Tag Archives: insight

Top 10 Market Research Projects for 2012

20 Jan

The New Year has arrived, along with a new set of challenges for clients across multiple sectors. Insight is integral to understanding what customers want, and how to deliver value for their discretionary spend. In these increasingly competitive and straitened times, here are ten insight projects that should be considered in order to give your business the edge.

1. Use research to generate ideas and solutions

More clients are using open exploratory techniques, including video observation and communities, to identify behaviours, frustrations and opportunities for innovative solutions. Such projects are essential if a business is committed to ensuring its product/service development and innovation is aligned to delivering solutions, not products.

2. Use research to test designs and concepts

Qualitative and quantitative methods can be used to refine and improve designs and concepts, giving them greater chance of success.

3. Use research to monitor your brand alignment

The value of brand alignment is becoming increasingly realised, and more businesses are using techniques such as the Brand Alignment Monitor (BAM™) to measure the extent to which they are aligned to a clear and differentiated vision – across multiple stakeholder groups (customer, prospects, influencers, staff, etc.)

4. Use research to measure customer satisfaction

Maintaining a satisfied client or customer base is a pre-requisite to building and sustaining a successful business. Beyond generating measures of satisfaction, a customer satisfaction survey can generate actionable insight around what service elements have most influencing on driving satisfaction, advocacy and loyalty.

5. Use research to understand the customer journey

Customer needs, attitudes and expectations change as time passes, and more clients understand the importance of monitoring and understand this through quantitative and qualitative research. Such consultation allows us to understand experiences and requirements at key stages of the journey, thus maximising revenue opportunities and minimising the risk of churn.

6. Use research to test your communications

Ensuring your messages are clear, easily understood and on brand.

7. Use research to understand needs and motivations

As incomes are squeezed further in 2012, businesses need to better understand the customer’s end goals and objectives – what are they looking to get from that product, service or experience?

8. Use research to measure usage, behaviour and attitudes

How exactly are customers using your products and services versus competitors? What is the wider context for their usage – what occasions exist and how are these fulfilled? How does usage and behaviour differ across different groups, locations, and through time?

9. Use research to identify priority segments

How does the customer base / wider market segment? What unique and differentiating attitudes, needs, behaviours, motivations and traits exist? Segmentation research allows businesses to understand which discreet groups deliver the greatest value, and which show the greatest opportunity for future growth.

10. Use research to generate competitor intelligence

Research can be used to engage with your business ‘prospects’ to understand their requirements, but also to understand what your competitors do differently in order to shape acquisition strategy. Insights about the competition can allow you to make decisions on all element of your own business – pricing/discounting, product, service, innovation, communication, etc.

For more information on any of these example projects, or to request case studies, please contact Colin Auton or Richard Walker at Ci Research on +44 (0)1625 628000.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Top 10 tips for dealing with quiet and dominant respondents in focus groups

8 Dec

Every focus group is different. Not only in terms of subject matter and techniques, but also in terms of the most important ingredient – the respondents.

Any moderator will be able to regale their own tales of interesting, colourful and memorable discussion group participants. Bringing together a mix of personalities, characters and opinions is often a recipe for unforgettable encounters.

Focus groups are all about engineering and managing the discussion and debate (and, sometimes, conflict) in order to develop meaningful understanding and insight around the subject matter and the research objectives. Managing the dynamics between the group members is, therefore, critical to delivering balanced viewpoints. Keeping control is essential – and this means hearing from all respondents in equal measure.

In this particular blog post, I have dissected the top 10 tips into two – we have 5 tips for dealing with the quiet and nervous respondent, and a further 5 tips for dealing with the noisier, potentially dominating respondent.

Encouraging the quiet respondent

1. Spot them early (check their defensive body language – they more likely to be sat furthest away from the moderator), and ensure that everyone is given the chance to speak early in the session;

2. Refer to some of the quieter respondents by their first name, and give them verbal and non-verbal encouragement;

3. Ask nice and easy questions from the start – don’t start off with complicated and difficult questions that will scare the nervous participants;

4. Break into smaller groups for tasks – less confident respondents may be more willing to speak up in smaller groups;

5. Refer back to earlier comments from the quieter respondents to prove to them that you’re listening.

Managing the dominant respondent

6. Spot them early (anyone who seems over-confident – they are more likely to be sat nearest the moderator – directly to the left or right);

7. On occasions and where necessary, take advantage of the seating position of the dominant respondent by leaning forwards and giving a ‘cold shoulder’;

8. Deal with interruptions – a hand in the air, palm outwards, is often sufficient to stop an interruption in its tracks;

9. Tell the dominant respondent directly if they are interrupting or talking too much. Initially you can make light of it, but if they know the rules and keep flouting them then you have reason to have a stern word!

