QualBlog

MROCs: Wave of the future or signpost along the way?

2010-01-22T14:02:24Z

There has been a lot of discussion in the industry about whether Market Research Online Communities (MROCs) are the future of the industry or simply a fad that will pass.

Communities and community-like research is here to stay. The past couple of years have been an inflection point in our industry. "Standard" qualitative is changing dramatically. Therefore, expectations are changing and communities are a reflection of that.

No longer will "8-10 people in a conference room talking about your product in a project that requires 2 weeks of recruiting, followed by travel to four cities and two weeks for the final report" be the "standard" of qualitative research. Qualitative research has fragmented so that the method fits the project objectives, which often include a tighter schedule and budget.

Toss into this mix the rising world concern about privacy and the industry concern about data quality and you get a situation tailor-made for something like communities. As we have seen over the past couple of years, communities have evolved. They are not just for the Fortune 50 any more. They will continue to evolve. But other options will evolve along with them that also make research faster, better and cheaper. Much research will be online but F2F will continue to be valuable, but the old "standard" focus group project will lose share dramatically.

Generally, communities are here to stay but they are not the total answer. They are an example of the new ways of thinking in research as we pass through this inflection point into a new (dare I say it?) paradigm in research methodology.

Brainstorming with Word Clouds

2010-01-09T14:35:42Z

Last week, I received my 2010 prediction issue of Research Business Review. There were 12 pages of predictions from all corners of the research industry. It was overwhelming. I wondered what would happen if I created a word cloud of the entire predictions issue to easily assess the common themes? I scanned the entire issue and loaded the text into Wordle to create a typical word frequency word cloud (below).

Then I began to consider the business implications of this compilation. My mind instinctively began to combine words in an attempt to decipher meaning from this jumble of words. Suddenly new concepts began to form around those word combinations. I quickly realized that I was brainstorming trends and opportunities for 2010 from this jumbled mass of relevant words. The word cloud and the resulting word combinations became an unexpected tool that stimulated brainstorming.

Look at this word cloud and allow combinations of words to form. What are their implications? How do those combinations lead you to insights? Here are some combinations that pop at me:

New Media Companies
Media Insights Communities
New Social Consumers
Consumer Insights Communities
Marketing Less Media
Continue Technology Promises
Understand Traditional Listening
See New Consumers

The beauty of using word clouds in this way is that the word cloud prioritizes the concepts (at least the words) that the experts are using but presents them in such a way that the brain has to work to make some sense of it. That is the process that leads to brainstorming.

As a qual researcher, my mind is spinning on two levels. First, how can I tactically use Word Clouds in my qualitative research brainstorming? Second, how can I use Word Cloud Brainstorming in my business planning to tap the wisdom of the crowds of experts to better plan and strategize?

"Bryson Household" ceases to exist for phone researchers

2010-01-05T19:20:40Z

For several months I have been threatening to disconnect our home land line. All 6 members of the Bryson household have a cell phone and I found myself answering the "home phone" on a regular basis when the call was not for me. Finally, in December, the Bryson's became a wireless-only family. Now we save the monthly cost of our telephone bill and I don't have to answer the phone unless someone wants to reach me personally.

Apparently, the Brysons are part of a massive trend that will change the face of the research industry. The National Center for Health Statistics reported that another 2.5% of American households are now without land lines making 22.7% of all American households wireless only. At this rate, in 11 years less than 50% of American households will have a "home phone" land line. My guess is that this trend will accelerate and we are more like 5 years away from that reality.

As we enter this next decade, the research industry must resolve this problem. Will we depend on mobile phone panels to fulfill our research needs? Will we migrate all research to online or in-person and abandon the concept of telephone interviews altogether? Before you say "no way" consider the plight of door-to-door interviewing which was a research staple in the 1950s and 1960s. Or, will we find a "third way?"

The telephone we know as a research tool is becoming extinct. Individuals now carry personal communications and information devices with them 24/7. No longer do we simply call a publicly-listed household and ask for the decision marker. We must have an individual's personal number, have permission to use it and have a relationship with that individual that leads to engagement.

In 2010, you can no longer reach the "Bryson household." You may call any of us...but you have to find our number first and give us a reason to talk to you. For telephone researchers, the "Bryson Household" ceased to exist in 2009.

MRDs moving to DIY?

2009-12-17T19:50:24Z

As primarily a fieldwork firm heavily engaged in both traditional qualitative fieldwork and online qualitative fieldwork, we have a broad vista of the qual industry. Our clients are researchers who hail from literally all over the world.

Around the office, we have been noticing a dicotomy that has created a lot of discussion and diverse opinions about the direction of the industry. We are noticing two opposing trends that appear to both be driven by the need to lower costs.

