Challenging the status quo

Editor’s note: Sheri Forzley is director of consumer insights at Emerse Research and Development, Grand Rapids, Mich.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the old adage, “Hearing is believing.” No? Well, how about, “Seeing is believing.”? I’m sure you all remember that one. The point of my asking is this: Why does it appear that during the critical stage of product development, development teams avoid “seeing” how key aspects of their new inventions have impacted the consumer?

To understand why let’s take a look at a typical developmental cycle. Whether it’s a simple ingredient change or a groundbreaking innovation, there are timelines and hurdles involved in moving prototypes through rounds of testing (the primary difference between simple and innovation projects has much to do with timelines, as the latter have the longer, more involved testing). Regardless of the type of project, they all generally start with an idea. Oftentimes these ideas are generated following more traditional qualitative lines of testing, including ethnography, observational approaches or even focus groups. This part of the development cycle - the “fuzzy front-end” - has traditionally been the stage for scoping out new ideas (e.g., identification of unique consumers, their mindsets and/or their unique behaviors/habits that will lead to unique market opportunities).

Once this broad concept or idea has been identified, the product developer is off and running, cranking out prototypes to be tested. During this time, the typical forms of testing rely heavily on quantitative techniques and are iterative in nature. From in-home tests to trained panels to technical testing, the attempt here is to clearly understand how much the changes made to the product have impacted the final perception. The objectives of these tests revolve around more concrete and targeted attributes that are perceived and rated differently from some identified benchmark. Through this quantitative testing, some sort of statistical outcome is expected, thus providing reassurance that a “real” difference will be delivered to the consumer.

At this stage, the product is typically turned over to the market research teams to deliver a compelling product/concept package that will ensure a win in the marketplace. The market researchers are most often looking for the emotional connections between the consumer, the product and the brand. When all of this is deemed “just right,” the product is launched. Most of this final research involves a more qualitative testing approach which allows the researcher to delve more deeply into the psyche of respondents to ensure delivery of the best product and concept mix. While there are certainly quantitative tests (e.g., BASES, in-market tests, etc.) in play at this stage, due to resource constraints, these are typically undertaken only after all team members are “sure” of the expected results. Nobody likes surprises!

Functional and emotional needs

So, what’s wrong with this picture? It has long been confirmed that consumers buy the products and services that best meet both their functional and emotional needs. Rare indeed would be the product or service that doesn’t have some type of emotional connection. And yet, in the scenario above, the emotional or social contexts of an idea are pursued at the beginning and the end of the cycle where there is also likely to be little or no interaction with the actual product. During the critical time periods of product evaluation, the primary emphasis is clearly on the delivery of functional components, with the emotional or contextual connections mostly ignored. Even beyond that, consumer mindsets and circumstances and their contexts (being a dynamic process) have continued to evolve over the course of the project. Therefore, the consumer contexts upon which the idea was established could very well be different by the time the product and concept are united again at the end of the cycle.

Shouldn’t the primary reason for any research be to gain the deeper insights into how consumers conceptualize a product category, how they filter choices and how they are actually using a product, brand or service? If qualitative methods are inherently seen as a way to identify the emotional connections, to understand mindsets or to keep your finger on the pulse of consumer habits and attitudes, then why aren’t qualitative methods used more frequently? Skepticism, that’s why - particularly on the part of the highly-trained, technically-oriented scientists on the development team.

Qualitative research, because of its highly interpretative, creative, impressionistic and emotional characteristics, is often viewed as being in direct conflict with the more objective, measurable forms of research. Due to its subjective nature, qualitative research is not seen as being repeatable or predictable.

It should be recognized, however, that even in the realm of statistics, subjectivity is unavoidable. Whether in the interpretation of the final results or in the generation of the attribute list to be tested, subjective assumptions are being made around how consumers think about products and their interactions with them. In my experience, the development team can often be blindly led by the numbers. If the qualitative and quantitative results conflict with one another, the fallback position almost always is the quantitative. However, it must be recognized that the consumers’ experience is highly subjective. Their experience and perception represents a complex set of psychological constructs derived from previous experience with the product, current product features, brand image, changes in their life and product expectations.

When a consumer reveals his or her delight or frustration with a product, it is more often the result of the sum total of the product experience, not necessarily because of one specific perceivable and ratable benefit that was or was not delivered. Product evaluation via questionnaire often demands the recreation of a specific situation or certain circumstances that aren’t easily recalled. As you move further away from the actual product experience, memories become clouded and therefore, difficult to reconstruct while rating the product.

