Discussions about what constitutes useful research and insights will probably focus on the role of the research provider’s team, and what they should and should not do. I would, however, like to contend that producing useful research results should be a shared responsibility and requires collaboration between the research and client teams.
“Distributed by the author of the enclosed article with permission from SAMRA”.
Much is heard about Design Thinking and much is discussed of how we, Qualitative Researchers, can use it in our practises as a problem solution methodology to help our clients maximise the potential of their innovation processes and deliver outstanding results. But what is Design Thinking?
How it works
A method for practical, creative resolution of business problems. It’s a form of collective solution-focused thinking with the intent of producing a constructive future result.
The Design Thinking Process can be synthetized in 5 key steps:
Qualitative Research is at the heart of Stages 1 and 5.
The first stage of Design Thinking EMPHATHIZE is the foundation of a human-centered design process. It is about understanding the people for whom we are designing and the key stakeholders in the process.
In Qualitative Researchers words, it’s a hands-on exploratory piece of ethnographic research about our consumers.
To empathize, we need to get everyone involved in the process to:
Watching what consumers do and how they interact with their environment gives us clues about what they think and feel. It helps us to learn about what they need. By watching people we can capture physical manifestations of their experiences, what they do and say. This will allow us to interpret intangible meaning of those experiences in order to uncover insights. These insights will lead you to the innovative solutions. The best solutions come out of the best insights into human behavior.
But we need to learn to see things “with a fresh set of eyes” – tools for empathy, along with a human-centered mindset, is what gives us those new eyes.
This can be done by sending all team members of the process to conduct in-home ethnographic interviews, interact with consumers in an online ethnographic Study or via observation trip to the key consumption points of our target, getting everyone in the research team spending a day living our consumers lives.
Once we’ve collected all our in-depth observation and in-depth knowledge about our target, we’ll move into Stage 2, which is Define.
In the Define Stage we’ll share, unpack and synthesize the hundreds of findings of the field day into compelling needs and insights which we’ll then translate into problem statements.
It’s a stage of the process where we organise all the information and focus on what’s relevant to our overall business problem.
In practical terms, this will be a half a day session with the key stakeholders in the process, where all Download all the observations and findings from the emphasize phase, synthetize them and convert them into problem statements.
During this stage, we set clear tasks to the workshop participants, by convert all their relevant observations and findings into meaningful post its, one post it per finding, including the source.
We’ll then get everyone to post their many post-its in the wall and present them back to the audience. These post-its will then be groups into relevant themes, to then be translated into problem statements to be solved.
Once problem statements have been prioritized, it’s time to move to the Stage 3 of the process, which is Ideation, the mode of the design process where we aim to generate radical design alternatives. This usually takes about half a day.
Mentally it represents a process of “going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes—it is a mode of “flaring” rather than “focus.” The goal of ideation is to explore a wide solution space – both a large quantity of ideas and a diversity among those ideas.
From this vast depository of ideas we will build prototypes to test.
We ideate in order to transition from identifying problems into solutions.
Once we have prioritised the best solutions, it’s time to move to Stage 4 of the process – Prototype.
Prototyping is getting ideas and explorations out of your head and into the physical world. A prototype can be anything that takes a physical form – be it a wall of post-it notes, a role-playing activity, a space, an object, an illustration, an interface, or even a storyboard.
Prototypes are most successful when people (the design team, the consumer and others) can experience and interact with them. What we learn from those interactions can help us drive deeper empathy, as well as shape successful solutions.
Once we have strong prototypes developed, it’s then time to do what we, Qualitative Researchers, do so often – test creative solutions.
Considerations
Testing with consumers is a fundamental part of a human-centered design approach. We test with users to refine the solution and also to get deeper understanding of the people for whom we are designing.
When we test prototypes we should consider both their feedback on our solution and use the opportunity to gain more empathy. We are back in a learning and empathy mode when we engage users with a prototype.
Trying to draw strict borders around consciousness is like trying to stick post-it notes on the ocean.
