Consumer Immersion

[ResearchTalk]

I'm trying to draw together what's happening in 'Consumer Immersion' and welcome your contributions.

I'm specifically interested in techniques that allow client-side non researchers (i.e. brand and product managers, designers etc.) to directly interact with consumers (or indeed business folk).

Some of the things I'm trying to understand include...
- the different approaches in use
- the level of clientside interest and acceptance (and issues)
- the extent to which it cannibalises traditional research, if at all

Cheers,

Surinder

[Dan Rockwell]

Lots of activity on this front in the social media scene right now. P&G, Starbucks, Dell for example all have social media like web portals where they invite consumers into their space and help them innovate within. Its sets up a space where team members can affectively "lurk" along with the participants in that space to better understand what consumers POV on their product/service etc.

P&G takes it a step further designing whole portals for their key brands, then actively recruiting participants to participate, offering them free samples, incentives etc, and its moderated and set up in a way that reveals the brand as approachable, honest and willing to really act on consumer feedback.

I think its another tool in the toolbox really. Does it replace traditional research, nope, its another flavor. It does help immerse you into the world of where you're consumers could be at, in the sense its an online space, and being online is a huge part of daily lives today, but your brand has to make sense to go there, if consumers aren't there, then going online isn't going to fly.

Once in that space, now anyone in your team can swim along with the consumers. This is where participation is key. You have to talk, you have to want to reach out and have a conversation, and keep it real. The minute it all comes off fake and structured then you start to lose some data, we're all far to good at sensing BS online or offline.

For clients, I think you have the potential to present a tasty story in that this is an online living city of data. You'll have to spend time and money to make sure its alive, active and sensible for people to participate and all but its on going, nimble enough to iterate on fresh ideas as they occur, its different data, different result I think. Still a tasty effort if you can pull it off. Some companies out there have gone into this direction almost exclusively attempting to be the end all be all portal research provider, a site like ning alone could be good enough to start.

Again to me, its different data. Its almost supportive and spontanous, tapping into the now data. It doesn't answer all your questions, and it has serious bias issues in that you could get some unwanted groupthink happening if don't watch it closely. But if your customers are in the online space and into social media, and your product or service is at all impacted by that possibility then you have a serious potential there.

I think it is cannibalizing research in some ways. Its shifting the focus of results. Brands need to act fast these days. Either to get ideas or improve on them or to simply figure out where the hell people are going, social media is that live stream of ideas, provided your customer is there, if they aren't there, no biggie. If they are there, your traditional methods are pale in comparison. Not sexy enough? Sorta, they still work, but they are old world approaches, tried and true and thats all ya need go for it, if you need something new, stay agile, blend them together or go full throttle into the storm!

Dan
http://www.twitter.com/floozyspeak

[Simon Kendrick]

Dan listed some great examples above. In theory, any form of social or participatory media can facilitate conversations between employees and potential/actual consumers. Inevitably, most examples appear to come from tech companies, since their employees are the most web savvy. To give an example, there are several profiles on Twitter called [name]atdell, where people twitter in their business clothes, so to speak

I'm not directly involved in the production side where I work, but I have seen examples (I presume they are isolated, rather than part of an institutional process) of people replying on official and unofficial forums. I've seen no evidence of people being either encouraged or reprimanded to do this, though obviously there is the issue of whether the individual voice is suitably in step with the company line