New, new media tells us it’s not only OK, but a potentially good thing to parrot something that’s already been written about in some detail (e.g., The Huffington Post and pretty much all of WordPress). So I am taking advantage of the somewhat fluid rules of social-media etiquette to call attention to an article in the September issue of Quirk’s Marketing Research Review magazine. However, given the relative obscurity of this particular publication, I may not be participating in blog relativism at all, which is unfortunate since I hoped it would make me seem younger.
The article, “What’s in it for me? How qualitative can help define the new value proposition,” explores a critical point in modern market research.
The article tackles a pretty profound point — What role does qualitative research play anyhow? It smartly points out how most research has changed from the “what?” (benefits, attitudes, etc.) to the “so what?” and the “now what?” Raise your hand now if this doesn’t ring true. So how do we get there?
Addressing this question means marketing managers and planners alike need to start opening up to alternative research methods or, at the very least, process enhancements. Exploratory techniques intended to get at subconscious or unrecognized consumer attitudes should and will become more common. Additionally, those looking to answer the “so what?” and “now what?” must face two increasingly real points:
1. Anthropology and consumer/target co-creation are imperative.
2. Mixed-methodology initiatives shouldn’t just be designed to look at the now, but also the tomorrow. And they should work in tandem, not just as a process.
The second point is very important given the routine perception of roles for insights versus numbers. Consumer insights are often seen as the softer or more human deliverables, while numbers are cold and impersonal. But what would you say if a researcher designed a formula to predict the likelihood of changes in consumer attitudes? What if you could plug in a soft, human insight into a cold, impersonal equation and find out where your brand needs to be in relation to your core customers three or five years from now? While this may seem next-gen, the truth is many other business fields have been working to capture this same sort of intelligence for some time. Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson likely aren’t household names in most marketing departments, but they split the Nobel Prize for economics this year for such groundbreaking work in behavioral economics — a field that strives to capture the quixotic nature of how human foibles affect the larger market. Their ability to forecast such changes is pretty remarkable. And, of course, it required a combination of thoughts and numbers.
The final takeaway is that if you’re looking to better understand your audience and interviewing someone to help you, ask them about their experience in alternative fields of thought rather than how many groups they’ve managed or quant projects they’ve completed. There’s a lot of that around already. Original insights and transformative findings will only come from original points of view.