Buy-ology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, by Martin Lindstrom
I read this book a few months ago and thought that it would be great to share with the reader some of the most interesting cases of Neuromarketing explained in the book. It is very illustrative of some the misconceptions that still exist among brand managers when they decide to launch a product or a campaign without conducting proper market research. Buy-ology:Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, by Martin Lindstrom (Currency, 2010) talks about Neuromarketing using examples that are wonderful and very illustrative. Martin Lindstom is a Danish author and a columnist for TIME Magazine, Harvard Business Review and frequently contributes to NBC’s Today show.
Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, is his first title written for consumers, for which Lindstrom conducted a $3 million word-of-mouth marketing experiment– inspired by the 2009 film, The Joneses – to study the effects of social influence on purchasing decisions.
Lindstrom has been involved in hundreds of Neuromarketing experiments and has used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to explain some of his theories. This type of resonance measures the magnetic properties of hemoglobin (the components of red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout the body). That is, an fMRI measures how oxygenated the blood is in the brain and can mark areas as small as 1 millimeter.
When the brain performs different activities, it demands more oxygen and glucose. So the more intensely a certain part of the brain works, the greater the oxygenated blood flow to that section. During an fMRI, that area will shine with a strong color.
By following these activated areas, neuroscientists can determine which part of the brain is working and thus identify according to brain maps what is the function of each of those areas (for example, memory, or speech, or control of emotions, or sadness, etc.)
It was a study in London, about smokers. All participants smoking Marlboro or Camel.
At that moment, the medical issues related to smoking implied a social cost of approximately $167 billion per year … however, cigarette makers continue inventing ‘innovative ways to kill us’. For example, Philip Morris created a ‘Marlboro Intense’: a mini-cigarette with high nicotine content and lasted only 7 puffs, to be smoked during those moments where one does not have too much time, but craves a cigarette, for example between work meetings or a short break.
Studies have shown that smoking levels seem to indicate that smokers selectively choose to be blind to the labels and messages that “smoking kills”. Are smokers braver than usual? Or secretly believe themselves immortal? Or do they realize the danger but they just don’t care?
Exactly this is what the fMRI in this study tried to answer. In 2004 the study was carried out, with a cost $7 million dollars (paid by 8 companies).
They used an fMRI and an electroencephalogram called SST (steady state typography) that measures brain waves in real time.
All the necessary measures were taken to avoid any biases and participants were carefully recruited. The questions during the study were:
Results from the fMRI were totally unexpected: the hazard warnings that are put on the cigarette packs front, sides and in the back did NOT have the effect of suppressing the craving for smoking. Zero!!! That is to say, that the horrible photos that we now see in all the packs, plus the millions of dollars spent on campaigns against smoking and all the regulations shared by dozens of governments and countries, are just a waste of resources and time.
But this is not all. According to the study – notices that smoking kills, causes emphysema, heart failure and other chronic conditions – actually STIMULATED the area in the brain known as nucleus accumbens, which is exactly the craving area in our brains. It is the region of the brain that is activated when the body has a craving (be it alcohol, food, drugs, sex or gambling).
In summary, the fMRI showed that the notices in the packs not only do not serve to move smokers away from cigarettes, but rather, encourage smokers to light a cigarette.
Although responding to the questions asked in the study, most participants verbally said that they are affected by the pictures and notices on the packs (maybe because they thought that this was the expected answer, or because they felt guilty) … the reality is that the participant’s brain showed a totally contradictory truth.
We all have behaviors for which we do not have a logical explanation. And this is truer than ever, because of the world we live in, full of stress, on information and technology, where there are terrorist threats, political battles, earthquakes, floods and violence.
The more stress we have, the more frightened and insecure we feel, and the more irrational our behavior tends to be. For example:
In 2005, $7.3 billion was spent on market research in the USA. In 2007 this number went up to $12 billion … and this does not include the amount spent on marketing, packaging, commercials, banners, payment to celebrities who advertise the product, etc. and that could perhaps increase the figure to $117 billion. (In 2005, 156 thousand products were launched globally, equivalent to a new product every 3 minutes)
But if these strategies still work, why do they fail 8 out of 10 products released to the market? Because what we say in a group session or survey may not correspond to the reaction we are having in some section of the brain.
