Answers to the most common questions from clients, researchers and students — about methods, costs, timelines, sample sizes and the choice between qualitative and quantitative research.
Market research is the systematic collection and analysis of information about a market, a target audience or a specific business question. The goal is to support decisions with facts rather than assumptions.
You need market research when you are considering a new step and want to reduce the risks: at a product launch, a rebranding, a pricing revision, an expansion into a new customer segment, or when you want to understand why customers are leaving, not converting or less satisfied than expected.
Market research is also useful as confirmation: when your team is divided on a direction and you need an objective, external measurement to underpin the decision.
This is the most frequently asked question in the field, and the distinction is fundamental.
Quantitative research measures: it delivers statistically reliable figures from a large sample (typically 300 to 1,000+ respondents). It answers questions like what proportion of people know our brand? or what percentage is considering a purchase? Questions are defined in advance; the research tests hypotheses at scale.
Qualitative research understands: through open conversations with a small group (typically 6 to 30 participants), it uncovers motivations, attitudes and behavioural patterns you couldn't have anticipated in advance. It answers the question why.
Choose qualitative when you want to explore unfamiliar territory, understand why people do or think something, access language, emotions and unconscious drivers, or when you don't yet know exactly what questions to ask.
Choose quantitative when you need reliable, comparable figures, want to measure or benchmark, require statistical certainty about a given outcome, or want to compare different segments or time periods.
Many projects combine both: qualitative in the first phase to define the framework, quantitative in the second phase to measure how widespread the qualitative findings are.
Primary research collects new, original data specifically for your question — through surveys, interviews, focus groups or observations. The results are exclusive and fully tailored to your situation.
Secondary research (or desk research) analyses existing sources: sector reports, statistics, scientific publications, third-party market data. It is faster and cheaper, but rarely delivers precisely the information you need.
In practice, a good research project typically starts with secondary research to set the context, followed by primary research to answer the specific questions that existing sources cannot fill.
A focus group is a guided group discussion with typically 6 to 8 participants who are representative of the target group. A professional moderator facilitates the discussion using a pre-prepared discussion guide, while remaining flexible enough to follow unexpected themes.
Group dynamics are an important advantage: participants react to each other, correct each other, build on ideas — generating spontaneous, authentic responses that are harder to obtain in individual interviews.
Focus groups are used for concept testing, packaging research, brand positioning, campaign evaluation and exploring consumer motivations. A typical project involves 2 to 4 focus groups to achieve sufficient diversity in the sample.
In a focus group, several people talk simultaneously. Group dynamics are an asset: participants stimulate each other, challenge each other and produce collective insights. This is particularly valuable when you want to know how a target group talks and thinks as a group.
An in-depth interview is a one-on-one conversation that offers more room for nuance, sensitive topics and complex individual decision-making processes. There is no group pressure and no social desirability that influences the answers.
In-depth interviews are better suited to hard-to-reach profiles (such as C-level executives), sensitive topics (finances, health), expert interviews and the detailed reconstruction of a decision process or user experience.
In an omnibus study, questions from multiple clients are bundled into one large quantitative survey among a representative consumer panel. Each client pays only for their own questions and shares the fieldwork costs with the other participants.
The main advantage is cost efficiency: for a limited budget, you can obtain reliable data on brand awareness, purchase intent, product usage or attitudes from a representative Belgian panel — typically within one to two weeks.
Omnibus research is suitable for companies that need a quick answer to a limited number of targeted questions, without the budget of a full quantitative project. It is less suited to complex questions requiring a long questionnaire or heavy target group filtering.
Closed questions offer fixed answer options: yes/no, Likert scales (1 to 5 or 1 to 10), multiple choice. They are ideal for quantitative measurement: answers are comparable, countable and easy to analyse on large samples.
Open questions let respondents answer in their own words. They yield richer, sometimes unexpected insights — but are harder to analyse at scale and require more time and effort from respondents, which increases dropout rates.
A good questionnaire combines both: closed questions for measurement, a limited number of open questions for depth and nuance. A questionnaire consisting entirely of open questions is generally not workable for large samples.
