This paper will examine new enabling tools in the manner of games that can be used to convert and enrich the conventional focus group discussion. This shall be demonstrated using a couple of case studies from Indonesia.
The use of games as a part of the qualitative toolkit, contrasting their use in market research with user experience, service design and design thinking, is addressed in this paper. The relevance of games and potential in Asia-Pacific is showcased trough the games and play that were used to better cased trough the games and play that were used to better understand motivations and behaviour in the finance sector in Indonesia. Furthermore demonstrated is how games are particularly relevant for Asia, that they reveal what Behavioural Economics states, and are a mechanism for teams to not just communicate new ideas but for stakeholders to vividly experience themselves.
New technology and tools are changing the practice of qualitative market research practice. Powered by the advent of broadband connectivity, social software, digital media and wireless devices, the Social Media Age has given qualitative researchers the means to transverse vast distances and observe the consumer journey in new ways. Similar to Homer's Odyssey, on this new journey (new boats, new sails, new maps, new navigation) we are also embarking on new journeys of immersion - observing and chronicling the people we study.
Frontiers are critical to society both financially and psychologically, and these roles are reenacted daily in the media. The frontier promise in the statement by John Kennedy in his presidential campaign demonstrates the tradition of the frontier archetype. We stand today on the edge of a new frontier ... a frontier of unknown opportunities and paths, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. As marketers grapple with institutional, cultural, and strategic transformations in an increasingly turbulent global economic environment, the frontier archetype continues to resurface in the business media. For Nokia, in Khuller's view, this deal truly represents a new frontier, Jan Fields, president of McDonald's U.S. central division, described chicken as the new frontier while addressing a group of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. analysts in Las Vegas last month. ;Despite the fact that some innovations in infant nutrition are market driven, probiotics represent the next frontier for pediatric neutraceuticals'. As multinational clients concentrate expertise and resources to emerging markets that are increasingly critical to the bottom line due to shifts in population, wealth, profit, and cultural power, there is a set of challenges for research practice and its underlying philosophies to keep pace. Emerging markets have been re-conceptualized as frontiers for financial growth, but continue to often be represented globally as underdeveloped Western markets yet across categories, researchers witness people continuing to leapfrog typical evolutionary paths. Whilst global trends, global brands, products and advertising are present in the emerging markets, the conversation is shifting between global and local. The dialogue between global and local has never been easy or simple. As a new wave of consumers gain access to a new set of products, they are also able to utilize their power as consumers and drive demand for relevant products and brands; and this will be evident in the digital frontier. This new wave of demand will need new products and new insights to support a reshaped global- local relationship. This will require new frameworks which will in part be shaped in Asia and not the West. We will utilize evidence from both market research as well as secondary research to demonstrate the presence and magnitude of the changes happening in the digital frontier in Asia.
Historically some of us have experienced global research studies which have viewed Asia as underdeveloped Western markets; or have fitted findings into a western paradigm. However increasingly we see markets leapfrog typical evolutionary paths: therefore challenging us to explore new frameworks to understand cultural, category and brand evolution. This paper explores how to conceptualise and research experience in the rapidly emerging market of China. How can we use tools that access the different experience threads that enable us to have conversations with people, and where we shift from researching consumers to researching people who are producers. Cultural ideas and practice are likely to be more complex and differentiated as our understanding becomes more tribal, more digital and more behavioural where we become more global and integrated, yet simultaneously, our experience is diverse and local.
This papers provides a dialogue which gives conference attendees the chance to have an inside view on the two sides of qualitative research - practitioner and client. The paper explores the key to the challenges involved, talks to other senior decision makers about their perceptions of market research and asks questions of the way forward.'The future of the market research industry is potentially under threat - because it hasn't evolved to be useful.'
Project Entanglement required a team of both qualitative and quantitative researchers to work closely together and involved a challenging brief requiring an innovative solution. The project demanded a non-linear evolution of insights; the project objectives demanded quantification with respondents simultaneously as the qualitative work (due to time constraints) which included conjoint experiment; and the research experience itself needed to communicate the brand values of the client.