The premise is simple enough – people don’t always reveal what’s driving their decision making, and more importantly, people don’t always even know what is driving their decisions.  Since people either don’t want to or simply can’t communicate what’s driving their actions, we need to look and see what their brain is saying.

Recently, several us read Buyology as part of our firm’s book club.  After reading this book, it is easy to get excited about the technology and benefits it could provide (especially when presented in an oversimplified manner).

The technology does hold promise; however, it isn’t yet the magic bullet in market research.  The ARF’s NeuroStandards Collaboration Project is working to shed light on what is and what isn’t working in the field.  As the article reports, these technologies are raising as many questions as they’re answering.  The biggest challenge?  Figuring out what it is actually measuring and being able to pinpoint what is causing the reaction.

Neuroscience is quickly earning a place in the researcher’s toolbox, but no research tool is without its faults.  We must understand the limitations of our methods for us to get the most out of them.

T. Magnum Photo

Our research work at Corona, more often than not, involves primary research, or gathering original data for the question(s) at hand.  However, this is often only the case because there wasn’t already data gathered previously (i.e., secondary data) that could answer the question.

Secondary data can save you significant time and money when conducting research and should be an early step in the research process before taking on new research.  Is there publicly available or academic research?  Will the Census shed light on my market?  What do my sales data and customer databases tell me?  Are there additional insights to be gained from previous focus groups and in-depth interviews (qualitative research can often be overlooked as a source – if you have the original notes, transcripts, videos, etc. it can be reanalyzed for the topic at hand).  All of these are good places to start.  But when deciding if secondary data is appropriate for your particular research question, consider the following:

• What was the original goal in collecting the data?
• What structure is the data in for additional analysis?
• Who collected the data?
• How (methodologically) was it collected?
• When was it collected?

Answering these questions and understanding the implications will help you make an informed decision on whether to use the data you have or gather additional data.

Through “research” done in focus groups it was revealed that people didn’t like Domino’s pizza. (I put research in quotations since I have heard CPB – the agency who did the ad – has a great disdain for focus groups.  Plus, I don’t think Domino’s would have taken the handful of opinions from focus groups alone to convince them to trash their recipe, but I digress.)

While “research” has been used in advertising in the past (remember Ford’s Swap Your Ride campaign?), I personally think this is on a different level.  Will respondents take focus groups less seriously, use stronger comments to get attention, or just not want to bother with participating if they think they’ll receive unwanted attention (granted, all the people in the commercial surely signed releases)?

More than likely, this one ad, or even ad campaign, will have little lasting effect on focus groups. And it does show companies acting on customers’ feedback.  But it’s important for researchers and end users to be aware of these pop culture uses and possible shifts in opinions towards research among participants, especially if we see more of this type of ad in the future.

What do you think?

(Reminds me of a previous commercial created for Windows Vista.)

One of the draws of phone app research is that it can be immediate.  Just saw a movie?  Review it while walking out of the theater.  Just left the store without buying that flat-screen TV – what kept you from buying?

While actively seeking feedback through phone surveys may be immediate, passively listening to the conversations already occurring can also be immediate, but without the interruption of a survey request.  While we often think of surveys and polls for gathering information, with the adoption of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (and many others), just listening to the conversations can yield real, unfiltered, and immediate feedback.  Anyone who spends time on Facebook or similar sites has seen their friends praise a great experience they had or denounce a company’s poor customer service.

While drawing statistical findings from sampling online conversations may be difficult, they can yield insights.

While there are services that specialize in monitoring social media, small companies can easily get started with services like Google Alerts that alert you when your keywords are mentioned.

The post’s author posted again in response asking for any examples of videos to illustrate, yet nothing has turned up.  Can any reader of this blog offer any examples?

Today I ran across this article written by another professional respondent.  While somewhat old, I believe it still rings true nearly five years later.

For reasons that are probably apparent from watching the video and reading the article, the current system that most firms employ for focus group recruiting is defective.  Sure, it’s quicker and cheaper upfront, but those valuable “insights” you’re gaining are costing you in the long term.

