Using Mixed Method: Both Qualitative & Quantitative Research

BackgroundOnce upon a time there was a successful line of public lavatory stores. Well c tout ensemble this group of stores QuickStop. At some point a staff-member effected that QuickStop seemed to be patronised by many more custody than women. This was passed on 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 out-of-the-way(prenominal) 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 take aim management attention and they began to wonder why this was occurring. Eventually management do 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 ensure why it was winning place, and if anything could be d one about it.Research ObjectiveA query project was designed to understand how women matt-up about shopping at QuickStop stores and why. It was resolute that this look for should be qualitative and the specific methodology would be In-depth-Interviews (this is look with one passe-partout interviewer and one respondent at a time in this solecismful the decision was made because there were suspicions that there could be sensitive issues that wouldnt be discussed as candidly in a group setting).Qualitative ResearchAbout two 12 current or potential young-bearing(prenominal) customers were paid to come into a research facility to discuss the use of doodad stores in general, and ulterior in the interviews the discussion was directed specifically to QuickStop restroom stores, in particular. The results were actually surprising to the management team. The major qualitative findings includedthe followingi. Women viewed convenience stores to be primarily designed for men, with li ttle or no servant for women,ii. The bathrooms at convenience stores were believed to be the dirtiest that could be found in a city gross was the most common description and that perception permeated everything that women felt about convenience stores in generaliii. QuickStop was seen as one of the worst of convenience stores kind of the place for a man to buy gas, plump a six-pack of cheap beer and cigarettes, but not the kind of place I want to go.Quantitative ResearchOnce the management team had an understanding of what issues they faced with female customers, they felt that they needed to understand how broadly these beliefs were held. Now they needed to get some hard numbers, and that meant that they needed to conduct quantitative market research. The research objective for this signifier of research werei. Understand how female customers of QuickStop differ from those that dont regularly visit these stores.ii. Understand whether or not a renovation of QuickStop could ca jole each group to visit more frequently (or at all depending on whether the respondent currently avoided QuickStop entirely).For the quantitative phase of research they decided to conduct 250 telephone interviews with a combination of female respondents. The requirements to participate in this phase of research were that half of the respondents stated that they had used QuickStop at least(prenominal) five times in the last year, and the other half admitted to intentionally avoiding QuickStop altogether, although they did use other brands of convenience stores. The major resultsfrom the quantitative phase indicated thata. oer 76% of all female QuickStop customers were women under 30 years old, without children, mend women with children and with higher incomes were 5 times less likely to shop at QuickStopb. The good news was that of the women who didnt currently use QuickStop, 64% said that if these stores were to modify their color schemes, clean up their bathrooms and update th eir health and feminine products that they would be willing to try QuickStop again.The two phases of research (qualitative + quantitative) gave the QuickStop management team a very good understanding of where they currently stood with female customers and why. Their quantitative research also indicated that those women who were not currently using their stores would forgive them if they changed their ways. Their decision immediately was to decide if gaining more middle-aged women as customers was worth the cost of modify their stores and spending more money to keep them clean and neat, and better stocked with the types of products that middle-aged women with children needed.Research note in general when conducting two phases of research (in this case qualitative and quantitative market research) its most often the case that the prototypical phase (qualitative research) is conducted first as a lead-in. Qualitative research tends to help the management team understand the underlyi ng issues, and the second phase (quantitative in this case) helps to understand how pervasive/wide spread these feelings/attitudes are among a certain target audience.