DIY Research in a Social Media World
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Sat, Apr 10, 2010
DIY (Do-It-Yourself) web survey research has been happening since at least 1997 but seems newly important as social media research opens up new ways for end users to conduct their own market research. Both were popular topics this week in the blogosphere.
Select Courses compiled 100 tips and tools for anyone to use to research the social web, and FreshNetworks published a useful intro to social media monitoring. FreshNetworks covered the convenience of search-engine alerts, the value of dedicated social-media monitoring applications and the perils of sentiment analysis:
Real-world ethnography has been around for a while - the process of analysing the context in which people act, usually researched by observing subjects in their natural habitat. It can teach us a lot about behaviour and influencing factors, however it is expensive and subject to The Observer's Paradox (see also Schrödinger's Cat).
Social media monitoring brings observational research to a mass audience. By tracking what is said in forums, on Twitter and in other social networks, brands can gain customer insight. But beyond getting geeky researcher's excited, it can also offer very practical benefits to organisations. Customer service teams can listen out for customer issues online and then and resolve them. Competitor Intelligence departments can find out what customers are saying about competitors' products. PR Managers can get early warning of pending PR disasters.
Kathryn Korostoff of Research Rockstar restarted the Do It Yourself Survey Research blogging with an article in Alert! magazine, "Why DIY Research is Good for Everyone", republished on the MRA blog, The Researcher's Perspective:
DIY research is like a free sample. In some cases, DIY is being done by people who are new to market research. They try it, they like it, and some will want more. They learn the benefit of having fresh data, or insights that are not widely known by competitors. In my experience, many people for whom DIY is their first research experiences are learning fast that it isn't as easy as they expected. And now they are looking for professionals to help with their next projects-either for discrete tasks or total outsourcing. Ultimately, DIY research can be a lead generation vehicle for market research agencies.
Building on Kathryn's post, Canek Riestra, a market analyst at Estrategica Rvox, argues in A Paradigm of Market Research in 2010, that the good researcher will make certain to understand the DIY work being done by the client and then integrate this into their own research. Whether it's surveys, social media monitoring, web analytics or blog tracking, every client is doing some research internally. Understand what they are doing and leverage it appropriately.
Brandon Watts agrees, but is harsher about the problems with DIY research in DIY Opposition or Opportunity:
While it may initially appear fiscally responsible to allow in-house personnel to develop and execute online survey research for very little out-of-pocket cost, the hidden cost of getting the decision wrong can be many orders of magnitude higher than the cost savings from a relatively simple concept test. Those asked to the design the study, write the questionnaire, and perform the analysis already have full-time jobs and often do not have the necessary background or training to adequately complete each task. And while significant advances in functionality have been realized, the vast majority of DIY tools still lack fundamental features necessary to conduct sound research.
He concludes on a similar note to Kathryn and Canek, however, saying, "By being so combative and dismissive of all DIY tools, researchers are missing potential opportunities. Perhaps instead of railing against DIY at every opportunity researchers should look to plug into the process and demonstrate the value of their expertise."
At the Research 2010 annual conference, Easyjet Customer Research Manager Sophie Dekkers championed her own role as a Do-It-Yourselfer. Recapping her Ideas Rush session, MrWeb wrote:
[She] outlined her dilemma of needing to react quickly to market changes, while using her research budget more effectively.
Dekkers - who suggested the term ‘DIY or DIE' [Do It Expertly & Do It Expensively] as an analogy for her issue - explained that as 98% of Easyjet's customers book online, she has access to a ready-made sample for online survey use. Within 24 hours of rolling out a DIY survey on, for instance, when customers plan to take their summer holidays, she can receive and react to the resulting data.
Like all clients, Dekkers says she is looking for added value from the agencies she uses...
I've long advocated that DIY surveys have disintermediated MR departments and that rethinking the role of the MR department requires researchers to become mentors, not project managers (see also, From DIY Surveys to Do It Together Surveys). DIY social media research is only going to increase the urgency of this transformation.