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One of the hardest, yet most crucial, aspects of marketing research is to decode consumers’ decision making processes. Companies need to go beyond numbers to understand consumer behaviour. However, leveraging qualitative research as a source of competitive advantage remains a challenge for many organisations.
At the upcoming Qual360 APAC on October 19 & 20 in Singapore, senior client-side researchers from Unilever, Citi, Facebook and Rabobank will explore how qualitative research can help businesses make better decisions, develop new products and services, and address common marketing or business challenges.
Understanding how economic, societal, and demographic variables shape the profiles of consumers may not be an easy task, but it is definitely worth the effort. Ratna Pratik, VP Consumer & business Insights for Unilever will discuss how she leveraged qualitative research to understand how the classic concepts of femininity are changing in Asian societies. Facebook’s Derek Lee discovered how modern culture shapes beauty values for woman across Asia.
From the banking sector, Fajar Rahmanto from Rabobank will address the cultural blunders companies often make when entering a new market and how qualitative research can help to adapt brand identities to local cultures. For many organizations, qual has long been established as a vital part of business decision making processes. Solomon Huang from Citi will show how the blending of qual and quant can drive strategy, define goals and help to advance corporate decision making.
In this ever-changing, high-tech, fast-paced world where big data and new technologies threaten to preoccupy corporate research agendas, qual needs to (re)claim its role in the overall corporate marketing research efforts. The good new is that qualitative research is becoming increasingly exciting, with bold new projects using innovative solutions from improvisation theatre to neuroscience. The success of conferences such as Qualitative360 shows that the qual community is active, engaged and stronger than ever. It’s time to be bold!
