Archive for the ‘Market Research’ Category

Thanks to the folks over at Research Talk, we're able to bring you a video of a recent presentation given by Tim Macer of Meaning (a UK research technology consultancy), which looks at the phenomena that is Powerpoint, or more specifically how researchers use Powerpoint as a deliverable rather than just a tool. Tim observed that PowerPoint is a provided as a client deliverable on 54% of research projects, and examined some of the problems that critics have identified in the use of PowerPoint. He then offered six “antidotes to PowerPoint.

This video is only 5 minutes in length, and you can also see the original presentation in Prezi (a great alternative tool to Powerpoint as it happens!)

It’s a given that within online qualitative research (bulletin boards, focus groups, communities etc), researchers get the opportunity to hear consumers talk about their experiences and their feelings towards products brands and services. Perhaps the pinnacle of any online research community or ad-hoc online qual study, however, is when, as a researcher, you get to sit back and hear consumers talk among themselves about  brands, products and their experiences.

Why is this so powerful? Simply, it provides some of the most candid and unadulterated insight one will ever experience since, as far as the participant is concerned, neither the researcher nor the client (brand) is in the same room. This provides the opportunity for consumers to literally spew the good, the bad and the ugly without fear of reprisal or backlash, and without the peer pressure associated with real physical presence. For the researcher and the client, it provides an opportunity to hear first-hand the language and experience the passion and gusto consumers use to share their points of view. It delivers truths that are hard to come by elsewhere, in such fashion.

If you’re asking yourself what online research communities can do for you, this should be somewhere near the top of the list. To find out more about how to achieve research nirvana, contact Stephen Cribbett at stephen@dubstudios.com

If you're an experience qualitative research moderator - online or more traditional offline methods - then we'd love to hear from you. We have a track-record in running multi-market online research studies for our clients, and work with moderators in-market. As we expand our business, we are seeking out fresh new talent, people with a passion for the new paradigm of online research, co-creation and collaborative innovation.

You'll need to speak and write English fluently - either as a first or second language - and be a proficient user of social networking platforms and social media tools. In particular, the markets we are looking to drive are South America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina), Taiwan, China, Japan and Russia.

If you're interested in learning more, contact our CEO, Stephen Cribbett, via email at stephen@dubstudios.com

The following post includes extracts from an ESOMAR paper titled USING ONLINE BULLETIN BOARDS TO DEVELOP HIGH VALUE CORPORATE STRATEGY, courtesy of PRNewswire via COMTEX/

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Online bulletin boards will become one of the preferred qualitative research methods for reaching a senior management audience," as reported in a recent publication co-written by Orla McGouran of Philips International, Penny Mesure European Director of Observant LLC and Dr. Michael Feehan CEO of Observant LLC.

"Online bulletin boards are an ideal solution for exploring the right questions with the right audiences," said Mesure. This conclusion came from a comprehensive study of a research program conducted in partnership between Philips International and Observant LLC which leveraged strategies for online market research. Mesure states, "In our work, online bulletin boards proved to be a breakthrough methodology for connecting with hard-to-reach senior management audiences. They generated the deep, high-quality feedback needed to drive strategic decisions." For Philips, the methodology genuinely contributed to valuable input for their corporate strategic planning initiatives. As a result, online bulletin boards will be leveraged in a variety of areas to support decision making across the company. "For Philips this is a research solution that is highly flexible for internal and external stakeholders, providing high caliber insights that have driven business decision making," said Orla McGouran of Philips International.

You can download a copy of the paper here.

Sometimes it’s good to remind oneself of when and where online qual research should be applied. If nothing else, this will help you flesh out your methodology, appropriate a solution provider and define your success criteria.

So, to remind you, you need a dose of online qual research when...

• respondents likely to be difficult to get into live face-to-face sessions, either because they live too far away, they have mobility problems, or they are time-poor (ie. senior execs, industry experts etc)
• your selected respondents are of a low incidence
• respondents are scattered all over the country, or around the world
• the subject matter is of a sensitive nature, and of the kind which respondents are uncomfortable sharing within a group setting. (We’ve done loads of work with sufferers, and without doubt they are some of the most successful projects to-date!)
• respondents need time to consider their responses, or need to express themselves using an array of creative tools and media
• your budget is restricted, eliminating such things as travel, room hire, transcription etc
• you want to truly achieve depth of response across the wider sample, in a way that you don’t think face-to-face groups can
• you need respondents to participate in more engaging and involved tasks that take longer, or require more information to achieve

So if you’re faced with any of these, why not get in touch with us and let us show you the way with our range of software and services, including recruitment.

