Quantitative and qualitative data: the size of a problem and its cause
Definition
Quantitative data: information in the form of numbers, such as how many people bought, how much they spent, or what percentage would pay more.
Qualitative data: information in the form of opinions and reasons, such as why customers think the packaging looks cheap.
- Quantitative data measures how big something is, so it can be counted, averaged and plotted on a chart to compare with last year.
- Qualitative data explains why the number looks as it does, because it records the reason behind a customer's choice.
- A survey of 200 shoppers might find that 60 per cent would not pay £4 for a sandwich, while the written comments say the filling looks thin for the price.
- The percentage tells the owner the lost sales are large enough to act on and the comments tell them the fix is more filling rather than a lower price, which is why a business normally collects both.
Social media: free, fast feedback from a very large group
- Social media gives a business continuous feedback at no cost, because customers post their reactions without being asked, and it arrives in three usable forms.
- Comments and reviews: qualitative data on what buyers liked or disliked, including what they post on a rival's page.
- Polls and question boxes: quantitative data, such as how many of 400 followers prefer one flavour to another.
- Follower counts and engagement: a rough measure of how much interest an idea attracts and which posts hold attention.
- Speed is the real gain, because a poll can return several hundred answers overnight and lets an owner test a design before committing money to stock.
- The weakness is the sample, since the people who follow a page and bother to post are usually already loyal, younger than the market as a whole, or annoyed enough to type.
- Negative voices are louder than positive ones, so an owner reading the comments can treat a fault that affects a handful of buyers as though it affects everyone.
- Follower numbers are not sales, because following costs nothing while buying does not, and a page with 10,000 followers can still take very few orders.
Example
- Gymshark was started in 2012 by Ben Francis, screen-printing gym clothing in a garage in Birmingham.
- It grew by selling online through fitness influencers, whose followers commented on and shared each new product.
- Those comments showed which designs the target buyers wanted before the business paid for a large production run.
- Its followers were young gym-goers, which is exactly who Gymshark sells to, so its social media data matched its market more closely than most.
Reliability: whether a finding is safe to act on
Definition
Sample: the group of people questioned in a piece of research, chosen to stand for all of the business's target customers.
- Size and fit: 30 replies in a town of 20,000 people can be a fluke, and even 500 replies mislead if none of them come from the customers the business is targeting.
- How recent it is: figures collected before a rival opened describe a market that has gone, so an old percentage can point the owner at the wrong price.
- Wording and source: "Would you agree our prices are fair?" pushes the answer the owner wants to hear, and a supplier's own leaflet has a reason to flatter its product where a government statistic has none.
- Weak data costs cash, because an owner who orders 500 units on the strength of 30 friendly replies pays for stock that does not sell and ties up money needed for rent and wages.
Judging whether a small business should rely on social media data
- Social media is fast and cheap, which makes it useful for a cash-limited start-up, but its followers may not represent the wider target market.
- The more expensive or difficult a decision is to reverse, the less sensible it is to rely on social media data alone.
- Overall, social media can narrow options quickly, but major decisions should be checked with research that better represents the target customers.
Exam technique
- Build the chain in three links: name what the data shows, say why that matters to the customer, then say what the business does differently as a result.
- Quote the actual figure or comment from the source booklet, because the application marks are gated on that context.
- When a question involves social media data, name the specific weakness, meaning who is missing from the sample, rather than writing that it may be biased.
- On justify and evaluate questions, judge how reliable the data is before you judge the decision, since that is where the evaluation mark sits.
Self review
- What is the difference between quantitative and qualitative data?
- Give two forms of market research data a business can collect from social media.
- Why do follower numbers overstate how many customers a business has?
- State three things that make market research data unreliable.
- What is a sample?
