On 3rd October 2022, GreenBook published an article written by FlexMR’s in-house copywriter, Emily James, entitled 3 Emerging Qualitative Research Trends to Watch. With some great insights from Gary Stow, a Senior Associate at Reckitt, this article focussed particularly on the trends of video qualitative insights, experiences, and digital connection.
Looking into the future is always tricky. When discovering new trends, we must try to understand if they are truly impactful and useful trends, or simply fads that will fade away in a matter of months once the novelty has died down. The only way to try and understand the distinction between the two, and what label we put onto potential future trends is to discuss it with other insight professionals and use experience to dictate our actions.
3 Emerging Qualitative Research Trends
Insight experts across the industry are watching to discover what innovations arise in the next few years that will expand the reach, influence and efficiency of insights and market research. There’s been lots of innovation and improvements in data collection, analysis and reporting through a variety of channels and technologies, and there are three trends in particular that are worthy of note:
Video Qual Insights
Video is being integrated into many aspects of market research, with qualitative research being one of the main beneficiaries. This is one of the biggest opportunities for qualitative research since the insights industry took true advantage of the internet, but previous attempts to include video into qual research have been hampered by a few significant challenges.
Experience Over Research
This can be thought of in two ways, firstly by tailoring qualitative research to capture experiences over consumer perceptions. With market research being driven by quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups, insight experts rely a lot on what consumers say they do rather than what they actually do, so better crafting research experiences to capture the actual consumer experience would be incredibly useful for insightful decision-making.
Increasing Digital Connection
This trend has already gained a lot of traction through the pandemic where the world had to increase their reliance on online technologies, but there is still a way to go. As insight experts there are plenty of ways we can increase digital connection in qualitative research, from injecting creativity into qualitative tools and methods to redesigning research priorities to accurately integrate tactics that boost respondent engagement in market research.
To find out more about these trends to watch and to read the full article, visit the GreenBook website here.
About GreenBook
The GreenBook mission is to connect marketers and market researchers with the people, information and ideas that will generate big results for their companies. They serve the market research industry through: Research on the industry (GRIT Publications), IIeX events, Webinars and online training, GreenBook Blog (charting the future of the industry), and the GreenBook Directory, the ultimate guide for buyers of market research.
