InSites Blog

Tom De Ruyck, Senior R&D Manager at InSites Consulting has been accepted for the ESOMAR Research Superstar. On Tuesday 14 September Tom will present his submission at the ESOMAR General Conference.

The ESOMAR Research Superstar is a chance for researchers to show they can present themselves in an engaging, fun, entertaining and passionate way, getting their message across succinctly and in an easy to understand manner.

Tom’s outline will talk on why researchers should become dj’s. Got you triggered? Find out more about the Research Superstar at the ESOMAR website or contact Tom De Ruyck.

…the Mappiness iPhone App, created by George MacKerron and Susana Mourato of the Department of Geography & Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

The main aim of the application is to be able to link happiness to location. Concretely, the app ‘beeps’ you as a user once (or more) a day to ask how you feel, and additionally the people you’re with, and what you are doing. Using the GPS data from your iPhone, your happiness scores are linked to a location. Also, the noise level in your surroundings is measured by using the built-in microphone in your iPhone. All this data is then sent to the database for analysis by the researchers.

So why am I so enthusiastic about this?

• Because happiness and location are straightforward variables. They are easy to understand, and the ins & outs are explained in a fool-proof manner.
• Because I’d like to know this too! In the list of questions that have puzzled humanity for ages, the question “what makes one happy” is probably right on top. Every step in the direction of an answer is one I’d like to witness. Furthermore, knowing the answer on my individual level (what context makes me happy) is extremely relevant for me. This app provides me an experience, a very relevant issue for the market researcher of the future.
• Because they clearly explain what’s in it for them too. The communication on their website is top notch. These people are trying to take research about happiness forward, and give me a comfortable feeling about my privacy. I can get out whenever I want, and can even get my data erased upon request. The way they communicate on their website is an example for all research agencies.
• Because it’s easy data collection. Every single response is valid, as data is aggregated. Easy in, easy out, and every single piece of data is useful, unlike traditional research where a whole questionnaire needs to be completed before the respondent’s data is included.
• Because context is key. As stated in a previous post, context is an indispensable part of research in the future. This app shifts the balance almost completely from content to context; 1 key variable (happiness) with a lot of interesting context variables around it. I especially like the noise level idea.
• Because the possibilities for ‘upscaling’ this are endless. Once we know who people are with and where they are, why not ask which brands they interact with? What clothes they wear? What the weather is like? How much money they have in their wallet? …

To sum it up, this app is simple, relevant, credible, easy, gives contextual information and has a large potential for future growth. This is one application I will keep in mind when discussing observational research here at InSites Consulting.

Follow me on twitter via @eliasveris

Having almost three years of experience in offline qualitative research I have to say I was curious, but also a bit wary, to do focus groups online when I started working for InSites Consulting a few months ago.

Would the people that participated be as open?
Would the insights be as deep?
And would the client feel as satisfied with the output?

It came out that all these questions could be answered with a definite YES.

1. Participants appeared to be very open and spontaneous in their answers. Perhaps it’s the relaxed setting of being at home and the anonymity that causes people to really open up and share their views on things.
2. The depth of the learnings also doesn’t suffer by doing group discussions online. You can use exactly the same projective techniques and the same exercises to stimulate imagination and creativity. We use a special online platform that allows showing all kinds of visual stimuli to participants to enable these techniques. Next to that we work with 8 participants in each session which is surprisingly easy to manage online. This of course generates additional input.
3. Finally, as for the clients, I have been pleasantly surprised by their enthusiasm about our approach and our platform. They are able to follow the sessions from home and post additional questions to me to ask the participants if needed.

Is it then really such a success story? Well… I would say yes. In my opinion there is actually hardly any difference between offline and online research and next to that, all ages (young and old) can participate and geographical boundaries are crossed effortlessly.
Of course I cannot unravel facial expressions from consumers, but smiley’s appear to do the job just as well. I don’t have a flip chart to write on, but now I just use the white board for that purpose and to show all kinds of material.

For me it’s been a great experience so far, that’s why I’m planning to take online qualitative research forward…

Want to read more? Check out our ESOMAR award winning paper.

