Last week a colleague forwarded me a link to this blog http://zebrabites.com/2009/01/29/manufactured-insights-online-communities-part-2/. For those of you who can't be bothered reading it, essentially it comprises of a Qualie researcher who is bagging out communities and the use of social media for market research purposes.
I wrote this discussion piece earlier this year as requested by Anthill Magazine. To cut a long story short it was never published because the author of the below-mentioned blog was one of their writers (I was assured that they really did want to post it though).
Things have changed a little since I wrote it and there are some good comments here from Matt Foley and reference to Mark Pollards great presentation, but it outlines the battle for conservative researchers to make a significant paradigm shift in how they conduct research.
But before I get ahead of myself, I am sure that there are two questions starting to take shape in some readers' heads:
a) How on earth do you combine online communities with Market Research and end up with real insights?
b) "What the hell is a qualie? Some kind of native rodent?"…
Starting with the first question, it is a pretty safe assumption that you all know of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo etc If you don’t, well there is no hope for you. Market Research Online Communities (or MROC’s for those who are down with the inside talk) purposes can include the aforementioned, but the really powerful research communities are private branded online communities. In lay terms, these are private, branded, online spaces where generally 100s of invited consumers or prospects come together to regularly spend time generating ideas, offering advice to you and to one another, sharing experiences and feelings, discussing trends and helping companies figure out their marketing and business issues. It is like when you stand around in the pub and are talking about all the things that are wrong with the latest TV show… except now you are telling the brand directly. It is giving companies, brands, organisations etc access to the everyday conversations that happen which they have not been able to access in the past.
As for "what the hell is a qualie?...?" 101 in research, you have two main techniques, quantitative and qualitative.
Quanties (that is those who specialise in quantitative methods) are asking a lot of people the same generic questions (hence the similarity in language to the word quantity). Then you have Qualies who specialise in qualitative techniques (language equivalent, yep, you guessed it, quality), a precursor on many occasions (but not exclusively) to quantitative research, a situation where a small group of people are engaged in more open dialog.
But back to the blog. What struck me about it was how certain the writer was of communities' lack of usefulness. Whilst managing to identify two types of communities, there was little here to demonstrate an understanding of research and communities, more sweeping generalisations. For example the reference to manufactured communities – "manufactured for the purposes of market research" –as oppose to other communities such as Facebook or MySpace went as:
"But notwithstanding the misnomer, from where I sit, manufactured communities are simply an inefficient, high cost, low return version of an online bulletin board focus group."
WHAT!?!?!?!?!?! Are you kidding? The author, as far as I can tell from her blog has done no research into this. Here is what Forrester's, one of the world's most respected and leading authorities on future trends have to say:
"Market research online communities (MROCs) will shock the qualitative market research world. They provide cheaper, faster, and newer types of insights that today's traditional qualitative research modes, such as focus groups, don't currently provide."
Will Web 2.0 Transform Market Research? By Brad Bortner; 24th April 2008
For those of you who are familiar with Forresters, you will know that they really do their research.
Thing is, it is not really a case of whether research communities will saturate the market in Australia, but when. They have already spread like a rash (but without the negative connotation associated with rash) in North America and Europe and they are now taking off in Australia.
"…it is expected that there will be a large increase in the use of online research communities in Asia Pacific over the next two years."
What does Research 2.0 mean to consumers in Asia Pacific? By Ray Poynter et al, ESOMAR, Beijing 5-7 April 2009
Funnily enough, most researchers I have come across simply do not get communities. It extends way beyond what research has done traditionally. It removes the veil (that researchers have acted as) between consumer and client, deletes the assumptions we have made about what is significant to consumers and builds brand advocacy. Perhaps this will begin to explain why when you show these communities to a marketer you can see them salivating at the mouth before you have drawn breath.
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