#Goals
2025 is bound to be a great year for qualitative research. I’m hopeful the pendulum that has been hanging out in the big data / tech space is going to swing around to the human-to-human space, as brands, businesses and government organizations endeavor to understand people at deeper levels..
The US Presidential election, the class and race violence, and the targeting of prominent corporate CEOs - all referendums from citizens on the way profit has been put before people. People are angry - understandably - and brands need to understand the anger in order to be true allies to people, and in turn to create brand loyalists.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: qualitative research can be a very efficient path to insights for brands. It’s not the only way, and it’s not always the way - and it’s certainly at its best when combined with other research methodologies. But it has a crucial role to play in understanding the situation we are in today and should be included in every brand’s plan, regardless of size or scope of the business.
How, you may ask, is a relatively small, highly targeted sample that requires human recruiting and a human moderator an efficient path to insight? The answer lies in the analytical efficiency of people developing empathy with other people, and in the speed in which empathy is processed, leads to insights, and ultimately to highly relevant ideas.
It’s the old adage, “walk a mile in my shoes.”
I can read about you all I want. I can review data about what you do for work, how many kids you have and what you like to eat for dinner. But until I sit and talk with you, I don’t really know you.
If I had to market a new product to you in scenario A, I’d make a lot of assumptions. Some of them may be right, and some may be wrong - and costly, for my brand.
But in scenario B, provided I’ve taken the time to really listen to you, and learned about your feelings toward your job, what your daily life is like as a parent, your parenting philosophies, and why you serve your family the food you do - now I have a lot more to go on, because I haven’t just learned about you, I’ve learned from you. And in doing so, I’ve internalized your hopes, your struggles, your values. And I’m going to be able to tell my colleagues about you in great detail, with confidence.
And yes, I’m aware that the most interesting consumer stories are the ones that get repeated - so how do we know these are the stories that will lead to marketing ideas that have broad impact? If we’ve done our job well in developing the right screening criteria, ensuring the consumers chosen for qual represent themselves accurately and are engaged in wanting to help us, what they tell us can provide valuable perspectives that resonate with broader trends.
And it’s these broader trends that in my opinion brands need to be teasing out in 2025. How did we get to a place in the US where a CEO can be targeted and killed on his way to a meeting and many people see it as justified, given the corporate policies he represents? We need to understand what is behind this sentiment in all its complexity, and help guide brands to ensure they are supporting consumers in the kind of lives they want - and deserve - to live.
Qualitative research, with its open-ended, exploratory nature, by its human-to-human nature, puts people first. And that is something society is desperately in need of right now. I’m hopeful that our industry will help be the change we want to see in the world, by illuminating the changes that are needed to move all people forward.
Want to chat qual? I’m always up for it! Email me here or text me here.
May you, your family and your friends have a wonderful year to come!
#qual #humantohuman #qualitativeresearch #positivepsych #pospsych