Martin Lindstrom predicts that we will see more marketing based on fear. The more stress and instability we have in our lives, the more we seek a solid foundation. The more we seek stability, the more dependent we become on dopamine (routine). And the more dopamine is in our brain, the more we want to have “things”.
Maybe that’s why Bush after the 9/11 event answered the question “what should Americans do?” And he said “shop”.
Neuromarketing continues in its childhood. And although we may never find the button that orders “purchase”, it will help predict trends and preferences.
One of the most consistent findings of behavioral science: people all think their decision-making is completely rational, yet in reality, emotions play a major role in their final decisions. In research situations, when asked a question about decision-making, participants tend to look for the rational answer. How do we get beyond that thinking, to access the true factors in their decisions? Following are two approaches.
Cognitive dissonance describes situations where people do things that contradict their beliefs. For example, let’s say I believe I am very careful when it comes to spending money, yet I buy an expensive car. Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort that comes with that type of discrepancy. Human beings look to reduce those feelings of discomfort; in this example, I would need to add a belief that resolves the contradiction. For example, I might tell myself that the car is well-built and therefore worth the investment. Or that it’s important that others consider me to be a successful person.
It can be very valuable to uncover those conflicting beliefs among our customers and prospects. Here’s a technique we’ve used successfully: Ask research participants what people say about your product or service. That will get you all the rational things participants think about it. Then ask them what people really think about the product. That one question does wonders at getting at the irrational beliefs people don’t want to admit to. Note that the question is asked about “other people,” so participants can feel that they’re still rational, and they’re just telling us about the thoughts of all those other irrational people!
We’ve all experienced situations where we try to ask deep probing questions about customers’ relationship with our brand, and they look at us blankly with a response like “what do you mean? I needed X, Brand Y’s product was good, so I bought it. End of story.”
But there’s more to it than that! We recently borrowed from an exercise used in life coaching to ask research participants about the values that are most important to them, and then asked about ways in which the brand helps them achieve those values.
Here’s how we presented the exercise:
Different things are important to different people. Following is a list of needs. You might say all of them are desirable or important… but if you had to choose just five, which five would you say are the MOST important to you personally?
The list included 15 different values, such as the following:
We followed up with questions about how the company we were researching might help them realize those important values. After answering the question about which values were important, participants seemed to be in a more thoughtful state of mind and went much deeper with ways the brand helps them achieve the values than they had in prior research.
If we only ask research participants for answers to direct questions (e.g., “why do you prefer Brand X”), we’re only getting half the story. We should always include exercises that look at emotional and contextual factors, in addition to rational considerations. While these exercises are particularly well-suited to qualitative research, many of these approaches can be adapted to work in quantitative research, too.
Want more information? Please contact info@thinkglobalqualitative.com or jay@bureauwest.com for more information about the projects or the methodologies discussed, or to arrange for a presentation.
No matter how strong your PowerPoint skills are, the richness of today’s immersive qualitative projects is not fully captured in slides. Slides are too linear. The addition of high-resolution images (collages, journey maps, still photos), audio and video clips make for large files that are not easily shared. And we still need text, often lots of it, to present a nuanced analysis.
I recently worked on two major journey-mapping projects for a client who asked for my best ideas about innovating the insights. I was delighted when they agreed to try having the major deliverable be a website that would house all of the multi-media files as well as the analysis and project artifacts.
The final result delighted the client, and has led to some significant rethinking about how they conduct and report deep-dive qualitative research. The purpose of this article is to give you some insights into how to produce such a deliverable yourself.
Let me start by telling you why I believe this type of reporting makes sense for qualitative.
I strongly believe that qualitative insights can drive innovation and competitive advantage in an organization, but only when these insights are shared. Putting our work into a format that can be easily shared, is engaging and immersive, is a goal we should be pursuing as an industry.
The impact of a collection of media and artifacts in a Dropbox-type of library will never have the impact of the curated storytelling we now create in PowerPoint and Word. We want to build on this type of storytelling in new report forms. While clients may value an organized archive of media across multiple projects, this is a library, not a report.
