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So you got the final sign-off on your MROC and are anxious to get your community launched… One of the first things you’ll want to do (if you haven’t already) is figure out who you want involved in your “core team” for the initiative, and how large you want your team to be. This is a trickier decision than it seems, and here’s why:

• “Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen” – The big risk is to have too many people involved. This will inevitably cloud your objectives and force you to explore a wider range of topics than perhaps are appropriate for your community. The conversation is more likely to jump erratically from topic-to-topic as you serve the needs of a large group of stakeholders, leading to frustration among your community members and higher attrition rates.
• Too Few New Ideas – The flip side of having “too many cooks in the kitchen” is having too few people on your core team. In this case, you risk running out of ideas for relevant topics to explore. You also have fewer internal cheerleaders helping you to market key insights broadly across the organization. While communities will generate topics on their own that you didn’t think to explore (and your vendor should be helping here as well), having a decent size core team in place will ensure you always have a set of valuable business questions to address in your community.
• Narrow Attention Spans & Confirmation Bias – Anyone who has been part of a large scale traditional focus group study has probably witnessed the executive who walks into the backroom of a focus group, leaves after one or two groups (of many) and then feels they’ve seen enough to know the results for the entire study. The same thing can happen in a MROC. The risk is that a stakeholder randomly logs in to your community for 20 minutes and begins to draw conclusions based on a small subset of the feedback.

So who should you invite, and what’s the “right” number of people to include? In my experience, it’s useful to think of two levels to your core team:

1. The first level has direct access to the feedback by virtue of a client observer login to the community. If you have a dedicated insights or innovation function that is leading the charge, then one or two key members of this function should be the ones to have this type of access. These should be the team members who will have quality time each week to spend with the community, and who know not to draw early conclusions from select activities.
2. The second level of your “core team” won’t have this direct observer access to the community, but they will still stay involved in ongoing conversations around topics to explore, might be involved in your weekly meetings and will be among the first to see the findings. If necessary, guided tours of the community will help these individuals understand how things are progressing.

The “right” number will vary based on your organization. In my experience, having about 7-8 people on the core team in total, with 1 or 2 having direct access to the site itself, is a “manageable” team size. Similarly, the “who” will vary based on who is funding the community, your objectives and goals, and organizational structure. A cross-functional team with members from marketing, product development, customer service, etc. will ensure that you get the maximum value from your community as possible.

There are broader industry regulations that might go into this equation which are too complex to go into here (plus, I’m not a lawyer), but these are some general guidelines for setting up a core team and controlling access to your MROC.

What has worked for your company? Comments are welcome!

I’ve blogged before about the benefits and drawbacks of mobile MROCs, but an article today in Research by Reg Baker got me thinking about it once again. Reg has some great points in his article, so I thought I would share my thoughts here, and discuss the implications for mobile market research online communities (MROCs).

On the expense of data plans…

I absolutely agree with Reg on this point. With many research projects being global in scope (and communities following in this trend), the cost of accessing a mobile survey or MROC could be substantial depending on the data plan a participant has and how they are charged for that data. In a mobile MROC in particular, there is more multimedia content that is necessary to download, leading to higher data usage by participants. Of course, we can always bump honorariums to help users pay for the extra data, but it’s a point to consider nonetheless. I’m lucky to be grandfathered into an AT&T data plan that gives me unlimited data for a decent price, but many other smartphone users around the world aren’t nearly as lucky.

On the point of ‘less than expected’

I think this is the best point in Reg’s article. In many cases, clients expect a lot more than simple survey responses. This is especially true in online qualitative research, where clients are used to in-depth, thoughtful responses to moderator-led conversations. While some people can write small novels with their thumbs, others are much more of the one-word response variety. Early tests we’ve done indicate it’s much more of the latter than the former. For many, it’s too time consuming and difficult to write lengthy responses or create new content on a mobile device. Instead, many use smartphones for content consumption. In the realm of qualitative research, this is far less useful.

