Archive for the ‘online qualitative research’ Category

By Walt Dickie, Executive Vice President

C+R does a lot of online qualitative, which means we use a lot of newly designed research platforms and try even more. We’re also very interested in using DIY survey tools as a means of giving our analytic staff a shorter, faster, less expensive path to fielding a client’s project. So, again, we’re constantly looking at new tools.

There are a lot of new tools and platforms entering beta or being rolled out, and they’re increasingly attracting investment and developer interest. There’s a huge amount of variation across tools, of course, but their designs have a lot in common, too. All of them have given a fair amount of thought to how to design an interface for the supplier/user, the people who are going to conduct a project. They have also thought a good deal about the respondent interface. But the interface for the end data – often dominated by a “report” that can be exported to PowerPoint – doesn’t seem to have received the degree of thought given the others.

And this last interface – which should be designed around the needs of the client, and should have been designed with the awareness that every client is looking for at least some insight and maybe an actual working plan – just regurgitates data in shiny graphic form, delivering “Marketing Research” rather than “Marketing Insight”. Why didn’t the smart engineers and web design people think more about this?

The main reason, I think, is that they’re listening to research providers, not the clients who buy the research and ultimately pay the bills. Either that or they’re just not watching very closely to see how the business is changing. Even if we allow that the model of the research report– delivered to the end client by a firm that conducted the nuts-and-bolts research, analyzed the data, and wrote the report– will be around for some time to come, we should also recognize that it’s already under siege. As time frames compress, team decision making grows, and the quest for insight replaces the delivery of data and analysis, team working sessions replace presentations and reports.

C+R frequently works this way especially for community-based, social, online qualitative projects. It’s also our standard approach for clients using Interactive Query powered by Invoke, a real-time, interactive, collaborative platform that offers surveys with statistically solid base sizes combined with the flexibility of on-the-fly questionnaire changes and one-on-one respondent interaction. Invoke is the only platform I’m aware of that is based on a model of a collaborating team interrogating the data being collected in real time and leaving at the end of the day having achieved consensus on its meaning. Kudos to them for their vision, but I want more, and I think our industry should, too.

So here, in no particular order, is my wish list for tools whose back ends are designed as decision support systems so a team of clients and research suppliers can have tools at hand for getting past the data and on to the decision. Some are pure flights of fantasy that I have no idea how to realize. Others are grounded in currently realizable technology (I think), given sufficient determination and resources.

• The “back room” team should have the same kind of information-sharing and messaging tools that we give the people in our marketing research online communities and that many corporations provide for their day-to-day operations. Every team member should be able to start discussions, join groups, and upload their thoughts and notes for comments or votes. Simply conceiving the team as a group and providing that group with the kind of functionality that we find in many corporate social networking platforms would be a huge advance. It goes without saying that the team should be able to assemble in virtual space, and should not have to be physically together at one site.
• Every team member should be able to independently, or with a group, explore whatever data the platform is collecting and working with. Everyone should be able to keep private notes with the ability to post ideas publicly to other team members at will.
• Team members should be able to tag or otherwise annotate items of interest in the data or produced by other members of the team when they find them especially insightful or meaningful. This is especially crucial in qualitative projects, but could be equally valuable in many quantitative projects. When a team is looking for insight, revealing items and ideas need to be marked as they are discovered so they can be quickly retrieved and easily shared out and discussed further.
• Functionality for data analysis specialists will have to be available. A coding team should be able to code/tag texts or media with the results then being posted for the team(s) to utilize. Video specialists should be able to retrieve tagged segments to compile “highlight reels” for sharing. The team should be able to tap statistical specialists, text or data analytics professionals, or other kinds of specialists as needed.
• Every team member needs access to information beyond the boundaries of the immediate project. This means access to the internet, of course, but the platform should make it easy to bring in information from corporate data stores and libraries, or from supplier data repositories. Being able to retrieve previous work or supplementary data is a key aspect of making good decisions– no project stands alone.
• Teams are often actively led by facilitators whose job it is to help the team move the process along. Tools to help expedite the process like voting and sorting tools that let groups work through piles of ideas to identify areas of interest and consensus would help.
• Displays of the results of the team’s discussions should be designed so that they are, in effect, self-reporting: the final state of the display should reflect the result of the team’s effort. Ideally, someone viewing such a display should be able to drill down into the top, final state to see more of the underline processes that led to the final display state, the “result,” “conclusion” or “decision.” The requirement of producing a PowerPoint “final report” should be left behind for a more powerful metaphor.

