Paradigm Shift: Trends in Market Research
I’m a consumer advocate. To advocate for them – to give them voice in the business decision-making process – I must know the best ways to learn from them.
As new techniques are developed, I can embrace them, refine them, reject them, or even create something else that will work better for my clients. I want a large arsenal of effective tools. And, when needed, I want to be able to combine approaches to address the client’s objectives in the best way possible.
The current trends in marketing research highlight four rather distinct quadrants in which work is conducted. A simplified overview is shown below.
Historically, most marketing research has fallen into what I’m calling the Sociologic quadrant – participants know they’re in a test environment and they often interact with an interviewer/moderator + other participants; additionally, verbal skills often have a prominent role.
Physiologic testing has been around for years. It measures a physical response to test stimulus, such as eye tracking when conducting a copy test or website evaluation.
Ethnographic (or observational) research, with its roots in anthropology, has become quite popular in recent years. In its purist form, participants don’t know they’re being observed and less emphasis is placed on verbal responses.
Discourse Analysis is the newest approach, and is currently the hottest topic in marketing circles. These methods analyze social media, such as postings on Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs, by studying the language used.
In the coming weeks, I’ll take a closer look at each quadrant in more detail. In the meantime, I’d enjoy hearing your initial thoughts about this concept and how it might be used to help clients understand why different methods are being recommended.
Tags: Marketing Research
Jul 31, 2009
Nice breakout of the methodologies! Most people forget there are more than just surveys out there.
Aug 03, 2009
I enjoyed looking at the four quadrants and want to learn more about how you are thinking about these areas.
For me, text analytics is just an extention of linguistics, specifically linguistic anthropology.
I’m curious about how you see anthropological study, primarily looking at the relationships of actors within groups, not just as individuals.
What about phychological/neurological?
Aug 03, 2009
Robert, thanks for your feedback!
I agree with you that text analytics is an extension of linguistics. In truth, that quadrant was difficult for me to label.
Your other two questions I need to think about more before I write, so I’m glad you asked them. The challenge in looking at actors within groups is that, at least from a market research perspective, I believe the design becomes hybridized because with humans, there’s a language component. That leaves it, in my paradigm, in the Discourse Analysis quadrant. In truth, both Quads 1 and 4 (natural setting) are anthropologic. Maybe I need to find another label for that 4th quadrant. Need to think about it.
On your last question, psychological/neurological, can you give me a research method for the psychological? Preliminarily, neurological, at least how I think of it now, would be a Phsyiological for autonomic-response testing and DA for neural networks. Your thoughts on this?
Aug 03, 2009
I posted a reply over on LinkedIn, but was thinking about the hypnosis stuff and brain scan using CT/MRIs, etc.
Aug 03, 2009
I find your quadrants very interesting but I question that Discourse Analysis is part of the Natural Environment. I find that when subjects are hidden in cyberspace they are not in what I would call a ‘Natural Environment’. This is a world that they have made up to satisfy whatever ego they need to stroke. It is so far removed from a natural environment that I question the validity of this information. I suggest that another plane needs to be developed diametrically opposed to from the Natural Environment to describe the Fantasy Land of cyberspace.
If you are designing this quadrant as meaning they are in the Natural Environment – such as a grocery store or restaurant – and then responding to inquiries on Twitter, etc – then how is this any different from Sociologic Traditional Testing. We put a subject in an environment and ask questions. the real difference is that now we cannot read facial expression, tonality of voice and body movement to understand and explain the insights that we are hearing.
I can see Discourse Analysis in Quant research but it will never replace looking a person in the eye, making a connection and gaining a true understanding of their feelings about the subject. How can you claim to be a consumer advocate and their voice if you have never heard their voice?
Aug 04, 2009
Kathy, you’re correct in what you’ve written in the first paragraph. I tried to label things in a simple way, but maybe I’ve over-simplified. Think of “natural” as “non-test.” I don’t know where we’ll go with data-mining and the quality of that information in the future. However, it’s here now, and I think it’s important for clients to understand how and when to use these approaches. In truth, many of these techniques will evolve to be hybrids, in the same way that usability testing has. Over the series, you’ll see how it’s very hard to find a pure technique once you get into the left side of this paradigm.
Being a consumer advocate means learning from them on all fronts. I do not always need to see someone to learn from them. If that were the case, then what valid role would quantitative studies and BBFG have? You may not value them as techniques, but they’re clearly out there, being used, and providing insights into consumers – on both emotional and rational levels.
I hope you’ll continue to follow this topic and I appreciate your feedback.
Aug 04, 2009
I’m not normally a fan of 2×2 matrices, but this is a useful springboard for discussion.
I would argue that most of the anthropologists I know work very hard to establish appropriate relationships with their informants and consent is crucial to the process. Fly-on-the-wall and opportunistic observation happens more with design researchers. Very useful, especially when the visual data capture is good, but not necessarily ethnographic.
