Regular readers of this blog might be interested in a recent article on Mediapost.com called, "Listen Up, Marketers: The Focus Group is Dead."  Since it was posted this past Wednesday, 3/18, the article has sparked quite a few comments from market researchers, social media-types and fellow research community practitioners.  If you haven't checked it out already, I'd suggest giving it a quick read...  

The gist of the article is that brands are not actively listening to a broad base of consumers before making changes to their products, and instead are relying on traditional focus groups to make their decisions.  The article cites a few examples as supposed failures of focus groups, including Tropicana's packaging redesign, Motrin's recent ad debacle and even Facebook's redesign.  (I think these examples are a bit of a "stretch" to blame on focus groups, but hey...).  We've blogged about this topic a few times before, so I won't rehash our point of view.  If you have a few minutes to kill and are curious, you can check out our previous posts on focus groups.

What I thought was the biggest takeaway was not this sudden revelation that the traditional focus group is "dead" (which has been declared numerous times before, yet focus groups amazingly live on), but rather that it should be replaced by ways of actively listening through social media.  This is definitely a valid point...  However, even listening purely through social media has its drawbacks, as I started to allude to in my recent post on twitter as an online qualitative research methodology.  

The comment I felt was the most "balanced" came from Julie Schlack (of fellow community practitioners Communispace).  In her comment, she mentions that focus groups still have merit, private online communities are a great way to actively listen to concerns/ideas solicited from a broad base of customers, and how twitter is not the "be all end all" of listening.  I couldn't agree more with each of her points...  

What do you think?  Is this just more hype around the supposed "death of the focus group," or is the author of the article on to something here? 

Matt
(@mattpluggedin)

There has been quite a bit of buzz lately about the micro-blogging service Twitter.  Naturally, the buzz has brought about conversations on how Twitter can be used for a variety of business applications, including qualitative market research.  I see opportunities for Twitter as a qualitative research method, but think there are a few key drawbacks as well.  Below are some of the potential benefits and drawbacks of using Twitter for qualitative research...

The benefits of using Twitter for qualitative research

• It's free & easy - We'll start with one obvious benefit - Twitter is free and fairly easy to mine for information.  All kinds of third-party services exist to help see the latest trends, hot topics, etc...
• It's fast - If you have an active group of followers you can get answers to your questions quickly.
• It's "natural" - We've written before about mining existing communities for qualitative research purposes.  Twitter is really no different - it's an existing social network that can be mined for feedback in a "natural" setting.

The drawbacks of using Twitter for qualitative research

• 140 character limit - I don't know about other qualitative researchers out there, but I'd be pretty disappointed if someone constantly responded with 140 character responses in an online focus group or research community.  Twitter's limit of 140 characters per "tweet" doesn't exactly lead to the most insightful and articulate responses from a group of research participants... Granted, you can just post a few tweets as a response, but that kind of defeats the purpose of micro-blogging.
• Who are you talking to?  As with any research in existing communities, there is no established process for determining if the people you are talking to actually fit the profile of your target audience.  While you could actively recruit to find Twitter users who meet your criteria, it still would be tricky to ensure you're talking to the right people...
  
• It's "artificial" - While mining an existing community or social network (like Twitter) can be a "natural" and semi-ethnographic way to conduct research, it is still a bit contrived at the same time.  The Yellow Submarine blog has a good post about this...  Many people are tweeting with the goal of being perceived in a certain manner.  That kind of "posturing" doesn't help qualitative researchers... 

Ideas for how to use Twitter for qualitative research

I see less of an opportunity in using the actual Twitter service as a means of conducting research, and more of an opportunity to pull people's Twitter feeds into existing online qualitative research platforms.  For example, a company could setup an online research community and ask members to share their Twitter feeds.  That information could be pulled into the community and associated with their profile to get a different viewpoint on the respondent and what they are like...

What do you think?

These are just our two cents on Twitter for qualitative research...  What do you think?  Have you used Twitter for market research?  Were you satisfied with the results?  Comments are welcome!

This morning we had the opportunity to talk with a large financial services company interested in setting up a private research community with a targeted audience of customers.  As we talked about their goals in setting up an ongoing research community, a member of the company's research team asked us where an online research community fits in the "continuum between an online focus group and a 'true' online community." 

His thinking was that an online focus group is a heavily moderated environment with far less emphasis on user generated discussions, while a "true" online community (as he deemed it) was initiated entirely by the community members with very little or no moderation on the part of a third party.  I'll admit - I had never really thought about research communities in this way and think his assessment of the landscape is right on.  After the meeting was over, I got to thinking about where exactly a research community fits in this spectrum...

The heavily facilitated environment of an online focus group

As he noted, the environment in an online focus group does tend to be heavily facilitated, with far more of an emphasis on the role of the moderator in guiding the group and discussions that center almost entirely around the objectives of the company sponsoring the research.  Depending on a company's objectives, that is often sufficient.  It also provides answers to a research question fairly quickly.  However, it leaves open the possibility that the participants had topics or ideas to discuss that may not have been covered in the moderator's guide...

The open environment in a "true" online community

The other end of the spectrum is what he dubbed a "true" online community, where members are congregating around a shared purpose and creating the community on their own accord.  While natural leadership roles may emerge among members, it's not "managed" in the sense that a focus group is.  The advantage to this environment is that it serves as a fairly natural venue to listen to what is "top of mind" among members.  The disadvantage is that members may or may not get around to discussing topics of interest to an organization, and that the audience in the community may not represent a target segment.   

So where does an online research community fit in?

Online research communities tend to fall somewhere in this spectrum, leaning slightly more toward the carefully managed focus group environment.  The key is to build a community environment that fosters a combination of direct questioning and careful listening.  It's what that we sometimes to refer to as "push/pull" research.  On the one hand, you're "pushing" targeted activities out to the community, while creating an environment that encourages sharing and "pulling" out ideas and insights. 

This is one of the areas that fundamentally makes a research community different from a conventional "online community."  It's the combination of a heavily facilitated research tool with a more "authentic" venue to listen to customer needs that makes research communities unique.