The Winning Combo: Syncing Qual and Quant for a Better View of the Path to Purchase
What happens when your data shows a clear pattern, but nobody on the team can explain why?
Path to purchase research rarely fits into one methodology. Shoppers behave differently depending on the category, the occasion, and even the day of the week, and any single data source only tells part of that story. Luth Research combined qualitative and quantitative methods across several client studies to show what gets missed when you rely on just one.
One Methodology Can't Answer Every Path to Purchase Question
Quantitative data is great at telling you what's happening at scale: which retailers get visited, how many touchpoints a journey includes, how long shoppers stick around. What it can't tell you is why. A number on its own leaves the interpretation up to whoever's reading the report, and that's where a lot of research goes wrong.
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How Online Category Shoppers Move
In a sample of over 2,400 shoppers, six in ten online category shoppers visited Amazon, while only one in five visited a mass retailer
46% of online shoppers touched just a single site during their path to purchase, and two out of three touched no more than two
Purchasers stayed in their journey longer than non-purchasers, making an average of three visits, including search engines
When the Data Doesn't Explain Itself
In one study, online activity for a high-ticket appliance category ran high during the week and dipped every Saturday, except on brand websites. The number alone didn't explain much. A qualitative shop-along revealed the real pattern: shoppers researched online during the week, then visited stores in person on weekends, often as couples, to build confidence before a purchase they'd be living with for years.
A similar gap showed up comparing diapers and laundry detergent, two categories expected to behave the same way as stock-up purchases. Diapers were visited online far more often, and the obvious guesses, under-buying or laundry lasting longer than expected, turned out to be wrong. Qualitative research surfaced the real driver: kids grow out of diaper sizes on a schedule no one had thought to ask about.
Start With Qual, Confirm With Quant
In a separate study, a CPG brand had already identified four drivers of purchase through a previous quant-only study. Leading this round with qualitative research first surfaced two additional drivers nobody had captured before. Testing those at scale in the quantitative phase confirmed both were real, and one ranked as the second most important driver in the entire category's online path to purchase. Without the qualitative phase first, that driver would have stayed invisible.
Put Both Methods to Work on Your Category
Find out how pairing qualitative discovery with quantitative validation, layered with digital behavior data, can surface drivers a single-method study would miss.
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