Discuss the following statement: "Quantitative research is more important than qualitative research because it results in statistical information and conclusive findings." Cook & Reichardt (1979) stated that the
Q2. Discuss the following statement: "Quantitative research is more important than qualitative research because it results in statistical information and conclusive findings."
Cook & Reichardt (1979) stated that the functions of quantitative research are more important than qualitative research. However, this statement is not that suitable and reliable nowadays.
Quantitative research, as well as qualitative research, plays a significant role in today marketing research area. They enable researchers to analyze and evaluate people's behaviors and thinking for a particular topic. Most companies use this research methodology to get reliable and primary data. (Malhotra, 1999) "The distinction between qualitative and quantitative research are closely parallels the distinction between exploratory and conclusive research." (Malhotra, 1999, P.147) However, there are still many scholars argue about this topic for different reasons. In this report, it will bring up with arguments and analyses for both research methods, and a final conclusion will be made to evaluate which method is more trustful and reliable for a successful research.
"Qualitative research is an unstructured and exploratory research methodology based on small samples that provides insights and understanding of problem setting." (Malhotra, 1999, p.147). Besides, "Qualitative data are gathered primarily in the form of spoken or written language rather than in the form of numbers" (Polkinghorne, 2005, p.137). This type of research is to identify the social meaning and individuals' interaction in terms of gathering people feelings, views, attitudes, interests, motivations and beliefs. (Polkinghorne, 2005)
In other words, the researchers are more likely to get the results by understanding how people perform their human actions in society. For this reason, qualitative research is not only a useful tool for the identification of population study, but also more accurate than quantitative research (McDaniel & Gates, 2005). These examples can be found in the research topic of employees' satisfaction on hotel organisation, the researchers should focus with the personal working environment including all the facilities and offices in hotel, or follow the guideline from individuals' satisfaction based on their different beliefs and feelings. (Donovan & Fang, 2004) Nevertheless, the performance of qualitative research is merely focus on a small group of people (Cook & Reichardt, 1979).
According to Malhotra (1999), there are two different approaches in qualitative research of its implementation, which are direct and indirect approaches "A direct approach is not disguised. The purpose of the project is disclosed to the respondents or is otherwise obvious to them from the questions asked." (Malhotra, 1999, p.149) The excellent tools, including focus group discussion and depth interviews, are offered by the interviewers to collect data based on close relationship with respondents.
A group of people who exchanging their own opinion to each other is called focus group discussion, which is one of the ways to gather data (Wong, 1999). The implementation of focus group discussion can be found in the following case. The case content is about the health research. The performance is based on "a qualitative study exploring group dynamics and the moderator's positions in focus group discussions, in particular the interaction between the moderator's position and her role as a doctor" (Reventlow & Tulinius, 2005, p.335). The acquisitions of the research are influenced by the moderators' view, medical background and their situational response. It is also mentioned in the case that not only the group members are able to influence each other, but also the working environment can affect people's perceptions during discussion (Reventlow & Tulinius, 2005).
Although the focus group discussion is only use on a small group of people, they can create the questionnaires and talk anything in a group more freely on a particular subject whenever they want. It is because the structure of discussion is quite rapport and informal. Moreover, this kind of research can motivate respondents' performance by increasing their attention and encouraging everyone to express their opinion. Therefore, researchers are able to gain different ideas based on the informal discussion.
But there are some negative outcomes may also be raised. First of all, researchers cannot get statistical analysis and measurable data from the respondents. In addition, there should be a specific time and location to perform focus group discussion between all researchers and respondents. It may make the research becomes difficult and confuse to analyze the final results based on unstructured questionnaires. (Wong, 1999)
Another function of qualitative research would be individual depth interview. "Depth interview is an unstructured, direct and personal interview in which a single respondent is probed by a highly skilled interviewer to uncover underlying motivations, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings on a topic" (Malhotra, 1999, p.157). Similar to focus group discussion, the depth interview relies on unstructured personal interview and questionnaires. The interviewers are freely to create questionnaires, and the respondents are able to talk based on their feelings and attitudes. During depth interview, those interviewers can directly influence the results of respondents by their interview skills and techniques. ...
