Research and innovation – experiment and observe…

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It has been a long time since Paul Lazarsfeld, founder of modern empirical social science, has shown how powerful observational methods are. His famous piece of work “Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal” is a classic for everybody interested in sociology. Sociographic was the order in those days.

Today it looks to me as if observational methods within market research are on the rise again; especially the increasingly used online qualitative methods such as online research communities or social media monitoring.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcolman/2770529443/sizes/m/in/photostream

Foto by jcolman

The use of these methods is beneficial not only for generation of insights, but is becoming increasingly important for innovation management process. This is partly due to the nature of innovation on the one hand, and, on the other hand because of the – for years underestimated – power of observation.

From the most common method focus groups to modern behavioral economics, observations bring forth new insights, perspectives and new thinking. The usefulness of observations has nearly always been proven in our studies.

In particular for the innovation process, we have found that this method can be ideally combined with other methods. Thus, a social media monitoring approach as a precursor and input for a consumer study is ideal. Furthermore, we have seen that the combination of asynchronous methods (e.g. community research) can provide a high density of information if it is combined with synchronous elements (e.g., chat)..

For a contemporary view of innovation, it is important both to establish working practice and environments that support the idea process. And again, that is a perfect field for the use of observational method. Because consumers don’t tell what they think, don’t think what they feel, and don’t always act as they tell us how they feel and think… an old but familiar dilemma..

There will be lots of more thoughts and talks about obversation and innovation at the The Market Research Event 2011 in November in Orlando, Florida, hosted by IIR USA.

Colors of cars, what do they tell you?

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If you are in the automotive research then you know what I’m talking about. In nearly every study we have done for the automotive industry, at a certain stage the question about colors play an important role. Sometimes it’s the question about the dominant color of a car in the local market, sometimes it is about to decide which color a car scribble should have as stimulus material for group discussion (or should not have). And sometimes you want to know if a given car color represents mass taste.

In a world of deep depth of information about a huge range of topic you will need to mix the sources of knowledge. It is indeed important to know your category before starting a research. Sometimes you are lucky and you will find the information you need.

Let’s have a look at this piece of information.

Source: Kraftfahrzeugbundesamt, Germany

Accordingly, the 1980s in Germany, red was 22% of new registrations, more than any other. A similar proportion (21.6%) was gray it was followed by white with 20.6% ¬and blue with 15.7%.

Since then, Germany has become colorless. Just 6.8 % of new registrations in 2010 were still red. Thus, the red cars have quickly become less important. Even with green, it went down (from 5.5 to 1.4%), also with blue (15.7 to 10.5%) and the other colors (10.6 to 6.9%) as brown or orange.

Big winners are the black colored cars. In 1986, only every 25th car was black (4.0%). Today, however, black is regarded as noble and almost one third (30.4%) of all cars is painted black. Only in gray, there are more cars (32.6%).

Is that all the numbers could tell you?

Source: Kraftfahrzeugbundesamt, Germany

If you – like me – like accurateness and precision the answer is No! Our philosophy is to go that extra mile to deliver better results.

You can see some kind of color fashion over the years. And it would be interesting to map the socio-demographic change against these numbers.But most important is the fact that every brand (and even every model) has its own hypecycle. In 2010 it is very hard to find a non-black Jaguar, Porsche or Jeep, because all brands have a proportion of black cars registered in this year of more than 50%.

And be careful to think that every silver / gray car is premium. Smart has a proportion of 58.4% for this color.  This is a good example of how putting together different sources of knowledge from existing information about the market helps you produce better research results. Let’s see what we will learn about the topic of “mixing information” at the The Market Research Event 2011 in November in Orlando, Florida, hosted by IIR USA.

Diaries – the right method for the right purpose

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Diaries have traditionally taken a major role in the qualitative research and have their place in the modern canon of methods. They offer an authentic view in consumers’ everyday life and give room for participants’ creative self-expression. More and more they are used as a kind of pre-task ahead of qualitative methods, used to stimulate participants to deal with the research subject in the run-up and to gather initial findings for the design of the survey situation (e.g. design of the discussion room, fine-tuning of the guideline …).

Diaries, online, paper-pencil or mobileTechnological progress and the opportunities it creates for market research have particular impact on this method. Several years ago the method of keeping diaries had to be carried out as paper-and-pencil. Over the past years it has diversified and now offers plenty of different varieties.

In addition to the traditional paper-and-pencil method, participants are increasingly encouraged to keep mobile or online diaries.

So when to use what?

Rules of thumb are a little flat. Neither is paper-and-pencil completely out of fashion nor is it necessary to go all the way mobile. As so often, it depends…

Depending on the research objectives, different methods for using diaries are useful and others are not.

When it comes to mobile usage of diaries, because notes about emotions and activities on the go should be recorded, flexibility and simplicity is important. On these dimensions paper-and-pencil executions as well mobile diaries offer more benefits than online, because both smart-phone and offline diary can be carried around easily and flexible.

In specific settings, for example where drawings of the participants are important, or where own handwriting is essential, because deeper reflection is necessary, there is no alternative to paper-pencil notes. In particular, the online and mobile versions are somewhat limited when it comes to expressing the own creativity. The technological development indeed evolves rapidly. But currently internet technology is not equal to creative possibilities of offline diaries yet.

