'Using Mixed Method: Both Qualitative & Quantitative Research\r'

'BackgroundOnce upon a time there was a successful line of lash-up inventorys. Well c solely this conference of stores â€Å"QuickStop”. At some point a staff-member irritate that QuickStop seemed to be patronised by many much men than women. This was passed along to the management team and they asked the store tellers to informally play along track of the proportions of men to women who came into their stores. It turn out that the theory seemed to hold true, and in feature far more men patronized QuickStop than did women.This discipline was passed along to the early(a) managers at other QuickStop stores and they run aground the same trend. This received some higher aim management attention and they began to wonder why this was occurring. ultimately management made the finale that this was too enceinte a crowd of potential customers to lose, and a stopping point was eventually made to study this phenomenon and to understand why it was taking place, and if any thing could be done close to it.Research ObjectiveA enquiry project was designed to understand how women felt about shopping at QuickStop stores and why. It was concluded that this explore 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 courting the decision was made because there were suspicions that there could be smooth issues that wouldnt be discussed as candidly in a group setting).Qualitative ResearchAbout two dozen current or potential distaff customers were paid to come into a research facility to discuss the use of gizmo stores in general, and later in the interviews the discussion was tell specifically to QuickStop convenience stores, in particular. The results were very affect to the management team. The major qualitative findings included the side by side(p):i. Women viewed convenience stores to be primarily designed for men, with s light or no consideration for women,ii. The bathrooms at convenience stores were believed to be the dirtiest that could be found in a city †â€Å"gross” was the most common comment †and that perception permeated everything that women felt about convenience stores in generaliii. QuickStop was seen as one of the worst of convenience stores â€Å" benevolent of the place for a man to buy gas, get a six-pack of cheap beer and cigarettes, but non the kind of place I want to go”.Quantitative ResearchOnce the management team had an understanding of what issues they faced with female person customers, they felt that they needed to understand how broadly these beliefs were held. at once they needed to get some hard numbers, and that meant that they needed to conduct quantitative market research. The research object for this level of research were:i. Understand how female customers of QuickStop take issue from those that dont regularly visit these stores.ii. Unde rstand whether or not a renovation of QuickStop could entice each group to visit more frequently (or at all depending on whether the respondent shortly avoided QuickStop entirely).For the quantitative point 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 five clock in the live year, and the other half admitted to intentionally avoiding QuickStop altogether, although they did use other brands of convenience stores. The major results from the quantitative phase indicated that:a. everyplace 76% of all female QuickStop customers were women under 30 years old, without children, while women with children and with higher incomes were 5 times less likely to shop at QuickStopb. The substantially news was that of the women who didnt currently use QuickStop, 64% say that if these stores were to modify their color schemes, clean up their bathrooms and update their health and feminine products that they would be willing to correct 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 â€Å"forgive” them if they changed their ways. Their decision now was to decide if gaining more middle-aged women as customers was worth the cost of updating 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 a good deal the case that the first phase (qualitative research) is conducted first as a â€Å"l ead-in”. Qualitative research tends to service the management team understand the underlying issues, and the chip phase (quantitative in this case) helps to understand how pervasive/ wide-cut spread these feelings/attitudes are among a certain position audience.\r\n'