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Beyond the Focus Group
Beyond the Focus Group
Imagine telling a 13-year-old that she has to find someone to take her to Borders so she can purchase the just-released album by her favourite boy band. She’d likely roll her eyes and pronounce, “WHATEVER,” as she typed a few things into her laptop and within moments accessed the songs, including cover art, downloaded via the Internet. Or, perhaps you tell a 25-year-old collector of video-game memorabilia that he has to scour weekend flea markets and the like to find old Nintendo game cartridges for his prized collection. He’d shrug you off, do a quick search on an online auction site, and find exactly what he was looking for in a matter of seconds. No driving or in-person searching involved. Examples like this, of course, could go on for pages. Thanks to the power of the Internet, the way we live and work has changed drastically.
Virtually every segment of our personal and business lives has been transformed. Regardless of how you feel about all the changes technology has brought, a few things are certain: The Internet allows for lightning-fast speeds, near-instant gratification, efficiencies once only dreamed of, reduced costs, and super-streamlined processes and activities.
Like most industry segments, qualitative market research and its traditional focus group approach have not gone untouched in this Age of the Internet. Businesses and researchers have taken focus groups to the web in the form of blogs, communities, social forums and message boards. These outlets have streamlined the process of collecting insights and also made it more affordable.
But one has to ask: Are these web-based alternatives to focus groups perfect substitutes for the in-person variety? What happens when you lose the visual aspect of a candid, stream-of-consciousness response, body language and interpersonal connectivity? How much are you missing when you don’t see those eye rolls, shrugs, or even tears?
For purely quantitative research, text-based applications can produce speedy and useful data. For qualitative research, however, they aren’t going to stack up in the long run. The problem? Thoughts and opinions tapped out on a keyboard will never result in the kind of face-to-face, personal exchange researchers desire and hope to get from in-person focus groups - no matter how many emoticons are used. 
The expressions, the emotions, the personal connections, the stream-of-consciousness thoughts - these are all critical for good, worthwhile qualitative research. These candid, face-to-face, truthful experiences are the core of the connections between brands and their consumers, forming the basis of great qualitative research. Unfortunately, today’s online, text-based applications are inadequate for capturing this dynamic.
Video-based online platforms, however, do capture these crucial non-verbal, emotive and candid insights. Moderator questions are sent via video to the participant, who responds with a webcam, simulating a face-to-face meeting. In fact, the platform can be set up so one participant can see and interact with other participants via video exchange. These things can’t happen with only a keyboard and transcripts of conversations.
Qualvu have recognised this and are now the leader on online qualitative video based research
Here are four reasons why video-based online qualitative research using the Qualvu platform takes research to a whole new level. This asynchronous platform is not just an online version of a focus group: It creates unique dynamics for both the researcher and the participant that can result in remarkably deep levels of insight.
Reason 1 : The Convenience Factor
Online video-based qualitative research is participant-driven. The respondent’s time is time is respected and appreciated: They can respond to moderator questions via a webcam during a lunch break, after work from the comfort of their own home, or late at night after the house has quieted down. Participants respond at leisure, within the project timeline parameters, when they are relaxed, willing and ready to respond with their thoughts, attitudes and opinions in meaningful ways.
This convenience factor leads to better, richer, more thoughtful research. The participant is not feeling harried from cross-town travel or the like. They feel respected, they know participating online is a huge timesaver, and they can concentrate on the task at hand: providing those critical, valued “behind-the-glass” insights researchers and clients crave.
Reason 2: The Significance of Setting
Through this participant-driven video-based method, the researcher gets candour that can only be gathered in this comfortable, relaxed setting - candour crucial to steer campaigns, product development or brand creation (and everything in between).
Mobile “wireless” webcams allow for even deeper beyond-the-glass consumer insights. For example, a researcher could ask a participant to take the webcam with him through his kitchen, pointing out the most-used and most-loved cooking gadgets. In a conference room, the researcher would never be able to have access to this level of depth.
Reason3: The Absence of Peer Pressure
Online video-based qualitative research allows for a situation that is utterly void of alpha males and females. With the online video platform, the participant can have a one-on-one, intimate “conversation” with the moderator. The moderator’s questions are pre-recorded and delivered straight to the consumer, virtually face-to-face. Peer pressure is certainly not a factor, allowing for completely open responses from each participant. Researchers are able to gather insights from every member of the group, wallflowers included.
Reason 4: The Height of Content Intensity
In-person focus groups often result in quite low content intensity. (Content intensity is defined as the amount of insightful data generated by each person in the qualitative research session.) Peer pressure, of course, is a factor here.
Also, because of the nature of online applications, a project can be replicated across a number of locations, and adjustments can easily and quickly be made. For example, questions can be updated or added on the fly to optimize feedback. Finally, projects can be implemented with much more frequency than in-person focus groups due to cost savings and the inherent scalability of web-based platforms
The Best Organisation is a UK partner of Qualvu inc.
Dairy Milk - I’m thinking of defecting
I am somewhat bemused. Cadbury’s have released a new ad featuring children with dancing eyebrows. I freely admit to being a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk fan and consume far more of the stuff than is healthy, but I am seriously considering defecting to another brand because I just cannot see what their ads have to do with chocolate consumption. The brief apparently was to ‘Create a piece of content that gives people the same joyful feeling they have when they eat Cadbury Dairy Milk’. Hmmmmm, drumming gorillas and dancing eyebrows… I just don’t associate them with that ‘joyful feeling’ I get. Perhaps I am odd.
Last week Media Week reported that WPP, the global communication group, is set to significantly shift its competitive profile away from traditional media and advertising operations to become a more strategic, insight-led organisation, according to chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell. Speaking at an International Advertising Association luncheon Sir Martin noted that WPP revenues stand at about £15bn, £4bn of which is generated by consumer insight, and he announced that WPP would be focusing more of its business in that direction. He cited recent research from the IAB, which looked at why clients value agencies and found that 87% of the sample pointed to the agencies’ “strategic consumer insight”.
“Clients won’t move in the future unless they get quantitative justification for what they do,” said Sorrell. “We may not like it - creative departments of ad agencies certainly don’t - but that’s the way the world’s going.”
So I am fascinated to know what ’strategic consumer insight’ led to the Cadbury’s ads (created by Fallon), and what quantitative justification they are getting to support them. Reports are that Dairy Milk sales are not soaring and that it has lost market share to Galaxy (and am I the only customer who is actually considering defecting to Galaxy or maybe Lindt?). Perhaps it is doing more for the Cadbury brand as a whole, let’s hope so.