In an era where companies are inundated with data, investing billions annually in analytics and technology, understanding the “why” behind customer behavior has never been more important.

From initial consideration to point-of-sale and post-purchase reactions, brands have more data on the customer journey than ever before. This has led many marketing and product leaders to incorrectly believe that they no longer need to invest in primary, qualitative research given the plethora of CRM, transactional, and other data already available to them. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In this blog post, we discuss the indispensable role that qualitative research plays as a stand-alone methodology or part of a powerful qual/quant combo in better-predicting customer behavior and shaping marketing strategy.