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Another function of qualitative research would be individual depth interview. "Depth interview is an unstructured, direct and personal interview in which a single respondent is probed by a highly skilled interviewer to uncover underlying motivations, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings on a topic" (Malhotra, 1999, p.157). Similar to focus group discussion, the depth interview relies on unstructured personal interview and questionnaires. The interviewers are freely to create questionnaires, and the respondents are able to talk based on their feelings and attitudes. During depth interview, those interviewers can directly influence the results of respondents by their interview skills and techniques. The main difference between focus group discussion and depth interview is their research process. One is focus on a group of people and the other one is concern with individuals. (Wong, 1999)
"An indirect approach is disguises the true purpose of the project." (Malhotra, 1999, P.149) A common way in indirect approach is projective technique, which provides four alterations of techniques including association, completion, construction and expressive techniques. The projective technique is an unstructured and indirect questioning technique that encourages respondents' motivations indirectly in terms of their feelings, beliefs, and attitudes. (Malhotra, 1999) "In projective techniques, respondents are asked to interpret the behaviour of others rather than describe their own behaviour." (Malhotra, 1999, p.161) Therefore, the researchers can set a situation to the respondents and then ask questions to gain their ideas, such as using expressive technique to ask respondents' opinion based on a cartoon picture. They can also use the completion technique by asking respondents to complete a sentence to get more idea. (Wong, 1999)
On the other hand, by using quantitative methods, "researchers have come to mean the technique of randomized experiments, quasi-experiments, paper and pencil objective tests, multivariate statistical analyses, sample surveys, and the like." (Cook & Reichardt, 1979, p.7) In designing the quantitative research questionnaires, the researchers should define what data and methodology would be most helpful in answering the questions and analyses the result. Hence the researchers are likely to use the statistical and measured techniques to decide questionnaires.
According to Wong (1999), the examples of quantitative questions can be started with how often, how much, and how many. Moreover, the quantitative topic can be written as market size estimation, brand share analysis, percentages of people who smoking or level of consumer acceptance of new products." However, although quantitative research is able to analyse a large group of people, it is easy to come up with a failure and error in a research. Sometimes it is hard to implement and evaluate the numerical analysis due to the large amount of researches and respondents. (Wright, Manigault & Black, 2004) For this reason, researchers should concern with the limitation of measurement error by using the effective statistical techniques.
Besides, "researchers need to be more attentive to measurement issues such as reliability, validity, and greater conformity in operational definitions." (Wright et al 2004, pg.747) To perform this type of research is more expensive than qualitative research, since the researchers need to have sufficient information and specific statistical programs to support its performance. As a result, the researchers may need to use many costly hardware and software in order to do the research, such as using super computers to deal with huge amount of data and statistical programme to run the tests accurately. (Wright et al, 2004)
As a result, the doctrine of quantitative research is more important than qualitative research is not come into existence. The most deadliness of quantitative research is because it is too formal during its research process, so the respondents are unable to talk freely whenever they want. (Wright et al, 2004) On the other hand, the respondents may misunderstand the purposes of the research without asking questions. The cost of implementing quantitative research may also be expensive.
According to the case Brittain (1990) mentioned about the performance of quantitative research, the purpose of that survey is to define how customers spend their money. However, there were many problems raised by quantitative survey. The reasons that failed the research were due to consumers' reluctance. They were not willing to be interviewed, especially on sensitive subjects. As a result, they gave misleading information to the questions they did not want to be asked or feel uncomfortable to answer with. Consequently, Brittain (1990) considered that the researchers should not only rely on the functions of quantitative research, but they should also concern with the qualitative functions as well (Brittain, 1990).
The qualitative research is better than quantitative research in some aspects, such as effective research functions which require lower cost for research process, getting more subjective ideas and meaningful information from respondents. Moreover, it also increases the motivation and dynamics of respondents to response. The informal structure of research offers a sociable interview for both interveners and interviewees. The four productive techniques allow more ideas and information.
To conclude, the statement about "Quantitative research is more important than qualitative research" is incorrect. Based on these analyses, quantitative research provides more statistical information and conclusive findings, but it also shows inadequate in other aspects. On the other hand, qualitative research shows some of the strengths which quantitative research cannot be reached, but it is lack of organise and structure.
There is no enough evidence to show one is more important than the other. More importantly, none of a successful research can only base on either one of them, no matter the qualitative research or the qualitative research. So, to complete a trustful and reliable research, a researcher must be able to combine both of research methods appropriately. Both of the research are same important as another.
Reference
Brittain, B.J. 1990, 'Research: money research: familiar challenges in unique disguises', Bank Marketing, Vol. 22, Iss. 12, pg. 42.
Cook, T.D. & Reichardt, C.S. 1979, Qualitative And Quantitative Methods In Evaluation Research, 1st Edition, Sage Publications, USA.
Donovan, D.T. & Fang, X. 2004, 'Applying interactional psychology to salesforce management: a socialization illustration', Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 7, Iss. 2, pg. 139.
