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BEST PRACTICE – Short Takes on Big Questions
How to Marry People, Prototypes, and Adaptive
Conjoint People.
Market
research would be considerably easier if people were
not required to make it work—particularly when
testing prototypes with dozens of new characteristics
and clients waiting to make critical design and pricing
decisions based on the results of consumer testing.
Faced
with the problem of designing a study to gather quantitative
data from a large sample of respondents for such a
test, we mulled over a variety of methods for gathering
such data.
One
of the most difficult issues we faced, and often face
when designing studies for manufacturers of durable
goods is in finding a method that allows us to show
the actual item to respondents before asking them
to express their opinions about the items they have
seen. Traditional focus groups of eight to ten people
are fine for gathering ideas, but their inherently
eclectic and unscientific nature cannot yield the
utility and pricing data manufacturers crave. No one
wants to base business decisions about entire model
lines on focus group outcomes.
Another
method under consideration was to use the Internet
to graphically display the object at hand and then
use sophisticated interviewing techniques allowed
by Sawtooth Software’s SSI Web ACA Module that
are only possible using a computer. The problem, of
course, with conventional Internet interviewing is
that respondents cannot see the actual item being
tested.
For
this recent project, which called for the nuanced
understanding only possible using computer-assisted
interviewing while exposing participants to the actual
prototypes, we hit on a design that incorporated broadly-recruited
Voice of the Consumer panels of 30 participants each
in a number of cities across the country and combined
that design with computer assisted interviewing CAI
on the Internet.
Only
the largest market research firms may own sufficient
computer resources to maintain a squadron of laptop
computers for CAI. Even for those that do own laptops
in those numbers, the cost of maintaining each with
the software necessary to conduct 30 simultaneous
interviews may be prohibitive. Since we needed to
conduct a computer-dependent survey design (using
Sawtooth’s ACA), our solution was to rent laptop
computers and arrange for high-speed Internet access
at each of our interviewing facilities—because
the prototypes we needed to demonstrate were so large,
our interviews ended up being conducted in hotel ballrooms
and conventions centers. The interviews were conducted
in a single room and the interviews were conducted
via the Internet, at the moderator’s direction.
The
outcome of this project was extraordinary. Not only
were we able to gather the information you can only
get through ACA, we were also able to capture responses
to "normal" survey questions using the same
SSI Web interview, all without having to fiddle with
a single interview computer beyond setting the browsers’
homepage to the study URL. The data were ready for
download when we returned to the office the next day
without having to enter a single response manually.
We had our data, and analysis could begin immediately.
The
results? Using Peter Williams’ suggestions for
including holdout tasks in the study* to ensure pricing
data were correctly estimated (and weighting the data
accordingly), we were able to duplicate quite precisely
the current market and build a series of models that
showed what consumers wanted and how much they were
willing to pay for those options. The non-ACA data
we also captured using SSI Web integrated well, allowing
us to look at market segments very closely and determine
the attributes that appealed most to different populations.
Sawtooth’s
SSI Web and ACA module and a little creative logistics
management allowed us to build a research model that
got the people, the products, and the computers in
the same place at the same time without major headaches.
We were left with a high degree of confidence in the
answers we gave to our clients, who in turn walked
away secure in the knowledge that we had gotten things
right.
Williams,
Peter. Calibrating
Price in ACA: The ACA Price Effect and How to Manage
It.
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RESEARCH
TECHNOLOGY - New approaches
What are Internet Panels and when should they
be used:
Internet panels are comprised of people who are interested
in participating in online research. Legitimate panels
can deliver much higher response rates than those
obtained through other data collection methods because
they offer the ability to select panelists based on
demographics.
Typically, panelists come from many sources, including
banner ads, online recruitment methods, and telephone
recruitment. They belong to a community of respondents
who are eager to share their opinions on a wide range
of issues. You can target respondents by age and gender
of family members or age, educational attainment,
ethnic group, gender, income, occupation, and ethnicity
of individual panelists. Panel demographics are not
based on predictive techniques. They are created from
self-reported, respondent-specific information.
Internet panels are ideal for research projects with
tight timelines or low incidence respondent profiles.
They offer the advantage of giving researchers greater
assurance of reaching the exact targets they seek
within a narrow timeframe. The end result: a cost-effective
data collection methodology that delivers on time
research results.
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OUR
MISSION – Setting the Standard for Market Research
Delivering Maximum Effectiveness for our Clients
When we design and execute market research programs
we combine a high level of market research experience
with a strong desire to serve our clients. We employ
best practices in all of our research projects. We
strive to learn everything we can about each organization’s
research needs so that we can design a project for
maximum effectiveness.
Our goal is always to deliver research outcomes that
provide insights, direction and answers. Our conclusions
are clear and concise and our recommendations are
designed to be extremely relevant and actionable to
the needs of our clients. We work with our clients
to ensure that the findings and recommendations of
our research programs are understood by all who need
to take action as a result of the study.
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