What are the Types of Business Research?

Business research can actually increase sales and profit. It’s a detailed study of all verticals of business and catching up on insights. These insights are integrated to create more impactful and feasible sales strategies for overwhelming sales, customer engagement, and profit.

In addition, there are some more business advantages that are concerned with competition, cost monitoring, marketing approach, financial stability, demand, product quality, etc. You can integrate the business research services-driven intelligence or plans to understand the best-fit approach for marketing, promotions, customer engagement, and savings.

There are certain types of business research that are ahead given.

Table of Content

A. Qualitative Research

• Interviews
• Focus Groups
• Ethnographic
• Case Study
• Website Visitors

B. Quantitative Research 

• Survey
• Online Research
• Experimental Research
• Correlational Research
• Casual Comparative Research

A. Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is a thorough study of information collected from first-hand observations. These are gathered in natural scenarios, as in interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, etc. to understand the problem, feedback, & experiences deeply and find solutions of the business problems like low sales, inefficiency, less profit margin, the low interest of customers, and many more. 

There are different subsets of gathering customers’ inputs to improve demand, production, and returns. Here are the following commonly used qualitative research types:

Interview

An interview is a well-planned dialogue in which one member asks a question and the other response. Also known as one-on-one, it commonly involves open-ended questions. The answerer understands and shares his opinions on the basis of real-time experiences.

Let’s say a retailer wants to figure out why a certain color is mostly favored by female customers over male ones. The interview can disclose the most possible reasons like it can be related to feminity or occasions.

Focus Groups

It’s a type of research that requires a pool of data through group interaction. It can be a small group of nearly a dozen or hundreds of people, which are assumed as a sample of conducting research. This type of research emphasizes identifying and exploring the intentions of people or how they behave to a specific product or service.

Unlike interviews, it ensures interacting with not a single person, but a group of target audience and collecting their inputs or opinions about the product/service.

More often, this method is advantageous when you are likely to launch a new product in the market. The interaction with a focus group lets you have their reviews, which have many upsides and downsides. You may improve your product accordingly for more sales.

Ethnographic Research

It’s like finding how people of a particular community or location live their lives. Once understood, it’s easy to target them with what they prefer the most.

Besides, the researcher has to adapt the natural environment of the target audience to closely observe their habits and living. Once you do so, there are a ton of crucial things that you discover. These can be related to their culture, lives, and challenges.  

For example, you can study a particular social channel like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Each one has different numbers of users each month. Upon spending time on social analytics, one can easily find out the behavior and interest of a user and post feeds accordingly. It certainly helps in adding more to online traffic, which improves opportunities for conversion.

Case Study Research

It refers to cases that have experienced the difference. You can generate an in-depth and dynamic understanding of a complex issue that arises in real-time.

Let’s say, a BPO company wants to discover how to engage digitization customers for frequent opportunities. The question is known. Now, you need to find an accurate answer. Using the results of some discoveries of the same, you may relate your condition and then, execute the tried-and-tested method of C-SAT surveys or innovative solutions as offerings.

Website Audience Research

Discovering what a customer thinks is crucial. It has never been easy as it is today. You have websites and social media to reach people in a matter of seconds. Moreover, you can find reviews in no time, which are freely available to explore on eCommerce websites, Google, and social media.  

You may analyze their feedback and find what they require, expect, and receive in reality. Their thorough examination can enrich you with such engaging marketing strategies that let you, onboard customers, in no time.

You may also integrate pop-ups to survey and gather their opinions or feedback for this purpose.

Also Read: Top 10 Simple & Profitable Startup Ideas In 2022

B. Quantitative Research Methods

This method presents a systematic approach to assessing as much data as they are available. The niche-based details are crucial here, which should be in statistical figures. It helps to implement mathematical and statistical tools to draw insights and make decisions.

commonly used types of quantitative research.

Survey Research

It is defined as the pool of information collected from a sample of the target audience. The user feeds his responses to questions while participating in the survey.

This method has been beneficial for understanding the nature of the market and making appropriate decisions for promoting products or services. Being extremely cost-effective, people integrate a Google survey sheet and run a survey to discover what delights the customers. This is how the secret comes out and you get away to attract them correspondingly in a short time.

Co-relational Research

It is a type of non-experimental research in which you measure two variables or different entities and assess their impact. It would certainly guide you to draw patterns related to upcoming or existing trends, relationships, and many such things.

Its most interesting example is the co-relational study of people who use social media. You can easily find which generation is interested in which category of feeds or apps or videos. Research has proven that teenagers prefer to use Snapchat or WhatsApp, whereas, adults love to be on Facebook and Instagram.

Causal or Explanatory Research

It is also called explanatory research, which is based on comparisons. Businesses use it for determining causes and effect relationships between different variables.

The substantial thing is that it involves no manipulation. However, there may have some changes observed on groups. It is simply because similar changes impact them. This is the trickiest business research because the independent and complementary variables co-exist in a group. 

Experimental Research

This study is based on a scientific research design. It could have a hypothesis or a virtual feature that the research can control.

It is advantageous in understanding the behavioral aspects of customers, which impact revenue generation.

For instance, the food catering apps have observed that certain discounts attract people in no time. These days, every new one in the market follows this strategy.

Online Research

Simply put, this is a great way of data collection. You may find information in any volume or amount in a few seconds, which is opposite to a library. There are a ton of resources available on Google, Bing, and Yahoo to find whatever you want. With this secondary research method, you can easily set a sales or marketing strategy.

Summary

Business research is a method of collecting insights to make big or small decisions related to sales, refining products, promotion, or attracting customers.