Quantitative Research - Basics

Research Process Problem definition Research design Data collection Data processing Analysis and recommendations

Problem Definition A market research programme arises from the need to address a problem or a business need. Ultimately decisions need to be made. The purpose of the research is to guide decision makers, and mitigate their risks. Once a problem is understood it may be defined by explicitly articulating - the business issue, - the business objectives that the research needs to address, and - the research objectives.

Quant suited for descriptive & inferential problems Descriptive problem describes or summarizes observations: - How many people use my brand? - What is my brand s brand equity? Is it increasing or falling? Inferential problems interpret the meaning of some descriptive measure or verify a hypothesis. - What are the factors driving brand equity? - Do more consumers prefer product formulation A over formulation B?

Research Design Problem definition pertains to research objective it tells us what to measure. The research design pertains to - methodology, - questionnaire design and - sampling It s concerned with how to measure.

Methodology - Role of Theories and Market Models Methodology: Use the right tools, techniques, models to address the research objectives. Theories: - Research models have a theoretical basis that provides a general explanation. - Examples: How advertising works Concept of brand equity Price elasticity of demand Market Models: - Theories are operationalized as market models - Examples: Brand Equity Models such as Nielsen s Winning Brands Price optimisation models Millward Brown s Awareness Index - Each construct is measured as one or more variable (eg sales, price) and, often, tracked over time. - Models are tested and refined over years.

Questionnaire Design Questionnaire is the instrument for collecting information from respondents Questionnaire design requires considerable thought and preparation to ensure that it fully addresses the research objectives

Questionnaire flow & question sequence Components of a questionnaire - Screener - Main section pertaining to the research topic - Section on Demographics Flow from the broader, wide-ranging to specific and focussed questions. Sensitive questions should be placed towards the end.

Order Effects - Please rate the colour of this drink. - Please rate the smell of this drink. - Please rate the amount of cocoa in this drink. - Please rate the amount of sugar in this drink. - Please rate the size of chocolate chips in this drink. - What is your overall rating of this drink? Placing it at end biases the response to the question on overall rating If respondent has positive (or negative) feeling for first few attributes (colour, smell), this might cause halo affecting response to subsequent attributes (amount of cocoa, amount of sugar etc)

Order Effects (contd) - Do you use Timotei shampoo? Question reveals existence of Timotei shampoo. Unaided brand awareness questions are placed near start of questionnaire, Questions on factual and behavioural information go before questions relating to attitudes and opinions.

Order Bias - Which stores did have you visited in the past 4 weeks? Hypermarkets Supermarkets Convenience Stores Personal Care Minimarts Provision Stores Sequencing of choices may generate bias Respondents have the tendency to select items that appear at top or bottom of list. Order bias may be eliminated by randomizing the sequence of the items in the list

Close ended questions Close ended Qs typically used in quant - Yes/No. Multiple choice questions. - must anticipate the possible responses provide for a number of response options Apt for quant - Close, rather than expand the focus of inquiry. (aim of quant) - Comparable across respondents - Quicker, easier and cheaper to administer in field, and process in the office Drawback - Restrict respondents to a list that may not apply to them - Prevents them from expressing their complete feelings and experiences - Hence a few open-ended questions provide for good balance.

Open ended questions Open Qs - Do you have any suggestion on how to improve our service? - Please share the reasons why you stopped using brand A? Open Qs do not offer predetermined categories of possible answers allow respondents more freedom to express themselves but difficult to analyse. Exploratory nature of open-ended questions makes them amenable more to qual than quant.

Information Needs Behaviours Attitudes Demographics (Classification)

Classification Questions Pertain to the respondent s demographics, and is typically used for profile analysis. - profile of consumers (gender, race, age, income, dwelling type, life cycle etc.) - profile of a company (line of business, country of incorporation, sales turnover, number of employees, average age of employee etc.)

Behaviour Questions Behaviours reflect impact of marketing mix, and serve as measures for gauging performance. To obtain accurate, fact based information questions should be framed in a manner that elicits accurate responses. - What brands of soft drinks do you usually drink? - What brand of soft drinks did you drink last time? Usually buy elicits central tendency gravitate towards few leading brands the respondent chooses, and reflects the individual s purchasing behaviour. Buy last time elicits a wider range of brands that more accurately reflects behaviour of population.

Attitude Questions Attitudes powerfully influence behaviours. Three components: - cognitive, - affective and - intent. Attitudes are measured using rating scales, in terms of both the direction (positive, negative), and the intensity. Because they are multi-faceted, it usually takes a series of questions, using Likert scale, to capture people s attitude about a topic.

Rating scales Rating scales turn consumer perceptions, attitudes and preferences into something that can be measured and compared. Commonly used scales: - dichotomous (Yes/No, True/False) - numeric (e.g. 0 to 10, 1 to 5 etc.), - diagrammatic (e.g. smiley faces), - continuous (e.g. slider scales used in online research), and - semantic-differential scales (e.g. strongly agree strongly disagree, very important very unimportant)

Likert scale multi-item rating scale Multi-item rating scale to measure attitude to teller service: Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Efficiently completed transaction/ addressed query 1 2 3 4 5 Knowledgeable of banks products & services 1 2 3 4 5 Courteous 1 2 3 4 5 Provided simple & understandable explanations 1 2 3 4 5 Likert scale is sum of responses to all statements or Likert items. Above scale will range from 4 to 20. It measures Teller Satisfaction.?

