Does your company ever wonder if your innovation research is truly tapping into all the potential intuitions of consumers? How do you find those truly “product brilliant” consumers whose insights and ideas can really be leveraged into product or service development?

Quester has partnered with friend and industry expert, Bob Woodard, to explore the importance of innovation research that goes beyond consumer profiling, through a mixed methodology case study. The case study explores perceptions of Health and Wellness from the point of view of the younger generation, through over 600 in-depth interviews with participants in the following age groups: 16-18,19-24 and 25-30.

A customer-driven innovation strategy is based upon understanding both the obvious and latent needs of consumers and having the confidence to take the creative leap to product development. Having good instincts is not enough. Early-stage innovations research is the foundation for a successful innovation strategy. By integrating observational methodologies such as ethnographies and focus groups with larger scale research to dive deeper into consumer insights, you will uncover the vast intuition of your consumers that you can then move down the innovation funnel.

Register now and learn:

• How the synergy of multiple methodologies can help you make the creative leap
• How you can talk to consumers who are often difficult to reach to leverage their brilliance
• How you can add value to your innovation work to give you the confidence that you are uncovering all the great ideas

About the presenters:

Nichole Clinkinbeard, Research Manager, Quester
With a background in psychology and sociology, Nichole has a passion for understanding the way people think and how their thought process impacts their behavior. Applying Quester’s Psychiatric and Linguistic techniques, she strives to understand the impact even the slightest language nuances can have on decision-making. She designs research to ensure Quester meets the unique objectives of every client, and most importantly, translates learnings into actionable steps that will ultimately impact the bottom line.

Bob Woodard, Partner, Deep Marketing Alliance
Bob’s 34 years of professional experience have spanned the areas of marketing research and analysis, brand marketing, marketing strategic planning, finance, and sales at companies such as Campbell Soup Company, The Coca-Cola Company, and Frito-Lay, Inc. Over 25 years of his career have concentrated on consumer research/marketplace analysis/marketing strategy. The resulting combination of depth in consumer insights and breadth across functional areas has given him a uniquely strategic perspective from which to add value to the businesses on which he has worked. Bob is currently a Partner in Deep Marketing Alliance and EVP of Advertising Effectiveness at The Advertising Research Foundation.

Click HERE to register for the event.

“The IIR MRTE will be an ideal event to continue introducing our unique and innovative methodology to the market research world,” notes Quester’s VP of Client Relations, Tim Hoskins. “With thousands of projects and over 3.5 million interviews, this venue provides a great opportunity for us to showcase our capabilities.” Join Tim in the Innovation Insights Zone on Tuesday, May 1st at 10:30am for a presentation of Quester’s technology.

Be sure to stop by Booth #104 to say hello to the Quester team! Look for details on Quester’s latest technology release at the conference as well!

At Quester, we’re somewhere to the right of center on that continuum, and honestly, are pretty excited about the possibilities. While a new option at such a low price point will surely encourage additional marketers to adopt a DIY strategy, we also recognize the opportunity that this kind of approach makes for qualitative researchers like ourselves.

The initial Google offering will deliver single closed-ended questions to consumers across the internet, based on those seeking content from Google’s publisher network. In exchange for answering a quick question, consumers will be able to access content normally behind a paywall for free. Access to this new source of respondents will be available at a rate of $.10 to $.50 per respondent, depending on targeting.

So while the DIY marketers will be easily and inexpensively collecting key metrics, this opens a huge door for those of us in online qualitative to provide additional insights on the “why” behind those numbers. With Quester’s tools, we’re uniquely positioned to augment findings from Google Surveys, since Socrates is completely scalable, we can easily deploy a follow-up deep dive with large samples, to deliver qualitative insights on a quantitative scale.

As pointed out by Leonard Murphy in the Greenbook Blog Post this week, “This will be a boon to qualitative researchers who like a bit of quant to spice things up. I see only upside to this for now.” Leonard did caution that we not “get too comfortable since Facebook is ideally positioned to do something similar with a variety of qualitative methods.” As always, we’ll be on the lookout, but for now, we’re seeing the glass as half full. Industry innovations like these drive creativity in our own development initiatives, and we’re looking forward to the challenge.

As the authors state, “Market research needs to transform the nature and depth of the insights it provides to clients.” Suggested changes are “not just about providing insights, but about providing transformation, not about quantifying the expected, but listening for the unexpected, not leveraging what we know, but seeking what we don’t know, and identifying how we know what we don’t know.”

Brandt and Markowitz suggest that part of the problem may be the fact that “traditional research approaches are siloed into quantitative, qualitative, and observational. While each has its strength, we are left hungering when we do qualitative for the precision of quantitative; quantitative leaves us without the insight from in-depth qualitative approaches. Research needs to break down these traditional silos if we are to deliver the depth of insights that clients seek.”