Insights gathering is near the start of the innovation process. It may be years – literally – before the customer experience, product or technology changes we recommend come to full fruition. This means that a great many people will work on the project who have not been involved in the insights process. The farther away from the insights the development team gets, the more likely they are to lose sight of the customer.
An interactive archive that allows team members to browse the material, dipping into relevant videos, can help the team stay close to the insights.
Every qualitative report serves multiple audiences:
We can plan web-based architectures that offer a pathway for each of these audiences, putting the user in control.
You have multiple options for creating a web site deliverable.
Exhibit 1: Wireframe diagram shows a structural design for the web site
I chose to work with an established business relationship, the ISP that has created and hosted our websites (Snap360). Writing a brief helped me clarify what I wanted, and gave the Snap360 team enough information to give me a proposal, a wireframe diagram (shown in Exhibit 1), costs and timelines.
Exhibit 2: Finished page template ready to be populated with text and images
Once I gave them the go-ahead, they created a home page, navigation structure, and page templates (shown in Exhibit 2). These templates waited like a wedding dress, unused for several weeks while we were in field.
Once the analysis was underway, I populated most of the pages with text and images myself. The designers also created some interactive features for the home page.
No one can write the words for you or identify the themes in your report. But you could definitely have a web designer populate the site for you, using the words you have created.
Many excellent tools are now available that make website creation relatively straightforward. You choose a provider, select a price plan, buy a domain, select page templates, and populate them with data and images.
You can do this with WordPress, Weebly, Squarespace, PageCloud, or many other DIY tools.
You will need to have a plan for hosting the site during creation of the finished product, and after it is done.
Your client will want to see “report drafts,” and possibly suggest changes, so you will need to be able to grant them access with a login and password.
A key decision is where the site will be hosted once the project is complete. You could roll the site up and put it on a portable hard drive. You could transfer all the files to the client so they can host the site themselves on an internal server. Or you can continue hosting the site for the client.
You will want to decide whether or not to store a backup of the site, and determine if this is going to come with a cost.
The more you use a bricolage or triangulation approach, the more elements of the workflow you need to manage. Adding a new element to the deliverables just adds more to the complexity of the work plan.
The most challenging part of the workflow, from my perspective, is creating the video vignettes. For a discovery-oriented research project, you can easily generate more than a dozen themes, each of which you can illustrate with a short video.
Our workflow follows these steps:
We treated French-Canadian clips the same way, but asked our partner Qualitative Research Consultant (QRC) to select clips that went along with our themes, and provide a translation that would be added as an overlay.
We were fortunate to be working with a skilled video producer recommended by another QRC, who was able to work on tight timelines. Even so, close collaboration as the schedule evolves is important.
The video producer needs to be considered part of the research team and brought into discussions before fieldwork starts. They need a clear vision of what the final product is to look like, and they need access to any brand graphics well in advance.
The potential for clients to enter into the creative process with the report is very high with this approach. You will have to decide how much input to allow, and at what points of the process.
Changes late in the project will be more complex, and potentially more costly than just re-organizing your slide deck.
With so much confidential data on the internet, we wanted strong security, and elected to put the site on HTTPS, the secure site protocol. This created unexpected difficulties.
Large corporate clients that manage personal data have very advanced firewalls. It may surprise you to know that these firewalls give far more scrutiny to a site that is HTTPS secured, than to one that is not.
Here’s a good way to understand this – if you talk to someone at your front door through an intercom, you know you are secure, and have no need to worry. This is akin to the insecure HTTP situation – the firewall never “opens the door.”
If you plan to let someone inside your house, however, you want to be sure you are dealing with a safe person. You may ask to see ID. You may call a supervisor to confirm the individual. This is the HTTPS situation, and these are the kinds of checks the firewall runs on any site that says it is secure, before it “opens the door.”
Consequently, our decision to put HTTPS security on the report site created a few access issues for the client that were not straightforward to resolve and far outside our knowledge base. We relied on our strong relationship with the ISP to see us through these challenges.
