Half way through a traditional face to face qualitative project with mums and kids, and it’s got me thinking about kids and their role in market research.

As we move forward to new technologies and channels for accessing adults are we going to be missing out on insights from kids, and what does this mean for our clients and their products?

At the moment we can conduct direct research with kids with their parents consent, be it in focus groups, accompanied shops, in home sessions etc. But contacting kids online and through mobile devices is a bit more of a grey area.

Does this mean more heavy reliance on mum for an interpretation of her kid’s thoughts, desires and relationships with brands and products?
Kids researchers know the value of hearing it ‘from the horse’s mouth’ so to speak, and clients certainly respond well to watching and listening to kids, who are often instrumental in driving mums purchase behaviour. Many a time we have seen kids in the next room choosing a totally different ‘favourite idea’ to the one their mums are picking for them across the hallway.

Sitting down to talk about a particular brand and what it means to kids can unearth insights far more powerful than we may first think. Kids are so used to being asked for the ‘right’ answers in school. But given the chance to explore their inner thoughts and feelings through drawings, projective techniques and other mechanisms, can be empowering for them. They enjoy harnessing their imagination and creativity, which can lead to fabulous food for thought for brand managers, advertising creative and design teams.

Often mums tell us they buy stuff for kids ‘because they want it’ – but how often do they know why?

I for one am interested to ‘watch this space’ and see how we connect with kids as ethical debates, technology and research evolve. After all, kids are often the most switched on when in it comes to new technology. In a recent focus group, the first question from the 9 year olds boys was “woah is that an ipad 4?”. I have to admit I didn’t know the answer……

As community managers we surround ourselves with people of differing ages, genders, backgrounds, attitudes and opinions in our communities. It’s part of what makes communities so interesting. We get to understand the differences and similarities between members, draw an overall consensus and then provide valuable insights to our clients.

Dealing with members with such varying backgrounds, opinions and outlooks can therefore be a difficult process. We aim to get to know people throughout the period that the community runs, and it is true that as we go along, you get a better understanding of what you can talk to some members about; how much you can ask them and importantly what topic of conversations are taboo or not. In the first weeks though it is worth being cautious as something that you may say flippantly without even thinking may actually be offensive to a member.

Think about real life, the first time you meet someone, it is pretty unlikely that you’ll be asking them who they voted for in the last election or how much they earn each year in the first few minutes of conversation. Sure these may be relevant questions at some point but think about how you would feel being asked this in the first week of a community or the first time you meet someone.

A good example of mine was a discussion which took place around Easter which aimed to investigate how much the meaning of Easter had diminished over time and the reasons for this. Whilst  most of us have an opinion on the matter, it was early in a community and had the potential to create divisions between those with differing opinions of a religious nature. Whilst healthy argument can be a good way to really delve into the true thoughts of members, fractures in the membership surrounding issues of religion or other sensitive topics can be very damaging.

Trust must be built up with members in order to get the best from them. It is built over time and you can’t expect someone to provide you the most insightful responses without their trust.

A tip that I now have in the back of my mind when talking to members in the community is that if you are any way concerned or worried about what you are writing and how it could be understood by a member then it is safer to not ask the question at all.

Sometimes it’s not the questions that we ask which are important in getting the best out of members but the ones that we don’t.

What’s your most embarrassing moment that makes you squirm and that you’d hate to share? What, you don’t want to answer? You’re trying to evade my question? Why?

As a qual researcher we often have to find ways of going beyond direct questions. We have to find subtle ways to ‘tease’ out the information we need. This opens up the opportunity for ‘unearthing’ different responses than would be gained through simply asking a direct question.

As we all know, in ‘traditional’ qual there’s a number of strategies to do this, and some of them are about getting people to ‘do’ things rather than simply talking to them about the topic.  Projective techniques, sentence completion, brand party, product reviews, sampling, missions, are but a few.

With online research communities these same techniques and strategies apply. Sometimes we may adapt them, sometimes it’s a straight forward exchange from the ‘round table’ to the online environment.  Chatting with community members is not dissimilar to chatting with focus group attendees. Sometimes you need to go in softly, tip toe around, and see what is naturally volunteered. And in some cases you canjump straight in and get to the point.

I guess the reminder for us all is to be creative….don’t just ask.

Here are a couple of different examples to inspire you:

• Ask members to create an ‘online dating’ profile for a brand.  What do they highlight to ‘attract’?  What do they gloss over and / or omit from the profile?
• Imagine Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are trapped on a leaky boat.  There is no reception where they are and only  two lifejackets can be found,  - which would you hope survives?

