Qualitative Research

Traditional and Non-Traditional
Focus Groups
  • Pre-recruitment or mall intercepts for groups and IDI’s
  • Brand image assessment, news, advertising language and graphics, concept reactions
  • When valuable, we incorporate techniques from psychology and anthropology
Deep Probing Psychological
Research
  • Cognitive Reorientation Research, a tool that identifies strategies to disrupt consumers' habit of using/shopping for a competitive brand/product, making them more receptive to our clients' brands/ products
  • Focus on specific emotions consumers associate or could associate with a brand, what we call Prime Emotions
  • Techniques adapted from personality psychology, social psychology, health psychology, cultural anthropology, and other fields
    • Fundamental questions: What is breakfast?  What does clean mean?
    • Guided Retrospection
    • Storytelling
    • Metaphor and symbol analysis
    • Deprivation
    • Personification
    • Cultural meanings and rules, belief systems
    • Benefit laddering
Interactional Research
  • Quasi-ethnographic methodology that entails observation of simulated interactions between mothers and children, spouses, doctors and patients, and other pairs
  • Enables marketers to observe consumers and those who influence them in real time rather than retrieve interaction from memory
Observational Research and
Ethnography
  • Basic observation studies and, as appropriate, concepts adapted from anthropology
    • Brand myths: Stories and beliefs that have personal meaning
    • Cultural meanings and rules, belief systems
    • Rituals: Repetitive habits and their meaning; rites of passage
    • Transformations: Ritual-based and otherwise
    • Tribalism: Shared choices, shared identity; secret societies
    • Social Interactions: Family members, housemates, others