The information for generating good consumer insights is out there! The challenge for researchers and clients is to adequately tap into this vast amount of data. New methods bring a lot of uncertainty and debate. Many incumbent researchers have talent but lack the contemporary skills to make the best out of the new information world. They revert to breaking down whatever touches the fundamentals of what they are used to. If both client and agency researchers want to keep pace with the latest developments in gaining consumer insights they need to adapt their skills at several levels:

1. Design & data generation. Consumers generate most information from experiences which are relevant to them. Establishing rapport, being good entertainers, journalists, ethnographers … are becoming at least as important as interviewing.
2. Technical & analytical understanding. Of course it does not mean statistics are no longer valuable. In this era of data overload the researcher of the future will actually need good statistical, software and database understandings.
3. Consultative research. The ultimate goal of research not changed though: insight generation for better decisions. But the story told through research needs to be an experience for decision makers as well. Triangulation, multi-medial and short powerful messages are key!

A lot of the evolution of our skills is in triggering, observing and sensing the information consumers self-generate daily. That’s why researchers have to become DeeJays! DJ’s play and select songs for an audience from their wealthy music collection. The successful ones provide a creative mix, fit to the mood which makes the crowd go wild. They are the cool new super stars, not necessarily the original musicians. What makes DJ’s successful is that they feel the audience and have the guts to experiment without forgetting tradition: they re-use old riffs and blend it with contemporary elements.

So how can researchers take advantage?

• Involve the young. Surround yourself with ambitious digital natives or Gen Y’ers. They will prevent foreign thinking and take things forward.
• Develop partnerships between research agencies, suppliers and end-clients that share a passion for innovation. Experiment with new methods via R&D projects and explore the limits and possibilities of the new.
• Publish and share the results and experiences in all openness. Instead of bluntly downplaying the new, all stakeholders learn much more from directness and the young talent will be seduced by what we do as an industry too.
• Develop a major and a minor specialization in your skill set. The contemporary researcher will be less of a specialist over the course of his/her career, but a fusion researcher blending different skills.

As such, we will build end-client expertise as well as research agency knowledge and prevent from becoming a mere product of the past. It means we need to take a risk, but if we do it jointly it will hamper any unrealistic expectations. Only by adhering to such principles we can make true improvements, develop talent and ultimately prevent the crowd wants to “hang the DJ”.

(Article by Prof. Dr. Niels Schillewaert and Tom De Ruyck, featured in Research World – Issue 22)

The world is in constant evolution… consumer behavior is evolving rapidly… but are our methods, techniques, research designs and skills evolving accordingly?

Contemporary Consumers demand for Contemporary Research Methods
Response rates in traditional research projects are in decline, as well as the good image of our work among research participants. As an answer to this trend, the market research industry wishes to move from ‘transactional’ to more ‘relational’ types of research. Researchers need to (re)bond companies with consumers (our participants) through more ‘connected’ research methodologies.

Additionally, we may state that the context in which consumers live has changed drastically during the last decade. It has affected their behavior accordingly. The contemporary consumer is:

• Empowered – Today’s consumers are more eager to declare their opinion (even if not asked for it) and make or break brands and products on a scale never seen before. They also choose their own tools and moments to do so.

• Cosmopolitan – Consumers’ online and offline lifes are blending, they use different multi-media interchangeably (cfr. life caching), are always on the go and create their very own ‘cocktail’ of attitudes. That’s why they have become more difficult to grasp!

• a Co-creator – Today, consumers want to interact with marketing professionals. More than half of the Europeans want to co-create products/services with companies.

• Emotional – For far too long, emotions and social behavior have been concealed behind closed doors and ignored in favor of rationality and efficiency (Hill, 2009). Today we are more aware of this & tapping into these dynamics has become ‘easier’ through new media (e.g. social networks & communities) and research technologies (e.g. text analytics & implicit measurement tools).

Taking into account this new reality, we are convinced that the way we do research, in terms of skills, research methods and techniques, needs to be adapted. As Kim Dedeker stated during the 2008 edition of the ARF Leadership Forum: “My call to action is that we would figure out the way to return to the consumer’s backyard. We have to rebuild that trust. We need to listen to them on their time and in the ways they want to communicate with us.”

