A striking new advertising campaign was produced for Benson & Hedges in France. Seven advertisements were prepared, and research was needed to establish, first, whether this campaign projected the image desired for the brand, and if so whether it was indeed viewed as a coherent campaign; and second, which of the seven advertisements would be most appropriate for the campaign. A secondary, but very important, question was whether it would be possible to advertise both the mainstream and the low tar products within this particular campaign. Since the research questions covered both smoker motivation and visual effectiveness, it was decided to use a number of qualitative research techniques, in conjunction with semiotic analysis of the advertisements. The paper discusses details of the methodology, and the areas in which each research process was found most valuable.
The paper comments on qualitative research as it is carried out at present in Europe according to different 'styles'. What is referred to as the "new" qualitative research is discussed and the view expressed that it has emerged from dissatisfaction felt by many professionals with the superficiality of much qualitative work; that it is a synthesis of old and new ideas incorporated within an eclecticism deriving from several related disciplines. Major influences from within and outside the market research profession are examined and the more important techniques in use, the so-called psychoscopic techniques, are discussed.
The debate should, however, take place in the mind of the reader. Section 1, âThe âNewâ Qualitative Research: The Reasons Why?â presents detailed explanations of the ânewâ qualitative research, including, in an edited form, three of the five âclassicâ papers from the Rome Congress. It finishes with an edited version of a review of qualitative research from the 1985 Wiesbaden Congress. Whereas Section 1 takes a theoretical stance sympathetic to the ânewâ qualitative research, Section 2, âThe âNewâ Qualitative Research: The How?â presents case history material to support that position. In Section 3, âAn Alternative Viewpoint to the âNewâ Qualitative Researchâ, the de Groot paper stands alone, presenting a powerful set of arguments in favour of that particular thinking.
The world economic crisis has had fundamental repercussions on marketing and qualitative studies. The need for exactitude and the increased culture of economic actors have resulted, to a certain extent, in the breakdown of the barrier which existed between universities and marketing. We have seen the arrival of micro-computing and at the same time, the changing of conceptions from dynamic to cybernetic notions; all of this has led researchers to consider communication as being made up of the message which has been transmitted and of its feedback (and no longer as the exchanges of measurable influxes at the receiver level).
A new qualitative technology is developing based upon improved skills, pressure from marketing management and advertising agencies for more useful research data, and the consequent reappraisal of qualitative research techniques. This movement is occurring chiefly in the UK and Europe but similar signs are now evident in the US and worldwide.
This example shows well that this way of reasoning and its pertaining techniques made it possible to find a competitive locating which helped to endow red AMBASSADEUR with a strong personality and to use at the same time all the potentialities of the brand to create a second product which is endowed with its own personality and will at the same time enrich the image of the first product.
This paper is concerned with applications rather than techniques per se. That is, with the results of using some of the techniques Sampson described, in several different product category and service fields. Our emphasis is on âadded valueâ - the belief that additional information and insights are gained from the application of the techniques used, the insights they provide and a belief in the need to operate within an integrated framework for qualitative research, which we have called âBASICSâ.
The communication audit, a fundamental, strategic study, is situated in line with traditional motivation studies. But contrary to the latter, it sets the primary of communication, supporting itself by the finding that brands are beings of discourse, that, there is, therefore, reason to analyse motivation in relation to the product but also and above all, to explore the symbolic imagination in relation to objects and brands, a mediating concept between deep, unusable motivation and purely descriptive buying behaviour. With an analysis of brand discourse on the one hand an analysis of consumer discourse on the other, the audit puts these two orders into a systematic relationship between which meaning is produced.
The discussion about ethics is probably a red-herring. It is difficult to damn an approach to qualitative research following the report of a marriage breaking up through participation in a âsensitivityâ group, only one of many group discussion formats. The marriage may well have broken up through a chance meeting in a bus queue. By and large, professional market researchers, bound by national and international Codes of Practice, adopt a strict code of ethics.
This comment suggests that good research, conducted by competent researchers, will achieve a considerable degree of agreement. It is not, after all, the intention (or the expectation) of the ânewâ qualitative researchers to come up with different answers to more conventional qualitative research but, rather, more detailed ones, and answers to different questions rather than different answers to the same questions.