As a focus group moderator, I can’t remember how many times I’ve been ready to start at 6.30pm, with only half a room of mildly hungry participants all quietly waiting for the rest to make it through traffic so we can start talking (and eating). And when you’ve only got 90 minutes, well you want to make sure every minute counts.

So it’s interesting to examine what time conversations happen online, based on what is convenient to our community members. One of the greatest benefits of online research communities is the flexibility for members – they can talk anytime, anywhere so long as they have internet connection.

The graphs at left show it’s possible to have conversations with research participants from 8am in the morning to midnight. Here are some other points of interest:

- Mums with kids at home show a steady presence all day, from breakfast to bed time. There’s not even a real ‘trough’ in the conversations at dinner (proving once again they’re able to multitask by feeding the kids and talking to us)

- Small business owners want to converse during work hours and tend to go quiet after 6pm. Isn’t this when we typically want them to come to groups?

- Our communities with an even mix of males and females, or those which are male dominated show a real dip at around 6pm – usually after a late afternoon peak in visits to the community. This coincides with the commute home, dinner, and other post-work activities.

- People are ready to talk from breakfast time – not when you’d typically participate in market research.

So when respondents say, ‘No I’m having dinner’ they probably mean it. We’ve all got to eat sometime. But there’s 23 other hours in the day to chat if you belong to an online research community.

One of the unique things about online communities is the nature of the relationship between the moderator/researcher and the participant. We talk to our members daily, get to know them personally over time and form close bonds which means that they become confident, open, willing and able to think more freely.

Because they have time to think about the issues we are discussing and can comment as they live within their real context, they raise issues that are important TO THEM rather than being constrained by the framework in which we have presented an idea. In this way we are given invaluable access into their actual behaviour, motivations, needs and attitudes, by allowing the consumer to set the agenda, rather than starting from a base of what we think consumers are interested in.

The long-term nature of communities also has other advantages. We can turn to the consumer at every step of the process from idea initiation and screening, concept development and refinement through continuous evaluation of revisions to comply with internal capabilities that occur as a result of feedback to ensure the product stays on target with consumer needs.

Instead of a quick 5-minute assessment, members have time to digest and reflect on the ideas within their usual thinking time and space, which may be over breakfast, in the shower, on the way to work or waiting in the car to pick up the kids as they scoff their ritual bar of chocolate. What this ensures is a much better quality evaluation and deeper insights.

There is also plenty of scope to take an ethnographic approach, tasking community members to complete online diaries, take photos or video footage and write bogs. One of the special things about our communities is that we know each member so well that we are able to virtually hand pick them to meet specific criteria for a longer term or targeted task.

An impressive array of new ideas is emerging from online research communities giving clients the potent competitive edge that they are been seeking. For more information on how and what we do click here.