The article goes on to discuss the current definitions of quantitative, qualitative, and observational research, and provides examples of emerging methodologies that can be applied to break down the siloed approaches, by focusing on Interactive Probing and use of Virtual Collages.

An overview of the process behind Quester’s probing technology is included in the paper, noting that “the software is trained to probe the consumer’s response using their own language, further personalizing the conversation,” and adding, “the software is sophisticated enough that it can employ different types of probes depending on the situation. These range from clarifications on meaning (the ‘definition’) to in-depth probes that ask the consumer to explain the implications of their response.”

Brandt and Markowitz shared that an analysis of the results of hundreds of applications of Quester’s tool resulted in a “four-fold increase (from 7 words to more than 30) in the number of words in the fully probed response in comparison to an unprobed answer.” In addition, they noted that the consumer response “has more depth,” and “does take us deeper into the emotional drivers.” They illustrate this using a Mental Map analysis provided by Quester, as well as a Means-End Laddering analysis, conducted based on the output from probed open-ends.

Virtual Collages were also discussed as a means of integrating “the concept of play” into survey research to obtain additional depth, and move beyond just what respondents can communicate verbally. Using pictures helps to “tap into a different part of the brain than our language does. Pictures can express thoughts and feelings that are difficult, if not impossible to articulate.”

The authors conclude the article with the following recommendation: “If people find our questionnaires antiquated and of little interest, they will abandon us. Of equal importance, if we fail to take advantage of what technology enables, our clients will lose faith in our ability to provide insights. So we need to move beyond our traditional practice silos and start taking new and integrated approaches. What you have seen today is by no means the most state of the art approaches that are available, nor are they even necessarily unique to Ipsos. The point is to show that it is possible to improve what we are doing and to approach tomorrow differently than we have today. The pace of change will accelerate. We need to keep experimenting and keep breaking the traditions that unnecessarily keep us from understanding people at the levels necessary.”

Background on the Authors:

David Brandt is a member of the Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange, Ipsos’ innovation center, where he leads the development efforts to modernize how Ipsos gains insights from consumers, including the integration of social media practices and neuroscience.

Lee Markowitz, PhD., is the Chief Research Office of Ipsos InnoQuest. In his role, Lee is responsible for certifying that all methodologies, products, and approaches developed by Ipsos InnoQuest, Ipsos’ Innovation and Forecasting practice, are globally consistent, of the highest quality, and best in class.

One of the sessions I found to be the most insightful was the “Panel of Panelists” session at the end of the day on Thursday. The CASRO team brought in eight panelists to share their experiences as respondents in online surveys. The panelists who took part in this session were members of anywhere from four to fifteen separate panels, with most estimating that they are members of around eight different panels. Most seemed to be very active panelists; taking surveys nearly on a daily basis.

As would be expected, most of the panelists shared that their rationale for participating in surveys is the incentives. One mother of six shared that she is able to purchase items for her children, like new tennis shoes, using her Amazon points, while another noted that he’s actually covering the mortgage on a lake cabin with the money he collects from participating in online surveys as well as focus groups.

However, the idea of having a voice, and contributing to the process of making products better was also a key driver for these panelists. They enjoy sharing their opinions and feeling as though their voice makes a difference.

Panelists were also asked to share what they dislike about the surveys they receive, to offer advice to us as an industry on how to improve their experience. Lengthy screeners tended to be the most common frustration, as panelists sometimes felt that they’d already taken the survey only to be told that they didn’t qualify. Others mentioned multi-variable questions that require them to “tic” “pages full of grids.” Other frustrations were tied to issues with redundant questions, or errors in the branching logic that resulted in questions that didn’t make sense – for example, asking whether or not they have children, responding no, but then being asked the age of the child.

Visually appealing surveys were appreciated by the panelists, with some noting that it’s much easier to work with a more interactive interface than simply click a tiny check box or radial button. Panelists also recommended incorporating an “accurate” progress bar in every survey, so they know how much farther they have to go. And much to my delight being from Quester, panelists also noted that “getting to write in” their answers in the form of open-ends was “engrossing” to them as well, and helped keep them engaged with the survey.

This panel exercise inspired us to begin work on our own exploratory panelist study, to learn more about what panelists really think about taking surveys – and interacting with Socrates. We’ll be launching our initiative in the next several weeks, so stay tuned for our results!

“One of the favorite components of my role as Business Director, Marketing MBA is to invite speakers from organizations that excel in a chosen marketing field. We were delighted to learn that less than 100-miles from our campus sits these really big brains at Quester! We were intrigued to learn Quester has created an integrated (man and computer/technology) approach to acquiring actionable insights. My first question was “how can this possibly work?” Any professional marketer will tell you that one of if not the biggest challenges they face is organizing, managing, maintaining, and trusting the processes surrounding collection of qualitative data aimed at understanding customer sentiments and preferences in a changing marketplace.