On ‘set to divert’

I can’t speak to the survey side of mobile research quite like Reg can, but when I look to mobile MROCs in particular I see similar questions and challenges. For example, just because participants like playing Angry Birds and checking in on their Facebook friends doesn’t necessarily mean that giving them mobile access to a mobile MROC means they will contribute more content or become more engaged. Of course, giving them more channels to participate isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we just have to be careful to understand the unique role of mobile and how it fits in with the overall research objectives. I’m seeing a lot of the “shiny new toy” syndrome as I look around and see how mobile is being used.

So what?

In re-reading this post I realize it sounds like I’m bashing mobile research. That’s not my intent at all… I’m the first to look for new cool technology to incorporate into research (in fact, that’s my role at PluggedIN). I should also mention that I’ve been wrong before when it comes to new data collection tools/techniques (see also: PluggedIN’s experiment with running research studies in Second Life). However, I get the feeling that mobile MR is the solution looking for a problem. Someone want to prove me wrong (please)?

-Matt

1. Don’t let the garbage In: It all starts with the focusing on the right issues. Make sure you are asking questions that matter to your business. If you don’t know why you are asking, then don’t ask.
2. Give people room to breathe: Don’t overburden your community with too many focused research tasks, instead prompt them with softer content (e.g. articles, tips/advice) to solicit more undirected feedback and user generated content that will lead to insights.
3. Take a step back: Regularly look at themes and ideas that emerge across the broader community rather than just focusing just on feedback for individual issues.
4. Say so what: Focus on implications. When reviewing feedback, always ask “so what” does this mean for my business?
5. “Twitterize” your report: Researchers like to write, but decision makers don’t like to read. Summarize your insights in bite size chunks. They are more memorable and more powerful.

The days of having hundreds (or even thousands) of “friends” in giant social networks seems to be numbered, at least if some of the new social networking entrants have anything to say about it…

I’m an active follower of what is happening in the social media/web startup space, and it seems as if the latest trend is to limit the number of connections a person can have to encourage stronger connection and engagement between people. For example, Path is an up-and-coming social network that limits the number of friends someone can have to no more than 50. The idea is that as the size of the group grows, people become less comfortable openly sharing with others. Path is just the beginning of this trend though… This article on Yahoo (via the New York Times) is one of many I’ve come across lately outlining this trend toward “smaller is better.”

If you’ve followed our blog in the past, you know that we’re big fans of limiting the size of market research online communities (MROCs) to improve engagement. People will hesitate to share openly with a few hundred people, but with 50 (or fewer) fellow participants it becomes much less daunting to share and connect. As a member of a small community, you will see friendly faces in every discussion and learn about who they are and what they are all about. It’s through this connection and dialogue between members that real insight emerges. The research team and moderation staff can do the same, leading to a better understanding of the audience and the development of stronger recommendations for the client.

I hate to harp on this point too much, but if you’re planning out a MROC I can’t stress the “smaller is better” advice more strongly… To me, this isn’t a “qual vs. quant” discussion; rather, this is addressing how we as an industry develop the strongest insights and ideas possible for our clients. Hopefully, this message will be validated by the “next Facebook” and future social media sites that spreading this idea as well.

I’m jealous of purpose driven brands. Brands like TOMS Shoes, who donate a pair of shoes for every pair they sell. Brands like Livestrong who’s purpose is to raise funds for cancer research. These brands are helping to make the world a better place.

However, I’m not jealous for the reason you might expect. While I do wish we could help make the world a better place here at PluggedIN, I’m more envious of the focus purpose driven brands have and their ability to compete in their marketplace on elements “above” their product.

Let me explain.

TOMS shoes doesn’t have to worry about coming up with the latest “gel technology.” They don’t have to worry about securing the most trafficked location at the mall. They don’t have to offer hoodies, sign partnerships with sports franchises, or search for a high priced spokesperson to break into the skater market. They sell shoes by simply connecting with people who care enough to donate a pair of shoes and make the world a better place. All of these other market factors do not matter.

As a community driven research company, our world is filled with the latest “gel technology.” As an industry we are confusing clients to the point of indecision. Our points of differentiation are our methodologies, our unique models, our philosophies, our feature set. I wish we could find a higher purpose to rise above the clutter. I know research communities can help make the world a better place. They bring people together with dialogue, align with a common purpose, generate ideas and promote goodwill. Is there a higher calling?