With more people handling the data, especially the video, you need to be very confident of the standards in place at each step. Having the parties sign on to the right agreements is essential.
There is little doubt that it is difficult, if not impossible, to prevent a determined hack. But many of us are comfortable using cloud-based file storage and backup. A web-based report is not that much different, even though it feels quite risky. Over time, we will learn to navigate these challenges.
A purpose-built website may not be our final destination, but it offers wonderful possibilities for bringing the client into the customers’ world.
Important contributions to this process were made by Korey Schaeffer, video producer, and Alnis Dickson of Snap360 Design.
Creating Immersive Qualitative Reports originally was published in the Sprint 2018 edition of QRCA Views Magazine.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences appears to be making a clear appeal to equality and inclusion for all cultures, preferences and genders. And people are talking about the Academy and the 2018 Oscars in a way that has never happened before.
Think Global Qualitative associate Astrid Velasquez was part of a team in Mexico watching the response on social media to the 90th Oscar Ceremony while it was happening on March 4, 2018.
The full report is available in the PDF Analysis of the digital conversation for the 2018 Academy Awards
Rumors hinted at it. A whistle blower tipped off Der Spiegel Online, one of the most widely read German-language news websites, about data collectors’ cheating. In one case, of 10,000 completed records in a data set, over 8,000 were falsified by the field service. Imagine the impact on companies that use research results to make decisions.
The intent of this article is to share some of the ways the qualitative experts associated with Think Global Qualitative work to omit cheaters and repeaters and to ultimately recruit true-blue participants.
Among the companies that use research results to make decisions are those that manufacture medical devices and over-the-counter medicines, as well as prescription pharmaceuticals. Not surprisingly, this raised concern among both clients and researchers.
Corporate decision makers are rightly questioning whether or not they are receiving accurate information from their field services. Researchers with experience and integrity know how to avoid this pitfall.
Interestingly, one of the articles written after the Spiegel exposé, called out open-ended queries as a way to help determine whether or not a survey respondent was real. Reviewing what people wrote in their text-box responses gave researchers a window into the authenticity of individual respondents.
For example, did the response make sense in terms of the question? Was the text response consistent with the other check-box responses?
As someone who has read quant responses line-by-line and routinely includes open-ended queries to ensure date integrity, this is old news. Importantly, this kind of attention to respondents’ words stems from years in qualitative research.
Experts in open-ended queries, qualitative researchers have long had specific processes in place designed to exclude inappropriate participants and to prevent cheating.
In several countries, like Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the Czech Republic, national participant databases help confirm a person’s demographics as well as whether or not an individual’s past participation included any incidence of cheating.
In America, independent recruiting partners keep track of participants and omit reported cheaters from their database. Additionally, they track the frequency of participation and use this information to curb repeat participation.
Of course, these national associations, as well as the independent recruiters’ efforts, are not fool proof because the process depends on self-reporting.
Think Global Associates take additional action to ensure they include truly qualified individuals. The following examples illustrate this.
In countries where smartphone technology is widely used and relatively affordable, we routinely ask prospective participants to send in a photo during the recruiting process. Photo evidence literally becomes part of the screening process.
This request might be for a picture of a specific product in the place where it is kept in the home. Posed pictures of new product displayed on a table raise questions about whether or not the person really uses the product and alerts moderators to instruct recruiters to ask additional follow-up questions or to simply omit this prospective participant. Pictures of a half used tube of toothpaste tucked away in a bathroom vanity drawer more likely indicate actual use.
Not only are we able to confirm category and/or brand use, we get wonderful insights into product usage from these pictures.
For example, who knew that floss pick users stored these products in the console or door pocket of their cars? This single example of incorporating photo evidence of use opened our eyes to an aspect of the product that we later confirmed during subsequent research as a strong love of how convenient the product was to use.
Pictures also can show whether or not someone really holds a membership or subscription.
Say you need Netflix subscribers or those served by a certain utility company. We ask reported Netflix users to show their subscription information or request individuals that say they use a certain utility company to send a copy of their bill that includes their name.
