Qualitative research
Qualitative research focuses on understanding of how people (customers, consumers,...) perceive various facts and the surrounding world – which motives lead to their behaviour (consumer, shopping, decision making), what are their preferences, which criteria are important for their decision/selection. The goal is to understand, why people behave in the way they do, why do they prefer one thing to another, what are the motives that lead to this. It is often something, that they do subconsciously and automatically. Understanding this is crucially important for successful operation on the market and it can bring an advantage over the competition.
This researches go very deep and try to comprehend thoroughly the consumers' and customers' behaviour and perception and therefore we don't use the ordinary statistical methods used in quantitative research.
Very often a person is not able to answer a question precisely. That is why the qualitative research comprise/include many psychological and sociological methods and techniques, that allow us to „look into the respondents' minds“ and gather important information, which are absolutely essential for further marketing decisions and operations.
Qualitative research is conducted by specially trained interviewers and experienced moderators, who need to have an extensive knowledge of psychology and sociology and they need to be able to listen carefully and grasp the essence of the thing.