Quantitative Market Research Methodology
Turn Data into Smarter Decisions that Fuel Your Brand
Every guess costs you — especially when growth is on the line. Gut feelings don’t move the needle. Quantitative market research does. At Elevate, we use quantitative market research to dig into the data and uncover what’s actually driving your business forward: brand perception, campaign impact, and what your customers truly want — and plan to buy.
Launching something new? Running a campaign? Or just feeling stuck? Our quantitative market research gives you clear, actionable answers you can use right away.
What Is Quantitative Market Research?
Quantitative market research and data collection methodologies involve large numbers (generally between 400 and 1,000 individuals per survey). The objective of the quantitative type of research is to identify trends and quantify behaviors as well as generate specific, useful results from the analysis of collected quantitative data.
Quantitative research gets to the point. Quantitative research measures” how many, how often, and how much”. For example, a company may find that 68% of respondents are aware of their brand and that exposure to a new advertisement boosts purchase intent by 12%. Both of these findings are areas for immediate action.
Quantitative research is generally conducted using various types of quantitative instruments, such as the internet (online surveys), written polls, etc. The primary advantage of conducting quantitative research is that results can be tracked more easily than with other forms of research (e.g., qualitative).
People generally ask “why” when conducting qualitative research and “what is happening” when conducting quantitative research; there is less ambiguity when collecting quantitative data than when collecting qualitative data, and therefore fewer concerns that the analyst will interpret the results incorrectly.
At Elevate, we focus on providing hands-on research across multiple quantitative areas and industries, including retail, home services, furniture, health care, and finance. Every year, we speak with over 20,000 consumers and conduct approximately 50-60 Research Studies. We have asked lots of wrong questions and have improved our ability to ask the right questions, and now we know where the real answers lie!
Our Quantitative Research Methodology
Good market research begins with the foundation of quantitative research methodology. This is the way we work:
Step 1:
Problem Definition
The first thing to accomplish is a discussion. What are you looking to clarify? What challenges or issues are you trying to resolve through having this conversation? Every question will be based on the answers to those two questions.
Step 2:
Survey Design
We create individualized surveys for companies or other organizations with a custom approach. The surveys we create include measured, defined, and structured answer options, using structured categories to enable us to gather high-quality quantitative data in our research projects.
Step 3:
Sampling
We target the right respondents using demographics, purchase behavior, and geography. We operate at a 95% confidence level. For a single U.S. market, that’s about 300–400 interviews. For national studies, we aim for 1,000+.
Step4:
Fielding & Data Collection
We deploy surveys across 5–6 third-party panels to remove bias in our quantitative research methodology. Surveys are mobile-friendly, capped at 15 minutes, and incentivized thoughtfully.
Step 5:
Data Cleaning & Validation
We remove straight-liners, bots, and outliers. In our quantitative research methodology, we use security questions and cognitive checks to ensure quality.
Step 6:
Analysis & Visualization
We use cross-tabulation, correlation analysis, MaxDiff, and regression to uncover insights. Results are delivered through custom dashboards and live Research Reveal sessions.
Step 7:
Strategic Recommendations
It’s more than just data; it’s quantitative data with actionable insights.
We aim to turn around our quantitative studies from kick-off to delivery within 4 weeks. That’s quick enough to enable timely action, and detailed enough to assure the highest degree of confidence.
Why Choose Quantitative
Market Research?
What makes a business like quantitative market research:
- Objective: A number is just a number-it doesn’t care if a product is good or bad. You get concrete facts rather than subjective opinion.
- Scalable: You can survey hundreds of thousands of people, and you’ll know how the entire market will probably feel.
- Trend Analysis: With multiple waves of research, you can track audience attitudes.
- ROI Measurement: Calculate the exact return on investment from marketing spend.
- Predictive Power: Anticipate purchase intent and market trends before they actually occur.
Our Quantitative Research Services
Brand Tracking Studies
We monitor your brand’s year-on-year health. We report on: unprompted brand awareness, prompted brand awareness, ad recall, brand favorability, purchase intent, and brand attributes. Typically, we present results to clients annually or biannually.
Brand Lift Studies
We can demonstrate the direct results of your most recent campaign, which will be extremely beneficial during your significant launch periods: Super Bowl ads, Olympic sponsorships, new streaming series, etc. We survey before and after your campaign, and can tell you definitively how effective you were.
Custom Consumer Behavior Research
Deep dive into your customers. We can use the findings from demographic, psychographic, transactional, and attitudinal research to gain a robust understanding of your target consumer and to identify misalignments between who you’re reaching and who you should be reaching.
Pricing & Product Testing
Determine optimal pricing and product design through methods such as Van Westendorp or A/B testing.
All services include access to our FLASH dashboards, live reveal sessions, and a strategy debrief one to two weeks after.
How We Present Results
We do not simply give you a 100-page PDF. During your 60-90 minute Research Reveal video call, we walk you through your results. Your quantitative data will be visualized as graphs, heatmaps, and interactive dashboards.
The week or two following that, we have another session to walk you through how to prioritize the top two to three most critical actions – what to do over the next 60 days, and what to prepare for 6 months out.
Our dashboards come with 10-15 flex filters that you can use to segment by age, gender, ethnicity, geography, income and more. You don’t need a degree in data science.
FAQS
Our confidence level when conducting market research is 95%. A small market (such as just one U.S. market) requires a sample size of about 300–400; however, we suggest using a minimum of 1,000 for national studies. Quantitative market research using smaller sample sizes may still provide directional information, but to achieve statistical significance, appropriate sample sizes must be gathered.
We implement several security measures to ensure only legitimate participants are included in the quantitative data collection method: attention-check questions, bot detection, removal procedures for straight-liners, and monitoring of completion time. In addition, we use multiple recruitment sources (5–6 panel providers) to reduce bias in our quantitative data collection. Clean collection produces clean quantitative data.
We believe that combining quantitative and qualitative research will yield the greatest value from your market research. Start with quantitative studies to answer questions related to large-scale patterns, then utilize qualitative methods of focus groups or interviews to understand why what was found quantitatively occurred. These two methodologies work best in conjunction.
Our quantitative research methodology can provide results approximately 4 weeks after we have received your approval to proceed. This includes the process of developing questionnaires, fielding, cleaning data, analyzing data and conducting your live Research Reveal.