This even works with confirming ownership of high-end products. For example, we might confirm that someone really drives a Lexus or wears a particular type of jewelry by requesting they send photos of themselves with the product.
And, we’ll be very specific, instructing potential participants to show themselves inside the car or wearing the jewelry so that we can see their face.
Absolutely, foolproof? No. Effective? Yes.
It’s common practice to ask to rescreen participants at the research facility before they come into the focus group room. This is a simple pen and paper screener.
We then review these screeners before taking qualified participants into the room, and we leave unqualified participants in the waiting area.
Even with rescreening in the holding room, it’s possible for an inappropriate participant to get into the focus group room. So those of us with a depth of experience routinely include questions at the very beginning of focus groups that help us determine the suitability of each participant.
For example, we might say: “Tell us your name and one thing that you really count on Product X providing.”
By listening carefully to these early responses, we can determine if someone is inappropriate for the research or not. Some of us refer to this as our sixth sense. We have a feeling, and we know how to quickly ferret out the truth using seemingly innocuous questions.
We also routinely have our recruiters’ supervisors rescreen participants. And in several instances, we have an internal person who rescreens, or as it’s referred to locally in India, “back-checks” every participant. Back-checking might even involve going to participants’ homes to ensure their appropriateness.
In face-to-face research, we ask to see participants’ identification as they sign in. This might be a driver’s license or some other form of photo identification. This keeps the neighbor down the street from sitting in for a properly recruited participant. While it might be hard to believe, this has happened.
For both face-to-face and online work, we use various methods to ensure participants are who they say they are. We might double check a recruit via Facetime or SKYPE so that we can see participants in-person and to verify their surroundings. Is their office really in their home? Do they really have a dog?
Also, we might recruit through social media, targeting groups that we know have a high likelihood of fitting the participant profile our clients require.
Let’s say we need to find men who have prostate cancer. There are a number of sites on Facebook where we are likely to find these gentlemen.
Similarly, we might go to groups on Facebook to find those who care for a parent with Alzheimer’s.
We’re transparent in our offer to give voice to these individuals, and know from experience it helps us find the right participants.
And, we might physically go to where the appropriate participant is. For example, we might go to the beach to find people who are using a specific kind of sunscreen or wearing a certain kind of flip flop. Then, there is no doubt. We see them using the product.
Experienced qualitative researchers, like TGQ associates, have developed a strong ability to read people. We are trained observers who listen intently to what participants say and how they say it. We stay tuned to participants’ body language and their tone of voice.
It is this intense attention to the participants that helps us spot red flags. For example: A participant says she’s really interested in trying a certain product or service, but she sits way back in her chair with her arms crossed.
This participant is no more interested in the product than day is night. Possibly, she’s trying to give the “right answers.” Who knows?
What we do know is that we need to respectfully explore this participant’s point of view in a way that spotlights her truths, whether she likes the product or not. And, it may mean that we need to omit her from the research.
There is nothing wrong with replacing a participants or cutting an interview short when it’s clear an individual is not qualified to be in the research. And, there is everything right about digging for truth on behalf of our clients.
Individuals in a consumer culture are aware of marketing. It would be hard not to be aware because marketing is so pervasively integrated into most societies.
Nonetheless, we honor requests for what many term “virgin participants,” those who have not participated in research in the past. We believe in the value of including fresh faces in ways that further our clients’ objectives.
To get these individuals, we start by using a past-participation screener. Sometimes these individuals are easy to find. Other times it takes hours to find just one. However, it can be important.
For example, sometimes we want that new Mom who has never before been asked about a new baby product. Other times, we know someone who was in research about shampoo a short while ago, isn’t necessarily inappropriate for research on nutrition products.
Particularly in Europe, companies have started asking those who submitted the best proposals to come back with “their best price.” Companies are effectively asking top-quality researchers to submit a lower bid on their work so that the corporate entity can choose among the most qualified companies and get a really low price.
There is an old adage from India that goes “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.” It is this lowest-price pressure that some in the industry say is the reason field services in Germany cheated.