I would love to hear suggestions about this topic. Do you work in collaborative teams? What kind of collaboration tools do you have available? Are you using any tools or platforms that have incorporated a “back room” for your team, and, if you have, what do they provide?

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

The use of MROCs is burgeoning.  They enable the researcher and the marketer to immerse themselves deeply in the lives of their consumers.  The experience is incredibly rich.  We can hear consumers in their own voice; we can peek into their homes.  They can show us the things and images that are meaningful to them and their families.  And, they still are able to talk among themselves in ways that make the most sense to them.  It’s an embarrassment of riches.

How do you make the most of these riches?  MROCs are qualitative research.  Right?  Yet, unlike a focus group or an individual interview, they don’t come at us as a simple, single stream of information.  Rather, they give us different types of information, both synchronous and asynchronous, and they give us tons of it.

As we have mastered the operational aspects of this approach, we have also developed principles for maximizing the learning it delivers.  Here are a few rules to follow if you want to get the most out of your MROC:

• Get your team organized and focused.  More so than with traditional qualitative research, it is important to assure that all team members understand the goals of the project and the specific details of how those goals will be achieved.  This is essential because most MROCs are built with a range of discussions, stimuli, and projective exercises.  There are lots of little pieces to keep straight.
• Give everyone on the team a research buddy or two.  Rather than ask every member of your team to pay attention to everything happening in the MROC, assign each member of the team one are two of the participants.  Have the team members follow everything that just their “buddies” say and do.  This makes the task of following the community much more manageable for each team member.  Moreover, by immersing themselves in the experiences of just one or two participants, team members will feel the consumer experience much more deeply.  In your meetings, they will become advocates for their research buddies.
• Use the technology platform to communicate questions and comments among the team members and with the community leaders.  It may be tempting to e-mail, text, or simply grab someone in the hall to talk about the community, but using the technology platform will allow everyone on the team to see every comment and serve as a repository for those comments when the project is completed.
• Hold a “study hall.”  It is important that the team not let the rush of information get ahead of it.  Therefore, we have found it essential to bring the team together almost daily to share the current state of its learning.  Since everyone has a research buddy, the regularity of these meetings is less onerous than it sounds.  We all want to give voice to our new friend.
• Give the team a framework.  While the study hall is great for collective sharing, we also find it useful for the group leader to send almost daily, but brief, summaries of the three or four key insights of the day.  Not only is the information valuable, but these insights focus the observations of the team members for the next day.

Following these simple rules will assure that your team gets the most from its MROC experience.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Traditional qualitative research methods like focus groups and individual interviews have often been conceived as a first step.  I need to explore a new category.  I need to develop hypotheses.  Even, on a more rigorous and technical level, I need to pre-test a questionnaire.  In all of these cases, qualitative research served to point a brand or product team down the path that led to a new product, positioning, or campaign.

Over the past few years, we have seen growth in methods that put us in immediate contact with consumers.  Often consumers are in the moment of the experiences and behaviors in which we are interested.  So, we have seen the mining of social media, the creation of online communities of users, and various forms of mobile data collection.  All of these approaches have engaged marketers and given them exciting pointers to the future of their brands and products.

But these activities produce a wealth of observations and data.  They are capable of stimulating a mound of hypotheses.  It is possible to mine through the comments on a brand’s Facebook page or listen to days of Twitter feeds and come away with directions going various ways.   Now, what to do?  How does the marketing team get the targeted direction it needs?

The answer may well be several well-designed focus groups.

• The focus groups will permit exploration of each of those directions with consumers in real time.  It is possible to hear how they view the strengths of each and the problems they see.  The brand team is right on the spot with the moderator crafting rejoinders and alternatives, pushing the consumers to a place they might not have taken themselves.
• While there can be a ton of conversation in social media, it may not focus on areas that are of most interest to the brand team.  Focus group can force conflict and debate among the participants on those specific areas that can grow the brand or create the positioning.
• And, ultimately, hearing all of this discussion face-to-face from consumers “in the flesh” will galvanize the brand team like no other exercise.  In fact, when focus groups are conducted at the end of the process, there is much less need to observe the research niceties.  Why not have the consumers and the brand team face off in the same room?  Focus group steel cage?

