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March 2007 - Strategy Magazine
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Letters: Readers respond to David Moore's query: Who will champion research innovation?

The future is non-verbal

Thanks to David Moore for asking the question. His observations on research remind me of the challenges laid down by Jim Stengel, global marketing officer of P&G: "I challenge the industry to bring the new competencies we need for this new world of marketing... forge partnerships, explore new technologies, and try doing things differently."

Meanwhile, Rex Briggs, author of What Sticks, notes in the Journal of Advertising Research: "If you really want to get an accurate and powerful read on how consumers are influenced by advertising, you need to adhere to the scientific method. You need to establish exposed and control groups beforehand and carefully measure differences in consumers' attitudes and behaviours between groups rather than rely on consumers' memories of what they saw and how it made them feel.... There is much more research that needs to be conducted using design of experiments to establish a more robust understanding of what ads really work in the real world."

The percentages Moore cites in terms of who is actually participating in online surveys are disturbing to say the least. Researchers will no doubt give examples of higher response rates, especially if they are given sufficient time to allow for and research non-responders. They will no doubt point out that even with lower response rates the results are pretty much the same.

Our research group has undertaken research methodologies including mall intercept interviews in the '80s, telephone screenings in the '90s and online surveys in the 2000s. At the same time, we have reworked our survey questionnaires from verbal to include more non-verbal/visual means. Why? After 25+ years using viewer reward measures, we know it is the feelings of consumers that really drive interest, decision making and purchase. We have experienced the power of using metaphor elicitation techniques such as photographs and colours to enable people to express their true feelings about brands.

And we generally beat the industry average, especially when our surveys are intelligent and fun (no longer than 20 minutes). We feel that more engaging research leads to more engaging ideas and insights.

Suffice it to say, there are lots of opportunities for truly understanding consumers, that include seamless quali-quant research, ethnography and non-verbal research such as facial coding and biologically based sensors. While some of these may sound farfetched now, they may become the mainstream in the near future.

According to a study we conducted last year among research professionals in China, India and Brazil, the long-term trends are more ethnography and online. The advances in ethnography speak to the fact that there can be a big difference between what people actually do and what they say they do. Online is cheaper and faster but it could be better....

Mike Gadd

Toronto

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