To get the right answers, ask the right questions

As Ralph Poldervaart pointed out, “80-90% of our behaviour is determined by our subconscious mind. The problem market researchers face, is that they communicate with the conscious mind of consumers.”

Market Research has come a long way over the last few decades by embracing technology and inventing innovative tools and methodologies, but traditional quantitative research is still largely guilty of not asking the right questions. The established maze of ratings and rankings of pre-defined parameters, generally lead to prompted responses which come from the ‘conscious’ mind and often fails to stimulate the ‘subconscious’ one.

To illustrate, if a consumer is asked to rate how ‘innovative’ or how ‘reliable’ a brand is, using a scale of 1 to 10, will it really bring out the insight that the brand might be looking for? If a respondent is faced with the unenviable task of rating 10 brands on 15 attributes, will the response bring out his/her true perceptions on each of those brands? And will that result really help the brand in understanding key attributes to enable their decision making?

The simple answer is no.

Peter Field, an established marketing consultant, had raised a pertinent point. “Traditional measurement has been so comprehensively attacked, it is amazing it is still used.”

So why is traditional research, based on long and repetitive questions with pre-suggested answers, still in existence? The answer is equally simple: “it is more practical and cost effective for the interviewer”. Unfortunately, such convenience comes at the expense of consistent and quality information.

Brand marketers often realise that in a comparative brand study, the highest valued brand often scores highest across all attributes due to its sheer overwhelming brand appeal. Thus, the most valued car brand often ends up appearing as the most innovative, most modern, most reliable and most efficient car. Or the most valued Cola brand comes out as the most refreshing, most innovative and best designed brand. But is this result itself reliable? Traditional research commonly fails to reveal differentiated profiles among brands and falls short of disclosing vital clues that impact perceptions and purchase behaviour.

Relevance was founded with the objective of eliminating some of these grey areas which traditional methods leave us with. We realised the limitations and understood the necessity to know our consumers in a better way, by generating relevant outputs which allow brands to make better decisions. We wanted to offer the richness and depth that a proper focus group might be able to provide, without undermining the robustness that quantitative research can provide.

“Research is formalised curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”- Zora Neale Hurston

We subscribe to that and add a word of caution; if the ‘poking and prying’ becomes routine and predictable, the response generated is also foreseeable and unsurprising, thereby defeating the purpose. This is where, we believe, the need to avoid a closed list of suggested attributes arises. This is where it is necessary to introduce open questions, and allow the respondent to share their thoughts, rather than limiting them with pre-decided answers.

Based on these premises, we developed Relevance Tags ® methodology, a new and innovative approach that is based on open ended questions to better analyse and interpret consumer perceptions. Coupled with a sophisticated data mining process which offers new metrics to solve marketing issues, we are able to make sense out of large spontaneous data through identical tags grouping, cleaning and correcting and their subsequent clustering into a unique semantic dictionary for each category in each geography.

Relevance has brought in a fresh approach to the research process by simplifying questions, in order to allow the individual an opportunity to express himself in his own words. By taking a qualitative individual approach, we are also able to focus on the ‘semantics’, which provide crucial insights into the consumer thought process and enriches the gathered information.

“Research is about engaging in a conversation with a brand.”– Matthew Rhodes

And an insightful ‘conversation’ is one which allows spontaneous expression of ideas and delves into the detail of semantics. Different concepts can have different meaning to different people.

To illustrate, through traditional research, it is easy to understand that ‘spacious’ is a key attribute for a sedan car. But the understanding of the concept ‘spacious’ might vary across countries, cultures and individuals. The German market might stress on ‘leg space’ and ‘head space’ while the Spanish market might be inclined towards ‘boot space’ and the Brazilians might disregard all of that and take into account ‘how many passengers’ can be fit in. Without unprompted questions, it is almost impossible to reveal these subtle insights related to semantics.

Supported by the intelligent usage of open questions, Relevance Tags ® methodology gets deeper into consumer insights, and our ability to cross between data generated from open and close questions, permits us to perform a quantitative analysis of qualitative information. This is how Relevance aspires to continue in its mission of  “making brands relevant.”

The writer is Amitabha Das, Director - Asia, Relevance.

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