Abstract:

Qualitative research has become not only a tool for determining the elements capable of orienting marketing action, but a good way, thanks to the existence of a read-write memory, of following the evolution of data from one study to the next. Today, at a time when qualitative research is characterised increasingly by its capacity to indicate the underlying meaning of things, the paths of imagery and the conditions needed for this imagery to function; today, when qualitative research is proving its value as a tool to help industry in its choices and its developments; paradoxically but still very logically, it has adopted statistical and data processing tools in order to deepen understanding of what is meant to the consumer by the signs and spaces of his environment and the consumer products in this environment The way has now been opened for the integration into our qualitative methods of data processing and quantitative analysis techniques - not in the aim of ending up with a mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches - a sort of undifferentiated qualitative- quantitative method - but in order to continue to enrich our qualitative analyses with ever more efficient tools for their interpretation. At a time when Europe-wide qualitative studies in the horizon, this orientation takes on an even greater importance.