A huge advantage of online diaries is the possible integration of audio-visual elements such as photos, videos and audio files. These elements can serve as a support of the written word. Furthermore it is much easier to process participants’ input via online, no shipping, transcription or scanning needed. And the researchers themselves are able to follow the process in real time and so are able to give feedback on specific aspects while participants are keeping their notes.

Nevertheless it is quite important to be clear about the question in which environments the records will be used. For the implementation of workshop formats creatively-made paper-pencil diaries are significantly better suitable than mobile diaries. Online diaries are constantly improving, mainly because videos deliver unique insights into the reality of life and emotions of the participants.

“The Market Research Event 2011″ im November in Orlando, Florida, hosted by IIR USA, deals with the topics “Online Research” and “Mobile Research” (among others). I’m curious what they will tell us about diaries.

Photo by Josh DiMauro: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jazzmasterson/278672397/

Brand research in social web – what about B2C2C communication?

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Stating the obvious, Facebook’s 714 million unique visitors worldwide in May 2011 (according to comScore) make it the largest social network amongst all. The immense coverage of social networks has animated brands to spread their branded content on social networks in general and specifically on Facebook.

Whereas there are more or less tried and tested instruments to examine coverage, brand exposure and so on for the distribution of branded content and advertising on traditional channels for years, for branded content via Facebook this is not the case.

There is hard evidence for the quantitative assessment of users of brand pages on Facebook (so called “fans“), but almost all relate to the pure number of fans. Coverage is equated with the number of fans in most of the cases.

This is only the first half of the story, as current research shows the effect of branded content on Facebook (such as the study in collaboration by comScore and Facebook, link to the white paper (for free, but you need to register)).

In addition to the fans of brands on Facebook, where marketing as well as market research focus on, the friends of the fans are moving increasingly into the centre of interest. One reason for this is the fact that the number of friends of the fans surpasses the number of brand fans by far across almost all brands (comScore states factor 34 for this relationship for the top 100 U.S. brands on Facebook).

Another reason for paramount importance of friends of the fans can be seen in the fact that over 25% of the time on Facebook is spent with reading, viewing and tracking of the newsfeed (timeline). This area is the part of Facebook where messages of friends are displayed, including their interactions with brands that they are “friends” of. The effect of this pure and additional brand impression is to be evaluated significantly more intense, because impressions don’t come from the brands but from the friends.

Therefore in this case, and unlike to traditional media, it is required to investigate further research in this “B2C2C communication” to understand the modes of causal relationship.

No insight without context!

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Some time has passed since “contextual insights” was promoted (by Bruce Tempkin and others) as a great opportunity to deliver and activate insights.

Contextual insights – as the opposite of pure statistical analysis – need a broad and deep understanding of our clients’ business. In other words contextual insights are “…observations drawn from data that resonates with an understanding of the business”.

We benefit from contextual insights primarily by understanding the business context for the interpretation and application of the results, combined with adequate data.

I like the idea very much, I think it’s extremely charming. We might need more than data to deliver good insights. We have to dive deep into the client’s business world and understand the context of their needs and opportunities.

But that’s not easy in every case (and btw. that’s the reason why highly specialized companies more often employ their own market researchers instead of commissioning external agencies…)

Social Media Data is a perfect field for contextual data. Although there are tons of data, they weight nothing without appropriate context information.

This is a graph of more than 10,000 Facebook statusmessages, where people have reported that they have separated.

What is clearly missing here are real “contextual insights”, because the data reveal only the “when” and not the “why“. But as a starting point for analysis and as a pool for building hypothesis social media data could be quite interesting.

The question that remains is whether this is already the end of the road or if there is more.

Let’s see what we can learn from the 2011 TMRE11 in November, hosted by IIR USA. There is a nice track called “Activating Insights”. Really looking forward to it

Online access panels, natural communities and online research communities – what, when and why?!?

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Online, Social Media Monitoring, Research Communities … It has been a long time ago since market research was affected by that huge amount and speed of change. Not only in order to marketing their own services, but also to face the challenges new words, phrases, tools, brands and so on have been established.

No wonder that confusion sometimes is still quite large.

One approach that became a popular representative of new methods in a short time is the approach of online research communities, also known as Market Research Online Community (MROC).

There are different definitions of Online Research Communities, but they all have a common base: “An Online Research Community is a platform that is used exclusively to generate a deep understanding of needs, attitudes and the reality of life of specific target groups.”

So we don’t talk about access panels with a focus on quantitative research and we don’t talk about natural communities full of customers’ conversation, like brand communities, Facebook pages or topic related community sites.

But of course these sources can help us finding and recruiting the right participants for an appropriate Online Research Community.

But we have to make sure to keep advantages and disadvantages in mind:
For example people from Online Access Panels are used to the internet, but they are probably not used to community tools and have a lack of willingness to participate over a longer period of time.

On the other hand people from a natural community like a branded site or a Facebook page have rich experience with a specific topic as well as with the community tools but maybe they don’t want to participate in market research. And sometimes, especially if you are not the owner of the natural community, it might be difficult to talk to the community members.

