Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation is a great read. Whether for your business or personal online presence, it underscores the importance of harnessing the web’s hyperconnectedness to build your brand. A former music journalist, Joel himself is a poster child for the book’s material, giving several examples of how he used today’s digital channels to open doors to many rewarding career opportunities.Joel cites WIRED editor Chris Anderson’s maxim that brands are fast becoming defined by their first page of search results. With so much customer interaction and feedback taking place online, many traditional market research techniques are becoming antiquated. For example, Joel believes focus groups, so long a mainstay of qualitative research, are much less useful than they once were. He writes: “The web provides the ultimate focus group (and it’s free). It’s authentic because you’re not locking people in a room and feeding them pizza to get their opinion. They’re expressing themselves (good, bad, and neutral) without being solicited, and they’re talking online with passion. Can you really put a price on that? Can you really afford not to be listening?” (p. 63).
Critics of focus groups have long argued that their legitimacy can be compromised by several factors; groupthink, biased or unrealistic questioning, even the interrogatory nature of discussions to name a few. But what does the nature of today’s growing digital realm mean for the future of groups? Will researchers conduct more online “chat” style groups? Will brands incorporate more feedback sites like Starbucks’ hugely successful mystarbucksidea? The java giant has created a fast, cost-effective method of mining the consumer brain trust for useful insights and opinions.
What do you think? In this digital age where consumer behavior and interaction is more easily measured, is there still room for traditional focus groups? Are they headed towards oblivion, or can they still serve a purpose?
4 comments:
Nice Charlie, glad to hear you had a chance to pick up Mitch Joel's book. Regarding focus group testing, it seems the real key nowadays is to create environments, whether online or off-, where there is a natural discourse to gathering qual and quant data through conversation. PaaS platforms like Passenger and Lithium are paving the way for these interactions, and building super-user participation in unprecedented ways, all of which tie back to the degrees of conversation Joel speaks about in his book.
Thanks G,
Doing all possible to create a natural rather than forced discourse is key here.
A friend of mine made a great point. Online discussion platforms are more likely to attract people speaking in dogmatic platitudes rather than the more nuanced interaction of real life discussions.
Also, the type of participants is important here too. In order to gain the "right type" of feedback, researchers must ensure the same stringent methods of recruiting are in place so that the results gathered are not either diehard brand loyalists or brand haters.
I'm not surprised by the backlash against focus groups. But I am disheartened.
Focus groups are nothing more than a tool and there are two opportunities for problems when using tools: first, using the wrong tool for the job and second, not knowing how to use the tool. It is my opinion that most focus group haters either expected them to do something they can't or executed them so poorly that it wouldn't matter what they expected.
Online research and social media are new tools, but neither are a panacea. The example stated talk about mystarbucks, but what if your business problem can't be solved by your loyalists (the only ones willing to participate in such an online discussion)? What if your loyalists are actually your problem?
Another drawback to online feedback is people's general inability to write coherently. Because it is very difficult to express oneself well via the written word, most people write in platitudes—which doesn't provide the best insight for strategy. The nuances of verbal and visual communication will always have a role.
If it were up to me, the pundits would spend more time being critical of strategy than they do bemoaning the tools used to arrive at said strategies. The whiners aren't going to produce good strategy regardless the medium used.
There are quite a few good points and comments I agree with here.
I think it is about natural environment wherever possible. I'm just about to go into 3 weeks of focus groups. I think their still relevant, but only if the facilitator is excellent and the stimulus material and the way it's presented is real. Foam boards, bits of products, display materials should be replaced by actual prototypes. Let them consume the product as close to their normal experience as possible.
Online is an excellent way for brands with an online presence to garner opinion and test modifications in real time. It's also a great way to capture broader opinion. I like the reference to a brand's image being defined by the first page of results on Google.
Great post, thanks...Andy
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