Malhotra, N.K. 1999, Marketing Research An Applied Orientation, 3rd Edition, Prentic Hall, USA.
Polkinghorne, D.E. 2005, 'Language and Meaning: Data Collection in Qualitative Research', Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol. 52, Iss. 2, pg. 137.
Reventlow, S. & Tulinius, C. 2005, 'The doctor as focus group moderator--shifting roles and negotiating positions in health research', Family Practice [NLM - MEDLINE], Vol. 22, Iss. 3, pg. 335.
Wong, T.Q. 1999, Marketing Research, 3rd Edition, Reed Educational and Professional, Great Britain.
Wright, B.E., Manigault, L.J. & Black, T.R. 2004, 'Quantitative research measurement in public administration: An assessment of journal publications', Administration & Society, Vol. 35, Iss. 6, pg. 747.
. Describe what "satisfaction" means and how this concept is to be measure.
The meaning of "satisfaction" can be referred to many different areas. When the concept of "satisfaction" refers to marketing research, it can be related to the customers' satisfaction. It is because the purpose of marketing research is to study consumer behaviors to find out what customers' thinking and expectation on a particular product and service. "The customer satisfaction can be defined by customer comparison and appraisal. It is one kind of cognition condition that evaluated feedback whether suitable when customers finished purchase." (Chang & Tu, 2005, pg. 197) Customers' satisfaction is a valuable asset and measure to every business and its products, companies can gain lots of benefit by understanding it. The degree of customer satisfaction is not only offering the knowledge to companies in order to developing effective 4P's strategies, which including price, promotion, product and place strategies, but also providing general ideas to improve their performance. These reasons explaining why companies are likely to measure and define customer satisfaction level by doing the marketing research. (McDaniel & Gates, 2005)
According to Zikmund (2003), there are two different types of customers, which are external and internal customers. The external customers are those customers outside the company and they are looking for some particular products or services. For example, people are searching the best suitable store when they want to purchase something. However, the internal customers are totally difference with external customers. The internal customers mean that everyone inside an organisation can be customer. "Every person, in every department, and at every level, has a customer. The customer is anyone to whom an individual provides service, information, support, or product." (Zikmund, 2003, P.201) Therefore, the customers' satisfaction not only involves external customers, but also concern with internal customers' satisfaction (employees' satisfaction). For instance, the researchers can use the qualitative or quantitative research to measure the consumers' satisfaction for a particular product or service. They also can use the survey to define the employees' expectative within an organization. (Zikmund, 2003)
There are three major factors to measure the customers' satisfaction shown in figure 1, which are including emotion and mood, customer loyalty, and the quality of products and services. Those factors are also able to increase or decrease the level of customers' satisfaction.
Figure 1: The measure of satisfaction
Adapted from: (Ruyter & Bloemer, 1999); (Chadee & Mattsson, 1996)
Firstly, emotion and mood "have directly or indirectly effects on behavior, evaluation, and recall" (Paula, 1895, pg. 281, 20). The evaluative of emotion and mood is difficult to analyze, because the customers' emotion and mood can be changed before their consumption, or it can be changed during their consumption process. For example, the advertisements for a particular good or service is able to increase customers' emotion and mood before purchasing. But some of the things are able to affect customers' emotion and mood during the purchase process, such as the first impression of stories or items, promotional events, and specific skills for sales person (Knowles, Grove & Pickett, 1993); (Paula, 1895). A positive emotion and mood is very significant to marketer to measure customers' satisfaction, because "the positive mood conditions likely to recall more positive information and less negative information than subject in neutral or negative moods" (Knowles, Grove & Pickett, 1993, pg. 41, 12). That's mean the customers may store a positive or negative mood and information in their memory.
Many marketing researchers play more attention on customer loyalty, which is one of the factors to measure the customers' satisfaction. Customer loyalty involves the dynamics and motivation for customers repeat business in a same particular brand product or service. Thus, a high level of customer loyalty not only remains the original customers, but also develops a new business opportunity for new product in same brand (Chang & Tu, 2005). For instance, the quality of Sony digital camera is worse than Cannon digital camera, but there still have a large amount of customers to purchase Sony's digital camera. The main reason is Sony has a high level of customer loyalty, and the customers would be quite satisfied although it cannot offer a quality function. To increase the customer loyalty, Sony had done lots of things, such as promotion events, building a good image, and differentiation. (The Hindu Business Line, 2005) From the studying of Sony's operation, it can explain why many companies try to increase their customer loyalty by using effective lower price strategy or promotion strategy. (Chang & Tu, 2005)
The quality of service and product can be one of the factors to measure satisfaction, which can directly influence the level of customers' satisfaction. The relationship between quality service and customers' satisfaction is basically about the requirement of customers. A high dimension of quality product or service can satisfy the customers' needs and wants. The elements of quality product and service are including its price, function, design, convenience for purchase or inconvenience, skills for sale person, category of service and product, as well as service encounter (Keaveney, 1995). To measure customers' satisfaction, the marketers first should define the amounts of requirement to customers by using survey research, so that they can improve their quality of service and product based on customers' expectation. After that, they need to monitor the process of service encounter to make sure their service encounter can meet the customers' satisfaction. If the quality of services and products are not able to satisfy customers' expectation, they should find out the reasons and then solve the problems (Stowell, 1989).
