--- title: "Qualitative Research Agency for Consumer and Tech Brands | antedote" description: "Qualitative research for consumer and tech brands: depth interviews, focus groups and ethnography that show why people choose, use and switch." url: "https://antedote.com/what-we-do/qualitative-research/" --- # Qualitative research that shows why your customers do what they do. Depth interviews, focus groups and ethnography, planned around what your team needs to understand or decide, so what you hear from customers can change what you do. ## What it helps you understand. - Why do people choose us, a competitor, or nothing at all? - What do people mean by the words they use about our category? - Which story should we lead with, and for whom? - What does our product need to be, in its users’ own terms? - What should our survey ask, and in whose words? How many people share a view is a question for [Quantitative research](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/quantitative-research/). Programs may combine the two, depending on the question and the evidence already available. ## Past the first answer. A first answer is where a conversation starts. We follow it into people’s routines, their context and their own words, so your team knows what an answer means before acting on it. *An illustration, not a client project.* A drawing: a moderator’s discussion guide on robot vacuums, headed by the team’s decision, what the next model must get right. Its sections are typed in the planned order. In pencil, the section on a normal week is lassoed and moved up, marked “She started here”; under the typed question “What made you buy one?” the follow-up questions step down from her first answer, “To save time”, through “Time for what?”, to the reason, “Saturdays with the kids”, which is ringed. A coral note from the team watching reads “Ask what ‘clean enough’ means to her.” - **Typed:** the plan your team agreed, built around its decision. - **In pencil:** where the session went, and the questions that followed her answers. - **On the note:** a question from your team, watching live. ## Three decisions our qualitative work informed. ### Which positioning would make a new smart home security device compelling to the brand’s app users and to buyers new to the brand? A smart home company · [Choosing how to talk about a new smart home security device](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/positioning-a-new-smart-home-device/) **What people compared** Messaging territories, each a different way of describing the same product, in online groups with people already using the brand’s app and people new to the brand. **What happened next** The product later launched. ### Should a new range of power tools for homeowners call itself professional, and how should its displays and packs describe its power? An outdoor equipment maker · [Positioning a new power tool range for two audiences](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/what-professional-meant-on-the-shelf/) **What people compared** Positioning routes on in-store displays, beside a competitor’s, and pack options that described power in different ways, with homeowners and owners of small landscaping businesses. **What happened next** The range later launched, on one of the positioning routes the research had evaluated. ### What should two new restaurant seasonings look, smell and taste like, in chefs’ own terms? A food company’s foodservice business · [Defining what professional chefs expect from a seasoning](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/what-chefs-need-from-a-seasoning/) **What people compared** Prototypes beside competitor products and the company’s current ones, each cooked into the same dish by chefs in their own kitchens in two cities. **What the team came away with** A benchmark for each product in chefs’ own language, with the range between too little and too much for each element. ## Depth interviews and focus groups. We choose the format for what your team needs to hear, and often combine them. ### Depth interviews One person, or a pair, at a time: at home, at work or by video, when each person’s story matters in detail or the subject is private. Tasks done online beforehand let the conversation start from what people did. ### Focus groups A small group, in person or online, when your team needs to see routes compared side by side, or to hear how people talk about a category with each other. When the answer is in what people do more than what they say, we use [ethnographic research](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/ethnographic-research/), in homes, in store and on their phones. Our own qualitative researchers design and moderate the sessions, with local moderators where a market’s language needs them. [AQR Qualitative Excellence Award finalist, twice](https://www.mrs.org.uk/pdf/MRS%20AWARDS%20BOTN%202022.pdf) ## Before you commission it. ### How many interviews or groups will we need? Enough to hear from each kind of person your decision depends on, in each market where they differ. We plan the number from that range, and add sessions where a smaller group matters to the decision. ### Can you run it in several countries? Yes. One guide is shared across the markets, so they can be read side by side, while recruitment, language and materials are made for each market. We check whether a difference comes from the market itself or from the translation. ### Do you use AI in qualitative research? Yes. We build our own AI agents and use them to look further and check harder across what people said. Our people decide what it means, and every AI output is reviewed by a person before it reaches you. [How we use AI](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/ai-in-our-work/) ### Do you use jobs to be done? Yes, when the question is why people choose, switch or stay. Jobs to be done looks at the progress people want to make in their circumstances, and it shapes whom we talk to and what we ask about. What you receive is in your customers’ own words. [What would customers have to give up to choose you?](https://antedote.com/thinking/why-customers-who-want-to-switch-stay-put/) ## What do your customers do that you can’t yet explain? Bring that question, and the decision it feeds, with as much or as little detail as you like. We’ll suggest who we should hear from, and how. [Talk to us](https://antedote.com/talk-to-us/) · [hello@antedote.com](mailto:hello@antedote.com) A partner or director will reply.