From microLINKS Wiki
Primary Research Tools
| Tool
| Description
| Advantages
| Disadvantages
|
| Interviews
| One-on-one structured or semi-structured conversations with potential buyers or industry experts
|
- Excellent for in-depth testing of research hypotheses and insights into the psyche of buyers
- Access to qualitative data
- Ability to explore and probe responses
|
- Expensive and time consuming
- Respondents may be reluctant to share personal beliefs and information
- Possibility of interviewer bias
- Rarely yields useful quantitative data
|
| Focus Groups
| Small, structured group meeting consisting of 5 to 20 participants from a target market segment or a cross-section of a value chain
|
- Ideal for ascertaining interest in abstract or new concepts
- Excellent for pre-testing ideas
- Generation of new research hypotheses
- Exploration of new and unrelated topics as they arise
|
- Small group bias
- Trained moderators required.
- Data not sufficient to make major decisions
- Reluctance to share personal beliefs in group setting
|
| Surveys
| Closed research instrument designed to test attitudes and perceptions on current product offerings or clearly defined future offerings. Can include quantitative and qualitative data
|
- Quantitative data provides rigorous foundation for other qualitative methods
- Data easy to tabulate and generalize from assuming high enough sample size
- Depending on distribution channel, relatively inexpensive
- Good for sensitive issues
|
- Limited ability to probe responses, so questions need to be simple
- Difficult and/or expensive to achieve statistical significance. This can be overcome with Internet/email distribution
|
| Observation
| In-store (or at the point of sale) observation of customers using or considering the purchase of a product
|
- Inexpensive if observation is “blind”
- Access to real life data
|
- Difficult to ascertain motivations behind behavior
|
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