Qualitative Research 2012 Day 2 Afternoon

We’re approaching the home straight here in Amsterdam as we enter the sessions of the last afternoon of ESOMAR’s Qualitative Research 2012, with the first two presentations of the afternoon continuing our look at qualitative research in the digital space.

The New Dialogue of the New World 
Sandeep Dutta and Shashank Khattar, TNS India
India is a changing state, rapid urbanisation and a growth of youth culture is creating an appealing field for marketers. by 2020 India will have 25% of the world’s youth. But it’s not just the shear number of young people that delivers the appeal but also their growing affluence. Sandeep and Shashank were here today to talk about a project they had carried out for Coca-Cola, who wanted an in-depth youth study to really understand the culture, trends and attitudes, they also wanted quick response data to advertising and marketing campaigns. They needed a study that would be continuous and interactive. The problem with a lot of youth research in the region is that it was ad-hoc and discreet, but as youth changes so fast more traditional methods couldn’t provide Coca-Cola with what they needed.

TNS decided that Facebook might provide the platform they needed. They wanted consumer to be open, happy, creative and always available and they thought Facebook would allow consumer to express their views without inhibition. They created an online community with 200 members from 8 rural and urban locations and had the youngest researchers in the company run the forum.

They wanted to community to be informal, fun and effortless. Letting conversations flow openly. What helped this flow of information was that Facebook was already integrated in the respondent lives. But they also met them offline, bringing the respondents to together, they got to know each other and the discussions became much richer. They added to this culture of participation by acknowledging the respondents as research partners, making the members feel more important and engaged.

All of this meant that Coca-Cola were able to get first hand answers and close consumer contact and a continuous platform for real time insights.

Shashank left us with 3 things to keep in mind:

• Discussion topics have limited shelf life – cut things into parts and have more frequency
• Subjects that are topical such as current events  gained better responses
• Occasional personal content with individual members made a huge difference to engagement and insights.

Luke Skywalker and Master Yoda 
Patricia Blau and Evan Von Rennenkampff, GIM Germany and Philipp Jaschuk, Danone 

The GIM and Danone team where to present their paper looking at how online methodologies may benefit from a partnership with offline methodologies. In a presentation heavy with Star Wars references (I feel very sorry for any delegates, like Fiona Ray, that had never seen Star Wars) we were presented with the metaphor of Luke and Yoda, with Luke representing the world of online research, youthful, young but with bags of potential and Yoda or the qualitative world, old, wise and guiding. Patricia went on to say that qualitative researchers are well experienced in creating and combining methodologies and a lot of successful projects succeed because of combining methods.

We were presented with some challenges of online research, and went further to discuss how combining online and offline were combined to overcome these issue, two if these were:

Tangibility – Online research presents a huge amount of data and with data coming from different methodologies, backgrounds and contexts it’s sometimes like looking for a needle in a haystack. In a recent study for a German youth diary product online communities was a natural choice it provided holistic output but the data was fragmented. GIM combined these online insights with face-to-face focus groups, this allowed them to bring the insights together.

Lack of speed – This may be a surprise for many in online research. And of course there are some studies that can be carried out quicker, as people can logon whenever they have the time, however on some tasks which may require group input getting everyone online may take some time. As an example GMI walked us through a study on tissues boxes and a project looking to gather insights on how to get non-users buying. They started with an online community, exposing non-users with the product, followed by an online concept workshop, then creating mock designs and feeding those back to the community. But they needed to test the new packaging concepts with existing users. To do the same again in the online environment would have taken some time. But by using traditional focus groups for this testing they were able to get the results in a day.

To finish this final day of the conference we had two different kinds of sessions. First up we were joined by Manish Makhijani, CMI Global Foods Director, Unilever, UK and Rebecca Wynberg, CEO Global Qualitative, TNS, UK, the originators of the recently launched Unilever accreditation for qualitative research. Manish and Rebecca were here to talk us through the programme, which has polarised the industry in research times, and take some questions from the audience. This was followed by a panel discussion on the future of qualitative research. Kees van Duyn covers both sessions for us.

Kees van Duyn
Qualitative Research Standards
Unilever Qualitative Accreditation programme
It caused a stir when it was first announced. So with the architect and chief implementer of the programme on stage the audience was expecting a lively debate.

Confronting message
Before Unilever embarked on the controversial Qualitative Accreditation Programme, they had a careful look at how qualitative research was used within the business. The conclusion was that qualitative researchers are a bunch of curious, driven professionals but, sadly, as an industry we are not in a very good place.