10. As a very last resort, kick them out. A dominant and domineering respondent can be damaging, and it is essential that the group isn’t compromised.

Of course, we would always have checks in place so that the group is spot on in terms of recruitment profile, that people are ‘warmed up’ and made to feel welcome upon arrival, and that they know the rules and expectations prior to the session starting. Feel free to try these techniques and let us know how they work out for you. And please feel free to share any tips of your own in the comments area below.

Richard Walker is a director at Ci Research, and has 16 years qualitative research experience. He is still actively involved in qualitative research – designing discussion guides, developing new techniques, moderating groups, devouring transcripts and presenting insights.

He has also been a key figure in developing Ci Research’s new suite of online qualitative techniques, including online groups, online communities and social media engagement tools.

For more information on moderator tips, feel free to contact Richard on +44(0)1625 628070 or richard.walker@ci-research.com

Tags: , , , , , ,

Top 10 – Effective Connections in the Public Sector

22 Nov

How should communicators in public services be using social media to make effective connections with people on issues that matter?

Andy Wright

We recently had the privilege of supporting the How Do Public Sector Communications Awards 2011, and preparing our part in the event set me thinking about the ways in which those in public service communicate with the people they serve and more importantly the ways in which they conduct these conversations. It never ceases to amaze me that despite best efforts status quo cannot be preserved, things move on and the change of pace – particularly in our online world – seems to increases broadly in line with the arcane calculations of Moores Law. In the mid ‘60s Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel, forecast that the processing power available to us in our computing devices will double every two years, which has proven broadly true. With this increase in speed and power – my current phone has more capacity than the first incredibly expensive and frankly massive “personal” computer I ever got to use – the ability to connect grows in reach and power for an increasing number of citizens. For public sector communicators this creates unique challenges both in terms of reach and accountability in new arenas and dealing with new audiences whilst not losing sight of the needs of the established audiences and traditional media, which don’t appear to offer the same levels of interaction as the new.

As researchers this was too much of a challenge for us to resist and to explore this further Ci Research polled more than 10,000 social media users to understand how they expect to converse with public service providers, either to receive or to give information.  The top 10 responses to our poll – in reverse order – were as follows:

In at number ten:

  • A way in which I can have input into local discussions in the belief that my views will be listened to (10%)

At number nine:

  • To provide my input into designing, delivering or assessing a local service (12%)

At number eight, tied, were:

  • To provide my response to a particular local issue or hot topic (13%)
  • To respond to an article of direct communication (13%)

In at number six – not as high as many would have thought:

  • To complain about a local service (15%)

At number five people told us it was:

  • As a way in which I can contact them (18%)

Following the theme of closely tied views joint third was:

  • To communicate my views or opinions on local matters and services (21%)
  •  As a way in which I am able to actively participate in local decision making on key issues and services (21%)

The second most popular response from our respondents was:

  • To find out what other people think about a local issue (26%)

Finally, the most popular response was:

  • As a way in which they tell us what is going on locally (42%)

So feeling pleased with the insight produced, I presented our findings to the captive audience of mainly public sector communicators.  To add a little difference to the process we followed the great tradition of the TV game show and asked the audience what they thought respondents’ priorities were. We used a simple double sided voting card with a green tick and a red cross for obvious purposes allowing us at the front of the stage to clearly see what the panel thought. This strategy revealed the first obvious flaw in the process, everyone in the audience was reliant on our assessment of the responses and allowed no direct feedback to those voting, or even real-time feedback of this closed voting system. We even had comments from the audience indicating a contrary view of the outcome from the response they could see.

