Broadly speaking, and within the context of gathering qualitative insights, online communities fall into two categories of interest;
1. Existing communities: virtual spaces where people with shared interests have gathered
2. Manufactured communities: virtual spaces where people who have been paid, or given some other incentive to offer their opinion come together
Are online communities, as described above, the goldmines for insight they’re being sold as?
Here are my thoughts;
Existing communities
These are communities that have naturally evolved to address member based interests and needs. Sport, parenting, cooking, fashion, music, social media etc – all have online communities that congregate in various virtual spaces across social media land (eg MSN or Yahoo groups, Facebook, blogs etc).
Theoretically at least, existing communities are a great resource for qualitative researchers. ‘Real’ conversations that often happen in relatively real time, minus any research effect. Insight heaven!
But what about in practice? Three key issues come to mind;
1. Sample
My old favourite, sample. Who are the community members? Do they represent the target market? There’s no way of telling.
2. Access
Many existing communities, and possibly the most interesting ones, are private; unsearchable for a start, but also, locked behind membership and passwords. If you can’t see them or hear them, it’s going to be difficult to glean any insights!
3. Professional ethics
Without the context of the market research ‘deal’, where critically, research participants are aware of, understand, and agree to participate in the research process, how should one proceed?
Should the researcher disclose their market research agenda? Is it unethical not to do so?
And if they do disclose their role as research participant/observer, how will the community respond? What effect will the researcher’s presence have on the community’s ecosystem and/or shape of the discussion? These unknowns make analysis a risky business.
Manufactured communities
Many researchers call them communities. They sell them as communities. Quite frankly, I’m not sure that manufactured communities (manufactured for the purposes of market research) should actually be called communities at all. Rather liberal use of the word ‘community’ in my opinion. A more accurate description would be a ‘purpose built environment’.
But notwithstanding the misnomer, from where I sit, manufactured communities are simply an inefficient, high cost, low return version of an online bulletin board focus group.
Here are my questions about manufactured communities;
What’s the cost of manufacturing, hosting, nurturing, monitoring and maintaining them to gather qualitative insights?
Where does analysis begin? Where does it end? What kind of questions are you trying to answer anyway?
You want insights?
I can give you a thousand insights.
Filed under: community, market research, qualitative researchers | 9 Comments
Tags: insight, online communities, qualitative
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Zebra Bites by Katie Harris is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License. -
Hi Katie,
I think you’re right about the limitations of these different kinds of communities for insight mining. But I do get all confused about the term community – sometimes I think we blur the lines between what community actually means and what the ideal community might look like. Both online and offline.
For example offline, I am part of the community of Elizabeth Bay, because it’s where I live. How I interact within that community might determine whether I am part of a manufactured community (purely due to my geographic location) or a more organic version (due to involvement beyond simply being a resident).
I don’t really have the answer (surprise) but it’s an interesting topic for discussion
We’re having a parallel conversation on communities and anonymity over at @markpollard’s house. Would love your views on this
http://www.markpollard.net/not-all-interaction-is-created-socially/
Or, perhaps we are disappearing up our own …
http://engineerswithoutfears.blogspot.com/2009/01/enemy-public.html
Good points Kate. It’s very confusing. Maybe we should borrow from “Brand” free January and deem February “Community” free.
: P
But for the sake of clarity, I’ve added the following into my last paragraph; (manufactured for the purposes of market research). Yep. Now it’s clear as mud.
double : P
Hi Gavin
I saw some of it yesterday…fascinating! Will definitely take a closer look later. : )
Hi Katie, hope you’re well –
Super post, I completely agree there are opportunities abound for qual research but I’m a little stumped with something and perhaps you can help me with it.
To me, existing communities are inherently manufactured. They’re non-digital people reconstructing a digital self and in that process isn’t ‘like for like,’ it’s ‘like for want,’ or ‘like for desire.’
