Something old, something new

Editor's note: Mary McIlrath is senior vice president at Chicago-based C+R Research. Erin Barber is vice president at C+R Research.

The explosion of online and mobile technologies has become fertile ground for innovative qualitative research. Since social sites and smartphones have become the dominant way so many communicate, a social approach can be the most natural way to talk about the brands in our lives. Both online and mobile help us explore customers’ experiences without geographic constraints.

Over the past several years, online discussion boards and communities have become quite common. Shorter-term online discussion boards are a fast, economical way to get the benefit of an online community in days or weeks without an ongoing commitment and expense. Long-term online insight communities provide an ongoing mechanism for staying in touch with your customer base and an efficient platform for launching targeted projects as needed.

These new techniques offer researchers a number of benefits, such as:

A wealth of rich feedback from 20-30 participants (or more) and more air-time per participant. The online platform breeds reflective responses. Participants answer in the comfort of their own homes in their own time so they can thoroughly think through their perceptions, behaviors and opinions. Also, there is no limitation on how much they can say in each of their responses, so every participant can have equal airtime to explain their viewpoints. They don’t have to negotiate sharing time with others in a designated response window.

A means to alleviate interpersonal biases. Social cues – like the way someone looks, dresses, talks – are much less relevant. Participants have limited access to the physical characteristics of other members that can affect discussion flow and how interactions occur. Plus, the natural bias from hearing others’ responses is controlled. We have the ability to mask responses, so participants will not know how others in the discussion have responded until they have given their own honest, complete answer.

For concept evaluation, order bias can be lessened in certain platforms by incorporating a tool to rotate the ideas, so certain groups of respondents see different ideas first.

Honest responses and realistic views into consumer experiences that are fostered by the relatively anonymous and unobtrusive nature of online participation. This setting gives us access to those who may be on the shy side in-person or those who are afraid to stray from majority response, or opinion leaders, in-person.

From an ethnographic standpoint, it allows us unobtrusive access into their lives via self-recorded video and pictures. Many times, participants are more at ease in their own natural environment without the distraction of a moderator and cameraman.

The ability to understand opinions over time. We can have participants capture their product/service usage over several weeks via journaling and discussions. This allows us to see if desires for specific products/services have remained strong or faltered after extended or repeated usage.

It allows for a personal touch. Although this personal touch does not compare to face-to-face interaction, moderators can create an open, comfortable environment that allows participants to realize they are talking to a live person – via video welcomes, video questions, welcome pictures, etc. Moderators can truly get to know many of their participants, depending on the length of the board.

Along with providing a personal touch with the moderator, online research allows participants to glimpse into their fellow members’ lives. They naturally interact with each other, sharing their opinions and personal stories. They bond and get to know each other to a certain degree. Many participants are sad when projects are over.

The ability to incorporate projective techniques. One of the means by which we uncover deep insights in traditional qualitative is through projective techniques. Many of these techniques can be implemented in the online environment, so we don’t lose the ability to use this very important qualitative method. We can have respondents create collages, video or photo journals, metaphors and more. We can also incorporate language-based exercises, such as storytelling, sentence completion and letter-writing.

Iterative and additive exercises collapse months of projects into weeks. When the goal is to optimize concepts, consumers can evaluate initial ideas over two-to-three days, leave time for the creative team to revise, then expose the revised ideas for confirmation or further refinement. Depending on the number of concepts and the time needed to revise, this could all happen within the same week.

As needed, this iterative process can take place at an accelerated pace – in one to two days via immediate feedback communities. We can recruit an advisory group who can participate synchronously in one-to-two-hour sessions so the team can view results together real-time to encourage team alignment, with facilitated iteration and brainstorming sessions. These iterative projects can be less expensive and faster than equivalent work conducted as separate projects.

The ability to listen to participant-generated content. We’re receiving answers to our research questions and are also allowed access into what’s important to our respondents.

There are no geographic constraints. Your participants can be recruited from anywhere since they are participating in their own homes. And, we can sit at our desks or at home and see the results unfold in real-time.