Of course what this really indicated was one of the real difficulties faced by any communicator using online social media in that it offers a two-way, symmetrical, conversation which people are used to and expect. For example, for Facebook users it would be as pointless as posting a status on your wall with no way of your friends commenting or liking it. In reality the use of social media by public sector communicators purely as a broadcast mechanism represents the opening unbalanced or asymmetrical communication with citizens which greatly weakens the place and value of its application. The world is changing and apart from Moores Law the influence of digital natives – young people who have grown up with the technology – has seen an increased willingness, even amongst newer “older” converts to express and share their views in a manner that would previously have never have occurred adding to the richness and understanding these contacts bring. Most effectively this has seen an increase in the value of and context generated by online communities which provide continuous / contiguous exchanges with a loyal group of contributors who invest in a topic, brand or area.  Confirmation of this comes from our poll in which the second most common reason people expected see social media used in public sector was “…to find out what other people think about local issues…”

All well and good and after presenting our findings to the audience at the awards and getting the audience to join in  I was asked, in a really nice but firm way, “… if I don’t use a computer, how do I get in touch?!”  Well that fine comment put the whole thing into context; social media is only one tool in the arsenal of public sector communicators who ignore those who are not digital natives at their peril, while offering a low cost channel with a real immediacy it is clear that social media remains only one of the many tools available, the trick is using experience backed up with insight to identify the best application in any given situation.

For more information, please contact Andy Wright on +44 (0)1625 628000 or email andy.wright@ci-research.co.uk

A copy of the presentation is available to download on the Ci Research website – www.ci-research.com

Tags: , , ,

How to survive a hurricane and still fulfil your quotas – Top 10 Tips

19 Sep

How to survive a hurricane and still fulfil your quotas

Ci Research senior research executive Lynsey Cargill was recently in New York conducting fieldwork on behalf of one of our clients in the leisure sector.  Unfortunately, Hurricane Irene also decided to visit that very same weekend….  Having returned safely, albeit a day later, and having already survived Hurricane Isabel in New York in 2003 (oh the luck!), Lynsey shares her tongue in cheek top ten tips for market researchers on surviving hurricanes and generating insight in the process.

1. Fill your sink / bath with water.  This handy piece of advice was given to me by my sister on the morning that the eye of the storm was supposed to hit Manhattan.  This may have been for drinking water, washing myself or flushing the toilet should the water be shut down, I’m still not sure, but in my panicking state, I did it without question.

2. In case of a power cut, ensure all gadgets, mobile phones, laptops, ipods, kindles etc., are fully charged.  Again, a top tip courtesy of my sister (spending too much time watching the news about the Hurricane and adding to my increasing anxiety!).  And of course, my fully charged laptop allowed me to get on with some work while I was stuck in the hotel.

3. Use the hurricane as a talking point to break the ice during the fieldwork.  Respondents will have a nervous chuckle when you apologise that there’s no option for ‘Hurricane fast approaching’ when asking them which response best describes the weather for the day.

4. Have a backup plan.  Luckily, my colleague Gareth was on the same fieldwork trip in Los Angeles.  He was able to capture additional respondents for the US market while I sat back and relaxed…. I mean, was stuck in my hotel room due to the dangerous weather outside….

5. Focus on the job in hand and the wider objectives.  Don’t let the weather get in the way and “cloud” the insight; To what extent is the major event affecting strike rates, perceptions, motivations, behaviours?

6. Always have a support team on hand.  From experience, it’s great to have team mates back in the office dealing with my phone calls (sometimes tearful and panic-stricken) about a hurricane approaching… “what am I going to do, I can’t get the fieldwork done, I’m on my own, I’m going to be stranded for days, I want to come home” etc. Thanks.

7. Always plan / consider the time difference.  Colleagues and family members do not appreciate phone calls in the middle of the night, even if you are sure that your building has just shuddered in the wind, or that your lights flickered on and off.

8. Think when planning accommodation.  Ensure your hotel is in easy walking distance of the where the research is happening.  This makes it far easier to run back to the hotel in the torrential winds and rain.  Transport may be shut down, as it did in New York (for the first time EVER). Being so near to our clients premises allowed me to get a few more interviews on the last day of my trip, once the wind and rain had begun to ease.

9. Listen to your mother (or other providers of sage advice).  On hearing about the earlier earthquake, my mum rang me at the airport asking if I was still going to New York.  “Of course”, I said, eager to get there and do a good job.  “What about the hurricane that’s on the way” she asked, to which I replied, “Don’t be silly, New York doesn’t get hurricanes…”

10. Talk to your client and manage expectations. Be nimble, and consider alternative flexible solutions to add extra value if your fieldwork has been compromised. Explore options for top-ups through online panels, social media monitoring, telephone research, etc.