Take facebook, generally from my experience it’s non-serious, social (in the sense of you know who people are in the real world) and you use it take the mickey. Any researcher who checks out my profile, or uses data from it, will get a skewed representation of me ‘as a whole.’ Another eg – Twitter, I use it to learn more about market research at home and abroad, it’s more work-like, bantering with strangers. There’s different sociocultural rules.
So, how can we research these ‘people’ in different social media environments and find insights which could just be as constructed a (re)presented as they are?
(I could just be missing the point entirely… lol)
Any thoughts?
Ps. I tried to explain it more in my post at http://geo-marketing.blogspot.com/2009/02/avatars-our-online-bodies.html
Hi Chris
Just left a comment on your blog!
: )
Hi Katie,
Thanks for the comment! I get what you mean, sometimes I take an able down abstraction avenue and it gets a little confusing! haha
You’ve raised a fab point about how we represent ourselves in the nondigital world and the digital world. After giving it some thought I think there’s definitely stark differences between the two. As an internet user you have so much control over how you are represented (what/how/why/where you say/display) that you can build a ‘body’ that may not resemble the real thing. The clothes you wear, how you speak, these are massive tellers in a non-textual world, which mostly the digital is. (The possibilities in second life completely freaks me out!)
When you mentioned manufacturing communities thats when all this sprang to mind, I completely agree that if ‘profiles are built’ to talk about certain topics of interest you could get valuable information say about brand values or usage information but could you really take this data and attach it to a person in the nondigi world? I think this is where’s Mark Pollards point on authenticity comes in to play (http://www.markpollard.net/not-all-interaction-is-created-socially/) … Authenticity as commanility, as a similar experience perhaps… I just don’t think ‘insights’ will be so easy to deduce in the online world….
Oh it’s a work in progress!! I’ll give it some more thought! Thanks! hope you’re well!
Hi Katie – great post… I like how you distinguish between existing vs. manufactured communities (specifically those “manufactured” for market research). There are indeed drawbacks with running qualitative research studies in both environments, as you’ve outlined…
I also agree that sometimes the term “community” is a bit of a misnomer when they’re conducted for market research. However, they are also a far step away from a focus group or bulletin board, so it’s not necessarily a fair comparison… I blogged about the continuum from focus group to research community recently on our blog if you’re interested in checking it out: http://www.pluggedinco.com/blog/bid/12071/The-continuum-from-online-focus-group-to-true-online-community
I can speak only to research in “manufactured” communities (since that’s what I specialize in), so I’ll try to debunk some of the myths of that approach… First, I think there is a general assumption that online communities for market research are these huge, ongoing initiatives with hundreds of members that last indefinitely. While that’s the way some companies use them (and the approach some community vendors push), they can be used in a far more “purpose built” way. We’ve found that using them in that manner helps avoid creating a “glorified bulletin board focus group” that lasts a really long time. You end up getting a ton of context around the participants, their background, ideas, topics of interest, etc… that you wouldn’t get in a bulletin board (at least not in any of the bulletin boards I’ve moderated over the years).
Even research communities that last indefinitely provide advantages over point-in-time methodologies. First, there is the ability to actually listen to participants and address the topics of interest to them, rather than push the agenda of the researcher/client down their throats. There is also the ability to track their answers over time to get a much deeper understanding of who they are and what drives their decision making. That type of analysis just isn’t possible in a bulletin board focus group, and it leads to better, more insightful feedback and recommendations for clients.
I also think it’s important to realize that online communities for market research will never be a complete replacement for any types of traditional qualitative techniques (including bulletin boards). When used as part of a researcher’s toolkit, however, they can be a tremendously valuable (and even efficient) methodology to employ…
I could go on and on, but I won’t bog down your comment section
I think you’re critiques of the methodology are perfectly valid, but I would urge you to think of research communities beyond the way they are traditionally sold…
Matt
Hi Matt
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. I clicked over to your blog for a look – really great stuff!
And I’ve no doubt that research communities can generate some wonderfully rich (and useful!) data.
I guess the key (as always, always, always) is that the value of the approach depends entirely on the business/research objectives, timelines and budget.
Anyway, appreciate your comment – off now to have another look at your blog!
: )