Qualitative ResearchMARK 5338

Dr. Michael Richarme

Questions to ask yourself

• Is this course about real research?

• How should I approach this instructor?

• Am I up to the challenge?

• Should I drop now or see what happens?

We are on a journey…

• …to find insight

Insight

• “Insight is a fundamental finding that causes you to change the way you think about your business”– Jim Figura, Vice President, Consumer Research,

Colgate Palmolive

Today’s Agenda

• Introductions• Syllabus Review– Readings, tests, assignments, etc.

• Overview of Qualitative Research• “The Power of the Situation” video

My expectations

• You will be here and be prepared to contribute

• We will all learn together through discussion• This class will take a lot of work and there are

no easy shortcuts• Each class period, we’ll go about 75 minutes,

take a 15 minute break, and then finish the class

Introductions

• So let’s begin…

• Your name, where you are from, and something interesting about you that we probably didn’t already know

• What you would like to get out of the class

Class Web Site

• http://www.uta.edu/faculty/richarme/

Overview of Qualitative Research

• What do you think it is?

Qualitative Research

• This is your one chance in the MSMR/MBA program to understand the “why” question

• There is no right answer, but there are ways to triangulate around it

• Keep an open mind• Socratic discussion, please

The Qualitative Focus

• The main focus is to try and understand motivations that lead to observed behaviors

• The main question we ask is “why”

• In quant work, the main focus is to measure• The main questions are how much, how

many, how often, when, where, etc.

What Falls into Qualitative Research?

• Ethnography – watching people and their actions– Passive, unobserved– Active, observed

• Interviews – interacting and talking with people– Depth interviews– Group interviews

• Try to separate the topic areas from the tools

We’re trying to understand…

• …how consumers think and how they make decisions

• We can generate testable hypotheses

• These translate into specific marketing actions and programs that we can put in place

Issues of Concern

• Ethnography– Behavior, not motivation– Privacy

• Interviews– Respondent desire to please the interviewer– Motivation may not be known or knowable– Interviewer contamination

The main issue

• Interviewer bias, a.k.a. subjectivity

• We see the world through our own lens

• Sometimes that makes it hard for us to interpret or understand the actions of others

Cultural difference biases

• This bias is particularly evident when we are in unfamiliar cultures or sub-cultures

Tools

• We’ll develop some tools during this course• We’ll use the tools in both practice and in a

real client project• We’ll have some expert guest speakers from

the real world to share their experiences with us

• We’ll read what the academics think about the area

The Power of the Situation

• http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/

• Program 19, 27 minutes in length

• The situation (simulated jail) can cause unusual behaviors