Human factors and ergonomics would be other types of physiological methods, which as you mention, get blended with cognitive approaches for issues like usability.
Discourse analysis, when blended with semiotics, crosses both the verbal and non-verbal, and doesn’t need to limit itself to electronic communication! Any artefact of culture feeds the analysis engine.
And I would definitely agree that being a consumer advocate doesn’t limit oneself to what people say directly to a researcher. Valuing and decoding the things people make and the texts they create is absolutely essential to understanding the human experience from a 360 perspective.
Aug 04, 2009
Julie, I’m so glad you understood that I intended this to be a springboard! These labels are creating a lot of debate, which is good for me and I hope all of us. The underlying point is that the toolbox is expanding.
I am not an anthropologist, and personally believe that “ethnography” is misused as a term by most marketers. (If you’ve visited the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest, you’d understand more about my reaction to this term! And you certainly don’t want to get my sister started on this subject as she was the person I dragged with me for our visit.)
When I started out with this idea, the X axis was “Interactive” on the right and “Observational” on the left. I needed to change the “Interactive” label as I thought it could be misunderstood, and in thinking about it more, it seemed not completely consistent with my thoughts. (This is evolving for me too.) As I changed the right to “Test Environment,” I wanted to balance the left. However, maybe I should go back to “Observational” for the left side.
Your other techniques are on my radar as well. I hope you’ll pop back to continue to comment on new entries.
Aug 05, 2009
I would say that a modern grocery store is about as unnatural an environment as you could possibly get
Excellent chart and a good debate-starter, by the way.
Aug 05, 2009
This is very interesting and a good way to look at and analyze types of inquiry. I agree with Kathy that social media is not natural per se and I always caution against using streams of text or messaging as representative, just as you would not choose sitting in on one particular business meeting as a representative slice for ethnography.
Thanks for making an interesting discussion and viewpoint on learning about how we study people.
Aug 05, 2009
Caryn: Nice research and great discussion. I happen to like that the 2×2 grid keeps it simple and doesn’t create the “death by PowerPoint/Flowchart” syndrome. As an ethnographer with a base in documentary filmmaking, the difficulty has sometimes been drawing parallels between these two. As someone steeped in both arenas, I think it is most appropriate to place the ethno area in “non-verbal/natural” quadrant. This is where the clues arise from, and where I (as filmmaker and researcher) find the richness of a person’s personal context. While we may get information from the others, this area has been the goldmine.
Nice work and great job simplifying what is often difficult to simplify.
Aug 05, 2009
Like Julie I am not a huge fan of orthogonal axes, however I can see this makes for good discussion and I look forward to seeing where that nets out.
I do feel I need to lend discourse analysis a hand here. In many ways (like classical anthropology, as distinct from commercial ethnography)it is natural in the extreme. It can take any text as its analytical concern – a Tweet or verbatim transcripts, an ad or an overheard conversation. It treats language as a form of social action and can explore how people actively construct their worlds and identities, populating these worlds with mental concepts. And so much more, how they orientate to these concepts (and expect others to as well). Data studied is often (although not always – and that is another story!) spontaneously produced i.e. not touched by the hand of researchers or marketeers, avoiding demand characteristics.
However I would say that there are two schools of DA going on in the marketplace – one much more based in critical theory and sociology, concerning itself with relations and power. And another more psychologically based issuing from a discursive psychological background and encompassing Conversational Analysis and ethnomethodology. The latter is the more hardcore and relies on more rigorous analyses of texts. More rigour means more depth, better frameworks and more salient and flexible answers for clients.
Both semiotics and discourse analysis engage with actual and imagined, as well as ‘created’ cultural artefacts – what people produce. They make no distinction between online discussion or ‘real’ conversation (or indeed what people own or why), whilst at the same time noting that online identity construction can be different from how you might talk offline. It is no less interesting for that, and all data is filtered appropriately. There are no artificial barriers concerning what is *artificial* or not – it is all one type of construction, or another.
Even semiotics has two schools: some which is really no more than cultural analysis, differing substantively from semiotics grounded in critical theory and the postmodern turn.
As for other areas to consider for your orthogonal ruminations, certainly cognitive testing and MRI research (which while still flawed is gaining ground) should be included in the ‘test’ side.
I very much look forward to seeing ho the postings continue!
Aug 05, 2009
Thank you all for the depth of your feedback. Diane, you’re obviously quite knowledgeable and have given me much to think about. I look forward to the continued exchange. This exercise started for me as a way to think about how my industry was changing (or needed to change) and has turned into something much more!
Aug 05, 2009
Ah and for your international readers, I should have mentioned there is of course the difference between Peircean semiotics and Sausurrean semiotics. For the record, these are both on the non-test side. : )