These days the content is valued on the basis of likes, views, retweets or shares. Videos become viral, and are considered successful. However, Tom Godwin, co-founder, All We Have is now is of the opinion that such content could be irrelevant to the brand. The metric itself becomes the target.
Here, one has to consider three things — the sector that you are in, the content that is valuable for people and whether there is enough credibility you have in that space.
RCT is also known as Field Trials. Economics is an inexact science of social behaviour. Each theory or study can be subject to biases, critiques and prejudices.
RCTS are conducted to measure comparative effects of a cause, that is a policy intervention randomly administered to a select group (treatment group) while keeping the behaviour or status of a compared group (control group) constant . It is a methodology of difference in differences — DID regression method. Other methods used in field experiments are propensity score matching and regression discontinuity design.
RCT findings in a certain region or for a certain population could not be extended to other regions or populations. There are contextual differences. Randomising the intervention raises ethical and social issues. Besides, RCTS are expensive. Correlation with other factors can affect the outcome. Treatment or intervention is independent — that is the assumption in RCT. It is called orthogonality condition. It must be satisfied, and not only assumed.
Traditional marketing research originated in advertising agencies in the 1950s, as an adjunct to the account planning function.Gradually, these MR departments blossomed as full-fledged MR companies, eg. IMRB of India’s genesis was in the HTA. Manufacturers set up MR departments to interpret data later. Vikram Sarabhai set up ORG to do retail audit of pharmaceuticals.
Of late, Gigna US has shut up their MR department and it has been replaced by Marketing Analytics department. The digital era is influencing MR not only abroad, but in India too. Instead of long consumer tracking surveys, we could have microsurveys and intercepts. Data scientists could be assigned the insight management. Instead of rear-view analytics of trditional MR, there would be focus on predictive analytics.
There are multiple data streams these days. There is traffic to the brand’s web site. There are social media. The buzz here has to be monitored. The comments in the blogs must be factored in. Traditionally, data from the syndicated research flowed in. Research was commissioned. Consumer behaviour was mapped. The focus was on past data. Marketing analytics calls for new set of skills. There has to be training datasets to help project intended behaviour. Experiments are run in real life. They are run in behavioral labs. Models are built and validated. All this is done without diluting the core MR and consumer behaviour.
MR is transforming into Marketing Analytics. Traditional skills and new age skills coverage.
We have already studied previously all aspects of the secondary data. In this tutorial, we shall study the introductory concepts regarding the primary data. Here we shall focus mainly on the type of primary data which can be collected, the means of collecting the data and the communication methods employed.
Of course, it is easy to collect secondary data. It is also less expensive. But the research problem cannot always be tackled completely using the secondary data.
Primary data may be related to demographic characteristics of the consumers, attitudes and opinion of people, awareness about the product and so on. These aspects have been discussed below.
Demographic Characteristics
Demographic Segmentation: Buyer groups differ in their requirements from the products and their marketing responses, the low income buyers prefer beedis for smoking. Middle-income buyers smoke Wills Filter, and high-income buyers like 555 cigarettes. This is the segmentation of the buyers on the basis of income. Such segmentation can be made on the basis of any relevant demographic variable, such as age, sex, life-cycle stage ( single, married, married with children etc ), and occupation. Even education, race, religion and nationality can be the basis for demographic segmentation. Marketers generally do multivarible demographic segmentation.
The following illustrates the use of demographic variables
Age : It could be below 6, 6-12, teenage(13-19), 20-30, 31-35, 36-46, 47-60, 60 plus, 70 plus
Sex : Male, Female
Family Size : 1-2 members, 3-4 members, 5 and above
Family Life Cycle (FLC) : Young and single, Young and married and no children, Young and married and children, Young, married and older children, Old couple Demographic characteristics are called ‘ states of being’. We adopt personal interview or telephone interview or mail survey method to collect demographic characteristics. These characteristics are useful in cross-classifying the collected data.