Industry spokespeople ask: How can researchers make a profit if they agree to work at a deficit? This pressure leads some to cheat.
From our point of view, sometimes it’s important for us to say, “No, thank you.” Doing work well costs a certain amount of money. In competitive bid situations, we put forth our best ideas and our best prices. After all, we want the work or we would not invest time and resources into the competitive bid process. So, there are times when we have to respectfully decline to compete in a way that jeopardizes the quality of our work.
TGQ associates bring the value of experience. Our intent in posting this information is multi-fold:
It is our sincere interest to promote high industry standards by holding to best practices.
2018 started with the announcement of changes to Facebook’s algorithm which determines the order in which publications are presented to viewers.
These variations are highly relevant because brands will need to modify the ways in which they interact with users in order to increase reach and brand recognition.
To read the full analysis, download the presentation, How brands are being affected by Facebook’s new algorithm
What do Pokémon Go and the Women’s March have in common? And what do these have to do with qualitative market research? The phenomenon Pokémon Go as well as the Women’s March in January 2017 are two examples of topics and events that spread across the globe, demonstrating today’s world connectivity.
Within a few days of its launch, Pokémon Go was played by millions of players across the world and widely discussed in the media. The Women’s March, on the other hand, started on a local level and spread to global interaction through the use of social media. Because Pokémon Go and the march resonated with millions of people around the globe no matter of their ethnicity, origin, language, time zone, they were excellent case studies to demonstrate how a global Blitz Community could deliver qualitative insights in as little as 48 hours.
In 2016, Think Global Qualitative, a team of international researchers, conducted the first Blitz Community on the topic of Pokémon Go. In early 2017 another study was conducted around the Women’s March to proof the Blitz Community concept and refine the concept.
The purpose of a Blitz Community is to develop a qualitative global snapshot of one specific, up-to-date-topic. The method has four key characteristics.
First: It explores current topics of interest to a broad range of people across the world.
Second: The community is launched on a global level to gain wide insight.
Third: The questions are kept short to get a fast turnaround — even in as little as 48 hours.
Fourth: Insights from the study can be used as the basis for a deeper discussion or follow-up study. A Blitz Community is useful for projects that require quick and global insights.
An online platform is used to interact with participants. In the case of the Blitz Communities, Think Global used Focusgroupit as a platform. Making use of the advantages connectivity provides and the engagement this young generation has with internet and their mobile phones, an approach was selected where participants could log on to the community across all devices, to respond to questions and make comments on the go using their mobile phones.
Since these projects addressed a broad range of respondents, a platform was chosen that is mobile optimized so it could be accessed from desktops as well as tablets or mobile phones. Furthermore, it allowed a quick and easy access rather than having participants download an app specifically. This would have reduced the willingness to participate since it increases the effort respondents have to go through. If the study was incentivized, however, using an app that is dedicated to research, is a viable option.
Participant recruiting was short and straight-forward. The selection criteria can be as simple as “If you play Pokémon Go we would like to hear your opinion!” For the Women’s March, for example, researchers wanted to gain an understanding of the different viewpoints, so it didn’t matter whether someone participated or just read about it in the news.
Recruiting was conducted through personal social media and networks of the researchers and snowball effect since the selection criteria were simple and the showcase topics of broad interest. Online recruiting allowed the researchers to efficiently reach people from all different continents.
Although these case studies utilized social media, Blitz Community recruiting could also be conducted through client contacts or customer base and forums, for example. In both cases, a few dozen participants from different countries participated which allowed for spontaneous discussion. If anything was unclear, the moderator could probe immediately.
Rather than asking participants a lengthy list of questions, Blitz Communities utilize just a few short questions that encourage participants to stay engaged and interact with each other. In both cases we used three main questions (besides asking for gender and origin) and participants would see the following question as soon as they answered the previous one. Once answered, they could see what other respondents wrote and respond to that. More in-depth research could be used afterwards if this was needed.
During the studies, continuous moderation was possible through the multi-lingual team of researchers. The Pokémon Go community, for example, first opened in Australia and India, followed by Europe and Africa and eventually Latin America, USA and Canada.