In summary, I guess no-one could have foreseen the disruption a bit of weather could have on one of the biggest and most resilient cities in the world. As a well travelled Scot, however, I can verify that it was ‘fairly blowy out’ – and this experience just goes to  show that international research is not always as glamorous as it’s cracked it up to be.

Feel free to share your stories on conducting research in ‘challenging conditions’.

Lynsey.Cargill@ci-research.com

+44 (0)1625 628039

Tags: , , ,

TOP 10 – Insights from Ci Research’s Comprehensive Spending Review Tracker

16 Feb

The Coalition Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) was released on the 20th October 2010. In order to understand more about how the public has reacted to these proposals, and capture their views on wider economic and political issues, Ci Research have been undertaking a tracker survey to monitor public perceptions through a mixture of street, online and telephone interviews.

This survey uses the conjoint technique ‘Trade-Off’ to gauge the relative strength of support or opposition to a range of proposed spending reforms.[1] The survey has now been conducted twice, once in November 2010 shortly after the CSR was announced and more recently in January 2011. In both waves of the survey over 200 interviews were completed over five days.

This week’s ‘top ten’ contains the key findings from the 2011 survey and highlights how opinion has changed between the two waves of the tracker:

  1. Since 2010 interest levels in UK politics and the UK economy have declined from 68% of respondents describing themselves as ‘having more than a passing interest’ in politics in November 2010 to 57% in January 2011. Interest in the economy also showed similar levels of decline.
  2. Of those who claimed to have ‘little or no interest’ in November 2010, their views have remained largely unchanged. The media attention on spending reforms has had little or no effect on this sub-group with only 10% becoming more interested as a result of the spending review. The largest growth in interest was amongst those who were already interested.
  3. Overall public perception of the CSR had not changed since 2010 with just over a fifth (21%) of respondents feeling positive and 39% holding mixed views (consistent with 2010). There were notable demographic differences, with Conservative voters significantly more positive. Continue reading →

Tags: , , ,

TOP 10 – Questionnaire design tips

9 Feb

This week’s top ten is a blog post from Ci Research Managing Director, Colin Auton, on the “art” of good questionnaire design.

When working as the company’s head of market research or insight, there is nothing more frustrating than stumbling upon someone who has decided to conduct their own survey without consulting you first. More often than not, you are handed a fairly basic questionnaire and are left thinking “If only I knew you were doing this. I could have designed this survey so you could have got so much more from it”.

Perhaps it is not surprising that people take it upon themselves to dive in and design their own questionnaires. On the surface it seems an easy thing to do. On the other hand would colleagues start to take on other marketing tasks themselves, such as designing creative materials or doing their own PR? Typically not!

 In all honesty it is only likely that this trend to “do-it-yourself” will continue, particularly with the emergence of the likes of Survey Monkey. With this in mind we would simply like to highlight to non-researchers that there is an art to designing a good questionnaire, and some useful rules to follow. Our top 10 tips are listed below:

 1. Think about your introduction

Positioning the survey upfront is important. Try to make the respondent feel that their views are important and look to highlight what the benefit is to them in taking part. Also be open and honest in advising on how much of their time will be required, and more specifically how their feedback might be used. True market research can’t be used to generate sales leads, and where individual views are to be fed back to the client you should get permission to do this and explain how this will be used.

 2. Screen out anyone that might be inappropriate

As a general rule of thumb you would always look to exclude anyone that works in marketing, advertising or market research. The theory is that they will have insight into why certain questions are being asked, and may therefore bias the results. For similar reasons you should look to screen out anyone who works in your sector.

 3. Think about the flow

The best questionnaires flow in a logical order for the respondent and thus make for a more survey friendly experience. For example, it is deemed good practice to order questions for satisfaction surveys in line with the order that the customer will have experienced the service.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , ,

TOP 10 – Projective techniques

15 Dec

Projective techniques are useful on a number of levels, and are useful for providing something ‘different’ to moderated discussion and for delving deeper into the sub-conscious. Projective techniques are also useful when exploring subject areas that consumers might not necessarily find it easy to elucidate an opinion (e.g. brand perceptions). The key to success from the moderator perspective is to remember why the projective technique is being used! Knowing that a brand is similar in personality to Simon Cowell is one thing, but understanding the relevance of those personally traits and how they come to light is where insights can be formed.

Here are our thoughts on the Top 10 projective techniques (and how best to use them!).

