Importance for Organizations to Find Out the Needs and Wants of Its Customers - Essay Example

?Running Head: Qualitative and quantitative research on importance for organizations to find out the needs and wants of its s Name: Course Instructor: Date: Introduction Qualitative and quantitative research methods are two distinct terms that describe two distinct methods of collecting data in order to gain information. Both research methods can be applicable in any context like in marketing research, professional research like in nursing, and production research. For example in our case, the two research methods can be used in two different companies like the airport and airline industries. Here, both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative research (survey) methods can be applied to gain information on whether it is important for organizations to seek out customer’s needs and wants about a particular service in the market. Our needs make up our survival kit while wants are the desires we have towards a particular good or service. According to (Davies 2005 pp98), most of our needs and wants are satisfied by products and services in the market once we purchase them. For full customer satisfaction, it is important for the providers of these services to have knowledge of what sells best in the market for the customer to go for. In order to achieve this knowledge, marketing research has to be done by the various companies providing these services in order to understand the choice and preferences of its customers in order for the company to compete effectively in the market. The following are some of the differences between the two research methods commonly used today. Some of the differences between qualitative and quantitative research methods Qualitative research seeks out the why but not how things happen throughout the analysis of unstructured information. It does not rely on the numbers or statistics like in quantitative research. For instance in the southwest airlines, which is an American low cost airline based in Dallas, qualitative research uses focus groups to collect information from a sampled number of passengers who visit the airline (Litosseliti 2003). I.e. the researcher can use focus groups to describe customer’s satisfaction on the services offered by the company and the response from its transport facilities. On the other hand, quantitative research methods will try to collect information in the form of numbers. For instance in the Nashville international airport industry, the researcher uses the functional independence measure commonly abbreviated as FMI to collect information on the passengers functional abilities from the time the customer enters the airport until he/she leaves the airport (Holloway & Plant 2004). Qualitative research is used to gain insight in to people’s behavior, their attitudes towards a particular airline, their motivations, concerns and lifestyles. After collecting data the researcher seats back then interprets the information received. For instance in the southwest airline, the researcher can ask questions like: do you take long before our staff serves you? How do you find cleanliness in our company? Is our airline secure for you to travel with? After getting feedback from these passengers, the researcher now seats down then interprets the information from the answers provided by the customers. Quantitative research deals with quantities of things and involves measured of these things. For instance, a group of passengers in the Nashville international airport taking a flight to the same destination say from London to New York. Here, information is gathered by use of objective measurements or even the functional assessment tools (Litosellite 2004). Focus groups Vs. Surveys According to (Kolb 2008) there is a debate as to which type of research is best by many marketing firms. Is it better to carry out a survey in our company or will the focus groups provide the required answers to our success? The difference between the two is that focus groups are a qualitative research approach while the survey form part of the quantitative research approach. In this case, focus groups becomes more explanatory while in the case of the surveys, it only quantifies the problem and also helps managers to understand how widespread the problem is by looking for projectable results in to a large population. In the airline, focus groups are used when the final outcome of the research cannot be predicted. For instance in trying to understand the importance of understanding the passengers needs and wants by the company, the outcome of research is not known since the customers have a wide range of choices and preferences concerning the services offered by the company. So, using focus groups will help the researcher to get in-depth answers in passenger’s preferences or even a concept something which is not possible in a survey. The focus groups unlike the surveys are conducted by a trained facilitator by guiding the researchers throughout the discussion hence making sure that they do not get out of the topic under study. For instance in the airline, focus groups are selected by the researchers whereby the following questions are asked: safety violations, risk management, incidents and accidents, and cost of its flights compared with other airlines. The facilitator will see to it that it is only the selected topic which should be conducted in order to avoid wrong information when analyzing data (Brotherson 2008, pp142). According to (Morgan 2007) Focus groups has gained wide spread use as a way of soliciting consumer feedback on products and services because of its unique qualities. One obvious advantage the airline gets from using the focus group is that greater amounts of information can be gathered in a shorter and a more efficient time span. You find that the researcher focuses on a selected group of customers and this helps in saving time while at the same time a wide range of information can be analyzed and interpreted. Surveys are costly to conduct hence if a company decides to use survey