My top five market research trends moving forward:

• The ability to accurately code open text/real language, which I expect will make great advances in the coming years, will enhance our ability to manage and analyze large volumes of data; the ability to be in touch with consumers’ thoughts/feelings in this way will elevate the role of the consumer researcher within organizations
• More interviewing will be done from remote locations (e.g., mobile, iPad kiosks).  This sounds obvious, but I don’t think we’ve seen the full impact of wireless technology on our industry yet
• MROC (market research online communities) will continue to evolve; for those who can’t afford their own, syndicated services will emerge
• How reports are delivered, and what they include (multimedia, the structure of implications, etc.), may be the way in which companies further distinguish themselves from one another.  (This has always been the case, but with technology, large and small companies will really need to work hard to stay ahead – a dated look will suggest dated thinking)
• The “anyone over 55 isn’t important” mindset (often held among advertising agencies and clients) will be seriously challenged in the next few years; related to this, matching targets to interviewing methods will contribute to even more mixed method studies

My five less-than-hot issues:

• Interest in certain types of social media research may cool among larger clients (just because “we can” doesn’t mean we always get valuable insights)
• Physiological testing, such as fMRIs, may not develop further as there are health/privacy-related issues to conducting this type of testing
• Respondent privacy issues will continue to discussed as the technologies evolve; while this issue isn’t “hot,” it’s still critical
• Back to basics:  it’s hard to find people who really do a great job recruiting for qualitative research and more emphasis will be placed on this by the community overall
• The debate about “the focus group is dead” will die back, as it always does; it’s just part of the cycle of what’s hot and what’s not.  We make it “hot” again by inventing new approaches to answer today’s (and tomorrow’s) questions

From their website:  “The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.”

I am at best an infrequent Facebook user; I tweet maybe once a week or when I see something of interest.  My blog posts are automatically tweeted.  I comment on posts I see that are of interest, on websites and in private forums.  That’s about it.

Klout had no idea who I was when I entered my Twitter name @CarynGoldsmith.  Once I signed up, I got my (again very humbling) score of 5.  Here’s what it looked like:

Seth Godin, a well-known marketing guru who focuses on digital delivery of his books and blogs, but isn’t into Twitter, has a Klout score that looks like this:

Clearly, much more influence due to the reach of his blog, which must be why his score is as high as it is.

Turn this around and look at a very active younger research professional I know and see that he’s much more likely to be driving the conversation online between people:

Reach=size of your engaged audience; Amplification=likelihood your info will be acted upon by others; Network=influence level of you engaged audience.

I don’t have an issue with a score like this being created, but one must suspend logic and believe that the online space is the entire universe.  That’s too much for me.  Just last year, I quoted the very respected Spike Jones (Brains on Fire) when he said that 90% of word-of-mouth marketing happens offline.  That’s right, offline.

The online space is very verbal.  And while it can be visual with YouTube videos and the like, a score like this focuses on words which are often tangible – tweets, retweets, mentions, likes, etc.   Further, the focus really is on influencers and not trendsetters.  Someone’s ability to influence others is terrific, but if I’m looking for those who can help refine a product concept or redesign a service, that may be someone completely different.

Nevertheless, Klout seems to have done a good job with building their score.  And we do need a good way to identify influencers online.  Yet, if we are recruiting for qualitative research – even if it’s to take place online –  we need to take some care here:

• On what topics are they influential?
• Who are they influencing (other leaders, buyers, etc.)? And what is that sphere of influence?
• Finally, how can we augment these influencers with others who are also influencers in other ways and/or offline?

Great tool.  Glad I learned about it.  Hope to have a chance to integrate it into a project soon!

Your thoughts?

Truth is, I couldn’t tell the difference in the quality of recruits.  They were all excellent.

A positive aspect of online recruiting is that you can screen someone all the way through without termination points and it doesn’t impact costs and/or you can prevent the use of the “back button” in the survey so that people can’t  “beat the system” by changing/anticipating answers.

However, if online recruiting is to be done, qualitative researchers and facilities need to consider several  things:

• Is the target online?  It might be faster, more accurate, and less expensive to administer the screener online, but if the target isn’t represented online as it might be in the general telephone population (or even if they don’t check their email as often – a major problem I’ve noticed before), other options should be employed.  Some stats:
  • Only 79% of adults are online, according to a May ’10 Pew Research report; this doesn’t vary by urbanicity, although African Americans and Hispanics (English and Spanish speaking) are less likely to have Internet access (70% and 64%, respectively, Pew Jan ’10).
  • As expected, Internet access is lower among older adults and those less well educated (only 38% of those age 65+ have Internet access,  coupled with only 39% of those with less than a high school education and 63% of high school grads,  Pew Jan ’10.)
• Security screening as it’s been done in the past needs to be re-worked for an online environment.  (It probably should be re-worked anyway.)  It’s fairly easy to focus on a potential recruit’s employment, but harder to get at immediate family “conflicts.”  But it’s doable.
• Just as online quantitative surveys required alternative question types and scales to increase engagement, online self-administered qualitative screening questionnaires need to be written differently.  This applies to questions about a participant’s aptitude for creativity, problem-solving, influencing others, etc., as well.
• For quality control:
  • Qualitative researchers should be approving skip patterns and the like for the online survey versions vs. just passing off the screener in print form.  (After all, the quality of the questionnaire creates an initial impression for the project, just as a personal recruiter does.)
  • Personal follow-ups with new types of validation questions are needed to ensure the person recruited is who they say they are.
  • Moderators should be hyper-vigilant in their own re-screening to ensure the newer methods are working as they’d like.
  • The facilities need to build systems that verify respondents are answering the same way on key demographic questions from study-to-study – something that would increase the integrity of participants, however they’re recruited, for all studies.

