Can Qualitative Market Research Predict Consumer Trends?

Market research subtracts the guesswork from data analysis and offers evidence of what your audience is looking for and talking about. You can dig the patterns in their preferences and then predict trends that will impact your business.

Here is how qualitative market research can help you dig into consumer trends.

The Role Market Research Plays in Predicting Trends

Social media has been an indispensable part of market research and surveys. If you regularly monitor hashtags, your brand’s handle, people’s comments on your posts for reviews and suggestions, and influencers’ posts and engagement, you will notice the topics that get eyeballs.

These are the hot topics that are and will remain in trend for some time.

Similarly, you can analyze consumer reviews to understand what they’re looking for in products and services. Common demands and needs turn the tides and become trends.

Similarly, user behavior patterns and buying journeys reveal a lot about what’s selling in the market and what might stick around for a while. However, don’t just get stuck with only your audience. Go a step ahead, and observe the audience of your peers, your domain, and other related industries.

Having said so, one or two market research projects can’t help you learn trends. Trends emerge gradually over conversations and appear when consumer demands shift.

For that, you need to be consistent with your observation, data collection, and analysis. You must first find patterns in numbers and stats, then dive deeper into qualitative research.

Not just understanding what users want, but learning why they want it, helps innovate.

Learn how to use social media for market research.

How Qualitative Market Research Helps with Predicting Trends

1.      Shifting Preferences and Motivations

With qualitative review methods like focus group meetings and in-depth interviews, you can understand what’s changing inside the users’ minds.

Stats might tell you that preservatives and stabilizers are taking a backseat in the food industry across all sorts of products. But what is at the core of this shift is the awareness of health hazards and increasing awareness about fresh products.

You can learn from your users that they’re increasingly analyzing the list of ingredients and are becoming conscious of what their bodies are consuming. Such analysis might not come out only from stats, but a personal interview with consumers and food experts can reveal this pattern.

And such trends might stay for longer, maybe for decades or beyond, because health is something users don’t want to compromise on.

2.      Emotional Cues

What qualitative reviews capture are emotional cues and nonverbal nuances of communication that stats can’t capture through forms.

Subtle head shakes to simple carbs, negative emotions towards unhealthy ingredients, and concerns about questionable choices of food products and storage conditions can be great patterns to observe.

Such cues don’t appear on forms, but they surface in the groups where people discuss openly. Communities, forums, and focus groups work in your favor to find out concerns and leanings that don’t come out so easily individually.

3.      Uninhibited Customer Sentiments

A deeper explanation of consumer problems comes to the fore in qualitative data collection, where users get to express themselves more openly.

They can explain the gaps they see in the market, their needs that always remain unfulfilled, and pain points that don’t have a solution so far. For instance, rising prices of fresh vegetables and their concerning quality are not something new.

However, consumers’ interest in making food from scratch has risen for some time now. Fresh products over frozen items might be more preferred in such situations, and people always struggle to find time for that.

However, with these discussions, you can understand that fresh base products, such as sauces, can be a great trend over store-bought jars that stay for 6 months.

Before You Leave

Lifestyle changes and social & cultural shifts give rise to many new trends. However, what remains is the reliability of market research data with a good survey partner.

If you need help with social media listening or qualitative market research, contact Track Opinion today. We have been working in market research for over 16 years, and cater to businesses of all scales.