Editor's note: Lois Steinberg is vice president and client service manager of Sorkin-Enenstein Research Service, Inc., Chicago.

Over the past 20 years, a number of social scientists have claimed that researchers should listen to stories to understand why people act the way they do. These scholars believe that people think, understand the world, and remember in terms of stories or narratives. In other words, people live out "scripts" in their daily lives.

Furthermore, these scholars assert that our traditional research model, based on the social sciences. fails to capture the uniqueness of human beings as revealed in their stories. Traditional methods, they find, typically do not allow people to tell their stories. Several scholars have crafted an approach to capture people's stories: narrative analysis.

Our company decided to explore applying stories to marketing research, since many of the studies we conduct involve understanding how people's perceptions and motivations affect their purchase decisions and product use. Our exploration began three years ago and has been guided by four questions:

  • What do we mean by "stories"?
  • How do we research people's stories?
  • What do we learn from stories that we would not learn from traditional interviewing methods?
  • What are the limitations of this method?

So far we have completed four studies using what we now refer to as "story analysis" methods. Each study included story analysis and traditional qualitative methods so we could compare the differences. The studies dealt with self-image, bank selection, beverage consumption and office product use.

The results of these exploratory studies suggest that people's stories surrounding various product and service categories can enhance the findings of more conventional interviewing methods. The results have expanded our thinking and uncovered some issues that did not surface in focus groups or responses to traditional one-on-one questioning.

What is a story?

Some psychologists concerned with identity formation have analyzed life histories to show how people tend to construct a coherent identity around stories that integrate their past, present and future.
Others view narratives as schemes for linking individual actions or events into a single episode that increases our understanding of the separate events. The goal here is to understand an event in terms of a specific context. Our research, similar to this second approach. was designed to gain access to stories relevant to specific products or use situations.

We defined the story as an account of consumers' behavior (what they did in the situation) rather than an explanation (why they did what they did). Based on our review of the social science research on people's stories, we began with two assumptions:

  • A person's story about a particular product would probably involve reconstructing the history of product use and interpretation of these events.
  • People are not aware of their stories about their experiences - they do not think of these events as stories. Thus, accessing stories probably requires indirect and alternative strategies.

Researching stories

The methods we have developed to access stories are designed to make respondents observers of their behavior in specific situations and a partner in the research process. All the interviews were one-on- ones lasting up to one hour. Respondents received the same incentive as they would for participating in a focus group.

Interviews for the first two studies included both traditional questions and those designed to elicit stories. Since respondents for the remaining interviews were selected from focus groups where they were asked traditional questions, we could concentrate on their stories.

At this point, we believe that the most critical component of this kind of research is designing an interview that allows respondents to tell their story. The respondent's script drives the interview. Thus our interviews have included:

  • questions that evoke respondents' interests and concerns (rather than researchers' or clients');
  • explaining what the research is about; and
  • locating the interview in an informal setting.

It is not always easy to accomplish the first task. Even when clients agree that they want exploratory qualitative work, they often ask us to cover so many specific topics there is no room left for the respondent's script - or no time to allow him to digress so we can discover his story. The first requirement of story analysis, therefore, is a client who feels comfortable with a relatively unstructured interview.

Recruiting respondents

In two of our studies, respondents were recruited based on membership in demographic segments of interest to our clients. In the other two studies, they were selected from focus group participants, based on views expressed in the focus group.

The "best" stories for our purposes came from the focus group participants. The reasons are twofold: First, because they had participated in the group discussion, they were familiar with the study topic. Second, they were selected because their comments in the group suggested they had an interesting story relating to the study objectives. In these cases we began the interview by asking the respondent to elaborate on comments made in the group discussion.

What do we learn from stories?

The differences in responses to direct questions compared with storytelling suggests that in the standard interview situation, people frequently respond in terms of: their idealized self-image; the norms of their social group; what they think is an "acceptable" answer; what they have learned about a category through advertising; or an explanation of their behavior. All of these may be contradicted by the stories they tell about their experiences.