So, savvy marketers will re-think how focus groups can help can help them in their development processes by saving the best for last.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

It is sobering to read in the space of a few weeks that Kodak is on the verge of declaring bankruptcy and that Sears will be shuttering over a hundred stores.  These are brands with which baby boomers grew up.  They stood for values many held dear — “preserving memories” in the case of Kodak and “value for the entire family” in the case of Sears.

The names, of course, are not completely dead.  In fact, I still have more contact with them than I do with some other brands.  My daughter-in-law continually sends me “Kodak Galleries” of my grandchildren.  And, I have a niece who works in a Sears.  Although, I suppose it is telling that I didn’t mention purchasing Kodak products or shopping at a Sears.

The easy answer, and the one you have all heard, is that both of these brands could not adapt to changing competition.  Like the proverbial supertanker, they were difficult to change quickly and sharply.  The transition from film-based to digital photography may have been inevitable, but Kodak played a role in the development of the digital camera.

So how do marketers keep their brands healthy?  How do they assure they do not find themselves on the wrong side of changes in the marketplace?

• A brand is the glue that binds a consumer to a product.  It is the basis of loyalty and identity.  And, it tells the consumer what a product is not, who does not belong to its family, as much as it defines what the product is.  That “what it’s not” extends beyond its immediate competition.  McDonald’s kept its brand healthy by recognizing it is was more than simply “not Burger King.”  It was “not a sit-down restaurant.”  And, that meant it competed with Starbuck’s for snack occasions.  What is Burger King “not”?
• The wrong answer to the question of what a brand is “not” is “trying to be all things to all people.”  It may work for a while, but, as Sears has learned, a weak focus can make you vulnerable.  When Sears truly dominated a large swath of mass retailing, all was well.  But, over time, more focused competitors — some big, some small, some physical, some catalogues — chipped away at the margins.  In the end, there are a number of players doing a better job of being pieces of “not Sears.”

So, the successful marketer must keep a careful eye on what is outside of the brand’s preserve, far outside.  One way is to keep monitoring social media.  The tendency is to pay attention to what is being said about “my brand.”  But, the real goal has to be paying attention to what my brand’s users are saying about all of their consumption.  What products, services, activities are poaching on the emotional ties that used to be exclusively the domain of my brand?  More to the point, what is replacing those emotional ties?

Another more focused approach to this monitoring is with on-line communities of your brand loyalists.  This effort still can have a very broad outlook, but it also allows for probing into specific behavior and attitudes.  I suspect it was not simply the birth of digital photography that changed the world for Kodak.  It was also the different vision of friendship and relationships that Gen-Xers display, a vision that set great store in broad but immediate sharing of experiences.  On-line communities are great places for exploring these changing social constructs.

By Shaili Bhatt, Senior Analyst

Projective questions from in-person interviewing flow smoothly into online qualitative activities! Nancy Hardwick gave a wonderful presentation on projectives at the 2011 QRCA Conference in Las Vegas, and here we explore how these activities work well online.

Most, if not all, of my favorite projective activities in new qualitative research are derived from traditional qualitative research methods.

Online discussions or communities feature an extended interviewing phase (multiple days, weeks or months beyond traditional 2-hour focus groups), which essentially provides researchers with a welcome abundance of time to harvest and probe an always-impressive incoming flow of information. How can researchers effectively utilize this time to engage online participants and immerse them in the topic at hand?
For the time being, quick “top-of-mind” free association exercises are just as important as creative projective questions, requiring online participants to reflect for a few moments (or days!) to capture a particular feeling or experience in a thoughtful post or activity page.

Written exercises like storytelling and other creative activities like collages, when used at opportune times, can be the key ingredients to insightful and interesting new qualitative research. No stimuli are required, and natural dialogue helps to tie it all together. Nancy Hardwick of Hardwick Research presented, “Projectives in Practice,” a detailed compilation of projective techniques at the 2011 QRCA Annual Conference, which was held at the luxurious Venetian & Palazzo Resort in Las Vegas.

Hardwick encouraged the audience to interact and build upon the listed activities during her in-depth, power-packed presentation. While the focus of the presentation highlighted “what works” with in-person interviewing, the ideas and energy in the room quickly catapulted this to a presentation that refreshed my perspective and sparked the most NewQual inspiration in my notebook.

(As you may know, projective techniques are subjective questions that researchers use to elicit the underlying emotions or subconscious drivers that influence choice, as an alternative or complement to asking direct questions. Many of these techniques originally stem from projective personality tests in Psychology, which were designed for people to respond to fairly nebulous, ever-inconclusive stimuli, presumably uncovering hidden emotions and internal conflicts in the process.)