 10 – Bring an item…
This doubles up as both a pre-task as well as a projective technique. At the point of recruitment, respondents are asked to bring to the group an item that they associate with, or makes them think of the brand in question. They are given creative licence! Ci Research used this technique recently when researching a range of kids multivitamins. Not only did it act as a great warm up to the group – setting the precedent for a creative session – but it also revealed a whole host of emotional attachments to the brand.

9 – Planets (and guided fantasy)
The ‘Planets’ projective technique involves quiet-time on the part of the respondents. They are asked to close their eyes whilst the moderator guides them on an imaginary journey through space. From leaving earth in their space capsule, all the way to returning again at the end of the expedition, they are asked to think deeply about the experiences and emotions associated with a visit to ‘Planet Brand X’. For example, What does it look like?, What are the people like?, What are the buildings like?, How do you feel?, What do you see?, What do you hear?, What do you smell?, Where do you go?, Who do you talk to? What do they say?, How do you feel about spending 6 months here?, How do you feel when you’re asked to  leave?. During the course of this ‘guided fantasy’ they can visit other brand/planets and compare and contrast the environment, how welcoming it feels, how much they enjoyed the visit, etc. At the end of the projective the group make their notes and debrief to the moderator / each other. We find this delivers much deeper insight and more colourful descriptions of the customer relationship and/or experience.

8 – Psycho-drawings
Psycho-drawings are most commonly pre-prepared sheets of paper, with stick men and women and an empty speech or thought bubble. They are useful for capturing individual views on subjects, and particularly the ‘how would this make you feel?’ type of customer insight. This is a handy technique for respondents that might be initially reticent about verbalising their own emotions in front of a group of strangers, as it also allows us to use a third-party perspective e.g. “this is how I feel most customers would react to this service experience”.

7 – The Treemen
The Treemen is another great example of using stimulus material to encourage respondents to disclose their feelings and emotions. Respondents can be shown pre-prepared drawings showing various characters living and interacting within a tree environment. Respondents can select the characters within the drawing that best represent how they (or someone else) might have been feeling in a given scenario. The insights are generated not by noting the individual tree character selected, but by questioning the respondent to understand specifically why that character was selected over others.

6 – Courtroom drama
The ‘courtroom drama’ projective technique is often used by Ci Research when using focus groups to conduct concept testing and creative development projects. Most often used towards the end of groups, respondents break into teams and are asked to use the preceding discussion and their own opinions to form a ‘case for’ or ‘case against’ the client preceding with one or more concepts or service improvements. Various interesting twists can be added. For example, taking respondents and asking them to ‘defend the indefensible’ by arguing the case for concepts that they were initially critical of. Teams can be constructed to balance the views of respondents that are more opinionated and vociferous in their views.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Top 10 Tips… for using film in research

1 Dec

Richard Walker(In a previous life) Director Richard Walker was MD of a film business specialising in consumer insight-led productions, and he has developed these propositions further whilst at Ci Research to improve the effectiveness of both insight capture and dissemination for clients. Below are his latest musings on how to most effectively use film and video within market research and customer insights.

10. Think channel not method

Film and video should at least be considered for every single research project commissioned. “Easy for you to say” I hear you all cry. My retort is thus: Every year, millions of pounds of research budget, if not entirely wasted, is at least partially frittered away because consumer insights do not compete effectively with other ‘noise’ within the client’s organisation. Fantastic research is useless unless it’s properly communicated and shared, and this does not mean simply circulating PowerPoint attachments alongside Excel data tables!

Researchers should start by simply thinking of film and video as an alternative, higher impact, more engaging channel with which to share consumer knowledge. Film is much more than capturing behaviour or glorified vox pops – it is potentially a stand-alone communications solution.

9. High quality production is worth the investment

“Easy for you to say” I hear you all cry. My retort is thus: It is the new media age and expectations of video outputs have changed. If an internal client sees shaky camcorder footage and poor quality shot framing, or hears distorted audio, then this potentially detracts from the message and jeopardises the communication.

Unless specified otherwise, we suggest aiming for broadcast quality outputs that you should be proud to share –not just for the content, but for the style!

8. But don’t let the medium overtake the message

A client in the telecoms sector once gave me this important piece of advice whilst I was having a particularly creative moment. This excellent advice sits well with another piece of advice absorbed along the way – that an audience will only memorise around 5 facts or key actions from any given presentation. In planning a film based output ensure everything is centred around communicating the message (sounds obvious, but worth re-iterating). Which 5 messages do you want people to remember and what do you want them to do as a result?

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.