BY: MONIQUE MORDEN – Executive Vice President – Vision Critical

The recent ESOMAR in Chicago presented our industry with a new way of looking at research: listening as opposed to our default of asking. The web offers an unprecedented amount of information just waiting to be mined for research purposes. The challenge today is not only finding the right information, but packaging it in a digestible format. Two papers at ESOMAR presented ideas on how to achieve this: one involved Netography and the other Tweetmiotics. In both cases, researchers didn’t ask questions to a group of “respondents” but rather utilized information generated by the general public.

Netography
The netography example gathered buzz related information from selected websites about a reality show in Europe. The information was used to assess the relative positioning of the contestants and to track changes over time. By simply listening to the amount and type of content being generated, it was possible to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each contestant and predict the overall outcome. The interesting takeaway for me was the possibility of applying this technique to brands, companies and products – especially if the results tied into to other information sources including more traditional market research.

Tweetmiotics
The Tweetmiotics case was similar but focused solely on listening to content generated through Twitter. The study evaluated tweets related to a specific company and their line of products. The analysis revealed that one product in particular was generating the bulk of negative comments. This information was already known internally however the study served as a catalyst since the company didn’t realize the extent to which the product was creating negative public discourse. Tweetmiotics opened up considerable debate at the conference, both on an off the stage, about the value of Twitter and appropriate uses of Twitter for market research purposes.

Both of these ideas cause some great consternation in the somewhat traditional world of research because neither fit within our usual research box; and on first blush lack the control and rigor we’re accustomed to. Nevertheless there’s no reason we can’t develop appropriate approaches, techniques and methodologies to have confidence in the validity of this analysis. It is incumbent upon us as an industry to embrace these new technologies, information sources and data. With some innovation, foresight and experimentation, these approaches can be another arrow in our quiver with which to service our clients in a holistic fashion.

Creative Commons Photo by Striatic