Qualitative Marketing Research: Time-Extended Online Depth Interview Forums Keep Pace with Real-World

Focus group research is a useful strategy-building tool for harvesting information from customers, competitor customers, suppliers, and employees. Focus groups are often an excellent starting point when scanning and uncovering opportunities for new products, branding, naming, positioning, and generating strategic options. A well designed focus group study can help decision makers understand the range of beliefs, opinions and buying behavior among key segments.

Management people like focus groups because it literally puts them in the same room as 8 to 10 segment members talk about their brand and the competitors’ brands; about what they’d really like to have if they could; and the sometimes unusual ways they use the product or service. (Remember the ads about putting a box Arm and Hammer baking soda in refrigerator as a deodorant? That extended, years-long campaign to expand product use came from a comment by one person in one focus group.)

This face-to-face qualitative research experience with prospects and customers is a way to get the strategy team “next to the customer.” Expressions and attitudes are seen on faces and in body language, and heard from their voices. Often heard is the VP or CEO in the group observation room after two or three groups, “Now I know what they really want. I heard it several times tonight. We’ve got to explore this opportunity.” This first hand involvement is good: it provokes creative thinking about how to attack the future.

While focus groups are one of the most popular qualitative techniques, it’s important to understand the “do’s and don’ts” and situations where they should be used, and where they should be avoided. Because of the popularity and familiarity of the focus group method, it’s easy to call out, “Let’s do some groups.” It’s a technique that’s easy to misuse and abuse. Here are some basic rules for any executive thinking about including focus groups on the menu of strategy-building tools. I hope to give you enough information to guide use and management without unnecessary detail.

Basic Focus Group Rules

Rule 1. Use a focus group study only for an appropriate purpose.

Here’s what’s appropriate:To learn about the range of beliefs, attitudes, and usage habits of the target segment. The goal is to hear and understand the range: if it’s said once in a focus group, it’s important.

• To become acquainted with unfamiliar territory . Group research is achieves some fast track knowledge about new market, new segment or new product categories. If you’ve found an interesting opportunity, but know little about the market, it’s an excellent use of groups.
• To screen concepts. Concept screening is valuable in the opportunity scanning stage. The focus group setting is suitable for screening a range of concepts: product ideas, advertising themes, store design, web experience, and brand names. Remember, however, that this is for screening, gathering ideas, and harvesting attitudes and perceptions about the concepts, not measuring the magnitude of their appeal.
• When observing group interaction is important to the research:  This is the single most important criteria for moving ahead with focus group instead of other good qualitative techniques such as depth interviews, online forums, or online research communities.

Rule 2. Carefully manage the group recruitment and setting. Get the right people in the right setting.

• Insist on ‘fresh respondents’ if conducting a study among consumers. This means they haven’t participated in a group in over a year. Avoid using lists of pre-recruiting willing participants offered by research field services.
• Think through the exact profile of people desired for each group. If your objective is to reposition your brand, for example, it might be smart to have group participants be aware of or have bought two different brands in the category. A recruitment questionnaire should be tailored to screen for exactly the people appropriate for the group.
• For hard-to-recruit people consider remote techniques. These include phone conference call groups, web-based groups; or as a substitute use telephone depth interviews. (You don’t get the group interaction, but the results can be better than group settings.)

Rule 3. Talk to the moderator about moderation style; suggest giving weight to a non-directive approach.

I’ve observed some groups where the moderators guide is merely a list of direct, structured questions that are better suited for a survey.

• A non-directive approach is one that constructs questions that suggest a topic and then encourage participants to talk freely. The conversation is extended by using non-directive probes such as, “Tell me more about that…” or “What came to mind about using that product?”
• Projective techniques are often useful in easing participants out of an analytical mode. One projective technique, asks, “If this company were an animal what animal would it be? What would the competitors be?” In this way, they talk about brand image without being peppered with a series of brand questions.
• Use advance written questionnaires. This primes respondents on key issues to be discussed, and it gives them a reference for the group discussion, thus making it easier for the unpopular viewpoint to be mentioned. (“Well, no one else has said this, but…”)

Rule 4. Don’t count heads!

It’s tempting, but this is not a projectable quantitative method, no matter how many groups are done. (“Let’s see we did eight groups of ten, what percent liked our strategy scenario A.”) A positive thing about groups is that the group interaction can stimulate thoughts and discussion which is valuable. (I always know the group has been good, if participant start asking questions of the group.) The negative to this is the interaction nag “group effects” that can easily affect reported views.