The best way to find out if Quester really has something that works is to invite them in to present their system and answer questions from twenty five plus MBA Marketing Candidates used to getting at the truth.

Andrea Richards and Nichole Clinkinbeard came in and provided us with a 90-minute session outlining how, when, and where Quester best fits and how it (exactly) addresses the major obstacles facing firms such as not having enough time, money, or resources to complete qualitative research marketing research. All questions and challenges were patiently and completely addressed.

Quester shows there are endless ways to combine man and technology to improve our business processes and knowledge. Quester’s Socrates model is not another technology solution chasing a problem to solve. It is a potential solution for one of your biggest challenges.”

Chris Majekodunmi, a Tippie MBA student who attended the presentation, also took the opportunity to have a chat with Socrates using one of the demo interviews on our website. Chris found the conversation to be “engaging.” He added, “It did feel like I was in a chat room with a real person the other end. I felt like Socrates® was listening to me.” He shared additional thoughts on his experience in a recent blog post entitled “My Conversation with Socrates.”

Many of the predictions were fairly predictable … lots of focus on Social Media and Mobile Research, along with some comments surrounding emerging methodologies like Neuroscience and Gamification. The idea of consolidating data was also frequently mentioned. As a qualitative researcher, the text analytics conversations were particularly interesting, so I took a deeper look into those comments. Roughly 22% of the predictions referenced Text Analytics in some way, (skewed a bit by the fact that over a third of the sample represented Text Analytics companies.)

Many of the comments tied to the larger concept of Social Media analysis, and using text analytic tools to extract insights from this vast amount of unstructured data. Several talked about the need for “education” and focusing on user training to remove the “black box” mystic surrounding many text analytic tools. Sentiment analysis also factored into these predictions for about 11% of the sample.

While many were just general comments on the importance of measuring consumer sentiment, a couple took the idea a bit further, expecting to see some pushback over the next 12 months:

• “It’s not that marketers don’t care how consumers feel about them but that there’s not much they can do with a pie chart of percent positive neutral or negative sentiment. The sharpest marketers will be looking for ways to make sentiment analysis pay.”

• “Businesses who pay for sentiment analysis are going to start asking ‘So what?’”

These comments regarding sentiment analysis were particularly interesting to me given the work we do at Quester. I’ve been asked at least three times just this week about sentiment analysis, and how Quester applies it in our practice. Although we have a suite of text analysis tools called Aristotle to help us organize and process the data, which significantly reduces our turnaround time, the majority of the Quester analytic process is done by hand by our team of linguistic analysts.

Because our analysts are digging into the data, really understanding the key themes and linkages between those themes, they can tell the story of what is going on in the data … not just in terms of frequency of mentions, or by using an algorithm to assign a “score” on the sentiment, but by communicating the nuances in the way the respondents are using language to communicate their thoughts.

It’s this in-depth review of the data, really “listening” to what our respondents are saying, that enables Quester to uncover the key insights within that unstructured data … ultimately making the “so what” crystal clear.

That said, we are always open to the possibility of incorporating new techniques and methodologies, so Quester is undertaking an investigation on the currently available sentiment tools. We’ll be sharing our findings in an upcoming post.

The awards presentation included a series of speciality awards ranging from “The IQ Award: To Recognize the Individual with the Giant-est Brain” to “The Aim High Award: For Work Above and Beyond the Call” as well as the “As-Soon-As-You-Can-Get-That-To-Me Award: To Recognize Excellence Behind the Scenes.” In Andrea’s words:

“While we want to recognize individual achievement, it is important to acknowledge the fact that Quester is truly a team. We are lucky to have such an intelligent, talented and dedicated group of employees – everyone here brings something unique to the group and is a huge asset to our company. We deeply value every person here, and in that spirit, we wanted to spend some time recognizing this fantastic group of people.”

After sharing details on the factors that resulted in each of the unique specialty awards, the coveted Charles E. Cleveland Employee of the Year award was presented. Honorable mention awards were presented to finalists Tim Hoskins, Vice President of Client Relations, and John Mertens, General Manager. And based on the votes, this year’s recipient was Quester’s Operations Manager, Eric Henderson. Andrea shared the following compilation of comments on Eric’s work as the award was presented:

“Eric is methodical, hard working, smart and incredibly, incredibly capable. He’s shown tremendous growth over the last year and can handle pretty much anything. Make foreign languages happen? Sure. Run complex statistics? No problem. Learn and implement a new survey platform? ‘k. Efficiently gather a sample of farmers or insurance brokers or nursing home administrators and coordinate with the vendor to make sure it happens on time and on budget? Yeah, all right. He’s super duper intelligent and educated at what he does and we are very, very lucky to have him.”

