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Earlier this week on Twitter, some folks following the #MRX conversation had some strong reactions to a BNET article, "Why Social Networking Isn't Customer Research." One comment read, "I pity the fool who thinks social media leads to customer insights." Really? Then why did Quirk's Marketing Research Review dedicate an entire issue to the topic last month? In the August issue, you could read about sampling social media data, best practices for surveying niche social media members and more.

Geoffrey James, author of the BNET tirade, gives some good reasons why you can't understand what's going on in a customer base through social media. Here are two that stood out to me:

• Commenters are self-selected: "Real research involves statistical sampling of a random group," he says. "People who comment are pre-disposed to comment, making their inputs statistically worthless."
• Paid commenting is endemic: "PR firms frequently 'stuff' comments with fake endorsements," he says. "Contrariwise, competitors stuff comments with fake criticism."

But Andrew Wilson, author of "When your consumers are talking online, here are some tips on how to listen" (registration required) in the August issue of Quirk's, makes some valid points as well. Wilson says user-generated content (like that posted on Twitter, blogs, review sites, etc.) "should be viewed as a series of unstructured conversations that, when used appropriately, can add depth to and expand your understanding of who your customers are and their experiences with your products and services."

Wilson recognizes social media's limitations but still sees its value in qualitative research. No, it can't replace your research - you still need to do that bulletin board focus group to understand your customers - but it can, in some situations, enhance your research efforts.

Throughout the article he provides examples of how one wrongly can interpret user-generated content - and tips for maximizing the validity of your findings.

Have you noticed that the meaning of the term "online focus group" is changing?

When we started doing online qualitative research in 2000, there were two basic types -- the bulletin board focus group and the online focus group. At that time, the online focus group was clearly defined as real-time, text-chat focus groups. The definition was clear and unambiguous.

Today, the term is evolving and creating confusion. Though one online moderator might use the term online focus group in the context of a text-chat focus group, another online moderator might use the term to refer to a webcam focus group. 

Today, the only consistency in the term "online focus group" is that the speaker is referring to a virtual focus group in real time. So, the next time someone asks you about an online focus group, you might want to ask for a bit more information before moving forward.

I posted the following on Next Gen Market Research Linkedin Forum. The discussion is a great read. 

I'm intrigued by Tom's contention that brands are becoming more innovative than agencies. I must admit that is our experience as well.

I agree with the comments about institutional conservatism and that the personality of the researcher is to avoid risk. After all, a very valid definition of market research is to reduce the risk of a decision. However, the greatest barrier to innovation that we encounter is that research firms have "tried and true" methods for making money. Therefore, research firms are VERY risk averse so innovations have two major hurdles, effectiveness and profitability. These are huge hurdles for innovation.

Brands, on the other hand, have different hurdles. Though they can be risk averse, their hurdles are more likely to be effectiveness and cost. Cost is hugely different than profitability. Since we are in the online qualitative research arena, we are seeing brands coming directly to us more now than in the 10 years we have been in this space. Brand innovators are pushing their research firms to deliver, but when they don't, they are bypassing them with increasing frequency.

The following was a post I made in response to the above question on the Linkedin Groups forum called The Market Research Event.

Technology advancements in the past 10 years have been terrific for the MR industry. Years ago, there were a few accepted methods of collecting data and the industry generally followed those methods without a lot of creativity. Technology has created an explosion in at least three areas:

New techniques. No one can argue the fact that we have seen an explosion of research techniques and methods related to technology.

New capabilities. Social media, longitudinal qualitative (e.g., bulletin board focus group), biometric analysis, etc, have given us capabilities to research people as never before. We are getting closer and closer to truly immersive research that is a 360 degree 24/7 understanding of our customers because of the techniques technology makes available to us.

New understanding. The capabilities mentioned above give us a deeper understanding of people, how they relate to our products and services and how those relationships are inter-related.

Any research team that is not getting deeper understanding than ever before is not utilizing the new research tools at their disposal.

There's been a lot of buzz recently as researchers begin to understand more ways to create "hybrid" research with new methods that combine online quantitative and online qualitative research.  iModerate recently conducted research among "hybrid practitioners" .  Some of the key findings were:

"Hybrid" definition is muddled.  In this survey of self-described "hybrid users" about half defined "hybrid" research as some combination of quantitative and qualitative research.  About 4 in 10 described it as a mix of data collection methods (phone, online, face-to-face, etc.).  As a research term, "hybrid" has yet to develop a common understanding.