Marketing Research Departments are shedding personnel and outsourcing more.
Marketing Research Departments (MRD) are doing more DIY qual in-house and cutting out the outside research supplier.

Personally, I think MRDs are using online qualitative services to do more DIY to cut qual costs but continue to outsource face-to-face qual. If this is the case, then the future will look quite differently for MRDs and research firms as online qual continues to gain traction and evolve.

Thoughts?

Why has online qual not taken off?

2009-12-08T18:22:42Z

There was an interesting conversation on Ray Poynter's blog (http://thefutureplace.typepad.com). Ray raised the question of why online qualitative has not "taken off" to the same extent that online quantitative has. Here is the response that I made to that question.

Catherine has a very good point in that we have not yet cracked what online qual can actually do.

When we started doing online qual in 2000-2001, uptake was very slow by traditional qual researchers. Frankly, qualies had a system (focus groups) that worked, was well accepted and was very profitable and they were extremely bothered that online qual was almost wholly text based. They missed (and still do for the most part) the visual cues and "feel" that one gets when sitting down with an individual(s).

Online qual has been growing significantly not because these problems have been overcome. As a rule, they have not. Online qual has begun to grow because (1) travel is expensive and a hassle, (2) researchers have discovered the diversity of a range of qual techniques to solve various problems (its not just focus groups anymore) and (3) social media has shown everyone that effective communication online is possible and, for some, preferable.

Online qual will continue to grow though it may not reach the 60%+ market share of online quant for a long time. Online qual has significant hurdles to overcome, chief among them (1) making the online experience as close to "being there" as possible and/or (2) finding new and better ways of connecting with people.

Eventually online qual will become a method for a 360 degree type of immersion that we are only guessing at right now. It will be a new world for research as Catherine said. Its very exciting and challenging to imagine and make happen.

This is one ofthe reasons that communities and "netnographies" are big now. Researchers want more than a one dimensional qual aspect. This is the most exciting time in qual since I joined the club 23 years ago. Its a great ride.

To see the entire discussion, go to http://tinyurl.com/yh4ql8f

Online Communities: The participants' experience

2009-11-28T16:34:09Z

ESOMAR Online Conference

The paper presented at the Conference titled, "It Works for Us but Does It Work for Them," focused on community participants. The findings were taken from the 17% of these panel members surveyed who had taken part in a community. Of these, 71% said they "always" or "usually" enjoy participating, so the communities have more positives than negatives.

Generally, participants said they enjoyed participating because communities are a convenient way to provide input on a product or brand and participants felt marketers were truly listening. Communities are convenient because participants can generally enter and leave when they want and participate as much as they want. They also liked the fact that they developed familiarity with other community members who they saw there on a regular basis. Participants also appreciated the optional ability to be anonymous and, presumably, be more honest.

Some of the "dislikes" participants mentioned were the low and uneven distribution of incentives or participation rewards. Because prize drawings are public, they are open to criticism about fairness. Participants also questioned the sincerity of some participants, believing that they tended to posture for the marketers than providing true opinions.

Communities appear to provide strong benefits for participants as well as researchers. Therefore, they are likely here to stay but will "morph" over time into many different variations. We will continue to watch the community phenomenon unfold along with other techniques to better understand the mind and behavior of the consumer.

Study: Participants prefer focus groups

2009-11-24T15:09:30Z

ESOMAR Online Conference

Earlier this month in Chicago, I had the opportunity to hear Ray Poynter present his paper "It Works for Us, But Does it Work for Them?" This was a study of 1085 research participants. The bottom line was that focus groups remain the #1 most enjoyable form of research for participants. Here are the percent of participants of each method who say they "always" enjoy participating.

Focus Groups 51%
Online Research Community 39%
Online Survey 37%
IDIs 33%
Telephone Survey 12%

Findings show that people enjoy focus groups because of the high involvement, face-to-face interaction that allows them to share their opinions and bounce ideas off of each other. They also like the format where people are listening yet there is a specific and limited time commitment. Participants enjoy the opportunity to "get the inside scoop" on new products or ideas. Of course, they also appreciate the generous incentives andfree food and drink.

Interesting, there are some significant fears as well. Some fear judgement by other participants or having to disagree openly with someone else. Others fear of public speaking and knowing that every word and action is being watched and recorded. Interestingly, participants expressed frustration over the limited timeframe. They don't always get to voice their complete opinion and one person might dominate the discussion and use up "their" time.