Do you want to increase sales, refine pricing, or boost your brand name awareness or branding position in a target audience? Can you quickly use marketing research tools to achieve that singular goal? You sure can, and here’s how.

1. Clarify the marketing strategy decisions you must make. Before you start, make sure you are clear about the marketing strategy and tactical decisions you face. Market research for decision-making won’t pay unless you take this important first step.

2. Think first about your marketing decisions.

 Think creatively; key decisions are at play. List the possible decisions, problems, and opportunities. These could involve pricing, product development, advertising, branding, brand image, or channels. Work with each. Hold off on the filters and judgments. In the beginning, put all ideas on the table. Allow incubation time.

3. Target the right problem or opportunity.
 
Take time to explode the marketing problem or opportunity. Reframe. Take a fresh view. Rarely is the surface problem the real marketing strategy issue or opportunity. For example, if you’re losing market share, it might be only a symptom. It could mean creeping product lag, a weak sales engine, undifferentiated branding or positioning, uncompetitive advertising copy or ad reach, or something even worse.

4. Begin now with a simple process that moves toward enhanced decisions, and eventually to market share growth.


 Opportunity scanning is the first of four classical decision stages. Start there.

5. Ask four key questions.


 Start with what you know right now. Use these simple questions:
• What do we know now about our markets, our market opportunities, and our own strategic and marketing goals?


• What are the best marketing and operational opportunities as we understand them now?
• How can we frame our marketing and strategic options based on what we know now?
• What do we need to know that we do not know now — about strengths, weaknesses, our products, our markets, and our customers?

6. Adopt a broad view of Marketing Intelligence.
 At Power Decisions Group, we use the Intelligence Platform with three components: data, ideas, and management drivers. Harvest each.




7. Pinpoint your decision-making stage to drive market research objectives and design.

 At each stage, ask, “Do we have solid marketing information, or is more market research needed?” Use the Decision-Research Matrix. This matrix links likely research tools to each of the four stages in the Decision Pathway.


8. Don’t fall in love with any one marketing research tool or technique, e.g. focus groups, online surveys.

 A strong method for one decision stage may be wrong for another. 



9. Build deep knowledge about your customer. Know the attitudes, behaviors, and product or service use system of your target market. 


The key to building loyalty is deep knowledge of your audience and their drivers of brand choice.

10. Use a Decision Agenda that is updated weekly: this will force you to surface, address, and clarify problems and opportunities as part of your regular management routine.

Let’s keep branding simple!

Research Neighborhoods and Communities — the advantages

Neighborhoods offer a number of advantages over conventional “point in time” qualitative research methodologies (like focus groups and online bulletin boards), including:

• Stays Active and Available in Parallel to Internal Decision Making Process – Decision Making within a company’s brand management, or executive management, structure happens over days, weeks and months. Options are developed and explored, criteria set and modified, creative ideation sessions held, and importantly, creative thinking incubation happens. Communities and “neighborhoods” can run externally in parallel to this internal process.
• Depth and Quantity of Feedback - By spending a few months with a targeted group of individuals, you can explore a research topic in much more depth than in a focus group, short term bulletin board, face-to-face depth interviews, or surveys. The volume of verbatim transcripts can be extensive as participants evolve in their own thinking and expression about your brand and the competition.
• Deeper Understanding of Customers and Prospects - Working closely with participants over the course of time allows for a deeper understanding of them and the context for their answers.
• New Questions and Insights - Over time, participants often direct the conversation to areas you may have never thought to explore initially, opening up opportunities for new questions and insights.
• Cost Savings over Focus Groups or Repeat Qualitative IDIs  Communities offer large savings over multi-city focus group studies especially when travel, facility rental and recruiting costs are considered.
• Adaptive Research Goals and Discussion - In an MROC, learning happens everyday. As the conversation evolves around a topic, we can, in consultation with you, modify the Discussion Guide.  The process is interactive, merging research goals, listening, learning, and modification; all in real time. Participants guide where the discussion goes. 

