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The Magic of In-Person Research

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Uncategorized |

Sep

2011

The Internet feels like it’s changing everything and social media is amazing. There’s literally a conversation happening 24-7 about anything you can think of. People share viewpoints in endless streams, and now even market research turns to the web for consumer insights. Some even question why would anyone go to all the trouble and expense of having an in-person focus group.

Here’s what I think: For the same reason you go to all the trouble and expense of visiting your family or traveling to a foreign city in person. Even though it’s far away and costs a lot of money and you have to take off work and hire someone to walk the dog and water the plants, ultimately there’s still no substitute for being there.

Can Decision Fatigue Skew Focus Groups?

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Focus Groups, Research |

Aug

2011

With great interest, I recently read “To Choose is to Lose” , an article in The New York Times magazine about decision fatigue. Someone working in a social psychology lab uncovered the “decision fatigue” phenomenon by observing data showing that mental energy and the ability to evaluate options and make decisions is finite, and runs especially low toward the end of a day.

A postdoctoral fellow working at this same lab noticed this while registering for wedding gifts. At the end of the day, when her mental energy was low, her tendency was to pick anything. The burnt orange coffee pot? Why not? The Mickey Mouse dish set? Fine, whatever! Just no more thinking! No more deciding!

I knew it! This article confirmed what I’ve always sensed. Having facilitated hundreds of evening focus groups, I now have a scientific name for what I sensed intuitively. Consumers in evening focus groups suffer from “decision fatigue”.

Focus Group Play Dates

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Focus Groups, Projective Techniques |

Aug

2011

In case you were wondering, no one wants his insurance agent to be a cow.

Recently I used toy animals as a projective technique to help uncover what consumers really want from insurance agents. These are extremely detailed toy animals made of some polymer. They are the right size to fill your palm and watching consumers hold their “idealized” agent in the palm of their hand was incredibly illuminating. It is research and it is play: a technique recently written up by The New York Times for yielding surprisingly deep and fresh insights.

I have a plastic box that holds a couple dozen of these animals, which I dump on the table in front of my group. Invariably, people’s faces light up. The discussion about insurance, or any topic for that matter starts to look like fun.

Consumers are People, Not Lab Rats

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Focus Groups |

Aug

2011

If I could do market research about jetpacks, people would beg to be in my focus groups. Alas, many research topics are rarely that sexy so we must entice participants instead with pay. But even money only buys people’s time, and what market research focus groups really need–deep introspection, stimulating conversation, and fresh insight–takes more than money. It takes relationship.

As you know, every transaction is really about relationship: creating a connection of trust between suppliers and customers. But when you’re talking about a new product or something ordinary and commonplace, consumers either don’t have that relationship or don’t even know they have one in the first place. They need a compelling reason to consider one. That’s where I come in.

Getting Through to Jaded Consumers

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Focus Groups |

Jul

2011

In marketing, we frequently talk about jaded consumers: How to breach the fortresses they build against anything that smells like marketing.

My market research focus groups are stocked with jaded consumers. There’s the tired guy who just got off work who’s thinking about his dog, or maybe even his date that starts in an hour. Someone else is wondering whether a hundred bucks is really a good reason to be stuck in a room full of strangers talking about something he doesn’t care about. Inevitably, there’s the single mom wondering how her kids are doing. Maybe there’s the lady who didn’t get much sleep the night before and can’t concentrate on much of anything.

The Secrets Projective Techniques Reval

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Projective Techniques |

Jun

2011

Generally, a wolf in sheep’s clothing symbolizes a sneak. So I was surprised when, during a market research project using Projective Techniques, I passed this picture out to my focus group of pregnant women and heard one say that she saw herself in it.

“He’s wearing a costume,” she said. “And I’m kind of wearing one, too.”

Really? I wasn’t looking for that at all.

But that’s what I love about Projective Techniques. It elicits a depth of insight that direct questions rarely do.

As it turned out, the pregnant woman was saying something that all the women confirmed: They felt like, in all the talk of fetal development, diet and hormones, no one was dealing with the huge change they all faced. For example, they all worried that in becoming mothers they would no longer recognize themselves—would become strangers to themselves, like a wolf wearing sheep’s clothing. Had I not used Projective Techniques, they might never have uncovered this issue.

Wrangling Road Warriors

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Online Research |

Feb

2011

Online qualitative research is a fantastic way to garner powerful consumer insights, especially among targets that are typically unable to participate in focus groups. Recently, I conducted research among road warriors, a group of people who just cannot be pulled together for a focus group. The very nature of this target makes it practically unthinkable to conduct traditional qualitative research.

By creating a proprietary research blog, these road warriors were able to log in from any location and be active participants in the project.

It was a huge win for the client who gained keen insight into a target that is intrinsically hard to meet with face to face.

Pay The Piper

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Online Research |

Sep

2010

I’m into the fifth month of a six-month MROC (Market Research Online Community) and have wisdom from the frontline worth sharing.

A real challenge with online communities is keeping engagement high. Over the past few months, I learned quite a bit about managing this and I’m happy to report that an easy way to bolster engagement is obvious and time-honored – provide generous incentives.

You can’t cut corners when it comes to incentives. It is an industry wide reality that consumers are paid to participate in focus groups and the same rule of thumb applies online.

This can’t be emphasized enough. Even though participation is online, we are still asking a lot of our community members.

In this recent experience, my client and I were so excited about the great learning we were getting that we got a little “question happy”. Basically, we started starting asking so more of our participants than we initially promised that participation started to lag.

Online Research Gets Personal

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Online Research |

Apr

2010

Online research is catching people’s attention but some continue to worry about how much depth and intensity can really be gleaned from research in this medium. I understand the concern….it really is counterintuitive to imagine that personal, human insights would be gleaned this way.

However, I must say that I’ve been using blogs for market research quite a bit lately and with each project, I’m astounded at the profound, straightforward and honest comments consumers share on these research blogs. With this type of research, I have been able to hit on insights and language that is often much more illuminating than what I hear in face to face interviews.

I suspect the anonymity of the environment helps people reveal some deep truths about themselves, but I wonder if it’s something even more than that. Could it be that people just need a little time to take a breath, process the question and go inside to figure out what they think?

At long last!

by Barbara Milgram | Posted in Uncategorized |

Apr

2010

Hello, World! - message from the first computer program

Hello! After lurking around the web and reading blogs for a long, long time I finally decided it’s time to jump in and share my own perspective.

My goal with this site is to help you get to know me better, and with this blog, to provide a platform for people to talk about and debate issues that regularly pop up in our minds. I hope to inspire you to think about things in new ways, to offer tips and tricks that have helped me along the way, to shine a light on things I care about, to embolden you to try new ways of doing research and to connect with new people in new ways. Be sure to leave a comment or drop me an e-mail; I’d really like to get to know you better.

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