Editor’s note: Lois Steinberg is vice president, client services manager with Sorkin-Enenstein Research Service, Inc., Chicago.

If you want to find out what your customers really think about your products or if you’d like to get their ideas for new products, you should consider listening to their stories. This advice comes from social scientists, who found in the 1970s that listening to stories was the key to understanding people’s behavior. The practice was taken up with renewed vigor in the 1980s by psychologists who claimed that people remember their experiences in the form of stories which become scripts for everyday living.

Since 1990, Sorkin-Enenstein Research Service has been exploring the relevance of stories to marketing behavior. We wanted to find out what stories could tell us that traditional qualitative methods couldn’t. Before conducting our studies, however, we wanted to find out why these scholars were making such claims about the importance of stories.

What’s different about research using stories?

To get at the difference between traditional research and research using stories, it’s helpful to look at the philosophies behind the two approaches.

For the most part, marketing research is based on methods developed in the social sciences, particularly psychology. Until recently, mainstream psychologists saw behavior and experience as two separate aspects of human beings. Their experimental studies treated people like objects whose physical and verbal behavior could be controlled, and therefore measured under scientific, experimental conditions. In other words, they believe you can study people in isolation from their social context and all trained observers will agree on the results.

Marketing research based on this approach attempts to simulate the controlled experiment by having a highly structured questionnaire or focus group guide and formal, standard, interviewing practices. All respondents are treated the same, objectively, and they are required to stick to the researcher’s "script." Most of the time, the focus group moderator can be thought of as a conversation director.

Story analysis is based on an alternative approach, which sees the individual and his world as interrelated and rejects experimental designs. The purpose of this research is to understand and interpret people’s behavior and experience rather than to predict or explain. Narrative analysis is a method to access people’s stories about their experiences.

The methods we have developed are designed to elicit people’s stories around product related behavior. These procedures are individualized to fit the respondents and allow them to be the author of their script or experience. We encourage respondents to become co-observers of their situations.

What marketers can learn from stories

Because we wanted to find out what stories can contribute to traditional methods, our exploration of peoples’ stories has combined both of these perspectives. Story analysis was included to augment findings of traditional focus groups or surveys. All of these studies have dealt with behavior around routinely used products or services such as beverages, home fixtures, office products, financial services and telecommunications.

Results of these studies suggest the kinds of research issues where story analysis can provide strategic marketing insights.

Critical motivations behind product usage

Direct questioning about motivations around some behavior patterns frequently yields inaccurate data. There are several explanations for this:

  • People don’t consciously think about how they use routine products.They forget what led them to try the product in the first place.
  • The social desirability factor: people want to look good to the interviewer or to give correct responses. Respondents have a tendency to give answers that are consistent with their self image or what they think researchers are looking for.
  • People have limited vocabularies around products that they do not usually talk about - either because the product is so routine that it would be boring to discuss with others or because it is sensitive and not polite to discuss in public.

Direct questions allow respondents to conceal motivations they think may be assessed negatively by the researcher. This proved to be the case when we asked upscale women, in one-on-one interviews, what went into their selection of a bank. To our direct questions they gave such responses as "convenience," "accurate monthly statements," and "helpful personnel." Through their stories, we discovered that most of these women wanted a bank that gave them privileges or special treatment. They did not say this outright - it was inferred in their stories about how they like to be treated in retail establishments. As one woman put it: "They treat me like a queen."

Resistance to new products

For one study, new product development managers wanted a qualitative assessment of an innovative financial service and ideas to guide marketing strategy. They did not understand the extent of resistance expressed in focus groups. By themselves, the group discussions did not shed much light on the source of the resistance or the marketing implications behind it.

In-depth interviews conducted with focus group participants were designed to evoke stories around financial transactions relative to the innovation. Results of these interviews suggested that the innovative concept was perceived as threatening to most respondents because it would disrupt their routines around handling finances. This finding led to product modifications and a marketing strategy that would position the product in a less intrusive way than had been initially conceived.

Reasons for category or brand selection

Most researchers question the accuracy of peoples’ top-of-mind reasons for selecting a category or brand. As an example, participants in our focus groups about beverages typically referred to a taste-related factor promoted in advertising as their reason for preferring a particular type of beverage.

One woman said in a focus group that she drank wine because she liked the taste. In the story analysis part of the in-depth interviews, we asked the respondents to recall their first experience drinking alcohol beverages. In recounting her earlier experiences, the same woman recalled that her father advised her to drink wine because it was most "ladylike" and socially acceptable to drink. She now feels uncomfortable drinking beer or hard liquor in mixed company.

Discovering themes around category use

 Although peoples’ stories around product use are idiosyncratic, they typically share similar themes. Included in the focus groups for an office product study was a section on the impact of technology. Everyone talked about how computers had changed their tasks but it was through their stories that they told us how computers changed their role in the office.

This was especially the case for secretaries who felt their role had shifted from that of a gofer to being a respected member of a team. Becoming adept at using the computer had greatly expanded their self-confidence as well as their job responsibilities.

Control is a theme that rarely surfaces in focus groups, however, it runs through the stories in almost all of our studies. People seem unable or unwilling to come right out and admit that they have a need to control, but their stories often suggest that such a need may be more common than we imagine.

Uncovering experiences with sensitive topics

There are products and services that are difficult for consumers to conceptualize or situations where people are reluctant to express their views in focus groups. This is especially true where understanding product usage involves discussion of sensitive topics.

For a study involving a product of this nature, the client suspected that focus groups would be unproductive. Not only did the product involve a sensitive category, but usage was private. Our client wanted to get consumer reactions to some new product concepts and to see if consumers would come up with any additional viable product ideas.

Respondents were recruited at random after passing an articulation screen to make sure they were capable of participating in this type of interview. Not surprisingly, since they seldom, if ever, discussed or thought about the product, respondents had a very limited vocabulary. In fact, several commented at the end of the interview that they never dreamed they could talk about the topic for a whole hour.

Given the private aspect of the product’s usage, it was a revelation to our client to discover the extent to which product selection was influenced by self image for some respondents. This finding was confirmed by a follow-up survey.

Ideas for new products

Much has been written about the limitation of traditional research methods in generating new product ideas. So far, only the above study included this objective. Our client was as surprised as we were when respondents came up with 24 possibilities even though the follow up survey suggested that only a few might appeal to target markets.

New motivations and behaviors

For segmentation studies that involve understanding lifestyles or work styles, story analysis helps to generate new product related motivations and trends. We typically combine the results of focus groups and story analysis to develop hypothetical, product relevant segments.

Limitations of story analysis

As mentioned in our previous article on this method, it is time-intensive and requires a highly skilled interviewer. Interviews last one hour and yield almost as much data as a standard focus group. To get respondents to recall personal experiences, the interviewer must be able to immediately develop rapport.

A third limitation is respondents’ capacity to relate their stories. When we recruit from focus groups, we can select people who appear to have stories to tell of interest to our client. Under these conditions, 10 story interviews are usually sufficient. When we recruit at random, there is no guarantee that stories will be forthcoming so it’s a good idea to conduct from 15 to 20 interviews.