HA7 Task 1 Research Techniques

Quantitative research

Quantitative Research options have been predetermined and a large number of respondents are involved. By definition, measurement must be objective, quantitative and statistically valid. Simply put, it’s about numbers, objective hard data. The sample size for a survey is calculated by statisticians using formulas to determine how large a sample size will be needed from a given population in order to achieve findings with an acceptable degree of accuracy. Generally, researchers seek sample sizes which yield findings with at least a 95% confidence interval which means that if you repeat the survey 100 times, 95 times out of a hundred, you would get the same response, plus/minus a margin error of 5 percentage points. Many surveys are designed to produce a smaller margin of error.

A good example of this type of research is the Gaming Britain report from IAB, The Internet Advisory Bureau. IAB is the UK trade association for digital advertising, representing most of the UK’s leading brands, media owners and agencies.

Qualitative research 

Qualitative Research is collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data by observing what people do and say. Whereas, quantitative research refers to counts and measures of things, qualitative research refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and descriptions of things.

Qualitative research is much more subjective than quantitative research and uses very different methods of collecting information, mainly individual, in-depth interviews and focus groups. The nature of this type of research is exploratory and open-ended. Small numbers of people are interviewed in-depth and/or a relatively small number of focus groups are conducted. Participants are asked to respond to general questions and the interviewer or group moderator probes and explores their responses to identify and define people’s perceptions, opinions and feelings about the topic or idea being discussed and to determine the degree of agreement that
exists in the group. The quality of the finding from qualitative research is directly dependent upon the skills, experience and sensitive of the interviewer or group moderator. This type of research is often less costly than surveys and is extremely effective in acquiring information about people’s communications needs and their responses to and views about specific communications.

https://www.icoe.org/webfm_send/1936

Electronic Arts carried out a form of qualitative research using mothers ho were asked to respond to the then new Dead Space 2 in 2011. This was really a form of innovative marketing, as EA thought that their game would sell even more if mums hated it.

For example,

Profiling

The recording and analysis of a person's psychological and behavioral characteristics, so as to assess or predict their capabilities in a certain sphere or to assist in identifying categories of people.
A consumer profile is a way of describing a consumer categorically so that they can be grouped for marketing and advertising purposes. It has been shown to be more profitable to target advertising to a specific market segment. As a short-hand way of talking about consumers, market segments are often represented by consumer profiles. Consumers can be identified by many different preference, lifestyle, lifestage, attribute, and trait categories. Thinking about consumers in terms of the way they are represented by categorical tiers can be useful. The first tier includes the most common categories for describing consumers, such as demographics, socioeconomic status, and product usage. The second tier extends the concepts of the first tier and includes psychographics, generation, geography, geodemographics, and benefits sought

 

Demographics

A common and traditional method of audience profiling is known as demographics. This defines the adult population largely by the work that they do. 

The NRS Social Grade breaks the population down into 6 groups, and labels them by using a letter code to describe the income and status of the members of each group.

Psychographics
This is a way of describing an audience by looking at their behaviour and personality traits. Psychographics labels a particular type of person and makes an assessment about their viewing and spending habits. The advertising agency Young and Rubican invented a successful psychographic profile known as their Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation, based on Abraham Maslow's, Hierarchy of Needs theory.

They put the audience into groups with labels that suggest their position in society.

Psycho graphics

This is a way of describing an audience by looking at their behaviour and personality traits. Psychographics labels a particular type of person and makes an assessment about their viewing and spending habits. The advertising agency Young and Rubican invented a successful psychographic profile known as their Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation, based on Abraham Maslow's, Hierarchy of Needs theory. 

They put the audience into groups with labels that suggest their position in society.

Geodemographics

Geodemographic segmentation is based on two simple principles:

People who live in the same neighbourhood are more likely to have similar characteristics than are two people chosen at random.

Neighbourhoods can be categorized in terms of the characteristics of the population which they contain. Any two neighbourhoods can be placed in the same category, i.e. they contain similar types of people, even though they are widely separated