shopper world, retailers need to be persuaded, and persuading retailers often requires hard data. Retailers like to see commercial arguments, based on data. Increasingly, retailers like to see these arguments based on their own data (loyalty card, scan data, etc.). Often the perception is that ‘a few focus groups’ is no longer enough evidence to support a retailer to make significant changes in their stores.
Can we live without qualitative shopper research?
So qualitative shopper research is on the back foot somewhat, but is that such a problem? Isn’t qualitative shopper research all a little bit (to quote my good friend Lauren Cercone) “squishy”? Surely with a big bag of data we have everything we need to really understand shoppers, work out what we need to do, and persuade retailers to support it?
Unfortunately not.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of quantitative data and, at various times, I’ve argued to drop qualitative elements from studies to protect the acquisition of valuable quantitative data. I know that convincing anyone, especially retailers, is a lot easier with a large stack of data to back up my arguments. But unfortunately these techniques don’t always give everything we need. Quantitative techniques excel in telling us what happened, when it happened, where it happened, and who did it. Where quantitative techniques are less effective is explaining why things happened: and indeed why not. Whilst these questions can of course be asked in a questionnaire, respondents often find it difficult to articulate their reasons and rationales for their behavior. Often the responses are post-rationalized. Whilst this phenomenon exists in qualitative studies too, there is room and time to explore and probe, and to get under the skin of the ‘why’, in a way that a response to a questionnaire couldn’t possibly do. And it is in the area of why, and why not, that we find the greatest insights lie: the insights that create the leaps that transform brand performance.
In part two of this post, I’ll suggest how to get the best from qualitative shopper research: both in isolation, and together with quantitative techniques. Subscribe to this blog to ensure that you don’t miss this post. And if you are looking to conduct some shopper research in the future, download our free shopper research e-book.
