Why Qual vs. Quant no longer makes sense

I have been working as an analyst/data scientist/methodologist in the Market Research Industry for {huge_number} of years. When I first started the first thing I was taught was “There are two types of MR - Qual and Quant.” And each side had its own methods, its own experts, and its own conferences.

But even back then it didn’t fit right with me. After all - the goal of Insights is the same regardless of method.

AI is eliminating the either/or of qualitative depth and quantitative scale, giving marketers a new way to understand people and performance at once.

About 15 years ago I started issuing a challenge: If I give you a million tweets to analyze, is that Qual or Quant? To me the only sane answer was both - or neither.

Things have now moved on even further, and the huge divide makes less sense than ever. Yes, we still need our experts on both sides, but to totally partition them makes no sense at all.

You can read a thought-piece I wrote on this topic for MarTech Magazine called You no longer have to choose between insight and impact.