Online qualitative: harnessing the power of the internet

Online qualitative: harnessing the power of the internet

by Jason Vir

In our perpetual quest to understand consumers, brands and their relationships, we at Kantar Media have developed a suite of online qualitative approaches that get us closer to people in their everyday lives. They are easy to use because they tap into the familiarity of the blogosphere and social networking. They’re unconstrained by geography and time, allowing participants to join the conversation at their convenience. And they’re engaging because they include images, films, clips, links and fun tasks. Together, this not only encourages a fuller response, but provides a more contextual understanding.

It’s a social world
The digital revolution is changing the rules for both media owners and researchers. The explosion of social media has propelled the internet from a functional tool to an emotional medium. Many now spend much of their time online in a new state of networked individualism. Facebook and Twitter rule, connecting us with friends and the wider world. Online communication is becoming a new form of consumption. There’s a cacophony of comment and opinion swirling in the virtual ether. Expressing our views, sharing pictures and organising our lives online all seem second nature. This maelstrom makes the internet a very interesting place to marketers, media owners and researchers.

Unleashing the power of the internet
Qualitative research, in particular, is insatiably inquisitive. Like a pig hunting truffles, it unearths insights from people’s relationships, emotions and interactions wherever they’re performed. It’s obvious that the internet is a field ripe for qualitative research.

And yet it has been slow to develop. At first, attempts were made to replicate the tried and trusted staple of the qualitative toolbox, the group discussion. Virtual rooms were constructed to replicate the real world viewing facility. The logistical advantages of connecting dispersed people without the need to travel were trumpeted, although in the early days dial up internet was a hindrance, delivering time lags and frustration. Many, though, were wary of the loss of face to face human interaction.

However, the familiarity of social media, aligned with a more intelligent use of online tools, means that online qualitative research is now coming of age.

At Kantar Media, our online qualitative approaches get us closer to the consumer pulse. Tasks and techniques tap into participants’ creativity, drawing them in as engaged participants rather than passive respondents. The online environment and extended duration amplify the context, illuminating consumers’ worlds. Our suite of approaches can be deployed right around the marketing cycle, from understanding an audience to optimising communications and enriching media sales cases. The tools are effective both standalone and integrated into hybrid studies.

Safari is a diary of behaviour recorded online over a set period of time, typically over a week or two. It draws on the principles of ethnography to reveal the world from the participant’s perspective, capturing moods and reactions to events as they unfold.

We’ve examined multi-platform news consumption among digital natives using Safari. We followed news fiends online over 10 days, incorporating filming, creative tasks and follow-up face-to-face discussions to uncover consumer perceptions of the news cycle and the role of brands in the apparent free-for-all of the internet.

Arena is an activity-rich, immersive forum that reveals needs and motivations. Freed from the constraints of social conformity, participants engage at their convenience, within the terms set. It is conducted over an extended period of up to two weeks, which interweaves the real world and encourages fuller, more considered feedback.

During the 2010 World Cup we hosted an online community of fans who shared their experience of the England campaign through film, text and images in our World Cup Arena. We followed them on their emotional rollercoaster journey and learnt about them through metaphorical image tasks and their uploaded filmed commentaries. They served as one strand in a study that drew on multiple data sources to reveal the role of mobile as both a research tool and a media platform.

Crucible provides a semi-structured, iterative discussion, which is designed to assess and refine propositions and creative. Over just two to three days, stimulus is recycled and refined to arrive at optimised concepts. The process generates greater individual feedback while benefiting from group interaction.

We assessed a newspaper client’s sponsored special edition using our Crucible approach to great effect. Supplemented with vox pops to drive home the story, we advised on how to develop the next special edition.

The Sounding Box is our simple way to collect top of mind thoughts, in text or rich media. It is typically used as an add-on to a survey to enrich the data, but we have also built it into other online approaches to serve as a private comment booth.

We’ve conducted vox pops on topical issues and captured top of mind feedback after surveys for semantic nuance.

Virtually there
As the internet revolution sweeps ahead, the shift in dynamic from company to consumer makes understanding the logic of the individual ever more important. Qualitative research has always sought out the individual to understand the world from their point of view. Now more than ever we need to tap into people’s worlds and harness their creativity to uncover refreshing insights that can help brand and media owners’ businesses prosper.