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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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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/.
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 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:
- Advertisers will continue to flock after consumers and will continue to transition to the Internet.
- Research will follow advertisers and become more Internet based.
- Consumer technology becomes more capable with online video enabling additional use of video for online research and face to face research.
- Online research becomes more natural for participants and clients. It also becomes more necessary to match the research design to the medium.
The Association Collaborative Effort (ACE) is an initiative by research industry associations (AMA, ARF, CASRO, ESOMAR, MRA, and the MRIA) to address the industry issues surrounding online research and panel use. The official purpose is: to ensure that all online and panel researchers and users, no matter the industry segment or the association affiliation, share a set of understood and accepted process and performance guidelines.
Today, ACE announced that it has completed its first assignment: to create definitions of online terms so that the industry will have a common basis for discussing online research. They have made these terms available on a nifty ACE website http://www.aceinfo.org/definitions.cfm.
Look for more work from ACE as the industry wraps its collective arms around the growing online research segment.