We summarized our vision on the future in our ‘10 commandments of contemporary market research’:

1. Conversations and stories of consumers should be at the heart of our marketing and research thinking as they are key in generating insights; and it is the main way innovations, customer experiences and marketing campaigns are being spread.
2. Researchers need to create more opportunities for participants to say what is on their minds, even if it is not directly part of the survey or topic guide.
3. Research should give participants a more active role throughout the whole research process not only during the interviewing phase. They like it and it will deliver us richer and better insights.
4. Research methodologies should be adapted so they are able to grasp fragmented consumer behaviour (both over time as on the go).
5. Methods should be combined to fusion designs in order to capture the whole picture and create a 360 degree view on the consumer (Blades, 2009).
6. We should unveil the goals of a research project and clients should show their ‘faces’ more to research participants.
7. Researchers should feedback intermediate results to research participants so they can influence the final outcome of the study if desired. Next to that it will motivate them to keep participating.
8. Participants should not be asked to provide us with new information if we can obtain the same information indirectly. We should therefore recycle our data if possible. Tons of data is available on the web or in customer databases.
9. We should stimulate rapport and trust between participants and researchers, next to bonding among peers in order to obtain higher quality data and more emotional insights.
10. Contemporary market researchers need DJ skills. They are responsible for keeping research participants enthusiast. They need to have the ability to choose the right methods and data sources and throw them in the right mix. Last but not least, they need to perform well in the boardroom by playing the most relevant tunes to management.

Want to find out more? Read our white papers or Steven Van Belleghem‘s book The Conversation Manager. Or contact one of the authors.

(Article submitted by Annelies Verhaeghe and Tom De Ruyck)

Let me start with this: I LOVE MARKET RESEARCH ONLINE COMMUNITIES! It is my favorite research methodology… And I truly believe that they are a big part of the future of market research! To be honest, I hate the term MROC’s as it sounds like an angry, hungry, hairy beast! I like ‘Insight Communities’ better. That’s what they really are!

But, don’t over-use the method. You have to be careful and wise in when and how to use it. To fully understand this, let’s take a look at some characteristics of insight communities:

• By definition, they are NOT representative, as they work best with participants who identify with the topic or the brand hosting the platform.
• Secondly, 150 people are the maximum number of participants a moderator can build a real relationship with. And, in my opinion, no relationship = no community!

Conclusion: This makes that they are qualitative of nature! OK, you can do some basic quant on them, but only to have first feelings. So, if validation of insights afterwards is necessary, it needs to be done through a traditional survey! And we have not even spoken about tracking studies…

Let’s say that every method has its place. It’s all about fusing methods! Researchers have to become more like DJ’s:

DJ’s play and select songs for an audience from their wealthy music collection. The successful ones provide a creative mix that makes the crowd go wild. They are the cool new super stars! What makes DJ’s also successful is that they have the guts to experiment without forgetting tradition: they re-use old riffs and blend it with contemporary elements.

This is the real future of research!

Innovations come about in several ways. The innovation process is often powered by technology. In other cases, marketers have sufficient knowledge and intuition to independently create new products. Occasionally, a good innovation is created by accident. Today’s active and empowered consumer is however prepared to innovate in cooperation with brands. Co-creation is the joint creation of innovations by customer and producer with the goal of better meeting customer needs. This is why co-creation is a very valuable, even necessary, supplement within the innovation process.

My Starbucks Idea is a good example of how co-creation based on consumer conversations can support the innovation process of a brand. The platform allows consumers to help think about new products. The ideas are shared with others who can vote for, and discuss, them. Platforms like these provide an open and honest opinion by the target group and demonstrate that the company values the opinions of customers. They do however remain marketing tools. The platform is open to anyone (as far as confidentiality permits) and it remains difficult to assess whether all suggestions should be examined. Companies also often underestimate the workload of such an initiative. Some consumers expect that precisely their idea will enter the market, and do not understand why they get no response, sometimes becoming quite upset. Support is needed in situations like these and this requires resources. The question, therefore, is how to apply ‘reverse engineering’ on My Starbucks Idea and translate it into a systematic and objective market research process of co-creation for innovation. This requires a specific approach with regard to target group and market research process.

Target group
Not every consumer is suitable for co-creation. This is nothing new in itself. Eric von Hippel already formulated the idea of leading edge users back in the 80s. Lead users have the same needs as the rest of the market, but much earlier than anyone else. These users are very interested in finding a solution to their needs. For innovation research, we can best approach consumers who are among the first within a specific product category to try new products and are willing to take a risk doing so. Based on theories from social psychology, the co-creation process of InSites Consulting adds a dimension to the innovation process: social independence versus interpersonal influence. We therefore approach two target groups:

• The socially independent innovators. These customers form their own opinion about an innovation based on their own personal experience, regardless of what is popular in their social context. In evaluating an innovation these consumers mainly consider the functional operation of a product; the social impact they achieve with it is secondary.
• The social influencers (influentials). This group of consumers view innovations from their immediate social environment. Influentials are regarded by their environment as a form of creative experts who easily see the benefits of innovations. Consequently, they are often asked for their opinion about certain innovations and the mainstream market follows them in terms of adoption behaviour. They enjoy being creative with products, they find it important that others approve the innovations they use and proactively talk about innovations. They are more concerned with the concrete benefits of an innovation than the technical features.