Recruiting, like much of qualitative research, is both an art and a science.  Technology and the Internet affords us other options for recruitment.  As time goes on, other issues are likely to emerge.

For now, these are my thoughts.  I’d love to hear what other moderators and clients have to add!

With the introduction of online focus groups and bulletin boards, new mini-batteries were created to make sure that people were comfortable with the technology and/or comfortable communicating in written form.

In the Summer 2010 issue of QRCA’s Views magazine, there was an interesting piece entitled “Emergent Consumers and New Product Development” by Praveen Kopalle, Ph.D., Tuck School of Business Administration.  What caught my eye was the discussion of the value of Emergent (vs. Lead) users.

“Lead” users we’ve often heard described as early adopters.  They are also people who might know what their needs are going to be, often because of their high level of involvement in the category; as such, they’re often ahead of the curve of the mass marketplace in being able to articulate these needs.

“Emergent” consumers are described differently.  Dr. Kopalle’s studies lead his team to conclude that there were consumers who had an almost “instinctive” ability to understand new concepts – even if they weren’t highly involved in the category – and that findings using these types of consumers in new product development lead to products which were more likely to be adopted by the mainstream.  There are eight questions in this “emergent consumer” battery, items such as:

• “Even if I don’t see an immediate use for a new product or service, I like to imagine how people in general might use it in the future,” and
• “When I see a new product or service idea, it is easy to visualize how it might fit into the life of an average person in the future.”

While I find this battery very intriguing, I’m a bit concerned that the only people who could answer all these questions confidently/accurately are those with lots of new product/service experience.  Maybe this is a new variant of “Prosumers” that has been discussed over the past two years or so.   And maybe my concerns are unfounded.

Today I was watching a TED talk by Chris Anderson on “How web video powers global innovation.”  A very interesting talk about how “crowds accelerate innovation.”   And when he described the “crowd” aspect, he put up this image:

In a crowd, he said, all these various types of people exist.  You and I might be able to add to this list (e.g., wall-flowers, copy-cats), but to my way of thinking, this is spot-on and a great springboard for refining recruiting screening criteria.

• For social media/communications, I might want to focus on Commentators or Superspreaders.
• In website usability research, I might want a mix of Innovators, Trend-spotters and Skeptics.
• And Cheerleaders takes the idea of a loyal customer to another level.

For me, this adds another rich layer to a study design and recruit that is likely to lead to some very interesting sessions.  The questions aren’t written yet to get at these various groups, but conceptually I like the idea of where this, coupled with the Emergent consumer battery for new product/service concepts, could go.

Your thoughts?

Within a couple of days, I attended a local QRCA meeting where social media was discussed at length.  It reminded me that I needed to clarify that my issues with discourse/text analytics were primarily on the quantitative level.  Clearly, any of us in marketing research, and specifically in qualitative research, have been following social media with great interest and using it where we can.

Today, my take is this:  social media review is another aspect of the due diligence I conduct when preparing to meet a client for the first time or when preparing a discussion guide for a study.  It’s always important to learn as much as we can and to have our fingers on the pulse of what’s being said.  (For the record, there are those who believe that qualitative social media mining is comparable to a qualitative research study.  I don’t agree with that point of view at all!)

The limitations I highlighted regarding quantitative text analytics apply to qualitative explorations as well.  Specifically, are you listening the “right” people online, are they a representative mix of your target?  And are the people that may have the most important things for us to hear saying it in an online public forum?

The advantage to qualitative exploration of social communications – a term I like better than social media – is that we are able to read the tweets and posts and do a better job of making sense of what we’re reading vs. machine classification (positive/neutral/negative or some other tagging structure).  More often than not , we still don’t know who the people are, but we can get an overview of what’s being said and the terms/tone being used.

The biggest hurdle we have is how to aggregate this information.  For the casual searches (those I do for myself, without client commission), I like Addictomatic.com and SocialMention.com.  (Images below.)  Addictomatic allows me to read more from their dashboard; SocialMention provides me with a directional overview and top keywords (often useful when I need to dig further).  For clients seeking more detailed, automated solutions, there is Radian6 and ObjectiveMarketer, among others.

I haven’t yet had a client give me their social-media report as a springboard for developing a qualitative study, but the time is coming.  Until then, I’ll remain proactive in including social-communications analysis as part of my process, in the best way I can.

What’s your take on including social media/communications analysis as a routine part of the qualitative process?

Addict-o-matic

SocialMention