While Corona conducts and hosts many focus groups, we do not recruit from pre-screened respondents for our projects.  We recruit fresh sample for each project and our participants have often never participated in any group before.  Yes, it costs marginally more, but the quality of the respondent is worth it.

Want to find out more?  Please contact us to discuss your project.

First, my view of loyalty.  We are all familiar with customer loyalty programs.  You can find them nearly everywhere, from simple punch cards, to complex airline programs, for your morning latte, gas, and, of course, groceries.  Many of these programs, however, only foster a transactional loyalty.  Meaning, once you earned your free reward, are you any more loyal to the company?  If you get 10 punches on your punch card and get a free coffee, are you any more likely to return to start over?  (Maybe yes, but it probably isn’t because of the punch card.)  Why not defect to another coffee shop and start using their punch card program?

In my opinion, true loyalty is fostered through experience, special privileges, and incremental rewards.  The coffee shop you frequent may be more due to you having a regular barista that knows your name and usual drink (experience), giving you samples to try or an extra shot of espresso (special privileges), and a frequent customer program that doesn’t always reset to zero (incremental rewards).

Lately, while visiting grocery stores, I’ve been conducting my own observational research, of sorts.  Specifically, I’ve been noticing several ways that the typical loyalty card could be designed to be much more powerful. (For reference, I usually shop at King Soopers or Safeway here in Colorado.)

• At the self-checkout, why does it always ask what language you speak?  How you prefer to pay?  Shouldn’t your card remember this for you?
• More and more people are bringing their own totes to use for bags and most stores give you a slight credit for this – when they notice.  If this is your default behavior, why not prompt the cashier overseeing the self-checkouts that they need to confirm you have them?
• Looking up fruits and vegetables are time consuming if you don’t have the little PLU code.  Most people, I believe, buy many of the same fruits and vegetables regularly.  Why not have a shortcut menu with  fruits and vegetables commonly bought by that customer?
• Millions of Americans have food allergies and they constantly have to check that some little ingredient hasn’t snuck its way into their food.  Why not prompt someone when they are about to purchase a food containing whatever they are allergic to?  Same could be done for vegans, or other food preferences.
• What if it reminded you if you forgot to buy an item that you always buy (i.e. milk)?
• How about an option to have a shorter receipt, or no receipt at all?  I love it when people buy a gallon of milk and their receipt is a foot long.

This is only a start.  As RFID, smart in-store advertising, and smart shopping carts become more common, the possibilities for improving the shopping experience are endless.

As a footnote, as I was writing this, I received an email from my wife about a new service from Safeway that tracks your family’s nutrition based on what you bought.  Hopefully this is a sign of many services to come.

Photo from Wikipedia.

This video reminds me of why we only custom recruit for our focus groups.  We use no panel and do not accept opt-in participants.  Instead, we custom-recruit for each project ensuring few if any “regular” focus group participants are in the group and that the group of participants are actually the ones you want to hear from.

I recognized the rooms immediately – two-way glass, audio and video recording, etc.  Instead of group discussions though, they use the rooms for communication trainings (for example, watching other doctors and students communicate with clients), or just anytime too many people in the exam room would be a hindrance.

Corona’s focus group facility only uses closed-circuit television to allow client viewing since we have always felt that mirrors can cause an unwanted distraction, especially when you can hear people behind them. At CSU, this has, on rare occasion, been problematic with the occasional noise coming from behind the mirror, though the majority of the time it is hardly an issue.  Most clients readily forget about the mirror (of course, they probably have other things on their minds considering they are there with their sick pet) and the mirrors are covered with blinds when not in use.

Next time we have focus groups in Fort Collins, maybe we’ll have to look into holding them at the vet hospital – but we’ll be sure to remove the examination table first!

Another great way to get a pulse of what is being said (and, potentially, create a conversation).

Thanks to Seth Godin’s blog for the tip (and if you like Godin’s perspecitve on marketing, you can currently download the audio version of his new book Tribes from Audible.com).