This week I have a meeting with a local not-for-profit who would like to better understand their customers and supporters to ensure the NFP’s future services meet the needs of their community. In 1993, the only choice to gain these insights was either though (1) focus groups (2) telephone interviews (3) shopping mall intercepts or (4) mail out surveys. The process would take about 12-20 weeks and, with a sample size of 1000, it would cost about $75,000 or more. I recall doing similar work in 1994 for Black Diamond Cheese. That research was simple, the purpose of the research was to find out which colour of cheddar cheese consumers most preferred. If you are interested in this topic, read more about food colouring agents that are legal to use in Canada.

Today, the research is more likely to be conducted through (1) focus groups and a combination of (2) email surveys (3) social media surveys (4) web form submissions

There are other methods that can get a few thousand responses in a few minutes. Anthropology has a subfield called ethnography and some marketers are trained in a practice called “product usage ethnography.” Ethnography in marketing has developed its own subset of activities which today include digital ethnography and social listening.

Imagine you have a Facebook page with hundreds of posts that your customers find interesting and engage in. Most marketing managers have little to no idea (mostly due to time constraints) what is happening on their social media. But imagine if, as a post, the question, “single men, when do you do your grocery shopping?” was asked. This might me a light hearted post designed for fun. But from a digital ethnography perspective, it could create a treasure trove of data.

Imagine you engaged your audience on social media with a question on shopping patterns. Instead of spending thousands of dollars, the following could have been gotten for almost nothing (blank fields are deleted data):

The above data is just a sample of a larger set of about 1000 comments. We deleted irrelevant comments (the blank fields). With this data, you now have the opportunity to code it (put it into categories), follow up with random respondents to be part of a focus group, or use it for a survey design. The days of multi-month high budget research is over – for some. Many companies haven’t realized that the face of market research has changed and are still paying $25,000 or more per study. Don’t be that company. Contact us to help you do better research at a reasonable price.