Editor's note: Pepper Miller is president of The Hunter-Miller Group, a Chicago research and planning firm.

Tom Burrell, chairman/CEO of Burrell Communications, once said "African-Americans are not dark-skinned white people." I heard Mr. Burrell's statement more than 15 years ago. His aim was to show marketers that cultural differences require different advertising messages for African-Americans versus the general population. The same idea also applies to marketing research.

For years, when conducting research among the African-American segment, my firm has used traditional designs and methods, carefully noting along the way what works and what doesn't. Today, we share our lessons, experiences, and advice with clients to help them understand that in research, like advertising, cultural differences impact how African-Americans should be approached, recruited and interviewed.

Following are some illustrations of research projects that required a different approach to designing and executing research among the African-American segment.

I. Identifying the target and market

Compared to general market information, there continues to be limited quantitative information about African-American consumers outside of proprietary projects. Therefore, many marketers often shoot from the hip, particularly when identifying the target. For the less-savvy marketer, or those with little or no experience with African-Americans, we suggest the following checklist of options as a place to start.

1. Use Census data to help identify, define or create a rationale for your target, i.e., age (50 percent of African-American adults are aged 18-34) and income and residence (growing numbers of middle- to upper-income African-American households are located in the suburbs).

2. Brand and category development indices and other syndicated research information (e.g., Simmons, MRI) to identify brand and category usage.

3. Conduct quantitative research in areas of usage (including competitors), demographics, geography and attitudes.

4. Consider markets with high concentrations of African-American consumers and facilities that are experienced with and accessible to this target.

II. Modify "by-the-book" methods

  • Relax the qualifiers. In many cases a general market study will precede an African-American study and is used as the model for the design of the African-American study. However, the general market specifications don't fit the real-world situations of the African-American target. Thus, the added demands for qualifying respondents make recruiting tough, send costs through the roof and increase the propensity for no-shows. The challenge is to incorporate quality and hands-on control while being flexible with the criteria. Following are a few of our experiences that reflect this approach.

We recently completed a qualitative study for a major insurance carrier to better understand the preferences among African-American business owners for African-American versus non-African-American brokers. Previous general market research included conducting focus groups among brokers and business owners. The same criteria were requested for the African-American segment. After reviewing the specs, we alerted the client to major differences and requested that the qualifiers be relaxed to represent more relevant situations in the African-American community.

For example, the earnings and company size criteria for white brokers far exceeded the number of comparably structured businesses in the African-American community. We convinced the client to relax the qualifiers to include 1) businesses that are operating in the African-American community, and 2) African-American firms that are doing business with African-American insurance brokers.

  • Relax the affinity clause: employ the buddy system (bring a friend). In December 1996, The Chisholm-Mingo Group was one of three African-American agency finalists for Denny's African-American ad business. On behalf of Chisholm-Mingo, we conducted research among younger, older, current and former users of Denny's.

Facing a quick turnaround and the challenge of locating qualified respondents (particularly from the user segments), recruiters were forced to use resources beyond their database of people with focus group experience. While many companies are conducting more research among the African-American segment than 15 years ago when Mr. Burrell was on his mission, we find many African-Americans - even the most sophisticated - haven't been exposed to the market research process. Moreover, those first-time "virgin respondents" often carry skepticism about the process.

Therefore, for Denny's we relaxed the affinity clause by allowing a few friends to participate in the same group, providing they met all other stipulated screening criteria. We noticed that as the comfort level increased, so did the flow of conversation and the amount of valuable information. As a result, we were able to identify three "mindset" segments which enabled Chisholm-Mingo to better address the issues at hand.

By the way, Chisholm-Mingo's awesome presentation won them the Denny's business.

  • Change the environment - comfort level is key. Two doctors at Children's Memorial Hospital (CMH) in Chicago established a Safe Haven Program after observing that epidemic numbers of children (particularly from high-risk environments) were losing their lives to guns. Safe Haven was developed to help create private and public places were children can feel safe.

To better develop the Safe Haven Program, CMH requested focus groups among mothers residing in public housing developments. Instead of having respondents come to a downtown facility, where the environment might prohibit them from speaking honestly about guns in households, we persuaded CMH to execute the groups at the housing site - which in this case was Cabrini Green.

This idea required making modifications to the recruitment process and to the logistics for the groups. A typical facility relying on a database was unable to handle this special and delicate assignment. Understanding that many public housing developments have active groups of concerned residents, we enlisted the leader of one of the development's many programs to help recruit qualified respondents. The screener was modified to a simpler format and we dispatched a field person to work with the leader on recruitment, group coordination and set-up.

The groups were conducted in a vacant apartment. One room served as the group room where respondents were audio and videotaped. Another room was set-up for client viewing via a TV monitor.

The 95 percent show rate complemented the excellent discussions. Respondents indicated that they felt valued and were appreciative that we met with them on their turf.

III. Probe, probe, probe . . . without alienating

Previous research has shown that African-Americans have a tendency to highly rate issues, concepts, ideas and services that have a positive effect on the community. Such is the case with South Shore Bank.

South Shore Bank of Chicago (SSB), is a white-owned institution primarily serving the African-American community. SSB is a major player in African-American community development and has invested millions of dollars in property renovation, small business loans and is physically located in the communities which it serves.

Although SSB's persona as a good corporate citizen appeared to be intact, some issues surfaced regarding the overall quality of service to its retail customers. In response to what management was hearing from its customers, SSB requested a customer satisfaction survey to measure the effectiveness of its services among target customers.

Using a 10-point scale, where 10 is the highest rating, many African-Americans rated the bank's services with 9's and even perfect 10's - to the point where learning was limited.

This is not to say that African-Americans are not being honest, but a couple of things were going on here.

1. Compared to the general market, African-Americans feel that they are not often asked for their opinions. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see a trend of contrasting extremes especially with regard to issues and situations affecting the community. Many get inspired from being asked and, in their minds, use research to foster a change (or, in the case of situations they don't want to change, maintain the status quo).

2. There is a history and perception among African-Americans that "good things get taken away; bad things are here to stay." Therefore, our experience tells us that with SSB, African-Americans most likely wanted to ensure that the community programs were not taken away or changed for the worse.

To that end, depending on the client and situation, the researcher may want to include additional probes at the end of the questions. Be careful about appearing to change the participant's responses. Instead, summarize their responses and even revisit some questions if necessary to help the them think about a particular event or circumstance that might help them deliver a more thoughtful response.

Don't abandon tradition

We are not advocating abandoning traditional approaches. They have served us well over the years. But it is important that marketers and researchers understand that African-Americans respond to their environment and many situations emotionally. In most cases this is what clients want. However, the outcome of the research and your marketing project may depend on how you approach African-Americans and your success in getting them to be more thoughtful respondents.