Why you Should Document your Market Research

Documenting your market research results facilitates information sharing, avoids or reduces duplication of effort, organises research results, saves the record, keeps an official file, and serves as the foundation for a business choice.

Documentation and Tagging

For easier reference and analysis, researchers can tag certain portions of transcripts. They can use markers like [Response to Question #1], [Additional response to Question #2], or any other text to help them and their colleagues with their research. [Respondent expresses favourite product aspects here], [Respondent describes frustrations here], or [Respondent gives suggestions for improvement here] are examples of descriptive markers that researchers might use.

Researchers can also categorise speakers by name or number (e.g., Speaker 1, Speaker 2, etc.). They may also want to keep track of where various activities were place or where stimuli were displayed. These types of additions make it easy for scholars to return back to certain parts later.

Timestamps are another sort of marking. These assist whoever is reading the transcript to readily locate the audio recording’s corresponding time. This makes finding specific areas of an audio recording much easier than starting at the beginning and searching for specific references. Timestamps can be set at precise time intervals (e.g., per minute), during speaker changes, or tailored to meet the demands of the researcher.

Contextual Analysis and Review

While respondent clips can be valuable later as a reporting tool, timestamps, labelling, and additional documentation allow researchers to understand the original context of what was said in a clip and refer to the source material as needed. This feature is especially useful if the actual study was conducted by an outside moderator or colleague, and the person evaluating the files is unfamiliar with the discourse.

Clips can be useful for highlighting and summarising information, but without the ability to analyse context, they can be confusing or deceptive.

Improved searchability for superior review is perhaps the most significant advantage of transcribing market research source material. Researchers can search transcriptions for specific words or phrases, documented events, or specified tags instead of skimming audio or video, pausing, and taking notes. Researchers can spend more time unearthing valuable ideas rather than listening to hours of irrelevant audio as the review process becomes more efficient.

Reporting

Marketing researchers collect a lot of data, but they realise that their clients just want to hear the highlights in order to figure out how their plans, goals, and activities should alter. Researchers can effortlessly copy and paste significant quotes into reports for their clients using transcriptions. While paraphrasing and summarising what respondents said is necessary, strategically employing quotes can have a big impact.

The searchability of transcriptions also allows for speedier data collection for statistical reporting. For example, researchers can note how frequently specific descriptive phrases (e.g., “hip,” “boring,” “quick,” “frustrating”) were used, how many respondents liked one sort of packaging over another, and other details that could be turned into charts, graphs, or infographics.