Throughout the presentation, Hardwick included a steady stream of projective techniques, resulting in a compilation of audience favorites in several important categories:

• Written Exercises
• Photo/Drawing Exercises
• Sorting Exercises

The variety of projectives serve as a reminder for how many of these time-tested exercises can be incorporated into online research.

Written exercises transition smoothly into the online world.

A few of my favorite activities are as follows (sans embellishments):

• Famous Owners—Pick a favorite/popular celebrity, and describe 1-2 thoughts about who they are. Then, ask what this celebrity’s version of (insert client’s product/service) would be like? What would it look like? How it would perform, and why? Note: This is a great technique for exploring an existing client’s products or services as well as innovation and co-creation.
• Storytelling: Describe a specific experience from the last time that you…(insert scenario). What Did You Think? Say? Feel?
• Tribute/Eulogy—Pretend that (insert product/service) no longer exists. What did it accomplish? What will you miss most about it? Describe all that you feel and want to say about the product, even if you are viewing it in a new light. Note: variations on the theme, such as a “Lifetime Achievement Award” can be more attractive for certain products/services, particularly category leaders.
• Picture Your World—Pick a picture/color that represents how you feel about (insert product/service). How does this picture/color represent how they feel, and why?

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

Very often, writing a discussion guide for online research is about applying techniques that are already available and crafting projective activities to capture the level of insights you can hypothesize…and then some!Hardwick advises to begin with a written exercise “early on” in the discussion, which also works well with new qualitative –even if it’s typed; this early activity serves to challenge the participants to think independently and also allows them to “own” their ideas and suggestions. A well-executed written activity that provokes thoughtful posts is also a great way to encourage insightful group discussions.Online discussion guides written like quantitative-type surveys, with numerous objective questions, can certainly be cringe-worthy. Please do not be afraid to ask creative in-depth questions: the online medium suits that well!

Leave room for the unexpected when writing questions and avoid mechanical dialogue. Don’t be overly repetitious.

When using projectives, encourage honesty and spontaneity while asking for details. I like to throw in a few natural quips at the end of questions, for example, “It could be anything!” (As in, “What’s your favorite part about ______? It could be anything!”) It is interesting to note how such a brief invitation can lead to a wider variety of posts. Treat it like a conversation, because it is!

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

If you have conducted focus groups, or even observed them, you have probably noticed that the energy level can vary over the course of a day.  I have always taken this as the normal course of events. But, it turns out there is a rather interesting explanation for this ebb and flow — decision fatigue.  A recent article by John Tierney in the New York Times, “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?,” describes the research surrounding this phenomenon in great detail.

I had always thought people simply get tired during the course of the day, but Tierney demonstrates that the mere act of making decisions wears us down, making us less able make additional choices.  He points to a study in which individuals who simply review material were better able to make choices about it at the end than those who were forced to repeat incremental choices.

He also notes that those who receive food make better decisions. And, it is not the psychological reward of the food that works.  Tasteless, but sugared grub will have more effect than a sugar-free sundae.

What is the impact of decision fatigued?  One makes poor decisions, of course.  But, what is a poor decision?  The fatigued person defaults to the familiar, the usual, the expected.  In other words, he or she avoids making the hard choices — just those choices we would like research participants to make.

So, what is the lesson here for researchers?  Well, I am going to take the cans of Pepsi and cookies on the table much more seriously than I have in the past.  I might even ban water and diet beverages.  On a more fundamental level, it has caused me to re-think the number and nature of exercises I ask people to perform in a focus group.  Let them create a collage at home rather than force them to select pictures for a collage during the interview.  Might there be implications for questionnaire design?

Concerns about decision fatigue also make on-line qualitative and MROCs look all the more promising.  Participants can respond to our tasks at the times they are freshest and best able to evaluate whatever it is we wish them to judge.

There is another troubling issue Tierney raises.  “Decision fatigue is a major — and hitherto ignored — factor in trapping people in poverty. Because their financial situation forces them to make so many trade-offs, they have less willpower to devote to school, work and other activities that might get them into the middle class….  A trip to the supermarket induces more decision fatigue in the poor than in the rich —because each purchase requires more mental trade-offs.” At first this seems like an important, but a political concern.  Yet, it has implications for those who wish to understand the behavior of consumers.