BAM — The matrix that captures all of brand essence

BAM is the branding research and assessment tool we’ve developed over years of conducting brand equity research for brand managers, advertising agencies, and branding shops. It distills our way of thinking about, and measuring brand essence. It’s simple, yet robust. It’s simple because the sum total of brand equity, –your brand, or your competition — can be captured in a 15 cell ratings matrix, thus Brand Assessment Matrix, or BAM. It can be used for internal measurements of brand equity among your employees and sales reps; and externally to guide to brand equity survey design to measure formally brand equity research among customers and prospects.

The Basics of Brand — They’re the same for all brands, including yours.

Measuring Brand Equity does not have to be complicated. Why? Because the same core components of brand run across all product catgegories, young and old brands, famous or not. Old brands, like Coke; new brands like Google; large share brands like Microsoft, and the millions of small share brands; they all have the same three core components. And, they can be rated on the same five core qualities that determine whether a brand is a winner, or not. Plain and simple.

Three Core Elements of Brand

The first step in understanding and evaluating the strength of your brand is to dissect brand into its core elements. There are three. The pictures, ads, and slogans are merely one of them.

1. Value bundle : the tangible benefits delivered to customers;
2. Brand promise: this is the promise the brand makes to customers; it is how it connects to what customers need;
3. Brand picture: things we see such as products, logos, and ads

The Five Qualities of Great Brands

There are only five core traits or qualities that a brand decision maker . As we’ve looked, researched, and analyzed brands – the great, the good, and the bombs– these five traits appear time and again to distinguish great brands from others.

1. Contact – Great brands make and maintain contact by effectively communicating via advertising and personal selling.
2. Consistency – Great brands create a consistent experience for customers time after time. Consistency builds trust, reliability, and loyalty.
3. Concentration – Great brands concentrate their energy on doing a few things well. Customers clearly know what it’s about. Customers are not confused.
4. Connection – Great brands make connection on a person-to-person level that customers relate to and remember. The connection is made in a way that makes the customer feel they are more than a member of a market segment. Brand advocates appear as the connection grows.
5. Leadership – A great brand establishes leadership somewhere, somehow. It becomes recognized for this leadership by having followers. Its recognition may come from a unique product design, the way it talks to the market, or some other quality of its name, voice, or message.

The Measurement Elegance of the Brand Assessment Matrix

By measuring the 5 Qualities of brand within each of the 3 Brand Components, there are a number of evaluations that can be made.

1. Determine relative strengths and weaknesses for each brand quality totaled for all components. Are you strong on making contact, but weak on consistency? Do you have a solid concentration score, but are not seen as a leader?
2. What is your relative score on each of the three components when you sum the scores for each of the five qualities?  For example, do you have a highly creative, high impact brand picture (great ads and logos), yet have a substandard value bundle of features and benefits that don’t compare to the competition?

This note is merely a starter of how BAM works.  Our proprietary research engagements and associated tools implement the BAM System(TM) through 1)internal surveys of management, customer service and support staff, and sales teams; and through 2) branding research surveys of customers and prospects, with detailed comparison drill downs among target and relevant market segments.

To wrap up, here’s the benefits…

• BAM is a brand equity method that is easy to understand.
• It can be used to measure both internal and external brand equity.
• BAM quickly identifies actionable strengths and weaknesses.  You can do something about the results immediately because they are so pinpoint and precise.
• You need not hop from one brand method to another, due to the common sense practicality of BAM.

Power Decisions Group implements branding research using our proprietary BAM System.

BAM : The Matrix for Rating Your Brand by Thomas Brown, Senior Consultant, Power Decisions Group is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.powerdecisions.net.

A successful new product can not only build revenues, it can add to brand equity for a company.   Many product development and marketing research tools are available for new products research, yet time, money, and opportunities are wasted if the wrong methodology is chosen given the current stage of product development.    

To choose the best next step, first assess where you are now in the  product development cycle.   Different product development creative input or data is needed at different stages.

read more…

Key Sections

Decision Mapping is a way of thinking, and a set of tools. While not intended as a complete strategy-building process, it’s an efficient first step to get into action. Any size organization can use it to enhance their strategic decision making.

It also saves time and money. This occurs because decision mapping forces management to think, and think thoroughly and creatively, before rushing headlong into major studies; or worse, making costly, short-sighted strategic mistakes. Analytical work and research will likely needed at some point in the strategy process. By starting out with Decision Mapping, however, management increases the probability that subsequent work will have a high payoff.

Decision mapping is a “fast-start” process. The four core steps of the process primarily call for assessing existing information, ideas, and internal drivers. It is a flexible approach adaptable for quickly responding to a new emerging opportunity, issue or threat.

