Editor's note: Pierre Belisle is an independent qualitative researcher and vice president of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA).

As clients continue to demand greater value from their suppliers, focus group moderators must become marketing consultants, says Dr. Alfred Goldman, an independent marketing research consultant and author of "The Group Depth Interview: Principles and Practice."

Speaking this fall to the annual convention of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA) in New York City, Goldman urged his colleagues to stay abreast of their clients' needs. Those needs will continue to be the "greater knowledge, insight and experience" that a consultant provides, he says.

"The role of consultant is quite different from that of moderator and carries with it different responsibilities and rewards," Goldman says. Moderators design studies, collect data, evaluate data and make recommendations based on that data. Consultants may encompass the moderator's role but also advise clients on product tactics and overall marketing strategy, realms that go well beyond the results of one study. As a result, "the role of consultant requires becoming more profoundly involved in learning about and understanding other components of corporate marketing," Goldman says.

In his speech, Goldman listed other likely areas of change in qualitative research including: an increasing specialization by industry; a re-emphasis on interviewing skills rather than quantitative or projective aids; the increasing use of standing panels; and the modest contribution of videoconferencing to the profession.

Increasing specialization by industry

The shift to consulting requires not only process knowledge of qualitative research but content knowledge of the industry in question, hence Goldman's forecast of increasing specialization by industry. Already many qualitative consultants specialize in a single industry, be it computers, communications or medical marketing. Goldman exhorted QRCA members to learn "at least as much about a product or service as your immediate client."

One result of this specialization, according to Goldman, will be a smaller pool of experts, and the continuing growth of exclusivity contracts and retainers: "Industry specialization necessarily concentrates the number of specialists available to any one industry. For industry specialists, exclusivity contracts and annual retainers will become more common."

Focus on interviewing skills

Goldman believes that collecting qualitative data will continue to depend mainly on interviewing skill rather than on quantitative or projective aids. He admits that electronic voting systems used in some group interviews permit more efficient response.

He argues, however, that summing evaluation ratings is not a primary mission of qualitative research. "We do ask respondents to assess concepts, attributes and brands," he says, "not because we are interested in the vote count, but as a platform from which we can explore what drives their evaluations."

Goldman also decries the fascination some researchers have with projective techniques. "As intellectually provocative as these techniques are to researcher and client alike, they have rarely proven to be more useful in yielding actionable insights than sensitive, comprehensive and vigorous probing of respondent motivation."

Standing panels

With increasing pressures for quick recruiting of knowledgeable and articulate respondents, the pool of willing "virgin" respondents is shrinking. Goldman argues that many respondents are already being recruited from lists of volunteers and that progressively more group participants should be recruited from standing panels when it is appropriate to the research task.

Videoconferencing

Videoconferencing - where clients view a remote group, facilitated by a live moderator, on video monitors - will play only a modest role in group interviewing in the near future. Videoconferencing may fail to interest clients who are without easy access to a viewing facility or who want to travel for the immediacy of the experience. "Video groups are a good idea whose time will come, but not for a while and not all at once," Goldman predicts.