I'll report more on this paper in another post. If you would like the whole paper, you can get it for EUR 15.00 at http://www.esomar.org/web/publication/paper.php?id=2047

General Mills has "mandate" to do qualitative research online

2009-11-10T02:39:18Z

The following article was posted by Jeffrey Henning on the Vovici blog (www.blog.vovici.com). It is an excellent summary of Ned Winsborouogh's presentation at the MRA's First Outlook Conference regarding General Mills' experience with online qualitative and its subsequent "mandate to move as much of our qualitative research online as possible." Especially interesting are General Mills findings and how they are adjusting heir online qualitative based on experience. General Mills is a QualBoard 3.0 user and has found it to be extremely successful for them.

General Mills Moving Qualitative Research Online

Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Fri, Nov 06, 2009

Ned Winsborough, manager of consumer networks at General Mills, presented "Accelerating

Innovation with Social Networks" at the MRA First Outlook Conference. "We have a mandate at

General Mills to move as much of our qualitative research online as possible in the coming months and years. We have been experimenting with this for a year, but we created our consumer networks team this summer and are now scaling it." (Consumer networks is the term that General Mills uses for MROCs.)

General Mills has done 22 community projects since last spring. Why online communities? "Online consumer communities meet the needs of consumers, brand teams and agencies with busy lives. They allow you to innovate with consumers better, faster, and cheaper." With communities, General Mills is able to engage in iterative building of concepts: "We listen, we build; we listen, we tweak. This can be done very quickly, with a lot of flexibility to the method." Community research allows for faster speed to market. For one project, General Mills did six months of work in six weeks. Compared to other qualitative methods, communities are less expensive. "There is a fixed cost for setting up the communities, which can be very significant, but the incremental cost of doing extra weeks, extra moderation, is very low."

]]>

As a result of General Mills' 22 projects, they have made changes to their approach to community research:

Focus on Discovery - The General Mills innovation model uses three steps: Discover, Build, Launch. The communities are great for Discovery but less suited for the Build phase. In the Discovery phase, community research always works, according to Ned, whether the project is big or small, whether the tolerance for risk is high or low. In the Build phase, small projects can be supported with community research but larger projects require traditional quantitative research. For future community research, "we are focusing on Discovery."
Smaller Communities - Early communities were larger (for example, 225 participants), but that produced too much information to quickly and easily analyze. "Now we work with communities of 30 to 50 people (more if we have subgroups we want to investigate). With fewer members, we really get to know them as individuals, and we can probe better."
Shorter Duration Communities - General Mills has moved from a permanent online community to project-based communities that last for six to eight weeks. "This is a different model than creating one ongoing community. We have some experience with that type of community: we had done that in the past but found it wasn't cost effective." The ongoing moderation activities can be significant, yet "it is rare that we have things that we need to do every week."
Larger Incentives - Members to an early community were offered $50 for six weeks participation and a chance to win some modest prizes. Current incentives tend to run $40-50 per week.
Geographically Centered - For one of its first project communities, General Mills invited seven local participants to come to their facility for shelf tests and project packaging tests. Now, General Mills "uses focus group facilities to recruit members, so that we can do selective face to face research."

Ned has heard everything from "traditional research is dead" to skepticism about the value of online community research. "The truth is in the middle," he said. "It has a place, and we need to approach it like any other new technology. What questions can it answer? What objectives can it meet? What objectives can't it meet? Where can it fit in an array of methods? It certainly doesn't obsolete core quantitative methods but it has powerful potential to transform qualitative research as we know it."

How to use SMS for qualitative research

2009-10-30T15:32:09Z

I recently wrote an article for Mobile Marketer about the use of text messaging in qualitative research. The article provides an overview of uses to give those not familiar with the use of text messaging in research a taste of the possibilities. The article was published today. Here is a brief excerpt:

More of these researchers who seek to understand the motivations behind decisions and behavior are using text messaging as a tool and finding it holds exciting promise.

No longer must the research be conducted at a time convenient to the researcher. Now the research query can come to the participants in real-time through their mobile devices to glean more reliable and complete information.

You can find the entire article at http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/4535.html

Is social media a fad?

2009-10-29T13:53:34Z

The first day of the ESOMAR Online Conference this week in Chicago focused on social media and its impact on market research. The Conference opened with the following video that was very thought-provoking.

Why social media can provide key brand insights

2009-10-27T19:02:00Z

ESOMAR Online Conference

The conference is taking place today and tomorrow in Chicago. The first morning has been heavily focused on social media with several good papers. I will post more about social media later.

Annelies Verhaeghe of InSites Consulting in Belgium made an interesting presentation making the case for "netnography." Netnography is essentially the practice of mining social media and other online sites to see what people are saying about a specific brand. I have heard it also called "scraping" or "mining" social media. Though netnography is not a new term to QualBlog, the presentation clearly outlined the case for conducting it. Ms. Verhaeghe provided a short list of 5 reasons netnography is an important, emerging research field.