Brand tracking is a periodic measurement of brand health among a representative sample. Typical indicators are spontaneous brand awareness (does someone know the brand without prompting?), aided brand awareness (does someone recognise the brand when shown it?), brand preference, brand associations and brand usage.
By repeating these measurements at regular intervals, you can isolate the effect of campaigns, detect trend breaks and systematically compare your brand to competitors.
Brand tracking is particularly valuable for FMCG brands, retailers and highly competitive sectors, but also for service providers who want to monitor their reputation over time. The value of brand tracking lies in consistency: always the same questions with comparable samples, so that changes become measurable.
The minimum sample size depends on what you want to measure and how precisely you want to do it.
As a guideline for quantitative research on the Belgian population, a minimum of 300 respondents is generally required for reliable results on the total population. For sub-group analyses (by region, age group or usage profile), a minimum of 100 respondents per sub-group is recommended.
An omnibus study typically works with 1,000 respondents, representative of the adult Belgian or Flemish population. For qualitative research, different norms apply: 6 to 8 participants per focus group, or 10 to 20 in-depth interviews, are generally sufficient to reach saturation — the point at which new conversations add little new insight.
The timeline depends strongly on the method and complexity of the project. As general guidelines:
Factors affecting the timeline include the availability of the target group (B2B profiles are harder to schedule), questionnaire complexity, number of segments and the required depth of analysis and reporting.
The cost of market research varies considerably depending on the method, scale and sector. As a rough guide for the Belgian market:
Determining factors include: questionnaire complexity, the required respondent profile, desired sample size, level of analysis and presentation requirements. The best way to get an accurate estimate is a briefing on your specific research question.
B2B research targets professionals in a business context: decision-makers, buyers, users or influencers within organisations. This differs fundamentally from consumer research.
The main challenges are:
B2B research requires targeted recruitment via professional networks and an approach that takes the respondent's context seriously.
Internal research is possible, but has clear limitations that can undermine the usefulness of the results.
The biggest pitfall is bias: employees know the product or service so well that they unconsciously frame questions in a way that elicits desired answers, or interpret results through the lens of existing beliefs. Moreover, internal surveys via own channels typically only reach existing customers — not non-customers, former customers or prospects who never bought. These are precisely the most informative target groups.
External agencies have access to representative respondent panels, methodological expertise and independence that makes it easier to translate results into decisions, both internally and externally.
The reliability of market research depends on four factors:
A serious agency documents these choices transparently in a methodology chapter and communicates openly about the limitations of the research.
A sample is representative when it correctly reflects the population you want to study on the characteristics relevant to your research question. For consumer research, this typically means region, age, gender and education level; for a specific question, additional characteristics may be relevant (product usage, profession, etc.).
Representativeness is achieved through quotas (a minimum per segment) and optionally weighting (statistically correcting the sample afterwards to match the actual population distribution).
A non-representative sample can lead to strongly biased conclusions: if your panel is over-represented in one region or age group, the results cannot be generalised to the broader population.
Social desirability is the tendency of respondents to give answers that are socially acceptable or that they believe the interviewer wants to hear — rather than their honest opinion. It is one of the main sources of bias in market research.
It occurs when questions touch on sensitive topics (health behaviour, purchasing behaviour, opinions about brands that the interviewer clearly represents), when the interviewer is physically present, or when respondents know who the client is.
Professional agency research limits this risk through neutral question formulations, guaranteeing anonymity, not mentioning the client in the introduction, and for sensitive topics preferring written or online methods where social pressure is lower.
Day One is an independent market research agency in Antwerp with more than 25 years of experience in qualitative and quantitative research for businesses, public authorities and universities throughout Belgium. We have an extensive respondent panel in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
What sets us apart from other agencies is our approach to methodological quality: we help clients not only with collecting data, but also with formulating the right research question. A good answer starts with the right question — and that step is too often skipped.
We are also the only agency in the Benelux active in biofeedback and bioresonance research: an innovative method that measures unconscious physiological responses to stimuli, as a complement to or alternative for classical methods.
More about our approach →