What has Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus got to do with market research? Well, note the crop. But as nice as it is, it’s only the bigger picture that tells us the actual story.

This is at the heart of the next issue for discussion; the ‘new’ (?!) practice of listening online.

Of course ‘listening’ itself, as a method of research inquiry, is pretty obvious and hardly new. What is new* for market research however, is;

• the online location per se,
• some of the online listening technologies, and
• in some cases, the actual content generated online.

But new or not, you still need to know exactly who it is that you’re listening to. And you also need to think about the context.

For example…

If you’re undertaking a market research listening exercise for a client, let’s assume, quite reasonably, that your focus will be on listening to their customers or potential customers.

Is the Internet a good place to listen?

Well, of course it is! But there are some very important questions to ask before you begin;

Of all your client’s customers/potential customers, how many have access to the Internet?

And of all your client’s customers/potential customers who have access to the Internet, how many are confident enough in a) their opinions and b) their writing (or video editing) skills, to express those opinions publicly online?

And of all your client’s customers/potential customers who have access to the Internet, and who are confident enough in a) their opinions and b) their writing (or video editing) skills to express their opinions publicly online, how many bother?

And of all your client’s customers/potential customers who have access to the Internet, who are confident enough about a) their opinions and b) their writing (or video editing) skills to express their opinions publicly online, and who bother, how many express those opinions in an articulate way (ie in a way that a marketer or market researcher might find of use)?

The skews are breaking my brain.

Defining your sample in terms of exactly who it is that you want to get feedback from is absolutely key in terms of determining where and how you should collect your data.

Notably, if your client’s target market comprises a wider group of people than the customers or potential customers who fit the very narrow profile described above, then – and critically – collecting useful data to generate useful output will mean going well beyond the insights you glean from your ‘new’ online listening endeavours.

*relatively speaking and/or as the hype would suggest

There’s been a lot of talk about engaging research participants in this ‘new’ research paradigm.

I’m focusing on qualitative market research here because firstly, that’s my thing…

: )

…and secondly, because I hear that ‘engagement’, within the context of market research online communities, is community-nirvana. The ‘best’ communities are engaged communities.

This strikes me as, paradoxically, both obvious and alarming.

There’s a very fine line between engaging research participants enough to… well…participate in our market research, and over engaging them.

Without due diligence, research effects (pick one of many) are likely to confound the research output in unintended, unexpected and underestimated ways.

I don’t, for one second, suggest that other research methodologies are free of research effects – they aren’t! – but surely this doesn’t automatically generate a license for ‘new’ market research to ignore them.

And while I don’t think you can necessarily control for engagement, some questions;

• To what degree should you try to ‘create’ it?
• How much is too much? When does it start to mess with what you’re looking for from your research?
• How do you disentangle it from your analysis?

I’ve just come back from a fantastic trip to Chicago where I attended the ESOMAR Online Research 2009 conference. You can find Jeffrey Henning’s brilliant recap here (he pretty much live-blogged it – very impressive!).

Anyway, not surprisingly, there was lots of talk of ‘new’.

And it would have been easy to come away with the message that the market research industry really needs to get with the ‘new’ programme or, quite simply, it will wither away and die.

Because the new world of research is here! New methodologies. New technologies. New ways of engaging with respondents (Gasp! Did I say that? I meant ‘participants’, ‘co-creators’ or ‘collaborators’).

All well and good, but what does this actually mean?

New kinds of output?

Let’s all take a moment to think. What, as market researchers, is our purpose?

Market research is about understanding the market. At a very basic level, the end goal is to deliver information that will help our clients make relatively informed/better decisions about how to sell their products or services.

And here’s my point; the output (ie what our clients are paying for) is only ever going to be as ‘new’ as the questions they/we ask*.

Over the next few blog posts I’m going to take a look at some of the elements of ‘new’ I outlined above. Examine them closely. Explore what they mean for researchers at a practical level. Separate, if you like, the hype and theory from the actual task of delivering useful output.

Should be interesting…

: P

*If you’re in the ‘listening’ camp, ie “Oh no, no! We don’t ask questions, we just listen to the conversation!”, I’ll argue that you’re still (implicitly) asking questions when you choose to/not to include any particular content in your analysis.