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.

It’s true that online research has advantages.  It’s versatile, people answer questions when they’re ready and they’re relaxed.  It’s anonymous, so people are more open and candid.  And for some people, like business travelers who are too busy traveling to come to a focus group, it’s perfect.

But there are just some pieces of an in-the-flesh, face-to-face interactions that can’t be duplicated online.

When I lead focus groups in person, we work with lots of creative approaches and projective techniques to unlock people’s insights:  like creating art projects and playing with beautifully made toy animals that release inhibitions and free the imagination.  There’s power when people interact with other on a projective technique that brings us farther than we would have imagined.  And then there’s body language.  Depending on whom you ask, body language is estimated to account for 65 to 95 percent of communication. That’s a lot of communication you lose via the Internet.

I love having the online research.  And I love the fact that it’s not the only option.

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”.

While I’ve got a huge toolbox of tricks to inspire a “second wind”, I still wonder…. would the outcome be different if the groups weren’t held at the end of the day?

Saturday groups are a fantastic alternative.  No decision fatigue and lots of energy and involvement.  But this is not a perfect solution since people don’t like working weekends.

I’ve done morning or daytime groups, which are also great, but these can be more costly because of the higher incentives needed to draw “working” folks.  They might even be more time consuming because of how much more difficult it would be to get people to come during the day.

These are definite hurdles, but it always makes me wonder if working the occasional Saturday, paying a bit more, or taking one or two extra weeks might not radically impact the outcome of the research.  Maybe groups among people not afflicted by “decision fatigue” would yield more productive, rich and rewarding results.  The return on investment could be astronomical and maybe for those high-profile projects, it’s worth considering.

What do you think?

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.

I ask people to select an animal that represents the qualities they want in an insurance agent and they eagerly sift through the pile.  Out comes the golden retriever, the nurturing tigress gently dangling her cub from her mouth and the sturdy, approachable horse.  This shows the warm, nurturing side of insurance agents, the side they want to experience when they call about a car accident, a flood or tree landing on the roof.

More sifting and out comes the lion, the panther, and the alligator.  This shows the side of their agent they want when it comes to dealing with the underwriter.  This fight can get dirty and they want their agent to be tough enough to prevail in the dirty swamp that the insurance industry can be.

This project illuminated what many moderators know.  Turning a market research project into a play date releases people’s creativity.  Consumers’ juices start flowing and what might otherwise be a dry, boring category starts to feel engaging, interactive and rich.

Now I just wonder when the cow will have his day.

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.

I start building connections with participants before they even walk in the door, using email, phone calls or blogs.  When they arrive, I’m the one person they know and it helps them feel comfortable right away.  Immediately, I engage them, feed them, and respond to signals they’re putting out.  It’s my job, but it’s also something I love to do.

In some cases I’ll tell them from the start what my client is trying to decide, making them stakeholders in the project itself.  Other times, I just admit:  “I know these might be boring, repetitive questions but your answers will really help my client make an important decision.”

I’ve had participants, near strangers say:  “You made this really fun!”

In those crucial early minutes, I let them know I see them as smart people whose judgment I trust and whose help I need.  That builds a bridge they’re willing to cross.  They no longer feel like lab rats.  They feel like a steering committee.

Imagine what I could do with jetpacks!

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.

I have a roomful these people and we need to spend about two hours together, coming up with insights to help solve my client’s problem.  My challenge as a moderator is to get my client what they need, I have to shift the energy of the room from uninvolved and cynical to lively and engaged.  I’ve only got five minutes to accomplish this, If I don’t do this well, the jaded, cynical consumers will never be forthcoming about a topic they honestly don’t care much about, such as menu board navigation..

So when each focus group starts, I might pull out my psychology training, my projective toys, my interpersonal skills or my snacks, all to encourage people to want to talk to me.  I read body language, and forge relationships—a topic that deserves its own blog.  I can’t just start asking, “Which is a better direction, the horizontal or vertical”?  Before we tackle the specifics, I often need to change the energy.  My client hires me to get the key to the fortress.

So I engage, connect, respond and subconsciously pull until…shift. The guy leaning back in his chair like a victim of “g-force” leans forward.  Someone cracks a joke. There’s a collective spark as the group connects with the objective.  Suddenly, you’re in a room full of team members, engaged in a project.  Now it gets fun and the learning begins.

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.

In Projective Techniques, I distribute photos to focus groups and ask questions like “Which picture represents an aspect of your personality that others don’t know?” Respondents tend to “project” their attributes or feelings onto the image, revealing emotions and insights they might have otherwise struggled to articulate.

In this case, the women told me something that my client, a major health care company, could use to become their holistic care leader. The company created solutions like offering the new parents candlelight dinners after the birth. Soon the hospital won accolades as the best place to have a baby in Los Angeles.

I’ve been doing this a long time, so it’s really exciting when something like Projective Techniques produces fresh insights that lead to truly innovative customer solutions..

In fact, it’s my favorite thing.

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.

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.

To keep goodwill high and be sure the members felt appreciated, we surprised them with a mid-project “bonus”.  This went a long way towards keeping everyone engaged and excited about participating! The results have more than paid for the extra cash outlay.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll talk about others lessons learned from this MROC – some hard to fix and some much easier.

What have you tried to keep consumer engagement high?

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?

Maybe it’s too much to ask people to get truly contemplative when the clock is ticking and they’re under the gun to come up with an answer.  I can’t help but wonder if one of the magic elements of online research is that people finally have time to give considered, truly thoughtful answers.   Do you think online research truly has the power to reveal the truth of who people are or am I getting a bunch of gibberish that I can’t decipher without the benefit of body language?

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.