Building an Insights Community is a lot like throwing a party. Who will you invite? What’s the theme? Formal? Casual? What will you offer your guests? How will you make sure everyone mingles?

Anyone who has hosted a party knows that it takes A LOT of organisation, and even then there will be things out of your control. Insights Communities are just the same.

At this year’s AMSRS national conference, I’ll take a look at how we can throw a rocking Insights Community!

Hope to see you there!

“I think that you and I should get closer. I’d like to find out more about you – your thoughts, values, dreams and aspirations… I’ve designed this survey, could you please fill it out?”

This analogy illustrates the discrepancy between research objectives, and the methods used to reach those aims. The disconnect between purpose and process leaves some gaps to fill when it comes to talking to participants.

Insights Communities are astonishingly adept at bridging these gaps, with members frequently willing to share the most personal details about their lives. The online platform, has permitted such intimacy between researcher and community member…

Speaking to members in ‘natural environments’

Today conversing online is an ordinary form of communication, which participants are comfortable with. Familiar environments, equal more open disclosures

Spending A LOT of time with members

Moderators spend months or even years with the same participants, building a rapport that is unparalleled to more traditional research methods

Sharing a mutual understanding

The ‘kinship’ between moderator and member is reflected in participants’ readiness to genuinely ‘help you out’. For little, to no monetary reward, most members are often eager to go above and beyond what was initially asked of them at recruitment

Why?

Members invest in their relationship with the brand. They appreciate the sense of being heard, and contributing to decisions the brand makes. By the end of the community it is often the members who don’t want it to stop.

The marriage of purpose and process

Through the developed relationship between moderator and member, researchers gain a broader understanding into the lives of participants,  leading to richer insight. Insights Communities marry the research purpose and process – now that’s a relationship!

When I first started working with online communities I used to agonise over what I was going to talk to my members about to keep them engaged and interested. Trying to keep abreast of current events, latching on to anything interesting that might have happened out in the ‘big wide world’ to chat about.

But what I soon discovered (quite quickly, thankfully!) was that it was the more everyday musings and mundane snippets of my life that elicited the most response. The more I was just ‘me’ and shared my (sometimes very random) streams of consciousness the more community members responded. Blogs about peanut butter toast, accidentally coming to work with a stain on my shirt, feeling overwhelmed by laundry and the like had members laughing, commiserating and sharing similar stories both with me and each other. It’s the little things we all have in common that connect us more than we realise.

Not only has this made my job far easier, but highlights one of the main motivations for members participating in communities. And why we call them communities in the first place. We are social creatures, naturally interested in other people’s lives. Being a real person made me as much a member of the community as the ‘respondents’ I was ‘moderating’.

I let them into my life and get to see into their lives in return.

This is one of the key strengths of online communities in research. Members get comfortable, get real, and reveal truths about themselves. A genuine bond and sense of belonging develops. Something that I have never achieved in years of moderating focus groups.

As we are seeking to reveal deep consumer insights, that has to be a good thing!

It’s incredible to think so much has changed over the past three years. As Charleni Li points out in her recent blog Groundswell Paperback: A Look Back Three Years Later, it was only back in May 2008 that Facebook and Twitter were still emerging trends. Even more incredible, the iPhone had no apps! Can any of us now imagine a world without our iPhone, without Facebook or without Twitter? I know I can’t!

And marketers and researchers alike are embracing these technologies to reach their different audiences.

This then led to me on to a bit of a tangent, wondering whether MROCs (market research online communities) or insight communities have yet fully ‘emerged’. It seems the world of marketing research may be lagging a little?  There are still many who are wedded to the idea of focus groups sufficing for all qualitative research.  Which continues to amaze me, because once the richness, depth of information and honesty online research community members reveal, there’s really no going back.

When it comes to social networking, Google hasn’t had a very good run. Google Wave no longer exists, while Google Buzz got off on the wrong foot (with privacy invasion) when it first rolled out. In the next few weeks Google will launch its +1 button – which functions the same as Facebook’s ‘Like’ button. Given its track record, will Google ever be able to go social? If a company such as Google can’t build a successful online community, what hope is there for us market researchers?

Google obviously has the technological savvy to create these types of social networking platforms, but its core offer isn’t about being social, it’s about being useful. Google Search, Maps, News, Scholar. It’s about getting the user on and off a page as quickly as possible, with the information needed. Social media offers fun, entertainment and interaction – keeping the user on the platform for as long as possible.

Building an online community takes more than just providing a platform. Ignoring ‘the social’ impacts considerably on how your community grows – if it does at all. When establishing an insights community, keep in mind the lessons of Google. It’s just as much about interaction as it is information.