Has its place

I would certainly never advocate the exclusion or elimination of quantitative testing. It absolutely has its place in the mix. On the contrary, I would postulate that it is equally important to keep the consumers’ contexts close to the research paradigm across the entire product development process. To understand how products fit within the consumer’s context, you must be able to observe the environment into which the product category fits. More research designers need to take into account not only statistical evidence that a consumer perceives a difference in product performance but also why and how these things matter. In other words, the research needs to be designed to hear what consumers are saying and to see what they are doing.

I would advocate that all forms of qualitative research (ethnography, observational, and yes, even group discussions) should be incorporated across the entire product development cycle. These methods can bring an essential part of understanding to the quantitative data. They can reveal how real people in the real social environment think and talk about your ideas or use your products.

Consumers are not that great at recalling what they do, where they do it or for how long they spend doing a task. Nor are they likely to remember the specific features that caused them to like or dislike a product. This is particularly evident with very routine behaviors (e.g., washing hair, brushing teeth, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc.). If you employ a survey questionnaire to ask consumers to evaluate product performance, how the package opened, how much the product lathered or the various steps during use of the product, their recall can be quite vague. It is through the course of observation that you can witness the how, where, what, when and why.

Observing patterns

Consumers are quite adept at altering their behavior when the product or packaging doesn’t fit their current pattern. By observing patterns of usage, new opportunities can be revealed. While companies may have clear intentions for product usage, consumers may or may not use it as intended (e.g., women using hair conditioner as a shaving lotion on their legs). Was there something inherent about women’s perception of hair conditioner that suggested that it may also be good for hair on their legs or did they just forget to replace their shaving gel and this was the closest thing they could come up with? Could other personal-care products take advantage of this observation?

Along the same line, consumers will often report that they always do “X” while, in fact, you see no evidence of such behavior. For example, a woman claiming that she always wears gloves when scrubbing with cleansers was rarely witnessed wearing those gloves during the course of our observing her during normal cleaning events.

Sometimes consumers simply make mistakes or can’t discern the manufacturer’s intent. For example, have you ever struggled with the removal of the little tab insert in a new deodorant? Some people resort to pulling it out with their teeth - not a good example of a product’s package working effectively. When asked how easy the deodorant pack was to open on a questionnaire, consumers may never mention (or even recall) this actual removal approach and alternative packaging might never be considered. At other times consumers are just being inventive by combining multiple products to achieve a singular benefit (e.g., combining gels, mousses, rinse-off conditioners and hair sprays all on wet hair to achieve specific hair benefits or styles), thus highlighting problems for existing product forms (i.e., mousses being too drying to the hair or gels leaving the hair feeling too stiff) or even identify previously unrevealed advantages (i.e., controlling frizziness with conditioner on dry hair).

If you weren’t observing usage behaviors, you might never know they were using all these other options during the course of the evaluation of your specific product.

Consumers can also respond with subtle behaviors that they aren’t able to articulate and of which they may not even be conscious (e.g., wrinkling their noses, shrugging their shoulders, fondly stroking a preferred package or absentmindedly playing with an inventive new “fun-to-use” package). Consumers are sometimes aware of these things but feel their reactions are too personal or even socially undesirable and will choose not to evaluate products using such descriptives. They may perceive a product in a particular way but not even bother to mention this, because in their view, it is not a logical or rational reason for liking or disliking the product. All of these possibilities should be examined in more detail, as they could potentially reveal hidden consumer insights and new opportunities.

While qualitative research has for years been a critical market research tool for exploring marketing ideas, I would recommend that qualitative research techniques become critical tools during product evaluation. If used throughout the development process, you could expose potential flaws and even discover unanticipated advantages earlier in the process and be able to suggest alternative ways to design a product, package or process.

Navigated carefully

The most currently popular forms of qualitative research - ethnography and observational research - allow a deeper understanding of what’s behind the quantitative details. By merely looking at numbers, you will never really see the response with which a concept or product is greeted. Granted, qualitative research findings must be navigated carefully, but the attentiveness to all subtle details will lead to true consumer insights.

It is important to remember that data are only one piece of the puzzle, and their significance (what it means to the business) is quite another. Consumer research can only have an impact when it incorporates an interpretative component. The responses or actions recorded from any type of research, qualitative or quantitative, will only reveal the surface of what is really going on with product evaluation. Video-capture allows for realistic observation of consumers acting naturally within their environments. Video also allows for the cataloguing of all activities, objects, spaces and moments of interactions. This documentation further aids in preventing information from being overlooked or misinterpreted.

All too often the executive stakeholders are those who remain most skeptical of our observational consumer insight methods and findings and may never change their perceptions or convictions until they see examples of these findings with their own eyes. Industry needs the richness of new observations and insights that take place when you actually observe people and then go on to dissect and discuss their actions, steps or processes that have taken place. You need to be there to actually see that consumer roll his or her eyes just before you hear them say, “What a grand idea!”