"Hybrid" methods deliver more comprehensive insight.  65% of study participants noted that "studies combining qualitative and quantitative approaches concurrently can yield more than a single-mode study on its own."  A secondary motivation was the potential time and cost efficiencies available with hybrid approaches.

"Hybrid" best when understanding is crucial.  Researchers value hybrid research when testing ideas such as concepts or advertising.  For these types of studies, statistics alone are simply not insightful enough. 

The article can be found at http://www.greenbook.org/marketing-research.cfm/demystifying-hybrid-research

The Future of Insight blog posted a very interesting hypothesis that we are moving into the "golden age of research" but that we might not recognize it as research.  Here are a couple of paragraphs that were of particular interest.  For the remainder of the article go to:  http://www.futureofinsight.com/2010/04/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/

My view is that we are in the midst of a very rapid evolutionary change in market research and that this change will be a step change, not incremental. Market research as we know it today may not exist in ten years, but elements of the current era will persist. For example, the days of the long survey are now very short. We know even long surveys among online convenience samples are now tenuous at best. Will surveys cease to exist entirely? I don't think so, but I do think they will look very different from today. They will be very short and are likely to be heavily open ended and therefore reliant on our ability to analyze text (which is improving very rapidly.). I have also contended that surveys will morph into "survulations" - video game silmulations used like surveys to better understand consumer behavior. This seems to make sense given the facility GenXers and younger have with gaming today. I also believe that the traditional tracking survey will slowly begin to meld with MROCs and that today's "project director" will be tomorrow's "community insights manager". In time, MROCs combined with social media monitoring will yield realtime tracking data that will make the traditional quarterly trackers relatively quaint.

But, if some of the older forms of market research will be in decline, some will endure. I happen to believe that IDIs, ethnographies, shop-alongs and co-creative focus groups will persist and perhaps thrive. We have a basic human need for human contact, and at some level decisionmakers and researchers want to engage consumers at a very granular, eye to eye level.

Social media is everywhere.  MySpace then Facebook then Twitter, not to mention millions of blogs on everything from foreign affairs to banana pudding.  People are talking on the internet about EVERYTHING.  For researchers, the internet and social media is a data bonanza.  We can "scrape" sites to gather enormous volumes of data on a particular brand. 

All of this data is helpful and can serve as a "thermometer" to monitor the brand's temperature in the market.  This can be very valuable to spot potential problems before they become widespread or to monitor reactions to marketing initiatives.  The question is, "How do researchers the "thermometer" monitoring to mine the mountain of data and produce real, actionable information?"

As research in social media matures, it will have to answer specific questions such as:

• What are the drivers behind the changes in brand "temperature."
• Are the changes only among specific user groups or in specific regions, etc.?
• Are the changes significant or just "noise?" 
• How does the brand team respond to the findings without affecting the entire market?
• How can the brand team respond and respect individual privacy?

Social media mining or "scraping" is here to stay.  However, a lot of hurdles need to be cleared before it becomes a widespread and effective tool for researchers and marketers.

Is primary research evolving away from projects designed and conducted to solve tactical problems?  The tea leaves all point that way.  Here are the trends:

 

DIY research is growing because research is easier and cheaper than ever.  Research, marketing and even human resource departments can deploy surveys faster and cheaper than they can procure them through the bureaucratic corporate procurement process.  We in the research industry can argue all day about the wisdom of this trend but it is happening and destined to grow. 

 

Companies have discovered that communities (MROCs) can provide faster turnaround on ad hoc studies and, when the cost is distributed over many studies, the research can be cheaper than an ad hoc study. 

 

Web crawlers that search the Internet and social media can provide a constant flow of information that continually updates marketing managers on the buzz around their brand and alerts them when their brand is threatened by a negative event and/or a destructive rumor. 

 

The recession accelerated these trends because it pushed research departments to find ways to do more with less.   They discovered that these methods work.  They may or may not have the same level of validity, but they were useful for decision-making.   Therefore, the methods will continue to be used.

 

Most research firms have simply not evolved to meet these needs.  In the qualitative world, projects require 2-6 weeks as they always have and the cost structure has changed little.  In the quantitative world, the Internet has caused data collection costs and turnaround to tumble in spite of industry-wide concern over panel validity.    Online qualitative has yet to achieve significant the cost and time savings.

 

Regardless, the trend is that the future for research firms appears to be in the consulting and strategy arena rather than research projects that solve tactical problems.   The information age crashed into the recession and birthed a new era in market research.   If a research firm cannot bring brains to the table, it won't be invited to dinner.

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.