Social software and market research: New tools call for a new approach

The market research world has a new kid on the block - digital research. But is ‘being digital’ enough?

Digital research is nothing new. Quantitative digital research tools have been around as long as computers have. And very useful they are too.

But now there is a new breed of tools, which offer a more dynamic, richer approach to aggregating the thoughts, ideas and insights of consumers. These qualitative tools are an emerging field, which are being progressively adopted by the industry and their clients.

Qualitative digital research tools can be built as a result of the convergence of two key developments:

• Improved infrastructure - primarily broadband internet connections, capable home computers and media capture devises eg. video-capable mobile phones
• Sophisticated digital user-behaviours

The latter has been made possible as a result of the myriad methods of digital communication, taught to people by popular social networking services like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. These services and the interactive features they offer have equipped participants with the tools and capabilities needed to share complex viewpoints from the comfort of their own home.

Digital research tools offer numerous immediate and obvious technical benefits over more traditional research practices. For example, all data generated is already digital, enabling researchers to cut and slice data dynamically, without the need to transcribe. This is only the start - but that’s a different post!

These benefits alone under-estimate the real potential of qualitative digital research tools. The real benefits are less about the technical advantages and more about the ability to persistently commune with groups of participants for extended periods of time.

With these tools, it is possible to hold extended research ‘workshops’ for anywhere between a few days and a few months. When compared to traditional practices, the quality and quantity of the work generated by each participant can be higher than traditional approaches by an order of magnitude. And typically for little or no additional cost per-participant.

These new dynamics require a new approach to research. The typical method of questions and answers needs to give way to a more open discourse between researcher and participant. This requires researchers to think differently about the way they conduct their primary research. Pre-planning is still vital, but the possibilities of being flexible, reactive and proactive during the research period is much greater.

The levels of open discourse offered by these tools also present new and interesting ways of fulfilling research objectives. In our experience, spending the extra time creating empowering research tasks, which put the participants at the centre of the question, rather than posing questions that ‘tick the box’ produce rich, high quality results that would otherwise be missed. Equally, the opportunity to respond and build on the responses of participants (both immediately, and importantly over time) becomes central to the methodology.

Researchers also need to have an ever increasing understanding of their participant base. This includes having an appreciation of their wants and needs. Looking after participants for extended periods of time is no easy task. Participants need to know what they are expected to do, when they are expected to do it and, how they are expected to do it. In essence, they need to be offered a narrative - explaining where they have come from, where they are now and where they are going. And this needs to happen more than once during their journey!

A well managed community of participants who are ‘looked after’ by someone aware of these factors will produce better results for longer periods of time than a community who are given a few tasks and then left to their own devises.

We offer our clients a sophisticated array of social media tools (blogs, forums, video-interviews, etc.). With these tools they are able to talk to people for extended periods of time, about the topics that are important to their studies. But with this comes the responsibility to help them make the most of the tools and the people using these tools. By offering a supporting service where research tasks are co-designed and managing participants is discussed, we are able to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Categories: Market Research, Online Communities, Voice of the Customer.