The Charles E. Cleveland Award is named in honor of Quester’s founder, Dr. Charles Cleveland, who passed away in 2005. Charles created Quester’s disciplined analytic approach to language, and spearheaded the development of Socrates and Aristotle. He instilled in his team a sense of pride in our work, and the passion to continually advance our methodology. It is this spirit and passion that we recognize in the recipients of the Charles E. Cleveland award, and we are proud to extend this year’s honor to Eric Henderson.

The list has a few predictable careers – Teachers, Artists, and Firefighters, for example, but others, like Psychologists and Financial Services Salespeople were a bit of a surprise for me, particularly in today’s economy.

The list ties into something I took away from the sessions at this year’s TMRE in Orlando as well. In the market research industry, we’re obsessed with learning about our consumers, what drives them, how they make decisions, how to get around the barriers that keep them from becoming our customers. But one of the themes at the conference was the value of tapping into the vast reservoir of knowledge that those who are closest to the customer possess – the front line employees.

Stan Sthanunathan from Coca-Cola mentioned that they send out a monthly question to each employee to gain additional insight on pressing issues. Employees are able to share their thoughts, and, perhaps most importantly, feel heard, and see their input put into action. Best Buy was recognized at a conference earlier in the year for their VOCE (Voice of the Customer through the Employee) program, which is completely based on input from Employees following interactions with customers on the sales floor.

In both cases, the employee feedback mechanisms are designed to be very simple for employees, not requiring much effort, but paying dividends in not only learning more about customers, but in increasing satisfaction for employees as well. Having this kind of program in place to capture employee feedback in a consistent manner may not be the silver bullet – but it is definitely a contributing factor for employee satisfaction, and promotes making the employee feel like a valued member of the company. Now, it might not rise to the level of the 10 Happiest Jobs in America, but it could certainly be a step in the right direction.

If you’d like to learn more about how Quester could help design an Employee Feedback program for your company, contact us for more detail at info@Quester.com.

What in the world is “FAIRY FOC GAD”?

It’s Quester’s new charity event … FAIRY FOC GAD stands for … “First Annual Inter-office Rip Your Face Off Competitive Giving Away Day.” I’ll admit, it took me a bit to understand the concept, and I still can’t pronounce the acronym, but it was a huge success!

As a company, Quester took part in Children & Families of Iowa’s “Adopt a Family” program. CFI is a local organization providing resources to those in need, focused on restoring hope, building futures, and changing lives. Families in need of assistance this holiday season submit an application to CFI, and each family member provides a wish list of items they’d like to receive, along with a brief description of their situation. Quester adopted a family of four: Mom, Dad, and their two teenage daughters.

Now, leave it to Quester to turn charity giving into a competitive sport, but here’s where the “rip your face off” part comes in … we broke into four teams – complete with the captains choosing each team member just like Junior High Phys. Ed … oh the memories! (Only in this case, our organizers were kind enough to provide a small spiff for the last picked team member to take away a little of the sting.)

Each team was then assigned one member of the family. The goal was to purchase as many items on their list as possible, within our allocated budget per family member. The team that was able to purchase the highest number of gifts on each list and save the most money off the retail price was then deemed the winner. There were extra bonus points assigned for “Shock and Awe” value – meaning finding a gift with the biggest “wow-factor” for Christmas morning. The catch? All shopping had to take place within the four hour window allocated on the day of our event (that’d be the GAD – Giving Away Day portion of the acronym.)

Now, you know a company full of marketing geniuses would be pretty proficient at finding deals in the retail world, so the competition was pretty stiff! There was a little friendly debate over the calculations on “retail price” – I mean, come on, when it says “Theirs” and “Ours” we ought to be able to use the “Theirs” price as the original retail price, right? (Wrong! Not under FAIRY FOC GAD rules.) And seriously, if you buy gifts for your own family that are buy one get one free, and donate the free one, should the donated item really count as a 100% savings in the Fairy FOC GAD scoring system? That’s got to be cheating! (Nope, not under FAIRY FOC GAD rules.)

So while the “rip your face off” competition label might have been a little much, it drove all of us to make our dollars go that much farther – resulting in being able to fulfill more of the wish list for this family that just needed a little extra help this year. And – it brought our Quester team a little closer together and made us all feel good about giving back to our community. At the end of the day, I’d call that a win-win … even if my team didn’t capture the FAIRY FOC GAD title this year!

PS: The winning team managed to show a savings of 82%! Their secret? Just ASK! Local retailers were very generous when learning that the purchases were going to charity – across the stores they shopped, they received 10%-30% discounts in addition to the sale prices they’d already found!

If you’d like to learn more about ways to help Children and Families of Iowa, and maybe stage your own FAIRY FOC GAD next year … visit their Adopt a Family Drive page.