My journey from ‘respondent’ to ‘member’.

As a numbers gal, I have always worked on the quantitative side. Numbers provided comfort. They are concrete, they are exact…none of this fluffy, abstract nonsense that those qual people on “The Dark Side” fiddle over.  People were “respondents” that provided “data”. As a stats geek I would translate this “data” to “information”.

And then I made the move to the qual side. Holy —-! Why have I been sitting behind a desk crunching numbers for so many years? Why did they not spend more time on this qualitative stuff in my MBA program?  The extent of our discussions around qualitative research was the mere mention of a focus group – not much on the process or benefits of what good qualitative research brings. And certainly no mention of online communities.

Over the past couple of years that I have been a community moderator, I have learned more about good research, customers, preferences, behaviors, etc. than I ever did in my years on the quantitative side. The feedback that you get from members of a community is so rich with emotion and detail that is hard not to learn so much about an industry and what it is that consumers really want.

People are no longer just a number, a data point, or a “respondent”.  They are a person – a member of a community that I take pride in. They have a face, a name, and a real personality! They like to engage in conversation. They like to tell me not only that they like Brand X but why they like it and how it fits into their life. I don’t report “information” but rather real insight into a industry and customer base.

As companies become more interested in learning about this “voice of the customer”, I realize that the only way to hear that voice is to listen to customers talk about their experiences with a product or hopes for the brand category first hand. Quantitative data (which will always hold a place in my heart and in market research) is hard to listen to – its just a bunch or pie charts and tables. But communities provide context, anecdotes, and first hand accounts that cannot be ignored.

Funny…this “dark side” sheds a lot more light on the “voice of the customer” than statistical significance ever did.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve kept busy enhancing our platform with new features to make your research projects even easier to manage. We’re pleased to share the following updates with you:

• Bulk Email Options: We streamlined our built-in email tool to make writing and sending reliable HTML and plain text emails a snap, while adding extra safeguards to help maximize delivery across email providers. To save even more time, try the automated email feature that lets you notify participants about new activities without preparing an email at all. Simply check which activities you want to include and the site takes care of the rest.
• Response Required Notifications: Imagine you’re reading a comment one of your participants wrote and you decide you want to dig a little deeper. That’s easy enough: You click the reply button, type your follow-up question and post it. Now you wait for the participant to check back in. Response required notifications help reduce this downtime and ensure the participant replies to your probe in a timely manner. Just indicate that a response to your question is required and the site automatically and immediately emails a notice to the participant.
• Moderator Coding System: The PluggedIN Platform contains a unique coding system that allows moderators to enter tags alongside participants, discussions, surveys and individual comments to help identify patterns and themes for analysis.

As new features become available, we’ll be sure to let you know!

I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the role of gaming in the future of market research. Admittedly, I think the hype is a bit overblown and I have trouble seeing the practical applications of gaming based research. In order to deliver insights, game development needs to be so customized for a given brand/situation that it can’t possibly be cost effective for the masses. In my opinion, the cost outweighs the value.

However, We R Interactive & Nike are launching I Am Playr, an interactive first person story game where players create their character and compete to become the best football player in the world.

The unique twist in this game is that players make decisions off the field that impact their character (e.g. choosing girlfriends, choosing agents, spending nights out, training). Additionally, there is a social element where players can share stats/results with other players and work together to improve their standing.

While I think that this is an incredible opportunity for Nike to learn about how people make decisions, motivations/rewards, and how people compete against each other and work together, not to mention the social awareness/hype this will likely lead to… I realize that very few companies have the budget or brand cache to pull this off.  However, it made me realize the potential of game based research, specifically, a consolidated game experience where brands could pose different situations/decisions for players. For example, in a sports game like I Am Playr, a sports beverage brand could catch players pre-game and explore the beverages they would you choose for their character and the specific benefits that resonate in context. The same could apply for various athletic brands (e.g. apparel, footwear, sports franchises) and the brands interested in this lifestyle (e.g. fashion brands, media/entertainment brands).

Though I still think the context needs to be right for game based research, here I stand slightly less skeptical than before.