Last updated August 24, 2024
If you are teaching qualitative research methods in relation to market research or because you are teaching these topics in general, these free qualitative teaching activities are for you to use as you need.
Benefits of Qualitative Research in Market Research
In order to understand customer needs, their emotional response to a new product or service, and their motivation for being interested in buying or using a product, qualitative research works very well.
In other words, rather than trying to measure something specific numerically, we are trying to evaluate and understand qualitative data.
To collect this information, market research in the form of interviews, focus groups, and via ethnographic studies, provides us a great way to better understand these emotions and motivations, in order to try and understand consumer behavior.
This higher-level understanding through qualitative data, enables us to better plan, adapt, and market new services and products, and to the right audience.
Qualitative teaching activities
1. Social Media Sentiment Analysis Workshop
Time needed: 30 minutes.
Intention: Social media undoubtedly plays a major role in market research these days so this is one of the most relevant qualitative teaching activities in this list if you are interested in social media and market research.
The aim of this activity is to evaluate the opinions and overall attitudes on social media surrounding one of your products, brands, or services, to try and gauge how your product is received online.
This type of qualitative market research activity can be extremely valuable for helping teach participants how to use social media for such research.
How to turn the activity: To get started with this activity, we will be delving into what is known as ‘Sentiment Analysis‘.
If your participants might not already know the term ‘Sentiment Analysis’, you can explain that this has to do with the semantics of language, i.e. terms and terminology used to express sentiments about a product/service and how we analyse these uses of language.
Now, as the training facilitator (or teacher), you should choose one well-known brand.
You will now ask the participants to spend 10 minutes to analyse this famous brand on social media sites (such as Facebook, or Instagram).
Participants should analyse:
- Instances of words used in the social media posts (and write down a list of these terms, both positive and negative and also other terms used).
- Participants should consider all words used including those in hashtags, keywords, and any brand mentions for the brand from other social media accounts.
After the 10 minutes is over, the next step is to ask participants to now analyze the words and terms they wrote down, that they noted about the brand on social media.
They will spend 10 minutes to try and categorise these words and see if they can notice any themes. They may work in pairs to do this part of the activity if they wish.
I then suggest ending this activity with a 10-minute class discussion. Ask participants to volunteer any themes they saw on social media for the brand.
What do these examples of qualitative data that they collected tell them about the brand?
Was there a clear marketing message or certain emotions, for example, that the company uses?
Likewise, from a consumer perspective, what did participants notice about how the brand is perceived online?
You can end the activity by explaining that this was a simplified activity and that for Sentiment Analysis, automated tools such as Hootsuite can be used and a more detailed thematic approach can be taken, but this activity is just an introduction to get participants thinking about social media and Sentiment Analysis.
2. Observation Fieldwork Workshop
Time Needed: One hour (plus time to walk to a venue).
Intention: This is one of the best market research activities for giving participants the chance to dip into experiencing some basic observational fieldwork, a key technique in qualitative research.
This activity gets those new to observational fieldwork, thinking about what’s involved.
One of the best ways to begin to understand consumer behavior is to do so in natural settings, i.e. where the consumer goes about their everyday business.
If you want to understand, for example, how travellers use an airport duty-free shop that takes them on a zigzag walk from just after security to the departures lounge, watching and observing their behaviour can be extremely revealing.
Note: This activity assumes that they have already been introduced to the idea of:
- The different types of observation (such as participant vs. non-participant observation, structured vs. unstructured observation) and the differences.
- If not, you might wish to briefly explain these differences.
Explain to participants that they will work in pairs and that they will go to a local retail space (such as a coffee shop, mall if there is one nearby, etc) and that they will observe from a distance, the customers’ behaviours.
They should write down anything interesting they notice, i.e. any behaviors (perhaps the way people queue for example), interactions, and anything that potentially tells us something about the people and the environment they are in.
They should note both verbal and non-verbal cues.
I would suggest asking them NOT to take photographs or film anything as doing so can have ethical considerations and this is best saved for future research when you have discussed these ethical factors in more detail.
It is worth also asking the participants to avoid trying to influence the findings, i.e. observe from a distance.
Give participants 30 minutes for the observations and note-taking.
Once participants are back in the classroom/training room after the observations, and given this is a basic and introductory activity, do some very basic analysis as a class.
Ask each group to read aloud their main and most interesting observations and as the training facilitator, make notes on a whiteboard as they do so.
After you have gone through each group and written up their ideas, have a class discussion about the themes that they can see from the list on the whiteboard.
How might the observations be categorized? What common themes occurred?
Even though we are not teaching data management at this point, certain themes will already likely be visible, even at this early and simple stage.
Also, what difficulties or issues did they experience when trying to do the observations?