As mentioned before, the use of mood and emotion, customer loyalty, and quality of service and product are able to measure the customers' satisfaction. The method for marketers to increase customers' expectation is to study of survey to investigate the relationship between all measures and customers' satisfaction. To achieve a high level of customers' satisfaction, the marketers need to be aware of the expectation of its customers and to define the way to satisfy them. Firstly, the marketers can use qualitative and quantitative researches to find out internal and external customers' satisfaction. After that, based on the results from effective survey, the marketers not only can make the decisions to improve their satisfaction, but also provide the solutions to increase their expectation.
To increase customers' satisfaction the marketers can use the functions of 4P's strategies. (Zikmund, 2003) For example, they can spend their investment on advertisements such as showroom, poster, and media advertising, which help to increase customers' motivation to purchases their products or services. Also, a necessary training for employees and supporting information to meet customers' expectation can improve customers' satisfaction as well. In terms of product strategies, it can be referred to quality services or products, such as the product's functions, designs, categories, and service encounter. (Chang & Tu, 2005) The marketers can provide the best suitable quality products or services to satisfy customers' requirement based on the results from marketing research. For the promotion strategies, they can provide some promotional events to face with their competitors, such as discount and coupon. (Keaveney, 1995); (Stowell, 1989)
To conclude, the measures of customers' satisfaction play an important role in today business condition. It is mainly because the company can have many benefits by understanding what customers' requirements. For this reason, many marketers always concern with their investment on 4P's strategies, in order to increase customers' emotion and mood, customers' loyalty and quality of services and products marketers are able to get more customers and increase the company's profit. Understanding customer satisfaction can build a better relationship between the customers and the company as well. (Stowell, 1989)
To measure the level of satisfaction, the implementation of researches should be performed, such as exploratory, descriptive, causal, qualitative, and quantitative research. Let's take an example of research questionnaire. They can use the survey to identify the customers demographic, such as their age group, gender, and income. And then they can set the questions related to qualitative research to define customers' satisfaction. The question can be how the services satisfy customers' expectation based on the quality of service. After collecting data from customers, they should analyze the result to make the solution to increase customers' satisfaction (Zikmund, 2003).
Reference
Chadee, D.D. & Mattsson, J., 1996, 'An Empirical Assessment of Customer Satisfaction in Tourism', The Service Industries Journal, Vol. 16, Iss. 3, pg. 305-302
Chang, C.H. & Tu, C.Y., 2005, 'Exploring Store Image, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty Relationship: Evidence from Taiwanese Hypermarket Industry', Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, Vol. 7, Iss. 2, pg. 197, 6
Keaveney, S.M., 1995, 'Customer Switching Behavior in Service Industries: An Exploratory study', Journal of Marketing, Vol. 59, Iss. 2, pg. 7, 12
Knowles, P.A., Grove, S.J. & Pickett, G.M., 1993, 'Mood and the Service Customer: Review and Propositions', The Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 7, Iss. 4, pg. 41, 12
McDaniel, C & Gates, R., 2005, Marketing Research, 6th Edition, John Wiley & Sons, USA
Paula, G.M., 1985, 'Mood States and Consumer Behavior: A Critical Review', Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 12, Iss. 3, pg. 281, 20
Ruyter, K. & Bloemer, J., 1999, 'Customer Loyalty in Extended Service Settings: The Interaction Between Satisfaction, Value Attainment and Positive Mood', International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 10, Iss. 3, pg. 320-336
Stowell, D.M., 1989, 'Quality in the Marketing Process', Quality Progress, Vol. 22, Iss. 10, pg. 57, 6
The Hindu Business Line, Retrieved 14, September 2005 from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/03/05/stories/2005030501091700.htm
Zikmund, W.G., 2003, Exploring Marketing Research, 8th Edition, Thomson, USA