Additionally, in-the-moment research via mobile can be used as a stand-alone approach or a supplement to shorter- and longer-term online qualitative projects. Thus, you can capture, see and hear reactions and experiences right when they happen with mobile texting, image and video – for initial perceptions and extended-use/change-in-appeal over time via mobile usage journals. And, you can move beyond your customers’ perceptions of what they will buy, do or use and step into their reality.

Not the perfect fit

With all this excitement around online qualitative research, certain users of the methods are realizing it’s not the perfect fit for all qualitative research needs. Some who have yet to adopt online methods are skeptical of losing some of the most valuable benefits of qualitative research, such as the in-person, human connection, improvisation, the volume of the nonverbal response and the ability to walk through a consumer’s space.

Online qualitative methods are not a panacea. Face-to-face qualitative can still provide a more intimate connection to consumers. While online methods allow for interaction and the ability to get to know the participants, there’s nothing that can replace the intimacy of talking face-to-face to a warm, friendly, live moderator who is there to listen and help participants open up. Today’s world has become so virtual that many people appreciate what has become the novelty of human interaction.

Additionally, in-person qualitative offers greater ability for improvisation. How many times has a traditional moderator entered a focus group room with a handwritten list of bullet points as a discussion guide, which was crafted with the clients 10 minutes prior? Or how many times has the guide been thrown by the wayside while the discussion turned in a more interesting and valuable direction? Online qualitative is limited in its ability to provide this flexibility; discussion boards are moderated live but pre-programmed, and even Webcam interviews are usually scripted. Moreover, changing direction and expanding topics too often in an online setting can lead to respondent fatigue.

In-person qualitative is also superior to online qualitative in its ability to capture spontaneous reactions. The first few seconds after a respondent reads a concept or views an advertisement are extremely telling. First impressions can’t be repeated. In online discussions and communities, participants can sit and ponder their reactions before typing a response. Not that this is a bad thing; in many cases we would prefer more thought-out responses. However, if you are looking to get true gut reactions, online discussions and communities are not the best route. Even live online chats and Webcam interviews produce a split-second technological barrier to seeing the respondent’s immediate reaction.

Traditional qualitative also provides a wealth of non-verbal cues via facial expressions and body movements – both of which are somewhat lost in the virtual world. We can capture reactions via self-recorded video in the online realm but the self-consciousness of recording oneself can introduce bias into responses.

Last, but not least, in-person, traditional qualitative lets us physically be in their worlds – while cooking, shopping, attending sporting events, watching TV, you name it. While we can certainly see into customers’ worlds via video uploads, we’re not there with them. The insights that can be captured by actually living in their world instead of simply seeing can be powerful.

The benefits of both

As we can see, both new and traditional qualitative methods have tremendous benefits. Depending on the research needs, either one can be used as a stand-alone method. Of course, more and more we are seeing there is a need to leverage the benefits of both.

For those who have yet to try online or mobile qualitative, a hybrid approach that combines both new and traditional qualitative is a great way to get your feet wet without losing the comfort and confidence you have in in-person qualitative.

A hybrid qualitative approach provides a lot of flexibility and advantages, including:

  • Getting broader geographical reach. If you need that in-person touch, go traditional. Need to get feedback on a national level? Incorporate online or mobile. This will also help to save you some money by eliminating the need to conduct groups or interviews in multiple markets and save on travel costs and time out of the office.
  • Merge top-of-mind gut reactions, including non-verbal (traditional), with in-depth, reflective evaluations over time (online).
  • Conduct exploratory online discussions along with in-person ethnographic “tag-alongs.” In many situations it can make sense for us to have participants record their experiences but in certain situations it’s simply best for the research to be in their world – for example, drive-alongs, walk-alongs, sport-alongs, drink-alongs, etc. A trained qualitative researcher can observe what the consumer may not even be aware of – like the frozen pizzas in their “organic” kitchen.
  • Use online or mobile journals for homework prior to focus groups so we can see their actual recorded experiences and explore deeper through an in-person discussion.
  • Conduct in-person tag-alongs to develop vocabulary and attributes prior to an online discussion.

Ultimate qualitative goals

As you can see, the possibilities are almost endless. We should continue to move forward by embracing the new while also keeping to our qualitative roots. For your next project, consider going hybrid and merging the new and traditional methods into one study to achieve your ultimate qualitative goals.