Bazis Intelligence Group : Marketing research in Russia and CIS, on-line research, panel, market analysis

«Qualitative research focuses on subjective data that is not easily coded into numbers. The emphasis is on words and feelings rather than numbers. Qualitative research tends to work with fewer subjects or respondents (cases) but analyses each case to a deeper level. It is particularly useful when management needs to answer questions relating to motivation and emotions such as consumer needs and perceptions, subjective opinions, brand images, brand personality and testing of advertisements…».

Definition provided by Asia Marketing Research Dot Com

http://www.asiamarketresearch.com/glossary/qualitative-research.htm

Qualitative research consists of:

In depth interview means a conversation between an interviewee and interviewer.
In-depth interview is effective when the subject of research is sensitive, the theme of discussion deals with the peculiarities of making individual decisions (for example, about acquisition of goods) and other ways.

The basic idea of this method is to get respondent talking about certain topics, which are closed under the presence of other people. That is detailed and unstructured personal interview. Well-qualified interviewer asks questions to respondent. Received information is recorded with audio and video equipment according to interviewee's permission. As usual the length of an in-depth interview exceeds 30 minutes and can even reach 2 1/2 - 3 hours.

Expert interview means a conversation between en expert and interviewer. It will let you clarify advantages and disadvantages of an enterprise activity; determine target group, improve the politics of sales promotion devices on the market and so on.

It is an effective marketing technique, which gives comprehensive and unique data about market by talking to experts. This method may let you formulate tasks in a more detailed way for focus-groups, further marketing research, program construction on sales promotion devices. Received information is recorded with audio and video equipment according to expert's permission. As usual the length of an expert interview exceeds 30 minutes and can even reach 2 1/2 - 3 hours.

Focus Groups are usually made up of 8 to 12 targeted respondents, a moderator whose role is to ask the required questions, draw out answers, and encourage discussion. Focus-groups are more useful as idea-generation tool, for the analysis of associations, in-depth studying of selected themes. This method is effective for the following tasks:

verbal, visual and color attributes of a trade mark;
image evaluation;
new image design;
testing of visual and audio representation of brands, packaging, slogan, advertising appeal;
reactions to new advertising campaigns or specific advertisements, or consumer perceptions of a whole product class and etc.>

Usually focus groups last two hours. Participants are screened according to homogeneity of social and demographic characteristics. Typically it is recommended to conduct from 2 to 6 focus groups in the framework of research.