Finding links, creating insights

Editor’s note: Reshma Bachwani is an independent qualitative researcher based in India.

A fundamental expectation from commercial qualitative research as a discipline is that it will provide a set of tools to understand and translate the world of consumers in a meaningful manner discernible to marketers.

As individuals we attribute meaning to our sensory experiences. Brands and products hold meaning in our lives because of the ways in which we interact with them. The meaning we attribute to things and experiences resides in our mind as a network of associations.

Most qualitative research involves conversations with consumers with an aim to uncover at least a part of the associations that consumers have surrounding brands or products. If it were possible to expose the structure of these associations in the consumer’s mind - i.e., not only the figments of memory that a brand evokes but also the linkages among these figments - it would help marketers appreciate a consumer’s world view better.

For instance, a soap bar positioned around the key benefit of “germ killer” could mean different things to different consumers based on the memory or experience it triggered in a consumer (Figure 1).

Mapping the entire gamut of associations surrounding a brand helps in a) understanding the breadth of the canvas available to a brand and b) focusing on the areas that need elaboration and their dimensions to mirror the meaning that the consumer already attributes to the brand.

Mind mapping is a technique that allows us to capture not only ideas around a concept in terms of images and associations but also ways in which these ideas are structured. To that extent it is akin to an external representation of the patterns of thought inside the brain.

Whereas a linear format of organizing information tends to be restrictive, organizing ideas to mirror the patterns in the mind gives us an opportunity to explore almost all the dominant associations that are triggered when the brain receives a stimulus.

Every stage

Mind maps have a place and a contribution to make at every stage of a qualitative research project. At the conception/research design stage, mind maps aid ideation and ensure comprehensibility of the issue being explored. In the data-gathering stage, mind maps offer a framework for respondents to articulate their thoughts as they are visualized. While drawing up inferences, mind maps can be of immense use to researchers as they provide a handy format for data reduction and help researchers form and articulate associations among elements of data. And finally, representing findings using mind maps is an easy way to understand the mental associations respondents have surrounding a brand or product and the interconnections that the researcher has uncovered.

The standard discussion guides used in research tend to be voluminous and are revised repeatedly to set the tone of questioning as expected by the client. This structure for a guide - linear, flowing from page to page - does not lend itself to easy adaptation when the actual discussion flow deviates from the one outlined in the guide, especially for a novice researcher.

Which is why when consumers jump from one topic to another, the researcher is left frantically turning pages trying to mentally check off points covered or, worse still, trying to force the discussion back to a linear format. Instead of delving into mental associations, the focus is forced on the discussion structure. Talk about missing the forest for the trees!

The futility of linear discussion guides is magnified when we consider the fact that we are not programmed to think in a linear fashion. Our thoughts are organized and stored as a web of associations in the brain. One thought could trigger multiple thoughts along one or more dimensions. Besides, the development of these thoughts does not follow any predetermined order or sequence. Sometimes even the very mention of a product category or brand could evoke a spring of thoughts in the consumer’s mind. Thus, using linear discussion guides runs counter to the actual process of cognition, leading to a loss of information.

Mind maps, like the one in Figure 2, are intuitive since these are a representation of our natural flow of thoughts. The mind map in lieu of a conventional discussion guide allows the researcher to scan the fluid pathways of information as the conversation evolves rather than jumping back and forth between pages to keep pace.

A gap

Conventional methods of inquiry involve getting respondents to uncover associations while the researcher captures them. Once again there is a gap between how the associations are conceived and how they are recorded, since we do not think in terms of lists. Listing assumes static memory - that memory would be accessed from a pool of associations. A linear form of gathering information presupposes an end; there is an underlying assumption by the researcher and the respondent after a few associations are mentioned that one has reached the end of the list and thereby the process of thinking.

Memory is actually dynamic and created afresh each time a person receives a stimulus to recall. What happens in the mind is that each thought activates a set of associations which help build more thoughts. What a person does therefore is pull out the relevant associations from a potentially unlimited number. Mind maps capture the data in a manner in which it was conceived in the mind, thus helping to build thought chains (Figure 3).

Moreover the consumer does not have to banish a stray thought (e.g., the feeling of love as an association with Coke), wondering where it came from and questioning its relevance to the topic being discussed, since its trajectory becomes clear through the mind-mapping process. In representing even these stray thoughts the tool does justice to the discipline of qualitative research, which is all about exploring as many directions as possible rather than limiting the canvas only to the first few and commonly conceived ones.

