In market research, qualitative data isn’t something you can “crunch” — not like your spreadsheet full of numerical data points or the crisp smoked gouda potato chips your competitors are selling. It’s messy, it’s all over the place, and it’s just … a lot.

But it’s vital for seeing your product from the customer’s perspective. The fuzzy, unquantifiable insights you glean from in-home usage testing (IHUT) help you understand why people buy your product, what they think about it, and how exactly they use it. If you don’t put yourself in your customers’ shoes, you’ll miss out on so, so much.

The good news: Qualitative methods of market research are getting more manageable thanks to high-quality IHUT platforms like Highlight. With high-tech tools like natural language processing and streamlined logistics, it’s never been easier to get to know your customers.

Read on to learn about different qualitative market research techniques and how to make the most of them.

Wait, what’s qualitative data? I just thought data was data.

Data is a hugely all-encompassing concept. To understand qualitative data, let’s first define its antonym: quantitative data. This is data you can count, which means that you can perform mathematical operations on it, run statistical analyses, and combine it into charts and graphs for clear visualization.

This countable type is the percentage of customers who gave your diamond-studded belt five stars, the average age of people who prefer your canned Margaritas to your canned Negronis, the increase in your coffee sales after you revamped the packaging with a grouchy but lovable owl mascot.

Qualitative data, on the other hand, isn’t countable. You can’t really whip it up into a bar graph or a pie chart. But what you can do is get some honest accounts of how your customers feel when they use their product. Do your shoes feel snug and comfy on their feet? Does the packaging of your snackable olives clearly resonate with the health-conscious snackers?

These critical qualitative product testing details provide the nuanced insights that can make or break your customers’ loyalty, and they’re available to you in real time through the types of on-demand consumer testing platforms that have been around since the 2010s. In fact, the nuggets of wisdom these platforms provide are so valuable that they’re a key stage in the market research field’s 100-year evolution.  

Types of qualitative market research vary, but one thing they all have in common is that they’re ethnographic. They involve learning how people interact with your product in the comfort of their own homes and within the rhythm of their everyday lives. When you take a rigorous ethnographic approach to understanding how your product is used, you discover insights you would otherwise overlook.

When do you need qualitative data?

Qualitative research is the way to go when you’re seeking authentic, unfiltered reactions to your product from real customers in their usual environments. With mediums like video, you can analyze both verbal reactions (what they say) and non-verbal reactions (their facial expressions and body language).

If you want to know WHY customers might use products like yours, and qualitative methods aren’t giving you the insights you’re looking for, it’s probably time to start focusing on lived experiences. Longitudinal testing — meaning testing over time — gives more accurate insights into regular habits and product use cases than a simple survey.

Qualitative research also helps you probe deeper in answering questions with limited sample sizes. It can be expensive to send a $500 wheeled suitcase to 1,000 in-home testers and have them all complete a survey, so market researchers often opt for sending the item to just a dozen or so participants and interviewing each participant at length.

Another less obvious advantage of qualitative market research techniques is that they can be a gold mine for marketing inspiration. By immersing yourself in the language that your customers actually use to describe your product, you can develop more impactful marketing campaigns.

Going in-depth with customer interviews

A survey is pretty limited in the detail it offers, but in an interview, you can ask a wide range of questions and gather unexpected insights. Be sure to ask questions that are open-ended (rather than “yes” or “no” ones) and have follow-up questions at the ready. A good researcher will be able to pick up on something interesting that a customer says and explore that insight further.

Questions also need to be neutral and bias-free. You want to make sure you’re not injecting any of your own attitudes about your product into the interview, no matter how convinced you may be that it’s the best product the world has ever seen.

For interviews, sample size should depend on how in-depth you want to go. A lower sample size will be better for getting deeper insights, since you’ll have more time to dedicate to each conversation.

Watching your customers unbox and try out your product

Want to capture that first-taste moment when someone brews your newest detox tea formula in the comfort of their own home? You can get it on camera!

Certain sensory testing details might slip someone’s mind during an interview, but video won’t lie. If the first sip of tea elicited a grimace, you’ll have proof that its taste will turn some people off. You can follow this up with an interview question about whether the stated health benefits are great enough for customers to get past the unsavory flavor.

As you observe the tester’s facial expressions, body language and step-by-step interactions with your product, you’ll see where your product elicits joy, and where it elicits frustration. Was the customer confused about how to empty the dustcup on your bagless vacuum cleaner? Maybe you can simplify the design.  

Have testers journals their interactions with your product over time

For some products, like those that a person might add to their daily skincare regimen, customer satisfaction has little to do with the first use feeling. Feedback on product usage and results over an extended period of time is what you’re looking for here.

Diary-like records of daily habits reveal crucial usage insights for these types of products. You can find out if customers are really using your product as frequently as you expect, and see what kinds of positive results they notice on day 10, day 20, and beyond.

Social listening

When you’re a brand, it makes sense to obsess over what people are saying behind your back. And thanks to social media, you can find out — with the right tools.

Social listening is the process of collecting and analyzing what your target customers are posting about your product, and products like yours, on social media platforms. It can be a great way to get wind of potential reputational crises before they become serious or get inspiration for ways to make your product offering better.

Start by monitoring for a target topic (could be your brand name) and see what’s trending. By analyzing the data that you capture here, you can extract meaningful insights that can then prompt you to make proactive decisions.

As with other qualitative market research methods, the goal is to stay ahead of the curve. You’re looking for trends that are just starting to develop, rather than performing a statistical analysis of something that’s already happened (possibly with disastrous consequences for your brand).

How do you sift through unstructured data and scale up qualitative market research methods?

Ah yes, the hard part about qualitative research. The data is unstructured, which makes sifting through it and scaling it a challenge. Gleaning solid insights, particularly at large scales, can require you to do a fair amount of manual work. It can also lead to data overload, since there’s no easy way to lump similar types of data together.

Highlight’s platform has several ways to reduce the amount of work you need to do here. If you’ve got a bunch of raw video footage, you can use AI-powered analytics tools like natural language processing (NLP) to get a summary of what the testers are saying. Similarly, you can use machine learning (ML) algorithms to detect patterns in a collection of social media posts.

Highlight also handles the logistics of recruiting testers, sending out samples, and ensuring high completion rates — jobs that can be a huge headache for any market researcher.

The payoff: You hear the customer’s authentic voice

Thanks to technology, it’s never been easier to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Whereas the brands of yesteryear often had to make an educated guess about what things delighted and frustrated their customers, brands today can lean on an incredible amount of verified, meaningful data — both qualitative and quantitative.

The challenges of gathering, analyzing, and presenting data in qualitative methods of market research are offset by the power of the insights they provide. From honest, unfiltered “first taste” reactions to the words and phrases your customers actually use to describe your product, qualitative data is a vital complement to the statistics that power your decision-making.

Start listening to the voice of your target customers