Di and Rachel were in Malta a couple of weeks ago enjoying the lovely islands hospitality, gorgeous weather and learning something along the way! We were at the Merlien Institute's Qualitative Consumer Research & Insights 2011 conference. 2 days packed full of thought provoking presentations and discussions. Thanks to Jasper and the Merlien institute for organizing a superb event
Core to many of the presentations were how do we make the consumer the centre of the innovation process if 95% of consumer decisions are made subconsciously and rationalization often happens after the event. Experts shared their thoughts and experiences in using techniques including Priming, Narrative, Living Labs, Mental models and Discourse analysis. New technology is also been used to the full with presentations on creating Social Media communities, mobile platforms for research, utilizing web 2.0 into traditional qualitative research and Research robots (quite scary!)
Di and Rachel hosted a workshop to debate some key questions into the role of Social Media within research – we’d like to continue that conversation on in to establish some best practice guidelines. Comments and thoughts on the key issues we raised would be welcome:
- Anything posted on social media is fair game for research purposes
- You can’t get a representative sample on social media
- Some subjects shouldn’t be researched on Social Media
- Research bots will replace interviewers & analysts in the next 25 years
- Listening is becoming more important than asking questions
- Social Media research is a major departure from Traditional research and will involve learning a new skill set