Although simplistic in their approach, having consumers keep diaries of their daily activities has long been a methodology employed by qualitative researchers when getting close to consumers. Traditionally, consumers are sent books or paper with pre-defined categories and titles under which content is to be written. Diaries are an effective qualitative method because they are natural to the respondent, and because they contain personal expression and meaning, and insight often hard to gather via other means.

Along came the internet, and with it, an opportunity to modernise the process of keeping diaries and journals. Web logs (blogs), including video logs (vlogs), and the introduction of mobile internet allows researchers to receive much greater benefit and richer insight from diaries, or digital diaries, than ever before. For the following reasons;

Speed & Efficiency
Combining the ubiquity of internet-enabled mobile devices and the immediacy with which diary entries can be made (thanks to wireless internet and 3G), diaries can be built up whenever and wherever the respondent wishes. What’s more, by removing the need for the researcher to moderate in a f2f environment, travel requirements and cost is reduced

Scalability
By removing the limitation of pen and paper (size, availability etc), the respondent is given  unending possibilities to post as much as they feel is required to express themselves.

Reach

Diaries can be activated kept by respondents around the world, in many languages, without the need for the researcher to leave his/her desk.

Expression
By allowing the respondent to share their routines as they happen, the diary captures the immediacy and moment of truth.

Moderation
Digital diaries mean that information posted by the respondent to the diary is shared with the researcher as it happens. This allows the researcher to interrogate the response much quicker, and gives the respondent the opportunity to respond within the same time frame, resulting in a much more candid and direct response.

Multimedia
Diary entries need not be limited to text alone, they can be a rich collage of images, videos, web links and screenshots. This makes it easier and more efficient for the respondent when capturing and sharing a moment or routine, and brings the insight to life in the eye of the client.

If you’d like to know more about some of the creative qualitative methodologies that Dub’s software and services support, why not contact Stephen Cribbett on +44 (0) 20 7247 3327 or by emailing stephen@dubstudios.com

Having run online qual projects for over three years now, we’ve learned a lot along the way. Things have also changed, like consumers’ online behaviours and the ease with which they use social networks within their everyday lives.

To help keep you updated on some of the best practice principles, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most important things you should think about when designing and executing your online methodology and/or research community. Follow these, and you won’t go far wrong...

Define your online research objectives
Make sure you set the objectives of your project clearly and concisely. This will help you decipher the most appropriate methodology to employ as well as the digital toolkit that you require. A clear set of objectives will also help you manage your clients’ expectations

Close the loop between recruitment and engagement
Recruitment is fundamental to nearly all research studies, but more so with online qual given the more creative and involved nature of tasks and activities set. Make sure you set expectations at the point-of-recruitment, and consider over-recruiting to achieve the desired level of participation.

Size matters
Quite simply, too many respondents and you risk reducing the quality of output and drown in a sea of data, too few and you’ll struggle to achieve stickyness and interaction. Remember, your research will benefit from the development of relationships, so make sure you have an appropriate level of moderation and Community Management for the size of your community.

Know your tools
Before you launch your project, invest time in getting to know what the possibilities are with your chosen software platform. The more you know, the more engaging tasks and activities you can design and execute. Quite simply, time spend upfront is time lessened, and mistakes removed, as you run your community.

Customise the experience
If your project and budget allows it, then consider customising the interface design of your community platform to reflect the visual appetite of your members. An environment that appeals to twenty-something media-savvy users isn’t likely to capture the imagination of 40-something mums.

Start slow, then accelerate
Don’t panic if your project starts slowly, it’s often the norm. Warm your community up with simple tasks which get them to talk about themselves and their lives, then accelerate hard, getting into in-depth tasks and activities.

Plan incentives
Be sure to plan your incentives carefully, whether they are on a task-by-task basis, individual prizes, or based on overall participation. Reward people for both their time and effort, and thank them at every step. Social and emotional rewards are also good motivators, so let your community interact with one another to learn new things and share experiences.

Motivate and captivate
Where traditional f2f focus groups fail to share news of what has come of the information shared, online research communities provide the perfect opportunity. By giving something back to your members in the way of curated insight, you’ll witness a new excitement and vigor to their posting, and a sense that they are genuinely making a tangible difference.

Sequencing
You’re likely to asking a lot of your community, so be sure to sequence your tasks carefully, allowing them enough time to consider their response, but not too much time such that they labour. Always ask yourself ‘can the task be completed in half the time’.

Allocate time
As well as allowing your community members sufficient time to complete their tasks and activities, make sure you have allocated sufficient hours for moderation and Community Management. You can elect to log on several times a day - in a focussed manner - or once a day, depending on how you yourself work best. Give yourself enough time to observe, interact, analyse and categorise the feedback you are receiving.

Content is king
If your community is larger and more persistent, say lasting several months, then community members crave interesting and engaging content to capture their attention. Keep it fresh and stimulating, and where possible, make it exclusive.