• Qualitative research is being practiced by anyone and everyone. We have welcomed anyone with a healthy dose of curiosity and decent people skills. Mostly these are well-meaning people without certifications or formal training.
• Unilever concluded that qualitative research had been commoditized. In a way it had become a bit like fast-food: transactional and a tad soulless.
• Importantly the emphasis is often on the process as opposed to outcomes, and on ‘testing’ instead of exploring. This has led to superficial, sometimes even meaningless outcomes.

According to Rebecca Wynberg, who is in charge of the implementation of the programme, qualitative researchers had started to ‘do research’, while thinking had almost become an after-thought (no pun intended). Marketing and CMI people, on their part, do not always understand what qualitative research is about. 

Unilever concluded that they were not immune to this. Indeed as a result of the above ‘issues’ there was a diminishing appreciation for qualitative research within the business.

Altogether a pretty depressing picture of the state of qualitative research on both sides.

Solution
Clearly there is a need to rediscover not just qualitative research, but good qualitative research. So how does Unilever attempt to do this?

• Through identifying Best Practice methods and techniques
• Through training the marketing teams
• Through training CMI teams
• Through accreditation of qualitative researchers, in order to attract the best talent in the industry

Unilever’s Manish Makhijani stressed that the programme does not involve a selection of methodologies but primarily of good thinkers. According to him a good qualitative researcher possesses a number of critical skills. He/she:

• Is a strategic thinker
• Has deep foundation of skills
• Has empathy with the wider Unilever context
• Is conscientious
• Has fresh ideas and thoughts

This may not sound like rocket science, but apparently it is not very common to find this quality in researchers.

Way forward
The idea is that the programme benefits everyone: client and researcher. Unilever gets the quality it seeks, researchers get the up-front recognition that they meet Unilever’s high standards.

The impact so far is four-fold:

• Researchers show off their accreditation badge – they are proud of it
• Unilever issues better briefs
• Unilever runs training programs with agencies to lift overall quality
• The quality of conversations around research within Unilever has improved

And the programme has only just been launched. Brace yourself for more.

Panel discussion: Qualitative research in the New World
The panel discussion involved a diverse range of people from different backgrounds: Natasha Dageneaud of Seissmo, Manish Makhijani of Unilever, Rebecca Wynberg of TNS and Ben Wolf of Leo Pharma and Gregg Fraley of Kiln.

Chairwoman Valerie-Anne Paglia of Ipsos asked the panel members about transformations in the industry. A number of trends emerged:

• There is no longer a set way of doing things or fixed method – anything goes these days.
• There is increasing time-pressure – faster and faster turn-arounds are required.
• Research tends to happen later in the process, whereas there is more to be won in the early stages of the brand planning cycle.
• The role of ‘respondents’ has changed – people are no longer passive sounding boards but are given a more active and involved role.
• In a conceptual sense, the focus has shifted from identification of needs and motivations to exploration of behavior. This is a good thing, as Behavioural Economics shows that everything we do, think or feel is highly context-dependent. This realisation is triggering a multitude of methodological changes and innovations, specifically ethnographic and self-directed  methods. This development underpinned Firefish’ paper on the use of context in research, which won the Qualitative Excellence award.

So what new skills do these transformations require?

• We need better communication capabilities to get our message across.
• We need to inspire clients, not just inform them.
• We need more empathy, or the ability to put ourselves in the consumer and client’s shoes.
• We need to do a better job at understanding the business issue and answering the marketing objectives.

That said, Manish rightly argued that the fundamental traits of what makes a good researcher haven’t changed – there is no software for interpreting and thinking. Despite the wealth of new methods and techniques, research remains dependent on the skills and qualities of the people who conduct it.

And with that ESOMAR’s Qualitative Research 2012 conference finishes. It falls to Andrew Needham to provide a few words and a thanks to all the delegates, speakers and the programme committee. And the closing speech of ESOMAR President Dieter Korczak in which Simon Patterson of QRI Consulting presented the nomination for best paper at the event  and the inaugural ESOMAR Qualitative Excellence Peter Cooper Award 2012. Which went to Jessica Salmon of BT and Robert Cook of Firefish and their paper Reality Check, Establishing the potential if new ideas in real world context.   

This was followed with the award for Best Presentation at this year’s event which went to Anupama Wagh Koppar of L’Oreal, India and Vartika Hali of FireFly, India and their presentation Loading Qualitative 2.0.

Now all that remains is for me to thank everyone involved in the event and in particular Kees van Duyn for providing a researchers view on some of these sessions.