as a way of collecting data, then it should have the available resources to suffice the whole process. Focus groups offer an appropriate medium for work at various steps during the research process that is, from both hypothesis generation to hypothesis testing but more specifically, the focus groups are more appropriate for obtaining information, in stimulating new ideas and concepts, diagnosing the particular problem in study and interpreting experimental results hence can be used as a supplement on the quantitative survey case study. Surveys can be done via phones, emails, and also online unlike in the case of the focus groups hence they are more applicable to use when the researcher has some knowledge about the problem of study but the aim of the researcher is to actually know what the large population has to say about the company’s services and products (David 2007 pp254). Surveys normally have many closed ended and multiple choice questions hence do offer little opportunity for any elaborations. Surveys become of more value only if the decision to be made is based on the numbers which are obtained throughout the research. In this case, surveys when compared with the focus groups are less effective when studying concerns about different customers with different likes and preferences about a particular service in the market. It becomes a hard tool to carry out research via a phone or even mails since it’s impossible to access all the customers needed and not all customers will be in a position to respond (Cotton & Range 2007 pp89). When identifying respondents, a reasonable sample needed is selected. In the case of focus groups, the participants do not constitute a random sample like in the case of survey. Nonetheless, they reflect the population of interest. This helps in making sure that a wide range and unbiased information is retrieved for the study. Like in our case of customer’s needs and wants is what drives any company to succeed. An intensive research on the customers likes and dislikes makes companies grow. It makes the company to provide a service which has a high demand to its immediate customers hence increasing the customer’s satisfaction as well as the growth of the company (Siemens 2005 pp10). Which method is most appropriate and why? Many researchers have a problem when it comes to choosing the best research method for their study. One way to determine whether a researcher can use the qualitative research or the quantitative research is first; to look at the purpose of the study. The researcher asks himself/herself: why am I carrying out this particular study? If the researcher wants to examine whether a certain trend is developing, quantitative research here is more applicable. For instance, A survey at the Airport company can be done by counting how many passengers use its flight instead of using the airline flight services but in the case whereby the researcher is interested in knowing why passengers choose one airline over the other, a qualitative research becomes more applicable by asking the passengers to try and explain their preferences of the airline over the airport (Edmondson 2007 pp1159). According to (James 2005 pp 45) generally, when it comes to choosing which method is more appropriate, qualitative research using focus groups as a tool of collecting data is more appropriate and it’s very widely applied in practice today. It focuses on discovering the true inner meanings and new insights on a particular phenomenon. It is less structured than most of the quantitative approaches. It does not also rely on self response questionnaires which contain the structured response format but it is rather more researchers depended in that it goes further to extract meaning from the unstructured responses for instance, a text from a recorded interview. The researcher also interprets the data he has collected in order to extract meaning hence converts it in to ready information for use by the company. Focus groups are less costly compared to the surveys due to their structure hence mostly preferred. Summary Qualitative research seeks out the “why” but not “how” things happen Quantitative research uses statistical data and numbers focused on questions like when? Who? Where? And How? Focus groups form part of the qualitative research methods and becomes more explanatory Surveys form part of the quantitative research methods and only quantifies the problem and also helps to understand how widespread the problem is by looking for projectable results in to a large population References David, H. (2007) Mapping volunteer activity: proceedings of the annual conference for research in nonprofit organizations voluntary action pp 254-257. Brotherson, M. (2008) Interactive focus groups interviewing. A qualitative research method in early intervention. Topics in early childhood education, 23(6), 142-148 Chrisnail, P. (2005) Market research. 7th ed. London: McGraw Hill Cotton, R. & Range, L. (2007) Using focus groups in educational research: Exploring teachers perspectives on educational change. Evaluation review, 19(2), 89-90 Creswell, J. (2007) Research Design: Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication, 23-30, Davies, B. (2005) The role of qualitative and quantitative research in industrial studies of tourism. Journal of tourism 5(425), pp 98-102 Edmondson, E. (2007) Methodological fit in management field research. Academy of management review 32: 1159-1176 Holloway, J. & Plant, R. (2004) Marketing for tourism.4th ed. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall James, J. (2007) Participatory action research: Data driven decision making for school leadership. Thousand Oaks, pp 45, CA: Sage Publication Kolb, B. (2008) Market research: A practical approach. London. Sage Litosseliti, L. (2004) Using focus groups in research. London: Continuum Morgan, D. (2007) Focus groups as qualitative research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Siemens, G. (2005) A learning theory for the digital age. International journal of instructional technology and distance learning 2 (10) Read More