QRCA Views

42 QRCA VIEWS WINTER 2 014 www.qrca.org "I've always felt like part of my job is to prevent people from getting hoodwinked by snake oil. Particularly when people make great claims, you need to apply some skepticism." "Qualitative is highly flexible. It allows you to shift-shape a little bit as you get in and hear what people are saying. It relies more on old-fashioned listening skills." Insider Perspectives on Qualitative C O N T I N U E D ly empirical validation evidence that allows you to have great confidence. I've always felt like part of my job is to pre- vent people from getting hoodwinked by snake oil. Particularly when people make great claims, you need to apply some skepticism. I think that is part of the role of a research professional in a company. Judy: Any snake oil qualitative methods you want to call out? Scott: No, I actually feel that qualitative is a little bit less prone to that. Part of the advantage of qualitative is that it's highly flexible. It allows you to shift- shape a little bit as you get in and hear what people are saying. It relies more on old-fashioned listening skills; you're responding directly to what people are saying. But it's largely about the inter- pretation. One reason that I prefer the more old-fashioned methods is that they require the clients – my internal clients – actually be there. That becomes part of a process of forg- ing consensus; partly you're trying to get people to see something, react to it, and then talk about what they think they saw. Judy: Do you find that it's difficult to persuade people to do that in in-person qualitative? Scott: It depends. There are some who love it and some who would have a very hard time getting to commit any time to it. With managers, their real peer group is other managers. You're a CEO, so your peer group is other CEOs. You want to brag about this cool, breakthrough thing that you've done. You're not going to be bragging, "I just went to a focus group." Judy: Is there any qualitative method you tried that looked like the next best thing, but you were very disappointed in? Scott: I've been disappointed sometimes when the qualitative becomes too unstructured. I've had some experiences where we're in swanky hotels because we don't want to be behind glass, so the cli- ents are in with everybody else. It's all shi-shi and the conversation isn't suffi- ciently driven by questions. It's very easy for these things to just evaporate. It can be good for getting some video footage of someone attractive and intelligent saying something interesting. But I still will sometimes come away feeling as if it didn't repay the effort in terms of the information yield. Judy: After asking all these direct questions, here's a projective one. If qualitative were a magazine, what magazine would it be? Scott: It would be a pictorial magazine of some sort. I hesitate to say Life because it's extinct. Any pictorial magazine like Architectural Digest, where people are looking at pictures a lot and figuring out, "Do I belong in this picture?" To some extent it would be any magazine because they look at not only the editorial but also the ads and say, "Are these my kind of people?" Magazines themselves are projective. In fact, when you do projec- tive techniques in focus groups, what are you using? You're ripping pictures out of magazines. Judy: Is there anything else you want to say about the future of qualitative? Scott: It's a valuable tool in our effort to understand what's going on. It's evolved and there's a menu of options that we didn't previously have. I think that will probably continue. The smart market researcher is going to decide in each situa- tion whether newer or more old-fashioned tools are best for that job and will act accordingly. Judy: The right tool for the right purpose. Thanks, it was great to talk to you.

• Cover