Market Analysis Segmentation and Targeting
Income : Below 2000, 2000-3000, 3000-5000, 5000-7500
Occupation : Professional (MBA, CA, ICWA), Technical ( B. Tech, B. Pharm ), Government Servant, Businessman, Farmers, Operatives, Housewives, Unemployed, Retired/Pensioner
Education : SSC and less, 12th/HSC, Graduate, Post-Graduate, Doctoral and above
Religion : Hindu, Muslim, Parsi, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Neo-Buddhist
Nationality : Indian, Foreigner
Consumer Behaviour and Consumer Attitudes : Consumer behaviour means the manner which a consumer conducts himself in a particular marketing situation.
Consumer behaviour is largely the result of consumer attitudes. Attitudes influence behaviour. The term consumer attitude refers to the feeling or disposition of a consumer towards a product or towards a specific brand of a product.
Consumer attitude is shaped by the consumer’s approach to life, his leisure, work, and products. It is influenced by consumer opinion, views and their mental bearing. What products people purchase depends upon the attitudes people have towards the various products. Habits have a good influence on consumer behaviour. Consumer attitudes are linked with habits.
Attitudes affect the behaviour. The approach to environment has influenced consumer attitude to the automobile. Energy crisis has influenced the consumer choices in favour of fuel efficient cars. A separate write up on consumer attitudes has been prepared.
Recruitment of Participants
MR agencies keep data of those who have participated in focus groups previously. Such participants can be approached. There is a possibility that some of these participants have become ‘ professional respondents’, who are best avoided. Alternatively, participants can be invited through random selection from malls, telephone directories, mailing lists. All potential recruits are screened. Participants are informed about the day, date, time and venue of the discussion. They are to confirm the participation. A formal invitation is then sent to them. The covering letter mentions the time schedule, place and the compensation to be offered. Cash incentives are generally given to participants, though professional gifts are also offered sometimes. The typical group consists of 6-10 people, though sometimes larger groups can also be used. It is assumed that only 50 per cent people would turn up for discussion out of those who have agreed to participate.
People selected are similar; say doctors, accountants etc. Consumers groups are similar in demographic characteristics. If people do not share common background, it is possible that cliques will be formed at the time of discussion, e.g. CAs and MBAs, working women and housewives. People should have more or less the same social status, or else the discussion is hampered. On personal topics, a mixed gender group is not desirable, as the discussion may not remain comfortable.
A population can be broken into sub-groups, but the budget is constraint on the number of sub-groups. We can afford to have only one to four groups; and it acts as constraint on the sub-groups.
Discussion Moderation
A moderator has to have equal concern for the task and people. He should have good communication skills, and should be aware of the purpose behind the focus group. He has to encourage people to participate. He has to steer the discussion so that it does not get drifted into irrelevant topics.
He has to be unobtrusive. He does not impose his view on the group. He keeps silent if the discussion is moving forward along the desired lines. His talk is limited to stimulating people to talk.
The discussion is led further from the previous topic. The sequence is led further from the previous topic. The sequence is not so previous topic. The sequence is not so important. All topics should be covered. The flow should be maintained, rather than the sequence.
Reporting Results of Focus Groups
It is generally considered to be a technique of qualitative research, and not quantitative research. Counting is not called for. The emphasis is on ideas and themes. These are drawn from the transcripts. A focus group reports reads like a story. Ideas are illustrated by asking actual quotes. Those managers who observe a focus group draw their own inferences even before they see a report. It is both a good thing and a bad one. It is good in the sense that managers are close to the data. But it may make them blind to the broader content of the discussion. It may lead to erroneous results.
Abuse of Focus Groups
Focus groups cannot be substitute for surveys, and generally they do. It is the main abuse of the focus groups.
Location for a Focus Group
The location should be convenient and convenient for the participants. There should be good infrastructure such as reception, seating arrangement, enough room so as not to give a feeling of overcrowding, soundproof system, videography facilities and a separate observation room.