Consumers control the conversation -- Researchers can "hear" what consumers say without the researcher bias.
Discover natural language -- Marketers can know linguistic conventions consumers use to refer to the brand.
Find unexpected golden nuggets -- Since the conversation is not controlled, sometimes the findings are more surprising than in a tightly controlled research design.
Back in Time -- the researcher can search the online history to better understand the evolution of a brand from the consumers' perspectives.
Emotions revealed naturally -- consumers are very good at expressing their emotions online, especially when they are talking to "friends." Researchers can mine these emotions from those conversations.

You Can't be Brilliant Alone: Effective Collaboration

2009-10-13T19:31:39Z

Last week, I attended the AMA Research Conference in Palm Springs. One of the better presentations I witnessed was by Chris Frank, VP of Global Insights for AmEx. He presented on "Tricks and Techniques" to be a brilliant researcher. These techniques are built on two trends he sees as pervasive in research.

Research Control becoming Research Collaboration
Education about research becoming Evangelism about research implications

Here are Chris Frank's 7 "Tips and Tricks" to be "Brilliant!"

Be explicitly clear on the essential business question.
Develop hypotheses, test them in the research and report on them.
Practice Smoke Jumping. Be willing to change the research design at any point to accomodate new findings or explore new questions so that the final report includes complete understanding of the findings and issues.
Reveal surprises. Ask the question, "What surprised you the most?"
Don't sweat the small stuff. Miniscule changes are just that miniscule. Focus on the important findings that are important enough to change decisions.
Plan and be sprecific in your research meetings.
Make the bottom line the top line. Put conclusions up front. Leave the detail for those who want to dig through it. Display the data to drive the point home. Be compelling.

These points are changing the way research is designed, managed, reported and used throughout American Express.

If we all focused on our research in this way, we would be more valuable to the decision-makers in our firm or our client's firms. This process makes complete sense and focuses everyone on the game-changing research results.

Breaking in New Clients

2009-10-01T16:11:51Z

Have you ever had an internal or external client who was skeptical about the value of online research, or even research in general? Chris Kann has recorded a podcast for QRCA that outlines how she used quantitative and online qualitative research to nurture a client relationship that grew to be strong and exciting.

Chris is the owner of CSK Marketing, Inc. in Racine, Wisconsin. She has been very active in QRCA having served 4 years on the Board, including one year as President.

In the podcast, Chris describes how she started the client with small quantitative studies which led to valuable discoveries. Then she moved them to online qualitative which led to greater discoveries. Now she has a strong client relationship that benefits her and her client.

You can find the podcast at: http://qrcabreakthroughs.com/.

Trends Changing the Market Research Landscape

2009-09-25T15:57:44Z

From: ESOMAR Global Market Research 2009

This research report included an examination of the trends directly affecting the MR industry, and blurring the boundaries between the MR industry and adjacent sectors. Therefore the competitive set is changing for MR firms. Here is a quick summary of 6 identified trends that effect our companies and our future.

Changing Client Needs: Clients are re-evaluating their spending patterns and experimenting with new sources of information such as free survey sites and web analytics tools rather than traditional research methods and suppliers.
Changing Skill Sets: Advisory and consulting skills are growing in importance as researchers are increasingly called upon to draw conclusions and provide advice based on their findings. Therefore, research firms now often face new competitors such as management consulting firms.
Technology Developments: Rapidly advancing technology opens up new sources of information and new research methods enabling researchers to expand their services and creating niches for new companies.
New Players: Players outside traditional research are using their brand awareness to enter the market with rival research offerings (e.g., Google Ad Planner).
Consolidation: Consolidation causes some brands to disappear while others morph and change shape to adapt to new opportunities creating a constantly shifting landscape.
New and Emerging Markets: More global firms are expanding their operations in developing markets. New players in emerging markets are introducing new techniques that are changing the shape of the industry.

Maine law restricts research with minors

2009-09-24T21:23:23Z

MRA released a warning about a new Maine law that restricts information that can be passed from one company to another regarding minors. The law could severly limit the ability of bona fide research companies to conduct research among consumers under 18.

Here is part of the MRA press release. There is also a video link explaining the law.

As CMOR explained in their August Legislative Update, Maine's LD 1183, the Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices Against Minors Act, prohibits the sale, offer for sale or transfer of health-related or personal information about a minor if that information is personally identifiable, was collected for marketing purposes without verifiable parental consent or will be used for "predatory marketing" purposes. The law came into effect on September 12, 2009.

"Researchers everywhere should check their data sets and research plans to ensure they comply with the strictures of this new law. Although the Maine Attorney General has said she will not enforce the law, any violator is still potentially open to private civil suits, including those sharing data between companies as part of the research process," said LaToya Lang, Counsel for CMOR.

The full press release and a video link can be found at: http://www.mra-net.org/news/article.cfm?aID=693