End the activity by reminding them that this was just a taster of what qualitative and market research can be about, but to use this to consider what considerations they might need to make in the future when undergoing field research.
3. Persona Development Workshop
Time needed: 30 minutes
Purpose/Intention: This is one of the best market research activities for developing a customer avatar based on the results of market research and qualitative research.
Marketing strategies and campaigns need to be based on understanding exactly who your customers are and hence the benefit of trying to understand the behaviors, pain points, and needs of your target customers are valuable.
How to run the activity: Start by dividing participants into groups of 4 (adapt as needed).
Explain (if needed) that a customer persona is a fictional character that represents a key segment of the target market.
Now provide the name of a product or service to each group (fictional or real) and provide them with a short description of the provide/service (so just prepare some simple scenarios beforehand to hand out).
Now ask the groups to create a customer avatar that includes:
- Demographics: Age, gender, occupation, etc.
- Interests: Hobbies, favourite activities, etc.
- Challenges: Problems or needs that the product/service could solve.
Allow 15 minutes for this.
After the 15 minutes, allow another 15 minutes for each group to present their product and customer avatar to the rest of the class.
As the training facilitator, I suggest asking each group how their customer avatar would affect how they would market their product/service.
To end the activity, I would suggest asking participants to consider customer avatars more when they are thinking about market research and collecting qualitative data.
4. Open-Ended Questions Exercise
Time needed: 30 minutes.
Intention: The focus of this qualitative training activity is to emphasise the importance of and how to use open-ended questions in qualitative research.
When we use qualitative methods for market research, open-ended questions give us a greater chance to discover new information and to spread the net wider in terms of data.
Knowing how to ask an open-ended question, versus a closed question, is important and extremely useful.
How to run the activity: You have probably already explained the difference between open and closed questions but if not, start by providing an example such as:
- Would you buy this product again? = closed because it generally is a yes/no question.
- What was it about the product that would make you want to buy it again = open question because you are inviting them to give ideas and information.
Now divide participants into groups of 4 and allocate each group a common market research topic, such as customer satisfaction, product improvement, or brand perception.
Next, allocate the groups 15 minutes and ask the groups to compile a list of 12 closed questions and to then write down the open-ended question alternative they could use.
Now have each group share two of their open-ended questions with the entire class.
As a class, participants can give feedback on the open-ended questions regards whether they think the questions can be even more open, clearer, or improved in any way.
>> Qualitative Market Research Teaching Materials
5. Empathy Interviews Workshop
Time needed: 60 minutes.
Intention: The best qualitative researchers for market research are those who have strong emotional intelligence and who are able to show empathy to those they interview.
Showing empathy provides a stronger connection and helps build trust, and this opens up the way for volunteers being interviewed to be more open with their answers.
This is one of those market research activities that helps participants to better understand the role of empathy in qualitative research.
How to Run the Activity: If you have not already discussed empathy beforehand, you can briefly mention/explain that showing empathy and building rapport with those you interview is closely related to the depth of data and feedback you can expect from the interviewee.
Furthermore, the types of skills connected to empathy (and which can be learned) include learning how to actively listen, making use of open-ended questions (so that they can express themselves) and always attempting to view things from the perspective of the interviewee.
One way to bring emotions and empathy into market research is by asking empathy-related interview questions.
An optional next stage is to run a quick demonstration with you (the training coordinator) running a 3-minute demo to show how you can use empathy-based questions.
Ask for a volunteer (to be the person interviewed) and run the demo with you asking questions, such as “Can you tell me about a time when you felt frustrated using our product?. What emotions did you experience during that situation?”.
Now divide participants into pairs and one person will be the interviewer, and the other person will be the customer in this roleplay.
Giving the groups 10 minutes for this, the interviewer must ask empathy-based questions to try and understand the “customer’s” experiences and feelings.
After 5 minutes they will swap roles.
After the 10 minutes are up and both have tried both roles, ask the class as a whole what questions they might have or any comments about asking empathy-based questions.
To end the activity you might want to just re-iterate that, in market research, learning to listen carefully, and asking open-ended questions that are emotive based, can be great for collecting valuable data.
Teaching Qualitative Market Research
If you found these qualitative teaching activities and exercises helpful, please do check out the qualitative research teaching materials. You can use the materials for teaching employees and other adults including college and university students. You can find more market research activities inside the teaching and training materials.
Owner at Symonds Research Training Materials
Valeria has a PhD in Sociology, has 25 years+ working in education, has taught at the University of Bath &Cardiff Metropolitan University, & Hankuk University (Korea) & worked as a researcher for Exeter University, & has many years of industry experience including with Cardiff University in management roles. She now creates training course materials courseware.