Dan Peck’ Atlantic article, “Can the Middle Class be Saved?” described what he calls the “hollowing out” of the American middle class.  His economic arguments are familiar. Over the past several decades, a larger proportion of the nation’s wealth has accrued to a smaller proportion of individuals at the top.  But, in the process, the middle class has fractured.  Now, the non-professional middle class are more likely to resemble in behavior and attitudes the “high school drop-out poor” than the “college educated members” of the middle class.

The sub-text — many more of those whom we survey or wish to have in our MROCs and focus groups are likely to be in a semi-permanent state of decision fatigue.  Our methods and approaches will need to be much more sensitive to this fact.

By Shaili Bhatt, Senior Analyst

It never fails to fascinate me how much people will share about themselves online—especially for longer market research studies where typical time constraints are a non-issue and participation is at one’s convenience.  People can be endlessly interested to complete interactive discussions and creative challenges, even if the rewards are not immediately tangible! As qualitative or hybrid qual-quant researchers, we can foster and utilize human curiosity to the fullest in market research online communities (MROCs).

The combination of a longer MROC timeframe and our innate curiosity allows the moderator and the accompanying backroom to set off on a meaningful journey with consumers.  Many of the questions in MROC studies are pre-structured by the researcher, clients (and sometimes an agency or two), yet we make it a habit to leave plenty of room to play, revise, and add new topics.

With MROCs, process-driven adventures excel when they are led with experienced online moderation, including large spoonfuls of strategy, analysis and fun. (Calling Mary Poppins…)

Blossoming the conversation in a visually appealing, fun and organic fashion, with posts ranging from the serious to even silly, is more of a creative endeavor than a task.

Every day, our backroom insights are shaped by the individuals in the community as much as the group at large. Over time, consumers share and develop the most interesting points of reference, and as researchers, we identify each clue and investigate it.  At any given time, the data is as granular or “big picture” as we need it to be.

What if you could lead a newly formed community on an adventure to explore products they use every day or on special occasions?  What if
you could explore their lives to conceptualize products that don’t currently exist?  What if you could craft questions to be so engaging and educational that the community members have fun on this journey (and forget that they are communicating with technology or are in a market research study to get paid)?  What if they could  journal their experiences in real-time every day of the study and follow how other members may be experiencing similar issues, motivations, desires, or loss, communicating these thoughts and feelings with each other?

Imagine the ideas they could share, the products and product substitutes they could seek, and the roller coaster of emotions that we can feel with them, neatly captured online or on mobile devices—in text, pictures, collages and video—day by day. We get to know who they are, individually and as a group, and by the end of it, we are celebrating new insights and Aha! moments along with birthdays, anniversaries, storm survival, holiday survival, new friendships and team accomplishments.

This is the reality at the heart of today’s MROC studies—resulting in more meaningful journeys, with more individuals coming together to form fully committed, vibrant communities that are brimming with insights and co-creation, with depth beyond anything most capture from a traditional focus group.  At times it can feel like stepping into the land of OZ and emerging with the key to the city.

Are MROCs part of your toolbox? If you’re working with MROCs, please share your story here, and if you’re not MROC-ing and/or if you’re not particularly enthused about this methodology, please share your side of the story too.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

I am staring at a series of collages I had participants create for a project I just completed.  I have always loved this sort of creative exercise.  It helps (forces?) people to stretch their right brains.  They make more connections and associations when they create the collages and discuss them than they would in almost any other exercise I use in a focus group.  Also, I discover symbols and metaphors reflected on the collages and in the responses of their creators than with almost any other analytic approach.

I was surprised to read an article in the New York Times recently that seemed to suggest something novel in the technique.  I have been using it for years.  One of my approaches is to have participants create collages out of whatever pictures and objects they have around the house.

As I looked as those collages, I realized they said much about the ways a group of young men and women felt about one of their favorite activities, which shall remain nameless.  I could see changes that had taken place in the way creativity is expressed by people who are not specifically trained to be creative.