Process/method
In terms of research method, co-creation requires a different approach than traditional research. The methods must meet the intrinsic motivation and interest of consumers in a contemporary way. They include tools that allow participants to design and adapt ideas in a concrete manner.

To begin with, the right profiles are recruited: only innovators and influencers are considered. The first group are given access to a closed online platform where they generate ideas on an individual basis. All participants are regarded as “innovation-developers” here. The objective is to search for innovation in a targeted manner with a small group based on previously validated insights.

The second phase is one of cross-pollination. Innovators can evaluate the concept ideas of others, comment on them and in turn be inspired further.
During the third phase, the influentials discuss the ideas generated from a social point of view. They refine the concepts with the purpose of making the innovative concepts relevant, memorable and interesting. The influentials are instructed to adapt the ideas in such a way as to be memorable: they must be simple, credible, unexpected and concrete and contain sufficient emotion for people to talk about them with others. Concepts are also proposed as an endpoint from the perspective of the customer and innovators and influentials have tools available to adapt or tag concepts, or load audio-visual material.

Traditional qualitative techniques are intertwined with ethnographic observation methods and creative exercises throughout all phases to provide context and inspiration. All participants are given a clear briefing on what is and what is not sought as well as insights into previous research. It is of great importance that the end customer actively participates in the research conversation and provides feedback. This increases the involvement of participants and gives a face to the initiators. Our experience shows that such an approach truly works. Recognition is more important to consumers than a financial reward: managing the conversation for innovation is what keeps them going.

Results
Based on the methodology described, InSites Consulting has conducted extensive co-creation projects for Heinz, Kraft and Friesland Campina. That experience has led to the following conclusions:

1. Innovators and influentials are easy to identify for different product categories.
2. Both groups generate more and richer innovative ideas than the average consumer.
3. Besides a reality check, innovators generate other ideas than those developed using other methods (e.g. internally in the company).
4. The ideas developed by innovators are more relevant for the market after they have been reviewed and adapted by influentials.
5. The influentials assess innovations differently and identify innovations that are not recognised by the average consumer, but which do in fact have potential in the market.

Want to find out more about co-creation? Contact one of our experts: Tom De Ruyck, Tom Goderis or Prof. Dr. Niels Schillewaert

This article is also available in Marketing Driven (attachment of Pub Magazine – edition 24/06/10)

Mid-September ESOMAR organizes their general Congress in Greece, Athens. The Congress theme is fully focused on the changing landscape in market research ‘Odyssey 2010 – the changing face of market research‘. The face of market research is changing and with it so are many of the approaches and methodologies we employ.

The R&D department at InSites Consulting continuously works on co-creating research solutions together with clients, suppliers, academics, consumers, and professional organizations. Probably one of the reasons we’ll be well-presented at this year’s general Congress.

First up are Annelies Verhaeghe and Niels Schillewaert on 13 September: User Generated Content and Research. While consumers participate less in traditional surveys, they generate more information than ever before. Consumers cache their lives online and are ubiquitously available via mobile devices. As researchers we have the chance now more than ever to fuse methods and generate more insights without actually asking questions. By observing consumers’ actions, becoming friends online, scraping publically available content and text-analyzing it, getting physiological measures like reaction times and mouse clicks we can come to a more full understanding of consumers through these neo-observational research.

On 14 September Tom De Ruyck and Annelies Verhaeghe will co-present ‘Exploring the world of water‘ with Michel Rogeaux of Danone Global R&D. A case on fusing contemporary research methods.

Joeri Van den Bergh will also attend the Congress, hopefully the collect an award for his paper on authenticity. And finally on 15 September Niels Schillewaert is one the chairmen.

Interested to attend the Congress? Sign up online!

Social Media Nethnography, a set of groundbreaking research techniques for discovering and applying insights from social media, has received recognition and praise from IBM with the award of this year’s IBM SPSS Insight Award. But the results of InSites Consulting’s application of nethnography have attracted attention and praise across the entire marketing and research industry.

