Consumers in Trump 2.0 - Continuous vs. Snapshot Qual
Everything has changed.
If you haven’t had conversations with your consumers in the last few months, this is your sign to do so.
Marketers like to talk about people’s values and beliefs being fairly stationary. What happens in the formative years tends to stay with us and shapes the way we think, act and feel later in life. Our values are born from early influences from loved ones, formal and informal education and life experiences. But increasingly, in our media-influenced post-shared truth world, consumer values are continually re-shaped as “truth” is re-interpreted - in often surprising ways. Anyone that has experienced a conversation with a loved one turn from cordial to contentious in a hot second knows this, and feels the pain of shifting values.
For brands this can mean what was important a year ago to your consumer may be insignificant today. Issues that were understood through one lens last month may be viewed completely differently after a few 24-hour media cycles.
Qualitative research can help you make sense of your customers’ views, helping you to understand which authorities they are placing their trust in, whom they consider to be credible vs. whom they may be skeptical of, and where their foundational values may be more squishy.
But as the media cycle in the U.S. has transformed from a daily rhythm to a constant flow of information, the never-ending drumbeat of media we are all subjected to creates such noise and complexity around issues, that it’s hard to believe one thing for very long.
You may be surprised to learn what your consumers are thinking today about your category is very different from how they viewed it even a month ago. And the way they are using your product may have changed, too.
And this poses a conundrum for brands that need to produce relevant marketing content and develop products that are aligned not just functionally, but emotionally with consumers. How do you create communications that are untouchable in the face of the media drumbeat? You obviously can’t be creating new campaigns and products every day based on changing consumer sentiment.
What you can do is ensure you are in touch with your consumers through all the media hype, paying attention to their patterns of reaction vs. their point-in-time insights. And not just through surveys- which of course you should be doing - but through continuous qualitative research, which can help ensure you don’t miss important nuances that might be game-changers for your brand.
In other words, don’t rely on “snapshot” qualitative conducted once a year or once every so often to shape your view of consumers. You can’t have intimacy with someone you only talk to once a year! Running frequent foundational qual is the way to build relationship with consumers so you can design communications and products that are truly valuable to them. A continuous qual insights program can help you understand:
Trends - Analyzing qualitative data over time helps identify trends, seasonality and long-term patterns, showing you how variables interact and change, and allowing for predictions and understanding of your customers’ cyclical behaviors.
Context - Constantly adding to your foundation of insights provides context for the fluctuations you may see, making it easier to understand causes behind changes - and giving you a well-rounded view of your customers.
Anomalies - Longitudinal insights can help identify anomalies / outliers that, in snapshot research, you might be tempted to weight more heavily than they require.
Frequency, sample size and methods are mutable - the key is to first shift your organization’s thinking about qualitative research from “snapshot” to “continuous” and figure it out from there. As a qualitative researcher I would urge you to identify a core moderator/interviewer/ethnographer team to execute your research annually, as we store a lot of information in our heads and laptops that can continually be built upon, creating efficiency and deeper insight.
I would add that while on-going research communities and longitudinal qual with the same respondents is very valuable, that’s not exactly what I’m talking about here. To gain the most insight from a continuous qual program, the sample should be continuously refreshed with new respondents to ensure engagement and fresh perspectives. And, human-to-human conversations should be at the forefront of this initiative - not ai-driven or text-based.
At this point, you may be wondering about the affordability of this type of customer intimacy initiative. It sounds like a lot of recruiting fees, incentives and consulting hours. The scalability of qual is a loaded topic and a subject for a future blog post, which, I assure you is in the works. But for now, if the question you are looking to answer is can we afford a continuous qual program? I would ask you to consider the cost of getting it wrong for your customers. Remember Gapgate? KJ’s BLM backlash? Lady pens? Costly mistakes based on consumer values (nostalgia, equality, feminism) that may have been avoided by engaging more closely with people.
If you want to talk about creating an efficient and highly effective continuous qualitative research program for your brand, I’m here, and always happy to brainstorm with you.
Further reading on Americans’ shifting values:
Post-election research from PRRI analyzes how Americans’ views of the economy contributed to election results.
Emerson College polls conducted in early Jan and this week: A majority of voters (52%) think the United States is headed in the right direction, while 48% think it is on the wrong track. This is a significant shift from just earlier this month when 67% said the country was on the wrong track and 33% in the right direction.
Just for fun:
Is your household in the middle class? Find out using the Pew Research calculator.