Online/Offline
If your community is lasting for several months, why not get its members together in a room and share with them what you’ve learned, or what you’ve created as a result of their efforts. Not only does this make the initiative more tangible, it motivates participation and nurtures more powerful relationships beyond previous levels.

If you need help planning your online research community or online qual study, why not get in touch with Stephen at stephen@dubstudios.com or by calling +44 (0) 20 7247 3327

A recent blog post by Jeffrey Henning got us thinking about how we view the different types of online research communities, and indeed the methodologies employed by more European-centric researchers.

In Jeffrey’s post, he looked at how online research communities were often categorised by size, whether they were open or closed, and whether they are managed or self-service. While this threw out some interesting discussions, we believe that what many might label as online research communities can’t always be classified as communities for research purposes. Thus it would be better to define how researchers are purposing these online engagement sessions, and how this is causing a blurring of definition.

Defining Online Communities
Taking a back-step slightly, it’s important to look at what defines an online community before one can understand the term ‘online research community’. Online communities are often centred around brands, lifestyles / lifestages, hobbies and interests typically. They consist of a group of people bought together online, around a shared passion or common interest. This shared passion or common interest is essentially the glue that binds people and provides the fillip for conversation and interaction among the group.

Online Research Communities
Online research communities came to light when brands (and agencies) realised they could harness the emergent user-behaviours and sociability of online communities to get people talking about and sharing their experiences and viewpoints. This works well with both qual and quant research, but the challenge will always remain that to sustain a longer term research community of several hundred or even sever thousand members is a big challenge. Why? Because to maintain participation and interest among the membership, there needs to be more glue than just the core research tasks. The glue is content generated by the Community Managers and the membership themselves. It is the conversations that members feel compelled to enter into among themselves. If the design of the community supports these, then you are truly entering into the realms of a research community, where you can gather valuable feedback from task-based interactions as well as free and open conversations.

Another defining characteristic of online communities is their combination of strong and weak ties among members. In our opinion, the coming together of people online who only have what are constituted to be weak ties doesn’t deserve the title of a community, as the individuals are being bribed or forced into it, rather than entering out of real passion or interest.

The point I’m coming to is that in our opinion, all to often ad-hoc online qual studies and ideation sessions are deemed to be communities, yet respondents aren’t so inclined to get into conversations with others simply due to the subject matter and the incentives and rewards being offered. That’s not to say that ad-hoc online qual studies can’t be successfully deployed; far from it. It’s simply a case of getting the terminology and strategic approaches right in order to deliver the intended objectives.

So where Jeffrey categorised Idea Voting and BBFG’s as types of online research communities, often there is little or no glue between respondents to give rise to richer, more fertile content (and insight). We prefer to see idea voting, ideation and live focus groups as features and activities taking place within online communities, or standalone online engagement techniques that deliver great value, but not always a true sense of community.

Here is Dub’s summary of online community and online research and innovation activity types:

COMMUNITY TYPES
1. Insight Community
Insight communities, or Market Research Online Communities (MROCs) as they are sometimes referred to, are classified as private, invite-only, and usually consist of between 300-500 members. This number has been derived from Dunbar’s number, based on calculations by Professor Robin Dunbar - a social network theorist and anthropologist - around the number of stable relationships an individual can manage.

Insight communities are purposed with uncovering qualitative and quantitative insight into the human condition, and can include activities such as live chat and focus groups sessions, feedback and validation tasks, ideation sessions (idea jams with peer review), blogging, diaries, surveys and polls.

2. Customer Community
Customer communities are larger and more open, and can consist of several hundreds or thousands of members, all of whom share the characteristic of being a customer (or fan) of a brand, product or service. While customer communities can be used to glean rich insight, this is not their sole or primary purpose, which is more likely to be more oriented towards sales and marketing. Customer communities can be open or closed.

Note that we’ve not included Community Panels in this summary, since we don’t believe that these constitute a community with a shared passion or common interest, as mentioned earlier.

ONLINE RESEARCH AND INNOVATION METHODOLOGIES
The activities described below can all form part of the activity suite within the two aforementioned community types, or can be deployed as individual online research methodologies. With some, but not all, there will be a level of interactivity among participants, though this is largely dependent on the nature of the topic being discussed, the design of a robust methodology, the technology used to support it, and the motivations and rewards.

1. Qualitative Panel
As Jeffrey Henning rightly stated, these are adjuncts to qualitative panels of the kind with tens of thousands of members. They are likely to last several months, and are purposed with delivering qualitative insights. Since participants are likely to be rewarded with cash and vouchers (or points), they are less likely to go the extra mile and interact with others participants, but this can be made a specific requirement with the right tools, tasks and incentives.

