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From Bedrock to MROC: Member Activities beyond Discussions

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Jane Mount, PRC, an executive vice president with Digital Research, presented "From Bedrock to MROC: An Evolution in Qualitative Research Practices" at the 2009 MRA First Outlook Conference. Jane began by describing how quantitative methods over the past sixty years have evolved from door-to-door techniques, to direct mail, to telephone and to online research, while qualitative research has remained with focus groups during this time period. Even today online focus groups represent less than 10% of the qualitative market. MROCs, however, represent a substantial shift in qualitative research: "a shift from asking questions to get reactive consumer feedback, to listening to dialogue to get proactive consumer insight."

Jane provided an excellent introduction to the topic of MROCs, covering familiar ground. (If you're new to MROCs, see my past posts on MROC = Market Research Online Community, Focus Groups vs. Online Communities and Social Networks vs. Online Communities vs. Panels.)

Jane presented the MROC market as a continuum ranging from full-service suppliers such as her firm, Digital Research, on one side to technology-only suppliers such as Vovici on the other side. [She showed a couple of her competitors, and a couple Vovici competitors, all of whom I have happily omitted from my recreation of her slide!]

Frequently researchers think of MROCs as simply "listening posts", a place to facilitate discussions and eavesdrop on conversations, but - as a full-service supplier - Jane talked about the many other research activities that MROC members can do:

• Static ethnography - Upload photos from their personal life.
• Representational images - Upload clip art or a photo that represents a topic. For a sensitive topic like body image, have them submit these privately. For a fun topic like perceptions of their in-laws, have them upload the image for all to see and comment on (one member uploaded a picture of a cactus with the caption "They're prickly" to describe their in-laws, inspiring a comment thread from others who agreed).
• Idea banks - Submit ideas to a shared database where they can rate them.
• Insight games - Play word-association exercises and MadLibs-style sentence completion games.
• Cartoon captions - Write a caption for a cartoon.
• Personal diaries - Record daily activities, providing a richer narrative than possible through a one-time survey; for instance, revealing how members struggle with dieting on a day-to-day basis.
• Collages - Assemble collages that represent the topic being researched.
• Fun polls & quizzes - Answer entertaining questions like "If the economy was a candy bar, which of these candy bars would it be?"
• Team activities - Do planned exercises with others. The research team segments users upon registration and then plans team activities where each team represents a different segmentation. For instance, DRI did a traditional quantitative study that produced six segments of consumer buying behavior, then invited those respondents into the community and recorded their segmentation.

Jane said that issues suitable for research with MROCs include "ideation; testing social media strategy; trend spotting; early stage evaluation of branding, packaging, ads; exploring attitudes and behaviors; directional insights when time is critical; and testing suitable language for a target." To her mind, MROCs are a very cost-effective method for qualitative research that is gaining in popularity because they are fast, provide ongoing insight generation, are highly creative, and their tech-intensiveness matches with respondent lifestyles today.

MROCs are now part of "a modern Stone Age family" of qualitative tools.

Photo credit:  © 2008 Mike Hill

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