USING MIXED METHOD: BOTH QUALITATIVE & QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
EXAMPLE : USING MIXED METHOD: BOTH QUALITATIVE & QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
QuickStop Convenience Stores
Background
Once upon a time there was a successful line of convenience stores. We'll call this group of stores "QuickStop". At some point a staff-member realised that QuickStop seemed to be patronised by many more men than women. This was passed along to the management team and they asked the store tellers to informally keep track of the proportions of men to women who came into their stores. It turned out that the theory seemed to hold true, and in fact far more men patronized QuickStop than did women. This information was passed along to the other managers at other QuickStop stores and they found the same trend. This received some higher level management attention and they began to wonder why this was occurring. Eventually management made the decision that this was too large a group of potential customers to lose, and a decision was eventually made to study this phenomenon and to understand why it was taking place, and if anything could be done about it.
Research Objective
A research project was designed to understand how women felt about shopping at QuickStop stores and why. It was decided that this research should be qualitative and the specific methodology would be In-depth-Interviews (this is research with one professional interviewer and one respondent at a time - in this case the decision was made because there were suspicions that there could be sensitive issues that wouldn't be discussed as candidly in a group setting).
Qualitative Research
About two dozen current or potential female customers were paid to come into a research facility to discuss the use of convenience stores in general, and later in the interviews the discussion was directed specifically to QuickStop convenience stores, in particular. The results were very surprising to the management team. The major qualitative findings included the following:
i. Women viewed
QuickStop Convenience Stores
Background
Once upon a time there was a successful line of convenience stores. We'll call this group of stores "QuickStop". At some point a staff-member realised that QuickStop seemed to be patronised by many more men than women. This was passed along to the management team and they asked the store tellers to informally keep track of the proportions of men to women who came into their stores. It turned out that the theory seemed to hold true, and in fact far more men patronized QuickStop than did women. This information was passed along to the other managers at other QuickStop stores and they found the same trend. This received some higher level management attention and they began to wonder why this was occurring. Eventually management made the decision that this was too large a group of potential customers to lose, and a decision was eventually made to study this phenomenon and to understand why it was taking place, and if anything could be done about it.
Research Objective
A research project was designed to understand how women felt about shopping at QuickStop stores and why. It was decided that this research should be qualitative and the specific methodology would be In-depth-Interviews (this is research with one professional interviewer and one respondent at a time - in this case the decision was made because there were suspicions that there could be sensitive issues that wouldn't be discussed as candidly in a group setting).
Qualitative Research
About two dozen current or potential female customers were paid to come into a research facility to discuss the use of convenience stores in general, and later in the interviews the discussion was directed specifically to QuickStop convenience stores, in particular. The results were very surprising to the management team. The major qualitative findings included the following:
i. Women viewed