Asynchronous Online Focus Groups (or Bulletin Board Focus Groups)
These is an ad-hoc qualitative research methodologies whereby up to 50 respondents are tasked with responding to a series of discussion topics within a private online environment, over the course of a few days or sometimes weeks. As with Qualitative Panels, it’s more likely that participants have been recruited specifically as having a shared demographic, lifestyle or behaviour, and are being paid in cash or vouchers for their time participating. The key observation here is that you are less likely to induce social interactions among participants as they tend to do what they are being paid for - the core research tasks - then log-off.

At Dub we have a number of tools and techniques that successfully encourage greater social interaction among participants. We also advocate punctuating asynchronous groups with live chat sessions as participants are more inclined to open up having spent a few days previously getting to know one another.

However, the short term nature of these focus groups means that participants also have less time to become as familiar with one another as they would in a larger online community such as those listed above.

Asynchronous online focus groups are a very successful method for qual research when designed and executed well - with expert moderators and a well structured study/discussion design. (Here’s some tips on how you can achieve this).

2. Live Online Focus Groups
Live online focus groups can be executed as standalone methodologies, or, as we suggested above, punctuating asynchronous engagement. These sessions can be simply structured around the discussion of a specific topic or, with the right tools, providing real-time feedback to stimulus such as pack design, advertising concepts, mood and image boards etc.

Sessions last an hour or two, and offer the same reach as online communities and asynchronous groups, provided participants have access to the right technology.

3. Idea Jams / Ideation Sessions
Again, Idea Jams can be assigned as a task within an insight or customer community, or as a standalone exercise where the output is a series of fresh ideas that have been reviewed by participants themselves. Peer review is a successful technique deployed by companies including Starbucks and IBM to focus in on some of the more potent ideas that can enhance customer relationships and help innovate. This activity however, does require careful consideration in respect of legal and moral ownership of ideas and intellectual property.

4. Research Blogs
Different to focus groups, blogs can be deployed as individual, standalone tasks, or as an activity promoted within a community. Dub’s research application, IdeaStream, lets clients create research blogs on the fly, which can be predefined as either private or social activities. What typifies a blog is firstly the ability for participants to post to it multiple times, over a sustained period, and secondly is capacity to capture multimedia (videos, images, links etc).

5. Digital Diaries
Traditionally, diaries have been used as a qual research task that respondents conduct using pen and paper. Templates were sent out to respondents with boxes to fill in under each day. Clearly there are limitations to this in terms of the nature of response and effort required.

Digital diaries have moved this activity on greatly. By allowing respondents to share their daily activities online, it becomes a more intuitive exercise and one that captures richer response more regularly (considering use of mobile devices).

We hope this information helps you decipher what you need and how best to achieve your research objectives. Have we missed anything, or is there more to add? What’s your experience?

If you’d like to talk to Dub about activating an online research community or online activity, contact me on stephen@dubstudios.com, or by calling +44 (0) 20 7247 3327

As of this week, Dub's powerful qual research software is available in Mandarin (for both Taiwan and China), Portuguese (for Brazil), Spanish and Bahasa Indonesia. So if you want to reach out further and engage respondents in far away places, and not bias your research by having to conduct your study in English, then get in contact with stephen@dubstudios.com or dan@dubstudios.com

At Dub, we provide local moderators who's role it is to look after the health of your online research community. Part of their role is also to localise the study design for their particular market.

Localising the study design matters greatly, for the reasons that follow;

Appropriateness
To ensure that respondents are familiar with the terms and labels used throughout the discussion guides. Often, making a direct translation from a master document (in English) can lead to the terms having little or no meaning for participants. Fro example, we recently conducted a project about data privacy, but it was deemed that this term meant little when translated for the Asian market, so the resulting term that was adopted was Protection of Personal Information.

Formality
To attain the appropriate level of formality. In some markets around the world, formality will reduce the level of creativity in response, while other markets are more comfortable with a relaxed, casual style (such as Asian and South American markets)

Tone of Voice
When conversing with certain markets, politeness is key to ensuring participation. This is different to formality, as you can be be casual and formal, and polite at the same time.

Equally, localisation can greatly help the flow of discussion and richness of response when handled correctly. Here are some handy hints and tips to follow;

1. Ensure that questions are not ambiguous or more than two questions are combined into one, and adjust the wording of questions to ensure answers are relevant and on-topic. This helps avoid unclear or irrelevant responses.
2. Ensure sequence of questions makes it easy for respondents to follow the progressing discussion and learn more about the topic and what is expected of them in the process. This reduces the likelihood of 'don't know' answers.
3. Adjust the style of questions to local communication preferences. For example, Japanese respondents value harmony and dislike voicing a different opinion, and are less used to analytical thinking and open debate.