Decision Mapping is like a “war room.” read more…

Stinker: So today we see this note in the NYT that good public colleges are receiving a new rush of interest from top students.  This is a “stinker” because it’s an unexpected turn of events: something we, in our stereotypical thinking, wouldn’t assume would happen.  Yet, the State University of New York (SUNY), for example, is attracting some student applicants who might have sought the Ivy League, Stanford, or Berkeley in rosier economic times.

The question is: what can  business decision makers learn about branding from this news.   Simply, if the five key qualities of great brands are kept in focus, your brand will be ready to harvest unforeseen turns in the market landscape, read: intense cost sensitivity due to the exploding recession.

One of our Great Brand Qualities is CONSISTENCY.  Great brands create a consistent experience for customers time after time.  This consistency builds a brand position quality of trust and reliability.   

Lesson: pay attention always to the Great Brand Qualities.

See article from NYT: http://tinyurl.com/college-brand

Marketing conversations are often dominated by ‘branding’. Brand advocates talk about such topics as building the brand, defending the brand, brand essence, brand equity, brand this, brand that. The brand focus usually has the premise of an existing category, a known battlefield where your brand is fighting it out with a slew of others. Yet, one of the high impact moves with a new or repositioned brand is to shift or redefine the playing field. When this is succussfully done, at we call these players “category makers”.

Category making is one of the most powerful strategies for creating a strong defensible market position.

The brands shown here built new ‘market spaces’ or product categories. They aimed at newly-discovered needs in the market, or looked at old needs in a fresh way.

1. If you create it, you own it.
   Creating a category or niche means that, at first, you own it. While market development and ramp-up costs can be high and time horizons long, owning it means high eventual ROI. Once established your category-domninant brand will likely have a high and profitable market share.
2. Categories live in customers’ minds.
   A product category exists in the mind of a customer. Brand managers may describe the category, and suggest ways to invent new ones, but how the category is viewed depends on the customer and her needs, concerns, and buying motives.
3. Ignored customers.
   When looking for opportunities, search for ignored customers. Someone in the advertising business told me about the time when she would have to buy a full fare airplane seat to get a package overnight from San Francisco to New York. My own story recalls asking a clerk in a book store if I could get fast delivery for a book gift, or if there were similar titles he had in stock. The answers were ‘no’ and ‘no’.Ignoring customers and lost customers means not listening to them in an organized way. Conducting ‘voice of the customer’ research is a must. See research tools for ideas generation.
4. Well established competitors.
   Category-building opportunites emerge when competitive players are seemingly immovable in the “old category”. Xerox in copiers, independent and big box book stores, US Postal Service, Airborne Freight all come to mind as well entrenched and sassy competitors when the category was changed on them by innovators. Of course, many dominant players stay that way, continuing to define and own their categories: Coke, Tide, Heinz, Hershey, Wells Fargo, eBay.
5. Asleep at the wheel.
   Whether an “old category” consists of many players (book stores), or a few (airfreight), they may become complacent, looking to the past, and have tunnel vision. This can be a seedbed for opportunity for the innovator to redefine the business, the products, and establish a new category and, possibly, brand leadership within it.
   Airfreight companies were blindsided by Fred Smith and FedEx when they were caught tied to point-to-point and multiple hub routing. FedEx created a new category — inexpensive overnight anytime — by innovating a single Memphis-based hub-and-spoke design.

  read more…

Are things changing as fast as everyone talks about?  Today’s “stinker”* is a presentation by Lee Bryant at London web/IT gang, Headshift, where he suggests perhaps the Twentieth Century models many organisations fall back on are not as established as they think. In fact, social network-based business and co-ordination have a much longer history than we think.

The Twentieth Century was Wrong :: Blog :: Headshift.

It’s worth thinking taking in as a daily dose of stinkers we need to keep thinking in creative ways.

* “Stinker”, as defined here by me is a fresh contrary idea or way of thinking that denies or objects to a conventional thought, notion or idea.  Stinkers should be collected, not rejected, for idea stimulators for our marketing, brand, and new product ideas.

The marketing and advertising press reported last week a lament by Proctor & Gambles top marketing guru that upfront listening to customers is becoming a lost art, or at least, a lost inclination.

