Quantitative Research - Basics

Research Process

 Problem definition  Research design  Data collection  Data processing

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

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the business issue,

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the business objectives that the research needs to address, and

Quant suited for descriptive

& inferential problems

 Descriptive problem describes or summarizes observations:

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How many people use my brand?

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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.

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What are the factors driving brand equity?

Research Design



Problem definition pertains to research objective – it tells us

what to

measure

.



The research design pertains to

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methodology,

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questionnaire design and

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sampling

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.

Questionnaire Design



Questionnaire is the instrument for collecting information from

respondents



Questionnaire design requires considerable thought and preparation

Questionnaire flow & question sequence



Components of a questionnaire

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Screener

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Main section pertaining to the research topic

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Section on Demographics



Flow from the broader, wide-ranging to specific and

focussed questions.



Sensitive questions should be placed towards the

Order Effects

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Please rate the colour of this drink.

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Please rate the smell of this drink.

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Please rate the amount of cocoa in this drink.

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Please rate the amount of sugar in this drink.

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Please rate the size of chocolate chips in this drink.

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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)

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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

Order Bias

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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

Close ended questions

 Close ended Qs typically used in quant

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Yes/No. Multiple choice questions.

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must anticipate the possible responses … provide for a number of response options

 Apt for quant

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Close, rather than expand the focus of inquiry. (aim of quant)

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Comparable across respondents

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Quicker, easier and cheaper to administer in field, and process in the office

 Drawback

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Restrict respondents to a list that may not apply to them

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Prevents them from expressing their complete feelings and experiences

Open ended questions

 Open Qs

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Do you have any suggestion on how to improve our service?

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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

Classification Questions

 Pertain to the respondent’s demographics, and is typically used for profile

analysis.

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profile of consumers (gender, race, age, income, dwelling type, life cycle etc.)

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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.

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What brands of soft drinks do you usually drink?

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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:

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cognitive,

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affective and

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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

Rating scales

 Rating scales turn consumer perceptions, attitudes and preferences into

something that can be measured and compared.

 Commonly used scales:

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dichotomous (Yes/No, True/False)

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numeric (e.g. 0 to 10, 1 to 5 etc.),

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diagrammatic (e.g. smiley faces),

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continuous (e.g. slider scales used in online research), and

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semantic-differential scales (e.g. strongly agree … strongly disagree, very important … very unimportant)

Likert scale – multi-item rating scale

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

Multi-item rating scale to measure attitude to teller service:

Likert scale is sum of responses to all statements or Likert items. Above scale will range from

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:

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Factor analysis: reduce statements into smaller set of uncorrelated factors

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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

Guidelines on Constructing Questions

 Refrain from leading or suggestive questions.

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“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

Sample design

 Determine the population that study pertains to  Type of sampling

 Sample size depends on

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Population Variability

More homogenous the population the smaller the sample

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Level of Accuracy

 Sampling quotas

Data Collection - Key Methods

Hard Copy Computer-Assisted

Interviewer Administered Telephone, Face-to-face CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing) Self-Administered Mail, Diary 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.

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

Use of Engaging & Interesting Elements

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.

BENEFIT

Respondents are able to create their own brand map online, by moving the

words/phrases toward or away from the brand

Example: Online packaging research

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

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.

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easier to coordinate and execute simultaneously across countries.

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

Analysis Process

Direction

What decisions need to be 

made?

Problem Definition

What questions to answer? What to measure?

Methodology

How to answer questions? How to measure?

Research Program

Get the facts. Answer The questions. Data Collection,  Processing Results  (facts, answers)       Business Objectives,  Marketing Objectives Recommendations 

and Action Plans Research Objectives Conclusions 

(Interpretation) Research Design

Interpretation: Data is like a jigsaw puzzle, you need to put the pieces

together to see the big picture

Customized Research Retail Data Consumer Panel Product problem? Trial strong, repeat low Strong distribution, good promo levels Segmentation: hit wrong target

Volume coming from Diet Coke

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

Triangulation: Piecing together snippets

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.