Quantitative and Qualitative Research: The Yin and Yang of MR
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Oct 23, 2008
My colleague, Brian Koma, has taken to describing qualitative and quantitative research as the yin and yang of market research. In Taoism, yin and yang are opposing forces that are nonetheless bound together and interdependent, each giving rise to the other. For market research, many research initiatives start out as open-ended, qualitative questions. Once enough qualitative research is gathered, it discovers sentiments that can be tested across a wide range of respondents, giving rise to quantitative research. A survey can then be conducted to determine how representative these sentiments are of the target audience. When that survey is done, analyzing the results will produce some surprises, with some data for which the context is missing; this will give rise to further qualitative research, prompting further questions that need to be probed in detail, qualitatively. And so the two types of research play off of one another.
What is unique about Vovici's approach to research is the integration of online communities with enterprise feedback management. The community portal provides the qualitative results, while the feedback management system provides the quantitative results. The EFM system is typically integrated with an internal database of customers, employees or partners, so that random, representative samples can be drawn. Such an approach bridges the divide that often separates quantitative and qualitative research, and provides a balanced view of key constituencies.
Unifying research with online communities and enterprise feedback management:
- Enables the best, most complementary use of quantitative and qualitative data
- Gives voice to customers and other key stakeholders
- Moves feedback from a traditional serial process to an innovative continuous process
- Supports best practices for market research
- Provides significant competitive advantage
If quantitative and qualitative research are the yin and yang of market research, then enterprise feedback management and online communities are the Tao of Vovici.