On the other hand, the Women’s March launched globally at the same time so participants could immediately interact.
In order to allow participants to engage in discussion, the overall language was English. However, participants also had the option to answer in their mother-language since they liked to read the English comments of the other participants, but prefer to answer in their very own language, that lets them express their thoughts much better. These comments were later translated by the participating moderators. 
With Pokémon Go, for example, more than 60 participants from countries including Australia, India, South Africa, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Brazil, Canada and the United States participated. In the community, participants can answer some general questions, share their opinions but also engage with other participants in English to discuss this topic. Through a period of 48 hours all participants could log in, share their answers, views and opinions and interact with the other participants.
Since the interest in both the topics chosen to conduct Blitz Communities was quite high, only a minimal incentive (Amazon vouchers) was used in the case of Pokémon Go in a few countries to increase participation. For the Women’s March, no incentive was given and yet there was still a high number of respondents since people were interested in the topic and like to engage in discussion.
The communities generate insights into what individuals around the globe are thinking at that specific moment – commonalities and differences – and even generate potential improvement areas. Within this short time frame, Blitz Communities made it possible to generate results rapidly and provide a global picture. Yet, the moderators of ThinkGlobal were also able to bring local know-how to the table, to enhance the overall outcome.
Taking the Pokémon Go study, for example, people around the world agreed that it was something completely innovative to use one’s surrounding and open space for gaming, and allows for interactivity.
As one participant stated: “Interactivity and GPS component gives the game a unique and innovative character.”
Furthermore, the trend of micro transactions was identified where people start paying real money for in-app services or digital gimmicks on-the-go. This augmented reality game brought the age of digitalization to a new level
“We are becoming increasingly digital and the borders between reality and augmented reality will become blurry,” one participant said.
Yet, the research also showed differences when highlighting how young people in countries where Pokémon Go launched at a later stage felt disadvantaged or even excluded from the hype. A person from Brazil mentioned that “It is frustrating that again Brazil is one of the last countries to be launched.”
The Women’s March Blitz Community focused on demographics and on the three questions to gauge the long-term impact of the march: What? So what? Now what?
Within a short time more than 100 participants from five continents participated in the discussion. While the majority were female (76{a75d112c1ea8efd8d548fa031ca8ffd35154d8dad1867f6f7c53f2160deae159}) there were also male participants engaging intensively in the discussion.
Susan Abbott, senior research consultant and founding member of Think Global Qualitative, used the comments and information discussed in the Blitz Community to identify eight key takeaways. These included:
1) The march inspired pride for both marchers and non-marching supporters.
2) The message of the march was loosely defined, but centered on human rights.
3) Participants were skeptical about the impact the march would have on political leaders.
4) The march helped those who previously felt isolated in their views, by showing that other people share their view and provided a source of optimism about the future.
5) Some participants felt that the march was a misplaced effort, launched by women who should be happy with their situation.
6) The march has already acted as a catalyst for further action for some.
7) The march highlighted the many divisions that exist, among women, and among progressives.
8) The march showed what is possible, even if started on a small level, and may be a foundation for further action.
This tool can be used as a great start for a project, before deciding on topics to dive deeper. It can also be used to get quick feedback on a concept or to test-run ideas.
When used with social media recruiting and free of incentives it is important to have a topic of high interest to the target.
With professionally recruited and incentivized respondents a little more lead time might be necessary (extra day) but then a more private and deeper discussion can be expected. Ideally this can also be used with client databases to get quick feedback from their own customers.
By making use of growing connectivity and involving the smartphone as a medium it has become easier than ever before to take down borders and conduct on the spot research on a global level.
Both the Women’s March and Pokémon Go studies demonstrate how Blitz Communities can be used to generate insights into a topic on a global level. We can compare countries. We can encourage participants to interact and discuss with each other on the spot.
And all within just a couple of days!
Janina Weigl is an associate of IKM GmbH of Munich, Germany. She is based in New York City, New York.
A version of this article originally ran in the Fall 2017 edition of QRCA VIEWS Magazine, which is published by the Qualitative Research Consultants Association.