We will learn more about research communities at The Market Research Event 2011 in November. If you look at the program you will see that IIR USA has planned a whole track for this topic. It will be interesting to follow the “Social Media & Communities” track on Monday.

Market Research Leadership – Where’s the beef?

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Recent research shows that market research is increasingly affected by a positioning problem.

For example the current Green Book Research Industry Trends Report mentions the fact that the proportion of those who describe the importance of market research as declining, has increased within six months by 20 percentage points.
Only every second expert assigns a rising or at least constant importance to market research. All in all it seems that perception of the relevance of market research suffers.

The reasons for this development are manifold. In addition to external factors such as the financial and economic crisis there are also some internal factors to be identified.
In general declining relevance is a consequence of lacking clear added values. That’s valid for brands as well as for companies, and this is also true for market research. On the one hand this can be explained by the constantly increasing number of competitors for market research. Boundaries towards other players such as consultancies, advertising or strategy agencies become fluid. On the other hand, fueled by the increasing importance of the internet, technological service providers play an increasingly important role.

One of the most striking examples for this is the rise of online research communities. Different to for example a representative CATI-survey an online community project is not naturally located in the area of market research competence. It often happens that the marketing itself, supported by IT and technology department / supplier, puts on such projects. Consequently classical market research role models and thought patterns are questioned.

Requirements concerning market research therefore are constantly changing. It becomes increasingly difficult for the industry to keep up with the pace of developments and to find the right positioning.

Someone who has accepted this challenge is IIR USA, the organizers of this year’s “The Market Research Event 2011″ in November in Orlando. This conference has it all, a first glance at the program (which you get only when you specify name and e-mail address) is sufficient piece of evidence for that.

From my point of view the combination of diverse and interesting topics makes the TMRE 2011 very attractive. Nine different tracks – from “Market Research & Leadership Insights” and “New Tools & Breakthrough Methodology” to “ROI & Measurement” show the full spectrum of recent challenges and how one can deal with these new approaches, innovations and ideas.

While promising “connecting to the best insights from around the world” the TMRE helps in positioning market research and to re-strength, win back or even expand relevance.

And this is something where we all can benefit and gain a lot.

Ist Social Media Monitoring gar keine Marktforschung?

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Ich habe gerade einen in mehrerer Hinsicht interessanten kurzen Beitrag bei bnet.com gefunden.

Dort macht Geoffrey James in sehr klaren Worten seinen Standpunkt deutlich, dass das, was man über Techniken des Social Media Monitoring über Konsumenten herausbekommt, nichts mit Marktforschung zu tun hat.

Hier seine vier Argumente:

1. Geschichten sind keine Beweise. Tausend Geschichten haben genau die gleiche Gültigkeit wie eine Geschichte, die genau gleich Null ist. Wenn Geschichten Beweise sind, dann sind fliegende Untertassen, Gespenster und Kobolde alle echt.

2. Kommentare sind selbst-selektiv. Echte Forschung beruht auf statistischen Zufallsstichproben. Personen, die kommentieren, sind für das Kommentieren empfänglich, was ihre Eingänge statistisch wertlos macht.

3. Anonymität erzeugt Verzerrung. Weil sich Kommentatoren oft nicht mit den echten Namen identifizieren, fühlen sie sich frei für “spitzbübische Stellungnahmen”.

4. Bezahlte Kommentare kommen Social Web gehäuft vor. PR-Firmen kaufen häufig Kommentare, die damit gefälscht sind. Umgekehrt bestellen Wettbewerber Kommentare mit gefälschter Kritik.


Warum das interessant ist?


Ebenfalls aus vier Gründen…

1. Weil es sich um “Totschlagargumente” handelt, die in der ein oder anderen Form auch für traditionelle Marktforschung gelten, dort aber mehr oder weniger sehenden Auges in Kauf genommen oder einfach ignoriert werden bzw. in Vergessenheit geraten sind.

2. Weil es erstaunlich ist, mit welchem Brustton der Überzeugung hier geschrieben wird. Als ob es nicht auch sehr schöne Beispiele gibt, dass eben Social Media Monitoring einen wichtigen Beitrag für Marktbearbeitung, Marketing, Markenführung und somit auch der Marktforschung leistet.

3. Weil nicht erst seit gestern Dienstleister, Consultants, und andere intelligente Leute die Möglichkeiten, die Social Networks der Marktforschung bieten, abwägen, bewerten, modifizieren und inspirierend einsetzen. Nur so bleibt die Marktforschung für unsere Kunden relevant!

4. Und schließlich, weil es Marktforschung reduziert und die immer noch weit verbreitete Sicherung des Status Quo stützt. Und damit sind die Argumente einer aufgeschlossenen Diskussion zu zukünftigen Anforderungen und Möglichkeiten alles andere als zuträglich.

Sei’s drum.
Ich hoffe nur, dass sich Auftraggeber, die sich unwohl mit dem Status Quo der Marktforschung fühlen, nicht verunsichern lassen und weiterhin mutig neue Wege bestreiten.