Focus group can be held at a private residence, at the client’s office, a hotel, or a facility of the research agency.
As compared to surveys, focus groups have greater depth and more flexibility. It may reveal points which would have escaped our attention in a traditional survey, as surveys could omit certain relevant questions.
There are obvious weaknesses. Focus groups are costlier, and are restricted to those who are ready to participate willingly.
As compared to depth interviews, they show lower cost per person. They stimulate discussion. The discussion is vivid, as it is taped. The weaknesses as compared to depth interviews are that they elicit less information per participant, are less flexible in the use of physical stimuli and are less complete as the level of participation differs from individual to individual.
Personal interviews score over focus groups as they are more flexible. But still focus groups are popular as they are low cost and vivid.
Focus groups can be made more interesting by using projective techniques and games. The commonly used techniques are described here.
Brand Sorting : A collection of brands are laid across the table. Respondents have to sort them out into groups.
Brand Obituary : Consumers are asked to compose an obituary of brands. Had Coke used this technique, it would have thought twice before introducing New Coke. It would have brought out the intensity of feelings about the brand.
Brand Personification : Brand is to be visualised as a person. At times, the brand user is to be personified. We can know the differences between a Garden woman and a Garden Dress Material woman.
Picture Identification : Pictures are to be linked up to specific brands/ products.
Celebrity Linkage : Brands are linked to celebrities. The linkages can bring out the differences, e.g. Shah Rukh Khan vs Hritik Roshan.
Sentence Completion : The sentence is to be completed by putting the first thought that comes to the mind, e.g. Medical admissions in India are difficult because…..The response is analysed for the content. Indian consumers are not comfortable with sentence completion.
Painting/ Drawing Competition : If the group consists of small children, and the product is targeted to them,drawing could be an interesting way to express themselves.
MR has started using focus groups in the last 35 years. Focus groups are used to get spontaneous feed-back from the customers and to bypass the highly expensive personal interviews.
When it started, focus group interview was a type of survey of a large number of people, usually audiences of radio-show, who were asked structured questions. But since then, focus group has come to mean a small group discussion where no fixed questionnaire is used. It is kept unstructured to allow a free flow of thoughts and ideas.
Procedure
A focus group comprises 6-15 people drawn from a company’s target audience. They are invited for a group discussion on a suggested topic. They are given a financial incentive for participation. The focus group conversation is held in a room, with circular seating arrangement, and has recording facilities. There is arrangement for videography. Participants are expected to fill in a brief background questionnaire. There is provision of snacks and beverages for the participants.
There is a pre-specified list of topics. The unstructured discussion is carried out under the supervision of a focus group moderator. The moderator welcomes the participants and initiates them to talk about say banking, and what they feel about it. The initial prompting may require the moderator to put simple questions like ‘ where do you bank ?’ and , and ‘ how long ?’. He then moves forward the discussion to the feelings about banking.
As the discussion rolls on, the moderator does least amount of talking himself, but encourages the participants to talk. He draws out people by asking questions, and does not allow the discussion to digress. His follow up questions take the discussion forward. The moderator draws out the shy participants by putting questions to them. The moderator keeps an outline of topics to be covered in the discussion. After exhausting the one topic, he lets the discussion flow to another topic. This continues till time runs out or else the discussion on all topics under the subject for discussion are exhausted. The moderator closes the discussion.
A recorded and videotapped version of the focus group is made available to the project director. Alternatively, a transcript is prepared and the same is used while submitting the report to the client.
Two Approaches to Discussion
A focus group uses either the funnel approach or the inverted funnel approach. In the funnel approach the discussion starts with micro-level questions, say care of teeth and gums and moves on to the use of tooth-pastes and other dentrifices to finally culminate in macro-level topics of oral health care in the total health care plan. In the inverted funnel approach, the discussion flows down from broader health care topics to the use of pastes to the care of teeth, which are smaller topics and a matter of detail.