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Category Archives: Qualitative
How are companies learning about you?
Antonio Bolfo/Reportage for The New York Times
Check out this article from The New York Times about what companies like Target may know about you and how they’re turning that information into profits.
Short on time? This video provides a short but interesting overview of the article.
SNL + Focus Group = Research Nightmare
Often, when conducting qualitative research, marketers may try to recruit respondents who are already loyal to the brand in hopes that the respondent will provide more in-depth feedback.
Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live
However, sometimes brand loyalists can be a bit too enthusiastic, just like Melissa McCarthy’s character in this hilarious Saturday Night Live skit shown below. Has this ever happened to you?
Reconciling Hispanic Product Evaluation Ratings
Do Hispanics consumers in the US like a product or service as much as they say they do? Apparently, they don’t…
http://www.quirks.com/articles/2011/20111203.aspx?searchID=315515030&sort=5&pg=1
Validity in Assessing Ad Communication & Impact
Under The Radar
by David Forbes, Ph.D. & Judith Retensky
Typically, good advertising has to come in “under the radar” – that is, be persuasive in ways that are subtle – appealing to emotions and deep-rooted psychological motivations. One type of research that attempts to measure these reactions is the communication check.
Communication check research typically takes place when advertisers have reached a fairly specific vision about an upcoming ad campaign. The “check” is used to gain a preliminary look at how the ad will “work” – what messages it will convey and how those messages will be received.
However, respondents are often unable to give accurate reports about their reactions to advertising since the important communications usually take place below the conscious intellectual level, and the kinds of impact good advertising can create are precisely those that respondents don’t want to acknowledge. Given these constraints, how should researchers proceed? Following the 6 steps in the communication check process can help to accurately measure reactions and optimize the campaign.
Step 1: Use Developed Stimuli
Stimuli for advertising communication research should be as fully developed as possible. Although showing the ad at any stage (sketch, storyboard, etc.) works, well-developed executions will deliver the underlying strategy in a way that can come in “under the radar,” just like a real ad.
The more stimuli look and feel like finished advertising, the greater validity in the findings.
Research ON Research: Importance of Brand Photos
The Effects of Brand Photos on Attitudes & Usage Measures
BACKGROUND: Including digital images of branded products or brand logos has become a common practice in web-based questionnaires on the implicit theory that these images will improve the accuracy of aided recall measures of awareness and usage. One hypothesis is that these images serve to jog respondent memories of brands seen or used that might otherwise have been forgotten, and thus raise levels of stated awareness and usage. A competing hypothesis is that these images lower levels of stated awareness and usage by deflating the incidence of “phantom awareness” (false positive claims of awareness and usage) by providing cross-validating information.
RESEARCH METHOD: A total of 1,250 surveys (625 with brand pictures, 625 without) were conducted about sports drinks, using a demographically representative online panel, with a standard security screening and a requirement that respondents be partly responsible for household shopping decisions. Each option shown to the respondent was selected at random and chosen to ensure an equal distribution of each option.
FINDINGS: The study showed that reported usage for several brands used in past 6 months was significantly higher when NO picture was shown, and significantly lower when a picture was shown.
CONCLUSION: Preliminary evidence suggests that the use of brand images helps to reduce the prevalence of “phantom usage,” i.e., overstated usage, presumably because brand images provide additional cues that improve respondent recall. Although further research is needed, it appears that brand images improve the accuracy of usage recall and should be incorporated when possible.
Time Out of Mind: Using Breathing Space to Maximize Inspiration
By Ric Dube, Ph.D.
It’s true that top-of-mind ideas can be important ideas. Focus group interviews and team ideation sessions are extremely useful tools that capitalize on teamwork and quick thinking to generate lists of ideas. These approaches use high energy and cooperation to cast a wide net to catch as many different ideas as possible.
Focus groups and ideations are very effective toward generating a breadth of ideas, however, these approaches are less effective in producing the depth needed for breakthrough insights. Despite the virtues of cooperation, there are often richer rewards in rumination, i.e., letting the mind wander and daydream, which permits the brain to create new connections and associations. According to legend, the Greek scholar Archimedes was obsessed with the problem of how to calculate volume until one day he stepped into his bath and saw the water rise. As the story goes, he cried “Eureka! I’ve got it!” as he ran naked through the streets of Sicily.
Cognitive neuroscientists studying the brain with fMRI have recently recorded electrical activity in the right hemisphere that signals impending “Eureka moments.” These scientists have discovered that certain conditions promote these kinds of insights: positive mood, absence of stress, and quiet, unfocused time spent alone, much like Archimedes’ bath.
Implications of Focus Group Candor Principles
Here are the implications to the three principals discussed in yesterday’s post concerning Focus Group Candor.
Ownership:
Let the respondents lead whenever possible. Stay away from driving the topic with the guideline and avoid “Now I want to talk about…” whenever possible. Internalize your client’s learning agenda and use respondents’ comments as natural transitions: “You mentioned ________, let’s talk more about that.”
Timing:
Strike while the opinion is fresh, before the respondent has a chance to review and edit a point of view. Look for a respondent’s nonverbal cues of readiness to contribute, and call on them as quickly as possible.
Engagement:
Drive the pace and you drive involvement. Consider that a group with ten respondents means a chance to talk only every two minutes if each person talks 10 seconds at a turn. Rapid sequences of short answers from many people means everyone is engaged. Long narrative responses create down time for others in the group, resulting in more “polished”, less candid input.
Creating Focus Group Candor
“Are They Telling Me The Truth?”
Written by David Forbes, Ph.D. & Gar Roper, Ph.D.
Perhaps the very biggest concern when trying to learn about the marketplace through focus group research is the issue of truth. Asking consumers to tell us about their thoughts, feelings and actions in the day to day real world is always an invitation to have the consumer tell us stories — stories about how they wished things were, or stories that present themselves in the most favorable, socially desirable light. This challenge to focus group learning is indeed a significant one, requiring the focus group moderator to have an explicit strategic framework for eliciting candor from focus group respondents.
The challenge of focus group candor is met with a scientific psychological approach that is based upon understanding how people think and talk while presenting opinions. Three principles are key to this approach: Ownership, Timing, Engagement
