A significant example of companies, individuals or producers who conduct research to gain perspective on their artistic creations. For example: Game of Thrones writers D.B. Weiss and David Benniof did research on their viewers preferences and decided to make episodes longer but reduce the amount of episodes.
Here is a link to the Article:
The producers and important stakeholders in the Game of Thrones tasked their employees to conduct qualitative research to hardcore game of thrones fans by asking various in depth questions through surveys. The questions they asked were "How do you feel about the current running time of Game of Thrones episodes?", "How do you feel about the missing plot lines from the books that are missing in the show?".
Through this in depth survey - HBO acquired qualitative information that directed them in the direction of eventually decreasing the amount of episodes but increasing the run time of every episode to make it seem like a movie.
They also learnt that viewers and fans were disappointed because major plot lines such as the "Lady Stoneheart" plot line was skipped and completely forgotten about in the show whereas in the books it is a very crucial aspect to the overall story. However the writers decided to keep the storyline away from the show as they had different plans to fill in the gaps of the plot lines that have been skipped throughout the years on the show.
Another major example of qualitative research from Game of Thrones:
In the fall of 2009, David Benniof and DB Weiss had finished filming and producing the first pilot episode for Game of Thrones, they had various actors and they decided before airing it conduct some qualitative research by holding a preview to their friends who had never read the books before.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-different-was-the-unaired-pilot-of-game-of-thrones-473593778
According to the article mentioned above, it has been stated that the viewers were very confused and didn't even have an idea that one the main characters Jaimie Lannister and Cersei Lannister were siblings. This sent the producers into shock and they then decided to scrap most of the actors and almost the entire episode and completely re did the pilot episode.
It was a significant improvement, they ended up using the first scene from the original pilot in the new pilot, the original pilot was scrapped and wasn't seen by the general public ever. Had they not have conducted this research, the show would have been doomed for failure since the first day and first episode as they would have failed to capture a fanbase and the show wouldn't be what it is today.