Posts Tagged ‘market research’

The engagement factor

Friday, November 21st, 2008

From Istanbul I came back with my scrapbook full of ideas. One was inspired by two very good presentations, one from Alex Johnston ‘It’s engagement, but is it research?’ and one from Keren Soloman ‘Getting intimate with our world’. Karen came up with the wonderfull concept of ‘Awarenes Quotient’ that I will definitively put in my dictionary (how can the research increase your AQ?)

I have always felt that the one of the underestimated effects of qualitative research is the level of engagement it arouses. Usually research is only judged on the level of insight it produces. But since insight without action is useless and the level of ‘action prowness’ is basically defined by the word ‘engagement’ this factor should always be used in assessing the methods. Without engagement any research delivers nothing but a clever report: expensive paper. With the choice of methods researchers should includen not only the level of insight expected, but also the level of engagement the method arouses.

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The beauty and the beast

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Just returned from the Istanbul ESOMAR qualitative congress. The only downside was that my stomach still is in bad shape, and the turkish food is not appropriate for stomachs with an attitude. Being at a congress, listening to so much presentations always has some ‘magic’, the magic of emerging subjects. I don’t know what that is, maybe a sort of ‘Zeitgeist’, because it is not in the parts, but in the whole: patterns in the subjects that emerge, patterns that emerge from the discussions. Two related interesting observations:

1: the quality of the presentations in terms of presentation skills and powerpoints was very high. This was a feeling most spectators had. It sets a standard. But it also introduces a complete new theme in the researchers grand narrative: researchers have always been more content driven. The qualitative now switch to the more emotional ‘looks’. I think this pattern of ‘better surface’ will continue to exist because the best presentations set the standards. I wonder how this theme will evolve further and how it will spread to the main conference (more quant driven and less ‘fancy’)

2: in conferences like this all of the cases about techniques and methods look like success stories. This is inevitable. You want to get a message accross, a new approach that you share. You are not going to show any downsides apart from the obligatory ‘problems’ that in these presentations always appear to be minor points, easily to be adressed. Your new method is always going to be the beauty and not the beast. I don’t want to argue that this makes the congress less valueble: new plants should be pampered and watered and so should new approaches.

For the latter I would like to share an initiative that I think is really brilliant: the mistake bank. I got the link from the website of John Caddell. Maybe we should open an anomynous mistake bank for our profession! Lets unleash the beast!

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Innovation paradox

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

Yesterday my blog was about the need to ‘reset’ you view on the world as an important factor in innovation. Within the world of market research we need to practice this more and more.

One aspect that has often be neglected in discussions about marketing research is the role of ‘freshness’  in interviewing. Often questionairs (in quant) or discussion guides (in qual) encourage the path of thinking that is predominant in society. The consumer is encouraged to think within the paradigma’s dictated by the view of the world as it is viewed by the marketing professionals. This is partly because the construction of the questionairs directly follow the assumptions the marketing professionals make: we probe for the information we want to have. Another reason is that the view of the consumer is formed by advertising and communication that is brought to them by the marketeer. So research gives you back the vision on the markets as they where implanted in the collective memory.

This is a barrier to innovation. And it is a barrier to finding new opportunities and new thinking.

Therefore, if we are in the field of innovation, we do not only need a fresh look from the buyers of research, we need to stimulate a fresh look from the consumers as well. This means that we are in need of methods that are a bit disruptive to the consumer and to the research buyers. We need to prevent us from the entrained thinking we are used to. We need to stimulate other parts of the neural networks. I would like to introduce two basic principles:

1
the more you try to get information from consumers in a format you can directly use and implement, the less the value of the information will be for innovation

2
the more easy it is to understand the consumer voice, the more ready made the answers are and the less interesting the consumers voice will be

I would like to call this the innovation paradox: if it wouldn’t take as much effort to really innovate, it wouldn’t be so rewarding to really do so.

I see it as a challange to come up with methods that help a fresh and innovative look both with consumers and research buyers.

(First published on www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/guests)

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