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MRDs moving to DIY?

By Jim Bryson on December 17, 2009 1:50 PM | No Comments

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. 

  1. Marketing Research Departments are shedding personnel and outsourcing more.
  2. 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?

By Jim Bryson on December 8, 2009 12:22 PM | No Comments
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

By Jim Bryson on November 28, 2009 10:34 AM | No Comments
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.

General Mills has "mandate" to do qualitative research online

By Jim Bryson on November 9, 2009 8:39 PM | 3 Comments

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.

Gen Mills Logo.gif

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."


Continue reading General Mills has "mandate" to do qualitative research online.

How to use SMS for qualitative research

By Jim Bryson on October 30, 2009 10:32 AM | No Comments
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.

Is social media a fad?

By Jim Bryson on October 29, 2009 8:53 AM | No Comments
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

By Jim Bryson on October 27, 2009 2:02 PM | No Comments
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.

  1. Consumers control the conversation -- Researchers can "hear" what consumers say without the researcher bias.
  2. Discover natural language -- Marketers can know linguistic conventions consumers use to refer to the brand.
  3. Find unexpected golden nuggets -- Since the conversation is not controlled, sometimes the findings are more surprising than in a tightly controlled research design.
  4. Back in Time -- the researcher can search the online history to better understand the evolution of a brand from the consumers' perspectives.
  5. 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.


Breaking in New Clients

By Jim Bryson on October 1, 2009 11:11 AM | No Comments

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/. 

QualBoard 3.0: We've come a long way baby

By Jim Bryson on September 15, 2009 9:45 AM | No Comments

 The late 1990s saw the dot-com boom leading to the dot-com bust of early 2000.  Not to be left in the dust, online qualitative research made its first forays into the online world.  First came chat based focus groups.  They were fairly rudimentary but served a purpose to engage people online from various geographies.  Next, came online bulletin boards that also engaged people but introduced longitudinal qualitative as a research methodology.

In 2000, I connected with Ted Kendall, then a client at US West in Denver and now with TripleScoop.  We discussed the developing online platforms and decided that the bulletin board methodology had the greatest potential.  We formed QualTalk.com and developed its flagship product, QualBoard in 2001.

For several years, acceptance of online qualitative was very slow.  After struggling with acceptance, QualTalk.com was dissolved and 20/20 Research absorbed the QualBoard platform.  20/20 rewrote the platform and re-introduced it to the market.  Still, adoption was slow and resistance to text-based qualitative was high.

About two years ago, acceptance began to build significantly.  Understanding of social media was growing so that researchers began to understand that people can communicate effectively online.  Researchers began to realize that online qualitative is not designed to replace face to face interviewing but to complement it.  They realized that online adds capabilities and benefits not available with face to face.  Online earned a place in the qualitative toolbox.

The online qual industry has grown dramatically and 20/20's involvement has grown as well.  In addition to QualBoard, we now have QualMeeting (webcam interviewing), QualAnywhere (mobile texting), QualJournal (journaling/blogging) and QualLab (usability testing). 

On September 10, 20/20 Research introduced QualBoard 3.0.  The third generation of QualBoard is head and shoulders above anything we have done in the past and leads the industry in ease of use and advanced features specifically for qualitative research.  We are proud of the software and the capabilities it brings to the industry.  For a demo go to:  www.2020research.com and click on the green button. 

The QualBoard 3.0 introductory press release is here:   http://www.2020research.com/2009/09/2020-research-cements-position-as-industry-leader-in-online-qualitative-research---launches-qualboar.html

 

 

The Internet: Its not just information anymore

By Jim Bryson on September 9, 2009 8:57 AM | No Comments

The world wide web is gaining on television as American's entertainment venue of choice.  The Conference Board released its quarterly Consumer Internet Barometer showing that 25% of American households watch TV online.  This is up from 20% a year ago.  Hulu.com is gaining ground quickly with collections such as "The Office,"  "America's Got Talent," and "Saturday Night Live."  The report also states that 80% of consumers log on to the Internet daily for entertainment as well as communication and work.  You can see the press release at:  http://www.itnewsonline.com/showprnstory.php?storyid=63330

The implications for qualitative research are numerous.  Here are a few:

  1. Advertisers will continue to flock after consumers and will continue to transition to the Internet.
  2. Research will follow advertisers and become more Internet based.
  3. Consumer technology becomes more capable with online video enabling additional use of video for online research and face to face research.
  4. Online research becomes more natural for participants and clients.  It also becomes more necessary to match the research design to the medium.

 

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