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    How are companies, agencies like IMRB, FCB Ulka and others finding new ways to improve qualitative research

    Synopsis

    As companies and agencies deal with the inadequacies of focus groups, they are finding new ways to improve their qualitative research. Here's how

    ET Bureau


    As companies and agencies deal with the inadequacies of focus groups, they are finding new ways to improve their qualitative research. Here's how

    Get rid of the groups and groupies

    For too long, companies have clung to the traditional model of speaking to eight to 10 people. Marketers recommend the aggressive use of one-on-one interviews with trained moderators. IMRB is spending more time on these and on smaller discussions. The focus, says Rohini Abraham of IMRB, is to listen to respondents, rather than piling up hours from groups of often uncommunicative strangers.

    Focus groups are plagued by poor quality respondents. Companies and agencies are both working to fix this. Marketing consultant Suvodeep Das says he is trying to find his way past a couple of people hogging the limelight (and mike) at these groups. "There should be more measures to ensure that everyone's views are taken on board," he says. "There's also the issue of some respondents 'self-projecting' themselves — there need to be techniques where we can derive the correct output about the brand or subject after removing personal subjectivity."

    Kartik Jain, marketing chief of HDFC Bank places the onus squarely on people involved in these groups — both those asking questions and those answering them.

    Research is too important to be just left to researchers

    Having someone from either the creative or planning side of the agency, involved in conducting or closely observing the group helps capture the excitement that consumers feel towards brands.

    FCB Ulka has an insight tool called Mind & Mood, in which a group of friends talk about products and brands. Planners at the firm are being pushed to undertake life immersion sessions, spending a couple of hours in detailed conversations with consumers. "Last year we spent a week in rural UP and MP to understand television-viewing habits," says MG Parameswaran, advisor, FCB Ulka. "Earlier this year, we met women in small town Andhra Pradesh and even photographed their dressing tables. These quasi-ethnographic studies give us a lot of rich information and insight."

    Take it outside

    company conference rooms can dull responses in most of us. Or create a pressure cooker environment fraught with tension. Josy Paul, chief creative officer, BBDO recounts an experience of breaking through the boredom barrier. "We were on our way to a pitch in Delhi, going through a number of concepts we'd come up with," he recalls. "At a loss to decide which was the best, we ran a research among the co-passengers and surprisingly they were very excited about this and helpful. We had the air hostess wander around with concepts, getting people's thoughts and feedback. That just felt very real."

    Unusual locations for research suggested include long distance railway compartments with their frequent atmosphere of candour and bonhomie. Or even visiting people at home, recording observations on the fly. None of this can happen in a traditional focus group setting, contends Abraham. Others such as Sarang Panchal of MRSS are pushing respondents to record breakfast for a week before a study to give the firm's clients some additional insights.

    Or take it inside

    Some marketers like Aditya Birla Finance have an internal team that present the results of their studies as actionable insights. Data only substantiates the findings and is never an end in itself.

    In technology, we trust Technology is playing a bigger role for MRSS — it is using eyetracking solutions that add to its understanding of how consumers process events, symbols, sequences and copy. While not substitutes, they provide a rounded view of consumers' assimilation and response to communication. MRSS has a video streaming facility called Focus Vision, which connects consumers in their bedrooms to companies in their boardrooms.

    "Consumers may prefer to take three questions on the internet and pose them to friends, rather than drag themselves to a strange conference room at the end of a long business day," argues Anuradha Narasimhan, director -marketing, Britannia.

    HDFC too is thinking on these lines as it mulls expanding and re-orienting its qualitative research. "We are looking to closed user groups online, building a panel of customers and more aggressively using social media for these qualitative insights," says Jain. Broadband may be the game changer. KV Sridhar, chief creative officer, Leo Burnett, says the internet allows people to respond and neither side needs to travel. "We are not putting people with four or five others in in a strange place," he says. "I can see the house the consumer lives in: the calendars, the props and the TV set. Even if she's not articulate there's so much that can be gathered on the way she lives." This may bring honesty back to people and recruiters.
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