How do you see qualitative research differently from UX research, if at all, when it comes to product marketing?

The best way I’ve learned to think about it is that as Product Marketers you should be focused on researching the buyer, whereas UX researchers are focused on the User.  Sometimes this overlaps and results in different questions on the same content - for example, we might show the same landing page or in-product modal but they ask about whether the user found the information they needed, and I ask about how they interpreted names or messages.  That’s great, and creates a strong partnership.  Oth ...Read More

Like many things, this can vary depending on your company. In some places, all research is unified under one leader, in one department. Other places, consumer insights may sit in one department (like Marketing) and UX research may sit in another (like Design or Product). With that in mind, there's definitely a venn diagram in terms of what these buckets cover. UXR often seeks to answer questions about how to best design an experience or interface for customers, but to best do so, it may be most ...Read More

Qualitative research and UX (User Experience) research have overlapping elements, but they serve different purposes and focus on different aspects, even in the context of product marketing. Here's how I think they differ and how they intersect: Qualitative Research: Purpose: Qualitative research in product marketing primarily aims to understand the needs, motivations, pain points, and behaviors of customers and prospects. It's about diving deep into the "why" behind customer actions and opinions ...Read More

I absolutely love working with UXR teams. And I completely understand the reason for the question. The truth is, yes it can be confusing. Fundamentally, I do think they share a macro goal -- which is to understand humans, their motivations, etc. But the ways in which we evaluate these can be slightly different.  The best UXR teams I've worked with can also present different UI/UX/Product Design experiences and gauge a customers response to that design. In my experience, thats an incredibly valua ...Read More

Qualitative research is purely a category of research methods, and can be used for a variety of business needs / research goals. Qualitative "qual" research methods are can include observation, ethnography, 1:1 interviews, focus groups, and more. Qual research typically deals with unstructured data like behaviors, audio, text, imagery, videos, etc unlike quantitative research that deals with measureable quantities (i.e. statistics; numbers) like survey data, transactional data, etc. UX research ...Read More

I work with market researchers to understand higher level problems, use cases, personas, customer journeys, brand consideration, preference, trust, etc. for my company and product as a whole. Buyers/users don't need to have actually used our product but should be a target persona or have a use case/problem relevant to our product. I work with UX research to understand specific user feedback of the product itself (whether it's a prototype of a new product/feature or observing them click through t ...Read More

In my experience, the main difference between UX and product marketing qualatative research is that UX teams are generally trying to understand user behavior for a specific product or feature where product marketers are trying to understand frustrations, motivations, problems, buying dynamics, etc. for both users and buyers for a speciifc product area or solution. PMM, UX and PM teams could do a better job of collaborating as all teams need to have a shared understanding of  the user personas, p ...Read More