 ”Kim Dedeker complained that P&G currently spends about 80% of its market research budget on evaluating ideas prior to launch rather than listening to consumers at the beginning or end of a product launch to help generate ideas or improve products.”  The Daily Research News Online reported.

Daily Research News Online no. 9481 – P&G Research Head Mourns MR’s Lost Listening Skills.

Here’s a fresh outlook for anyone who creates, manages or nurtures brands to success. The challenge is to become a more astute brand-thinker and decision-maker by seeing your brand or your company with new eyes, of one having very personal qualities.

Your brand as a person.

Think of your brand as a person. Not human, but clearly a person. When you, as a brand decision-maker, take this viewpoint, you will begin to think differently about your brand. You will think more about nurturing it, rather than managing it. You will think more about having it fulfill its potential and finding its unique place rather than beating the competition. When you see of your brand as a person, you’ll be more about letting your brand be itself and finding a community of loyal friends, rather than showing off and spending money to ‘buy friends.’ You want it to grow up, become educated, learn how to move in the world and have character. Of course, if all goes well, like a fond Aunt or Uncle, you want it to be successful, be prosperous financially and, maybe, have a family.

What are the core elements of a person? Human make-up has three parts: mind, emotions, and physical. It’s the same for a brand. At my firm we call them:

Value bundle (the ‘mind’ of the brand):

the benefits delivered to customers

Brand promise (the emotions or ‘heart’ of the brand):

this is the promise the brand makes to customers; it’s how it connects to what customers need

Brand picture (physical):

things we see such as products, logos, and ads

Just as humans gain insight by understanding their make-up, when you separate the elements of your brand into these parts, it points the way to assessing how your brand is performing in the marketplace.

Qualities of a great person, and a great brand.

Consider some of the qualities you might recognize in a successful person. First, a successful person knows how to meet and make contact with others in friendly ways. They’re reliable and consistent: people trust them. They have a well-focused clear vision in life; something vital propels them and outsiders see it. Beyond making contact, they have a knack for truly connecting their world and with others on an intellectual, emotional, or physical plane. Lastly, an effective person picks a spot to demonstrate leadership by motivating, teaching, or coalescing followers in some important way. Any person, regardless of station in life, can demonstrate leadership.

The Five Qualities of Great Brands

It’s these same essential human qualities that make a successful brand. As I’ve looked, researched, and analyzed brands – the great, the good, and the ugly– these five traits appear time and again to distinguish great brands from others.

Contact

Great brands make and maintain contact by effectively communicating via advertising and personal selling.

Consistency

Great brands create a consistent experience for customers time after time. Consistency builds trust, reliability, and loyalty.

Concentration

Great brands concentrate their energy on doing a few things well. Customers clearly know what it’s about. Customers are not confused.

Connection

Great brands make connection on a person-to-person level that customers relate to and remember. The connection is made in a way that makes the customer feel they are more than a member of a market segment. Brand advocates appear as the connection grows.

Leadership

A great brand establishes leadership somewhere, somehow. It becomes recognized for this leadership by having followers. Its recognition may come from a unique product design, the way it talks to the market, or some other quality of its name, voice, or message.

Knowing and Guiding Your Brand

How does this view – brand as a person — help managers who are “in charge” of a brand? Here are some tips for using the “brand as person” analogy to thinking about and manage your brand:
While the mind of the brand – executives and managers – guide and nurture the value proposition of the brand, and its tangible delivery to customers; it is a much larger team, perhaps your entire organization, that delivers the heart of the brand, and keeps the brand promise. In your efforts to manage your brand, then, recognize that you may have hundreds or thousands of people on your “brand team”.

Just as the health of a person has three dimensions and is examined on each: mind, emotions, physical; so too for a brand: all three dimensions must be monitored when assessing brand health, or brand equity. This means focusing separately on 1. The Value Bundle, 2. The Brand Promise, and 3. The Brand Picture. How is the brand performing, maintaining, and growing in each?

To measure its performance, use the Five Qualities of a Great Brand as the core barometers of how your brand is doing. Use internal and external brand equity research metrics to gauge how your brand makes contact, its consistency – from product quality to its message; the quality of its connection to people in the marketplace; its concentration of purpose and focus; and its perceived and tangible leadership.
In the day-to-day work of building and nurturing your brand, seek out new ways to think and see your brand. Try on the idea of seeing your brand as a person, the qualities of a great brand, and how it relates to its world.

 Think of Your Brand as a Person by Thomas R. Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.