Over the years, ESOMAR has been a strong supporter of young professionals and their ideas. To encourage industry involvement and sharing, the Young ESOMAR Society (or YES!) was launched and with it, the YES Award.
At Congress 2019 in Edinburgh, David Deeley from Bord Bia presented his idea and has now written in more detail to share with the world…we hope you enjoy!
Understanding the cultural environment of the world that we live in has always been important but in research today, it is too often ignored. Traditional approaches regularly disregard cultural insight and that needs to change if we want to truly evolve our field. Through hunting for cultural insight, we can move beyond the undecorated world of the rational and into the enlightened, colourful and vivid world of real life.
As busy researchers, we often fall into the trap of the tried and tested to solve a research objective and more often than not, these processes ignore cultural context. To change this, we need start thinking of ourselves as cultural receivers for our organisations – focusing on the ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular society so we can unlock new meaning for brands navigating the complex world we live in.
Three steps to understanding
Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, is the semi-state government organisation tasked with growing the success of the vibrant Irish food and drink industry in over 180 countries around the world. For us, understanding the cultural context of consumers far and near is crucial to that objective, and to do so we follow a broad three-step approach:
1. We begin by studying macro trends shaping the particular market of interest. Here we are examining the key shifts shaping the broader landscape of the consumers’ environment including economic, demographic, social and political aspects of a particular country or area. This stage is fundamental in helping us to understand the downward forces that are shaping the lives and thinking of the people we are trying to understand.
2. Next, we use semiotics to learn from the signs and symbols of surroundings. By absorbing what culture is demanding in addition to what consumers want, we can start to see their interdependency. Traditional research methods assume that opinions and perceptions are individual choices. Semiotics, on the other hand, assumes consumers’ opinions and perceptions originate from culture. (WARC Best Practice, April 2019)
Consumer goods and brands are an important medium of culture, facilitating the construction of self-identity for people. They are a place where we keep our private and public meanings, and by observing and analysing these we can start to free much deeper understanding.
3. This builds into our most powerful asset when it comes to building cultural insight, Ethnography. Here we immerse ourselves into the deeper cultural dynamics through ethnography or observing people and cultures in their environments to unlock why people do what they do and what exactly it is that influences them.
“Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos “folk, people, nation” and γράφω grapho “I write”) is the systematic study of people and cultures”. In Bord Bia, we use commercial ethnography but it follows the same principles and sees Insight Specialists observing and living with consumers, shopping and eating with them to truly understand what makes them tick.
Three steps to unlocking cultural insight
Following this approach provides us with qualitative data awash with evocative cultural insight that needs to be analysed carefully. While technology makes steps one and two above easier, it has yet to replace the human ability to vividly analyse the qualitative data from the third step, ethnographic research. And if you want to move from insight to impact, there are three critical techniques you’ll need to follow to get there.
First, you should focus on literal conversations as they happen, the simultaneous transcripts and the initial outputs of the conversations had. This is useful for surface-level analysis and starting to identify the broad themes or emerging behaviours of the group in question.
Next, you’ll need to start interpreting these literal conversations and decoding the subtle messages they contain. This involves translating the initial findings and filtering them through the lens of the cultural context identified at the outset of the research concentrate. By doing so, you begin to build out the insight and understand on a deeper level, the why behind peoples’ behaviours and reasoning, and the impact that their surroundings have on them.
Finally, and perhaps most critically, reflecting at a post-analysis stage on the factors that may have influenced your outcome is vital. This involves you, the researcher, being aware of your own bias and challenging your scepticism concerning the methodology and the emerging results. (Elliot & Timulak, 2005). Doing so requires thought and time, but it is essential to eliminate the risk of mental shortcuts, facilitating the move from insight to impact.
What is the bottom line?
Trying to understand people through traditional research methods will never tell the full story. As market researchers, our offering needs to evolve to include cultural insight streaming into all of our research projects.
While technology can enable us to unlock cultural insight faster and often cheaper, it is up to us to use our human ability to decode those insights and make it meaningful. Doing so will allow us to destabilise the status quo, challenge our taken for granted assumptions so we can identify the latent and emerging needs of people, while making the world a more interesting and colourful place.
Does YES peak your interest? Want to be a part of the community? Or know someone who would? Be sure to check out the YES website and get yourself and/or colleagues 30 and under involved! Speaking, competing for an award, programme committees, becoming published, volunteering as a student…it’s all possible with YES!
