QRCA Views

40 QRCA VIEWS WINTER 2 014 www.qrca.org drawing a different conclusion. This involves interpretation. It's pretty hard to do deep probing and deep interpret- ing when I am only getting what they are writing. And even if I am reviewing video collected through an online com- munity, it is hard to do the deep probe or follow-up that helps answer the tricky questions. So I am still a bit old school when it comes to qualitative. But I yield to the advantages of these temporary communities because they're formed for a special purpose. We put them togeth- er, thank everybody, and they go away. Judy: So you're using focus groups less than you did, but they still play a role? Scott: I haven't thrown away any of those old tools yet in my own preferred approach. I think there's more flexibility around it. I rarely would do a fourteen- person group. Sometimes there was a tendency to try and make these things more like quantitative, getting votes: "Hold your hand up. How many people like this?" There are better ways of getting that. I tend to prefer smaller groups. I like eight or nine; I also like using dyads Insider Perspectives on Qualitative C O N T I N U E D 6633 E. Hwy 290, Suite 201 l Austin, TX 78723 l 512.637.6690 l www.thinkgroupaustin.com R business executives IT professionals mobile developers hispanic & latino market experienced management web streaming focus groups ethnographies video conferencing bilingual staff 5,000 sq. ft. facility personal client service eye tracking technology online bulletins medical professionals business owners product trial test on-site IT specialist national recruiting central location success and triads where people know each other and call each other's "BS." I've also done work that involves eth- nographic methods. We've had a lot of fun with Teen Vogue readers, these teen- age fashion freaks. You give them some money to spend and send a camera out with them. They know the stores in Seattle or in Phoenix or wherever, and they'll dive right in. They've been eyeing this item for a while. You have them buy it, come back to the group and then style it; it'll be a whole day. Why do they think that's fashionable? How would they put it together with their other stuff ? You're not going to get that in online research. It's a whole process that gives you some clue as to how they are thinking about what they put together and call cool. I don't know of any other way to get to it than this approach. Yes, it's slow; yes, it's expensive, but in certain situations it still seems to me to be the best way of provid- ing that kind of interpretive grist. You can't afford to have old school qualitative as often as you might prefer. And you are under pressure to do things that are more innovative and novel. The newer and less traditional approaches tend to be the ones that always earn favor with management just because they're new. Particularly when I'm try- ing to get editors to think more con- cretely about who's in their market, you still really need to structure some direct engagement between them and their customers. For this, I prefer more old- fashioned high-touch approaches to qualitative. Judy: You talked about the faddishness in market research and in business gener- ally. What is that about? Is it, "We're bored, we've seen a lot of focus groups?" Scott: I think it's that. It's also what tends to get covered in the press. People are very focused on how these things appear. Particularly in an environment where we have digital disruption, people tend to be enamored with things they might not even fully understand. I think there's more space right now for black boxes where we don't really know how the thing works – where there's the proprietary algorithm, where there's neuroscience. Neuromarketing tech- niques are guilty of this; there's not real-

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