It’s a fine line
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?
Filed under: market research | 6 Comments
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Zebra Bites by Katie Harris is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License. -
This is a fascinating take on “new”…research. As researchers, it’s an interesting paradigm that we’re all “living” through right now. As market research companies we need to be “new” & “adaptable” & “flexible” and “relevant”. But, at the same time, these trends introduce problems & concerns of their own. If you don’t address them, you’re considered “antiquated” & “incapable” & “unflexible” & “irrelevant”…so you comply and introduce “new” to address the current trends. As you mentioned, when you do address them, you have the signifant problem of “disentangling” the bias from your analysis. The recent real concern about the representation of online research & online participant panels are a prime example of what you’re examining. The problem is that in many cases, it’s all about quicker, faster, at the expense of good or better…many people just don’t care.
Co-creation, engaged research participants, social development through communities, etc. seems to have an often unrecognized or unaddressed risk. The risk is that you pull together so many like-minded & interested participants that the resulting research is biased in a way that no one recognizes. You may be creating something very new & innovative, but the product, service, item, etc. may be reducing the probability it is scalable to the entire consumer base. Kind of interesting that you may have a “better” product, and more loyal customers, but that the customer base may decline as a result.
To your question of how much engagement to create and Vaughn’s comment about “quicker & faster” often being preferred, I have a retail client who intentionally refuses to spend much on customer research of any kind. They argue (convincingly if you look at their numbers) that price and location are supreme for their market.
Every dollar spent on customer engagement is a dollar more that they have to make back in product sales, and raising product prices vitiates their primary competitive advantage of low prices.
They also acknowledge that their service is never going to be excellent, and they’re okay with that, again believing that better service isn’t why they crush competitors.
LOVE your blog. Thanks for another terrific topic.
Like any marketing effort, I guess you really need to know what you want to know. You can measure all sorts of things, but do any of these measurements actually contribute to, or shine a light on, the problems you are trying to solve?
Sometimes you need your haters involved. You need a balance of evangelists, interested participants and apathetic types. Without a good spread of those with intention and those without, you end up working in an echo chamber. And there’s only so much good to be found listening to our own voices.