• The Dutch association MWG awarded the Hans du Chatinier-Prize at the AMMA Awards 2010.
• UK digital think tank eConsultancy gave the idea its Innovation Award in 2009.
• MOA (Dutch Market Research Association) recognized the innovation of the technique by awarding it the 2009 Feedback Innovation Award.
• And by applying the analysis of user-generated content in social media to improve life for the elderly, InSites Consulting’s Senior R&D Manager Annelies Verhaeghe won ESOMAR’s 2009 Young Researcher of the Year Award.

These prizes follow several other awards for InSites Consulting (ESOMAR, AMA, ARF and MOA).

Social Media Nethnography combines InSites Consulting’s method, software and techniques with IBM’s predictive analytics to gather and analyse unstructured conversations and feedback from social media. Such insights can be fed back into product development, services and entertainment, and the results of changes can easily be measured.

Why study content of online conversations?

According to Annelies Verhaeghe, Senior R&D Manager, there are several reasons why market research should study the content of online conversations.

‘First of all in contrast to traditional market research where individual answers are not public, comments on social media can be read by everyone. Whether companies like it or not, social media are nowadays a full element of communication and advertising that influence people in their buying decision process. Secondly, at a time where response rates in traditional research are declining, these spontaneous answers are a welcome source of information.
And finally online buzz contains new, high quality information which is not easily available via traditional research. It creates the ability to go back in time, gives a glimpse of the moment of truth and makes it possible to discover blind spots which could lead to new market insights.’

As many of you know, ESOMAR is taking an important step to facilitate regional knowledge sharing via the ‘Best of ESOMAR’ local seminars.

Wed 19 May, the Vlerick School of Management hosted the inaugural Belgian chapter and I joined the researchers, marketeers and generally interested observers at the Vlerick ‘Chapel’, hoping to receive some divine wisdom.

For me, the overall message was listen, listen, listen whilst adapting and evolving our techniques as market researchers and marketeers. We need to move beyond the traditional paradigm of posing questions to one of listening and managing Web 2.0 conversations.

The opening session reflected on current challenges facing the MR Industry. Bert Weijters of Vlerick made the sobering observation that our brains are not ‘growing’ sufficiently fast to contend with the data explosion that surrounds us – new methods are needed to counter this inability.

Fittingly, Tom De Ruyck of InSites Consulting brought another analogy to the turn-table, suggesting that ‘we are not analysts…’ – the MR skillset now needs to add the plug-in of ‘DJ skills’.

Our MR ‘DJ’:

• Selects groovy and relevant sources from all the MR ‘playlist’. When to use which method or data source?
• Mixes all these together, potentially using new ‘fusion’ techniques of both quali and quant.
• Of course DJ’s are also sexy and admired and that’s where we (MR) want to be!

It’s about time a Belgian audience got to meet the Belgian ‘ESOMAR Young Researcher 2009’ so Annelies Verhaeghe from InSites presented ‘And they lived happily ever after’ – a clear example of fusion market research within the new marketing paradigm. Using Netnography combined with text analytics, the study attached sentiment and frequency mappings to over 81000 social media postings by elderly citizens to learn that (among other things…..):

• Don’t call the elderly ‘old’
• Supermarket experiences need a seniors overhaul
• TV programmes are too long

Laurent Florès of CRMETRIX finished the session and reinforced the new ‘listening’ and ‘conversations’ paradigm. Brands are still doing too much talking, the ratio of talking and listening is currently 50:1! (a bit frightening…). Laurent reminded us that so much potential market insight is out there amongst our ‘free’ Web 2.0 universe. Both Google Trends and Blogosphere proved good predictors for the 2008 US Presidential Candidate nomination and 2007 French election. The buzz volume of Hillary Clinton’s online discussions suggested her defeat, things got a little more conclusive when we looked at Google images attached to her versus Barack Obama.

Laurent concluded that passive listening is not enough in itself – we need to be conversation managers.

Finally, Niels Schillewaert, Belgian representative for ESOMAR outlined how the Belgian community can better leverage the value that ESOMAR offers its members. Participation at conferences is key, but more importantly submitting papers and sharing learnings. A ‘publish and share’ mentality. Let’s also motivate our dynamic young MR community (with advanced DJ skills). Less than 2% of ESOMAR’s membership is under 30!

So all-in-all a good kick-off for ‘Best of ESOMAR’ in Belgium. Till next year!