Factor analysis and Regression Likert scale gives equal weight to all statements. BUT some statements are more important than others, and some statements are highly correlated to others. Two-step process to determine the importance of each statement or attribute: - Factor analysis: reduce statements into smaller set of uncorrelated factors - Regression: determine the importance of each factor by regressing against a summary measure such as Overall satisfaction with Teller service

Guidelines on Constructing Questions Use simple vocabulary. Avoid jargon, technical terms, abbreviations and ambiguous or hard to pronounce words. Keep the sentence short and easy to understand. Be specific. Avoid words that lack frame of reference e.g. often, usually and occasionally. Instead use last time or past 4 weeks. Double-barrelled questions should be excluded. Example How satisfied are you with your bank and your relationship manager?

Guidelines on Constructing Questions Refrain from leading or suggestive questions. - Do you agree that Nagara drink has great taste? Yes/No. The purpose of the study is research, not advocacy. This question should be rephrased as Please rate the taste of Nagara drink. (on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 means Very Good ) Avoid emotive questions. Ideologically-loaded expressions or red flags elicit negative responses. Do not have questions that are time consuming as these will antagonize respondents.

Sample design Determine the population that study pertains to Type of sampling Sample size depends on - Population Variability More homogenous the population the smaller the sample - Level of Accuracy Sampling quotas - Race, age, sex, household income

Data Collection - Key Methods Interviewer Administered Self-Administered Hard Copy Telephone, Face-to-face Mail, Diary Computer-Assisted CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing) Online, MCAPI (Mobile CAPI)

Online Advantages Improves respondents engagement through multimedia image, video, sound, animation and text. (User friendly features - sliding scales with smiley faces, 3- dimensional images and interactive exercises). Respondents have more time to think and react to open-ended questions. Better suited for obtaining sensitive information since respondents may remain anonymous. Being computer-assisted, online research supports better questionnaire controls. Software controls sequencing logic and flow, sample quotas, and so on.

User-Friendly Interactive Questionnaire Vertical Ranking Scale BENEFITS More reliable and meaningful Avoids top loading or neutral scores Better discriminatory power Enable detailed analysis by shopper segments Works well on small and important shopper base Both scales have data points ranging from 1 to 100.

Use of Engaging & Interesting Elements Slider: Smiley Face or Button BENEFITS Easy to understand and use Realistic and meaningful measures Sensitive measure Addresses cultural differences in scale usage Actionable results Smiley scales have data points ranging from 1 to 100.

Example: Online packaging research BENEFIT Respondents are able to create their own brand map online, by moving the words/phrases toward or away from the brand

Online Advantages (contd.) Faster turnaround Automation and consistency in delivery eliminates interviewing bias in online surveys Tracks respondents interaction (time spent) with specific pages/stimuli. Used for optimization of questionnaire as well as identifying professional survey takers. Not constrained by geographical boundaries or barriers. Participation of specialists, professionals or new mothers can be facilitated through specialized access panels. Cost savings - no fieldwork, less data entry/coding. Physical stimuli or prototypes are substituted by visually appealing graphic images.

Online Advantages (contd.) Reduction in costs affords greater flexibility. Affordable to test different variations of questionnaires, stimuli and concepts. Can change or add questions on-the-fly. In terms of logistics and costs, multi-country studies benefit greatly from the borderless nature of the internet. - easier to coordinate and execute simultaneously across countries. - online eliminates need for the physical presence of teams in each country.

Representativeness In quant, the notion that samples should be random and representative is of fundamental importance Online samples are neither random nor representative!! BUT it s debateable also whether conventional methods of data collection are random or representative. In reality there are no purely representative samples - Response rates for conventional surveys are low. Door-to-door surveys exclude people who in restricted areas. Surveys often need to be compensated by boosters.

Representativeness Since some compromise must be made, decisions ought to be based on what s required to meet the study objectives. Vast majority of research is broad-based & relative in nature. - Which products do people like more? What attributes are associated with my brand? What are the factors driving customer satisfaction? - Biases inherent in online are unlikely to affect outcome of these studies, provided the topic has no direct bearing on the internet. Online samples tend to over-represent high internet usage segments (young, upper/middle class) Research firms compensate for this by recruiting panellists that better represent the population as a whole.

Analysis Process Direction What decisions need to be made? Business Objectives, Marketing Objectives Recommendations and Action Plans Problem Definition What questions to answer? What to measure? Research Objectives Conclusions (Interpretation) Methodology How to answer questions? How to measure? Research Program Get the facts. Answer The questions. Research Design Data Collection, Processing Results (facts, answers)

Interpretation: Data is like a jigsaw puzzle, you need to put the pieces together to see the big picture

Triangulation: Piecing together snippets from diverse sources to examine an issue. Segmentation: hit wrong target Volume coming from Diet Coke Consumer Panel Customized Research Retail Data Strong distribution, good promo levels Trial strong, repeat low Product problem? Advertising reinforced cool, not taste Communicated trendy brand image, not real taste message Triggers: high accidental purchase (pack); negative buzz from wrong trialists Improve taste message

Online Demo

Gauging consumers perception of product concept (car)

Respondent can view the car from different angles

Respondent can choose various options. This allows us to gauge their preferences.