Market Research and Consumer Behavior Understanding

Question: Create an article summary based on business and/or news article taken from a scholarly marketing research publication pertaining to a consumer based marketing research topic. The idea is to see how the concepts I am learning in class apply to the real world. I am learning about the marketing research process and proposals, such as qualitative and quantitative research methods. Answer: The considered article has been established for the purpose to gain an in-depth understanding of the experience, behavior, and journey of the customers of Apple. The conducted research presented through the article indicative of the fact that in the current scenario consumers prefers to make communication with the business enterprises through multiple touch points (Lemon Verhoef, 2016). The article says that such recent trend in customer behavior determines that this is probably a high time when business firms should start integrating their external stakeholders with the internal business function to gain positive customer responses and stable relationship with them. Following the major aim of the concerned article which is to have a clear understanding of the complex attitude of the customers, the author has given stress upon qualitative research. The article establishes its core aspects by evaluating several historical resources in the context of customer experience (Lemon Verhoef, 2016). Alongside, the article has made a serious attempt to showcase the way in which customer journeys and experiences are related can be handled with customer management. The research article is relevant enough for understanding that instead of having a handful of statistic tools for quantitative research; qualitative thematic analysis method is significant sufficiently to get to the root of critical matters like the considered one. The outcome could not have been obtained without pertaining the existing concepts and literature. As opined by Creswell (2013), thematic research style in qualitative analysis is used less though it is powerful enough to establish a new hypothesis. The article finally showcased some significant points through which future researcher can undertake research studies on the same subject matter. In the current scenario, enterprises like Apple prefer to take market research to gain customer opinions through conducting surveys on buyers. Therefore it seems understandable that primarily quantitative research process is the first preferences for most of the business organization. On the other side, a question may arise about the importance of doing thematic qualitative research to understand customer behavior (Lehnert et al., 2016). Quantitative market research may provide a handful of numerical data which could not be understood without the help of qualitative thematic research. As opined by Duggleby Williams (2016), the thematic analysis in qualitative method paves the way for gaining better perception regarding the on field data acquired through the random survey. The concerned article could not have been prepared if there have not been supporting for quantitative data. Most importantly, the purpose of the article is found to be established on particular numerical data regarding the complex behavior of consumers. Therefore, it can be deducted that in market research, qualitative and quantitative thematic research methods are correlated with each other. Therefore, alongside presenting historical perspective regarding customer experience, the article proves another major fact that is the thematic analysis of qualitative method is equally important for market research in comparison with quantitative studies. It is, therefore, understandable that market research which is an essential tool for communication with the customer and gaining the response from them executes fruitfully with the help of both qualitative and quantitative research methods. References Creswell, J. W. (2013).Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approach. Sage publications. Duggleby, W., Williams, A. (2016). Methodological and Epistemological Considerations in Utilizing Qualitative Inquiry to Develop Interventions.Qualitative health research,26(2), 147-153. Lehnert, K., Craft, J., Singh, N., Park, Y. H. (2016). The human experience of ethics: a review of a decade of qualitative ethical decision making research.Business Ethics: A European Review,25(4), 498-537. Lemon, K. N., Verhoef, P. C. (2016). Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey 1.Journal of Marketing.