Definition: A Qualitative Analysis is a type of analysis that is based on non-numeric information to assess certain subject. The elements involved in qualitative analysis are mostly related with behavior and attributes rather than figures.
What Does Qualitative Analysis Mean?
Statistically speaking and from a business standpoint, most analytical tools are based on numbers and what you can get from them. Nevertheless, there is another major field that is based on characteristics that can’t be portrayed by using figures and these are explained through qualitative analysis.
By including these elements, a researcher can have a better grasp on the personality or behavior of certain subject and judgments about character and attributes can also be extracted from this type of assessment. From a marketing perspective, this field is essential to describe customers, market segments and competitors by using demographic items such as gender, geographical location, behavior patterns, frequency of consumption or favorite outdoor activities.
A company can develop a person or a company’s profile with qualitative analysis and it can develop strategies and courses of actions to use those elements on its behalf. Nevertheless, qualitative variables are more difficult to analyze than numerical values since they require certain treatment in order to be properly presented for decision-making purposes.
Example
Los Burritos LLC is a Mexican food company that offers gourmet dishes to high-end customers. The company was founded by Americo Valente, a Mexican immigrant that saw an opportunity to bring high-quality Mexican food into the U.S. market. He got the idea of opening the restaurant after reading a report that affirmed that 85% of Americans were open to try foreign dishes and 34% of them preferred gourmet-level food rather than fast food.
He identified a market niche within this information as all the qualitative variables were inclined positively towards foreign gourmet-level restaurants. Los Burritos is now a huge success. They have more than 35 restaurants across the West Coast and they are planning to keep opening new ones each year.
