Hi Beata,

Your question forced me to go back to my days a student and recall my thoughts. Precisely measuring value to an individual consumer is challenging. Sometimes we can get close by looking at the price. When a customer buys it might suggest the consumer anticipated getting at least that much value; otherwise, why would a rational consumer buy it? Obviously, this understates the value by  the consumer's surplus.

Opportunity cost has been uses to approximate value, especially when neither monetary nor other quantitative measures are available. Once again, precision is questionable at best.

Measuring value has been on the minds of economists and others for centuries.  Its subjective nature adds complexity and it has been somewhat elusive.  Advances in other areas (e.g., neuroscience) may offer new approaches.

I hope this helps add perspective and encourages others to respond.

Rob

In scientific reasoning, a quantitative description is more relevant than a qualitative one. Saying that this sample of water is warm by sensing it with my hand is not as good as placing a thermometer inside water & getting a temperature reading.

In the scientific approach, facts & figures are stronger than anything else. If customers are really satisfied with a certain product, then their number will tell that & there will be a rise in sales & the product will become so famous that it will advertise for itself without continuous boring advertisements on TVs & websites.

When I see persons praising something on the media on an incessant basis, my usual reaction is to look well into the matter before buying the goods.

Yes, we ought to take evidence into consideration but the correlations have to be well-established without blur.   

Although measuring value to customer is subjective, the accuracy of data we collect depends on the confidence interval put by the reasearcher.

Dear Colleagues,

thank you for your comments. I wish we could use sth like a thermometer to measue value, or even better - its customer perception - by it. Regretfully, there is no such an instrument. We can only rely on data, and even if they are numbers, they usually are ones because we try to quantify the opinions using eg. Likert scale...

I do agree that the more precise we are, more triangulations we use etc, the more they seem to be objective. But in quantitative studies we usualy cannot track down the grounds and subtle interrelations between the constructs that finally create value. That's the whole problem (and not only this one)...

While focusing on well established correlations, we might omit sth important that is emerging out of data. And it might even be a side effect, not operationalized well yet, but still crucial to understanding the phenomenon we study...

 best

Beata

Dear Beata

Very interesting question, as well as the answers of colleagues.

The important thing is to know the potential of qualitative and quantitative research, the limitations of each one and how the results are interpreted. Qualitative research is not designed to produce broad generalizations, but rather deeping. Quantitative research does produce generalizations but is more superficial. If you would like to tackle consumer value research with each of these two paradigms, here is what you could get.

From qualitative research.- A holistic and deep understanding of how consumers perceive and build the value they receive from companies. How the context influences the construction of value. Categories and themes that are relevant in value building.

From quantitative research.- Means and standard deviations of the scale used to measure the construct of value for the client. Personal and psychological variables and marketing variables, that have a significant association (positive or negative) with the magnitude of the value for the consumer.

Obviously you can also address the issue of value from a mixed-methods perspective.

Greeetings,

Jorge

Dear Jorge, you are perfectly right about the mixed methodology and the different usage of both quantitative and qualititative methods.

But let's think about eg. 150 local open unstructured interviews about value perceptions and respective 150 responses about the same topic, but from questionnaires, where Likert scale (extended 7 -points) is used... Which one will be more insightful, and which more publishable and more "scientific" in our claims?

I even do not want to raise an issue about the responses given to the same questions, once they are open or structured and quantified...

but it makes me think....

I have some data from one study. Firstly, respondents were asked to evaluate the car via the e-questionnaire, alone - nobody watched, when they gave the answers. Then the same was done, when someone watched them... and then they were asked about their opinions when confronted with others. Lastly, they were free to talk what they think and feel, privately with an interviewer... All answers difffered, even though it was the same car and the same people....

best

Beata

Dear Beata

Very interesting your questions. One of the characteristics of a good researcher is precisely the ability to generate many questions (even more than answers). Just some additional reflections.

1) Always remember that the qualitative techniques are intensive and deep. You should never raise a qualitative sample of 150 individuals for in-depth interviews, it's too much. On the other hand, 150 individuals are usually a small sample for quantitative studies.

2) I think a good way for you to answer your questions is the mixed methods approach. Consider the following mixed designs (the most used) where you can find a formal procedure to answer your questions:

   A) Triangulation.- Develop qualitative and quantitative research simultaneously (there is no feedback from one to the other during data collection). When the data are collected, they are placed facing each other and compared. It deepens in convergences and divergences.

   B) Exploratory sequential.- You would deploy the qualitative part first. For example you would study with in-depth interviews the value for consumer and then the hypotheses that emerge from the qualitative study you should test with quantitative research (eg survey).

   C) Confirmatory sequential. - You would deploy the quantitative part first (eg survey). For this you must have a good starting theoretical basis. Then you should deploy the qualitative part in order to understand and contextualize the quantitative data.

Regarding publication journals, there are journals of strong quantitative orientation, others qualitative and many that publish either type of research. One of the most important thing for journals is the contribution of your paper.

In addition, both qualitative and quantitative research are scientific. The qualitative is based on the constructivist and interpretivism paradigms, the quantitative in postpositivist.

Finally you should always be aware of the limitations of the methods you use. Qualitative methods allow you to understand a phenomenon in depth but you can not generalize the results to the total population. The quantitative research (if you follow appropriate sampling techniques), generates results that you can generalize to the population, but do not generate data in depth.

Greetings,

Jorge