An example from the banking study reveals the tendency to give top-of-mind responses that are consistent with the respondent's self-image. Respondents selected for this study were successful businesswomen with incomes of $100,000 or higher. Among them, married women were asked about their role in family financial decisions. Responding to the direct question, they tended to report that they had an equal role with their husband in these decisions. However, as one woman described some specific decisions, she acknowledged that her husband had the most say.

This example also illustrates a tendency for people to develop an identity that is consistent across their various roles. Women who are decision makers in the business world tend to see themselves as having an equal say in family situations.

When asked why they selected a particular bank, most respondents referred to an obvious feature. For example, one said the only thing that mattered to her was "clear, intelligible monthly statements." But after thinking about various experiences with banks, she observed: "I'm beginning to see that I select a bank in the same way that I select my wardrobe. I'm looking for quality in both, but it means different things in each situation."

Responses to direct questions in the banking study also show how this technique helps respondents conceal motivations they think may be assessed negatively by the researcher. The respondents, we remind you, were well-off, successful decision makers. We discovered through their stories that most wanted special or privileged treatment from a bank. They did not state this outright, however. It was inferred from details about how they are treated and/ or want to be treated in retail establishments, including banks and department stores. The services these women expect from a bank go far beyond conveniently located ATMs.

The beverage category study shows how consumers' reasons for preferring certain products tend to reflect what they've learned from advertising. The typical response in a focus group referred to a taste- related factor promoted in advertising (e.g., "thirst-quenching"). In response to the standard question about why she drank wine, one woman said she preferred the taste.

Then, for the story analysis part of the interview, we asked respondents to recall their first experiences drinking alcoholic beverages. In recounting her early experiences, the same woman recalled that her father had advised her that wine was the most "ladylike" and socially acceptable drink for women. She now feels uncomfortable drinking beer or hard liquor in mixed company. Another woman recalled her teen-age beer drinking as part of rebelling against her father. Today she associates drinking beer with being independent and not caring about what other people think.

Some advantages of story analysis

The results of our studies to date indicate that this method may be most useful for research that deals with:

  • Studies involving lifestyles or work styles where you need a battery of statements to develop segments or customer profiles. The beverage and office supply studies were used for this purpose. Analyses of the stories added dimensions that the focus groups did not reveal.
  • Products and services where use has become routine, or low-involvement products. In these situations, consumers' use of the product is automatic - they have become "blind" to how they use the product. Driving a car is a good example. Once a person learns to drive the vehicle, it is difficult to recall all the steps involved in the process. This applies also to services where use has become routine, like telephoning and banking.
  • Questions related to topics where consumers know the "right" or "politically correct" answer. Few people these days, for example, admit that they are not willing to take action to protect the environment or to lower their consumption of "unhealthy" foods.
  • Product categories where you suspect (or previous research has shown) that subjective issues influence market behavior, for example, where use of the product may enhance the user's identity or self-image. This turned out to be the case in the three studies involving product usage. People's stories frequently contradict their top-of-mind responses and self-ratings on traditional interview questions.
  • Situations where you suspect that imagery is important to effective communication strategy. People's stories about their product usage often include metaphors that help us understand how best to speak to them about the product. The metaphors can vary for different groups.
  • Products or services that are difficult for consumers to conceptualize, or situations where certain types of respondents are inarticulate in focus groups. Sometimes this occurs because certain respondents see the interview or focus group as a test situation; or they might think their views are not as interesting as others'. Encouraging them to tell their stories about product usage tends to quell these anxieties.

Some limitations of story analysis

At this point, we see two major limitations to this method: it is time-intensive and it requires a highly skilled interviewer.

All of our interviews lasted about one hour, yielding almost as much data for analysis as a standard focus group. Since the success of the method depends on getting respondents to recall personal experiences, the interviewer must be able to develop rapport and draw out the respondent fairly quickly. Recruiting respondents from focus groups helps to ensure that they will be articulate. When respondents are recruited independently there is no guarantee the results will prove useful.

We are working on variations of our approach to overcome these limitations. In general, we find that the cost of conducting interviews on people's stories is similar to conducting one-on-one hour-long executive interviews based on conventional methods.