• Fifteen years ago a typical collage would contain pictures from a range of magazines.  And, they would also be taken from both the advertising and the articles.  Now, it seems that people’s image frame of reference is much more restricted. It is not unusual to see the same pictures repeated in several collages.  It is evidence that magazines are much less a part of everyone’s daily life.  When I conduct ethnogaphies, many houses I visit have no evidence of magazines.It was commonplace for collages created by men to have pictures from the sports page of the local newspaper or from Sports Illustrated.  No more.  All sports news is on-line.  And, as more and more people use smart phones, they are getting their sports news in such a way they can’t even print a picture.And, the images that do appear on the collages are almost exclusively from advertising. This change is a bit more difficult to explain.  What qualities do the images from advertising possess that other images do not?  As I listen to men and women discuss their collages, the answer becomes obvious.  Advertising magnifies and simplifies the representation of emotions.  Its images are designed so that consumers “get it.”  I can only conclude that generations raised on the media can understand their own emotions only through the intensifying lens of advertising.

• The collages also reveal what is a complementary trend.  The Internet, in effect, has short-circuited creative thinking.  I used to see collage creation as a serendipitous process in which my participants wandered through magazines or their homes and happened upon pictures and objects that triggered a response they might not otherwise have felt.Now, however, collages have become more logical and literal.  I see a trophy in a collage, and I ask its creator to explain it.  Oh, he says, I felt successful, so I Googled “trophy” and printed the first picture I found.  So the search for images had become less about metaphorical and and more interpretation.I can’t help but feel that this presents a problem for my collage exercise.  The Internet enables consumers to get THE answer, and that answer more often than not is verbal and logical.  The emotional dimension is lost.

What this all suggests is that in the age of the Internet, with Millennials as targets, we need new ways to tap into the emotions of consumers.  Or, we ourselves need new metaphors for that emotional response.

By Shaili Bhatt, Senior Analyst

It’s Friday night, and I am logging in to check posts in the online community. It’s true that we can find and recruit people who are ready to talk/type in the day (and night), and yet their enthusiastic, sustained engagement can be an issue for long-term communities.

Your opportunity to connect on a personal level with each participant, particularly at a natural time for conversations, is where the magic happens…

One of my secrets is to spend an hour or two to moderate the discussion on a Friday night.

Friday nights are not just for “going out,” even if it’s one of the first warm Fridays of Spring or Summer (like tonight when I began to write this)—For some participants, it’s their time to connect with friends and family, and even other members in the online community.

My secret is to login to the discussion after work and dinner to connect and let them know that I am right there with them. From prior years of experience, the gesture goes a long way, and the connection that forms among us on these nights is often deep and long-lasting.

Share your questions or experiences with online community engagement in the comments!

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Last week, I saw David Sirota discuss his book, Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explains the World We Live in Now – Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything. His thesis is that, beginning in the ‘80s, American society has become increasingly focused on the individual. He, of course, used words such as “narcissism” to describe this. One piece of evidence he offered was that the number of people who were members of a civic organization had almost halved over a 15 year period beginning in the early ‘90s.

Well, we have heard this all before; it’s the “Bowling Alone” argument.

But, as I listened this time, my first reaction, probably influenced by all of the online research C+R has been conducting of late, was to think, “Hey, wait a minute. What about all of those online communities and social networks? Aren’t communities both growing and proliferating? Isn’t there lots of interaction among the members of these communities? Hasn’t our ‘social capital’ merely moved online? Isn’t the tendency of people to select their own affinity groups a replacement for traditional communities?”

The answer is yes and no. It is important for marketers to keep in mind the differences between online communities and physical communities when they plan their strategies and conduct their research.

• Online communities are not physical; they do not have locations. This observation may be in the category of “Duh.” But, what does the difference mean? We conduct surveys that use a “nationally representative sample.” That sample reflects general population distribution. Perhaps, it is more important to reflect the density of different self-selected communities. A traditional qualitative project might be conducted in different markets to achieve a “national representation.” Might it be better to be in a single market, but reflect different communities — evangelical Christians, environmentalist, and the like — in separate focus groups? And, most obviously, if online communities are the way people are organizing themselves, shouldn’t we really be talking to consumers online?
• Online communities are more homogeneous. Members of online communities consciously select themselves. They seek members with whom they share beliefs and interests. And, if that is the case, do my samples of members of these online communities need to be as large as a sample of a physical community?
• Online communities are more fragile, less stable. Recent news suggests that Facebook traffic is declining. There are a number of ways to interpret this data, but the trend highlights the fact that people enter and leave online communities with much greater frequency than they enter and leave physical communities. I might have confidence in the results I obtained from a well-designed survey of my town for three years. But, if I were to rely on a survey of an online community, I might want to revisit my results in half that time.

Online communities are the new reality. They are indeed a rich, focused source of information. But, a changed world requires changed methods and perspectives, and C+R is prepared to guide you through this new territory.