Importance of Organizations to find our the Needs and Wants of its Essay

Importance of Organizations to find our the Needs and Wants of its Customers - Essay Example Here, both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative research (survey) methods can be applied to gain information on whether it is important for organizations to seek out customer’s needs and wants about a particular service in the market. Our needs make up our survival kit while wants are the desires we have towards a particular good or service. According to (Davies 2005 pp98), most of our needs and wants are satisfied by products and services in the market once we purchase them. For full customer satisfaction, it is important for the providers of these services to have knowledge of what sells best in the market for the customer to go for. In order to achieve this knowledge, marketing research has to be done by the various companies providing these services in order to understand the choice and preferences of its customers in order for the company to compete effectively in the market. The following are some of the differences between the two research methods commonly used t oday. Some of the differences between qualitative and quantitative research methods Qualitative research seeks out the why but not how things happen throughout the analysis of unstructured information. It does not rely on the numbers or statistics like in quantitative research. ... On the other hand, quantitative research methods will try to collect information in the form of numbers. For instance in the Nashville international airport industry, the researcher uses the functional independence measure commonly abbreviated as FMI to collect information on the passengers functional abilities from the time the customer enters the airport until he/she leaves the airport (Holloway & Plant 2004). Qualitative research is used to gain insight in to people’s behavior, their attitudes towards a particular airline, their motivations, concerns and lifestyles. After collecting data the researcher seats back then interprets the information received. For instance in the southwest airline, the researcher can ask questions like: do you take long before our staff serves you? How do you find cleanliness in our company? Is our airline secure for you to travel with? After getting feedback from these passengers, the researcher now seats down then interprets the information fro m the answers provided by the customers. Quantitative research deals with quantities of things and involves measured of these things. For instance, a group of passengers in the Nashville international airport taking a flight to the same destination say from London to New York. Here, information is gathered by use of objective measurements or even the functional assessment tools (Litosellite 2004). Focus groups Vs. Surveys According to (Kolb 2008) there is a debate as to which type of research is best by many marketing firms. Is it better to carry out a survey in our company or will the focus groups provide the required answers to our success? The difference between the two is that focus groups are a qualitative research approach while the survey form part of the quantitative