Simple exercise

The mind map can be created by the researcher during the course of the discussion as consumers talk about their associations or could be done as a post-group process. Whichever way it is approached, creating a mind map is a simple exercise. One always starts off with a central idea around which the map is to be built. Take for instance if we are to create a mind map for consumer associations around a brand of tea based prerecorded responses from two consumers.

Consumer 1 has recorded the following thoughts:

“It has been with me from the time I was a young girl.”

“Even now when I am a mother, it is a part of my family.”

“Like a bank account - it is part of my everyday life.”

“Trusted, practicing old values, adopting new thinking.”

“For all times, like a diamond is forever.”

“Like a family in happiness, sorrow, fun and togetherness.”

Consumer 2 adopts a narrative approach to record her responses:

“Since it is a health drink it will be useful on many occasions. Like when my husband comes back home tired from work and in a bad mood, I make him a hot cup of XYZ tea. After drinking that his mood changes and he listens to my problems.”

“When my children have exams I give them XYZ tea, which helps them stay alert and do well in their exams.”

“When my mother-in-law is in a bad mood, a hot cup of XYZ makes her cheerful again.”

“Every month I call my friends over and we have some tea and snacks together and talk about our memorable days together.”

The central idea for the mind map would be the Brand XYZ. Since consumer responses include their relationship with the brand and the values associated with it, we represent these by drawing two branches that radiate from the central idea (Figure 4).

As shown in Figure 5, the first three responses from Consumer 1 represent dimensions of what she means when she says that the brand has been part of her life - these three dimensions appear as second-level branches to the relationship node. Similarly qualities associated with the brand appear as new branches to the values node and the mind map begins to evolve.

For new responses/thoughts, if they share a connection with the existing concepts on the map, they can be incorporated as sub-branches. For instance the lasting presence of the brand in the consumer’s life can be linked to the concept of the “family” that is with the consumer at all times (Figure 6).

When the data cannot be linked to existing concepts on the map, new “child” nodes can be drawn to represent the connection (Figure 7). In this case, Consumer 2’s responses pertain to the product more than the brand, though the feeling of “being there at all times” still holds true. Thus these appear as a separate set of sub-branches under the node “with me at all times.”

The mind map provides the researcher with a simple yet effective framework to capture thoughts expressed by different consumers no matter in what format (words, associations, narratives) those thoughts were expressed. It also helps the researcher view at one glance the entire gamut of responses captured, how they relate to each other and any linkages among the concepts. In the map in Figure 8, the brand evokes a feeling of “togetherness” in the consumer due to its continued presence in the her life. The other dimension of this feeling is created by the product, which is a present during the time the consumer spends with her friends.

Form and clarify

Research requires data reduction and determination of patterns. Data by itself does not mean as much as the interrelationship among sets of data. As we have seen in the above example, mind mapping helps form and clarify those interrelationships.

Using the mind-mapping process at the information-gathering stage helps the researcher understand the consumer’s thought process better. While listening to consumer conversations and recording them on mind maps one can visualize some of the mental associations consumers make. Visualizing the data in this way aids the researcher’s process of analyzing and drawing inferences from the data, since it aids the process of finding patterns.

With the help of a mind map, key elements of a lengthy transcript can be visually represented onto a one-page map. Reducing the data and structuring it in such a manner not only facilitates comparison among sets of data but also helps the researcher visually identify themes, clusters or patterns, thereby acting as a catalyst in analyzing the data and drawing inferences from it.

Since mind mapping is an intuitive and visually rich form of representing thought, it can be extended to the process of presenting research study findings. The overlay of color and visuals on the web of associations in a mind map helps to capture emotions and imagery surrounding a brand. More importantly it is the closest representation of the consumer’s thought process as seen and understood by the researcher and so helps the client appreciate the data in the mental context in which it was conceived.

Flows intuitively

At the outset, incorporating mind mapping into the qualitative research process seems to require jettisoning established practices, since we are conditioned over the years to a linear way of organizing information. The good news is that when one gets down to it the process flows very intuitively. It does not require specialized knowledge and can be incorporated quite easily into common research situations.

As in the mind of a consumer, information resides in the mind of the researcher as associations and much of inference-building hinges on which sets of data trigger which sets of associations. To that extent using mind maps to visually depict associations can aid a researcher’s interaction with the data and enrich her insights.