Qualitative and Quantitative Research Fusion, Powered by Online Communities
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Mon, Mar 23, 2009
Brad Bortner, a principal analyst with Forrester Research, has a new independent white paper, "Fused Research Modes Will Save You Money: How To Master The Faster And Cheaper Imperative In Stark Economic Times". Here's the summary [the links are mine]:
The economy is both eroding financial wherewithal to conduct market research and putting a larger burden on market research professionals to identify successful markets. While vast economies have already been realized in quantitative research using online panels, the same benefits are about to be realized in traditional qualitative research. New fusions of qualitative and quantitative research approaches have finally emerged that are economically viable alternatives to traditional and expensive approaches. Companies must harness them or resign themselves to doing less with less at a time when sharper market insights are more necessary than ever.
A graphical representation of one form of this fusion of techniques:
A standing online community takes the place of a series of focus groups. Questions can be posed to the community regularly to develop qualitative insights. These qualitative insights can then be used to shape survey instruments; members of the panel - which includes, as a subset, active community members - are invited to take the survey. Fielding the survey beyond the community provides better representation than using just the community itself.
Why is that important? Too often qualitative insights that illustrate a subset of the target population are taken as representing the overall population. Catharine Taylor recently posted "Listen Up, Marketers: The Focus Group Is Dead", which she illustrates with examples of four brands that mistook qualitative research as being representative of their target audience: Tropicana, Motrin, Facebook and The Sci Fi Channel. Each brand faced a public-relations backlash as a result of the changes they made based on that research.
Clearly, as Brad writes, the fusion of qualitative and quantitative research is more important than ever. If you haven't considered deploying online community software and connecting it to your survey tool, now is a good time to do so.