Business-to-Business and Consumer |
Serving the following Markets:
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Product Development: Introduction of a Very Advanced Product |
| Information Need | A major Telecommunications manufacturer needed to
decide upon what features and functions it should roll out for a very advanced, never before used wireless product. There were more ideas in the developmental hopper than time or money, so the race was on to determine which ones to ones would make the most impact as well as revenue once released. Qualitative market researchers are not unfamiliar with this situation. After all, you cannot use a quantitative approach when discussing a wholly new product or service. How could anyone relate? Where would one begin? How would one phrase the questions, if you knew what the questions were in the first place? No, qualitative research is where such product research must begin. |
| Target Population | Consumers and Service Providers |
| Research Methodology | Focus groups with consumers across North America; one-on-one interviews with Service Providers |
| Methodological Challenges | How does one move a respondent into the technological future fast enough so that s/he can be an effective and productive focus group participant? We had no product. The service worked, but we had no service that was outside the lab. We did not need an ideation session. What we needed was an understanding as to what could be done, then a general discussion about lifestyles and how some of what could be done would augment the lifestyle. Then, out of all those possibilities that were raised, have some type of numeric rank ordering that could give us a sense of priorities, especially the distance between choices, and the why behind the choices. Think about the task of learning calculus if all you know is algebra. In order to get from algebra to calculus quickly, you need a bridging concept or two. You don't need to learn geometry or trigonometry first. That's generally what is taught, but people can go from algebra directly to calculus. They just need a little conceptual help, and that is what researchers found years ago. Apply that to this situation. If you take a panel of individuals, even those who are technically savvy, and ask them to come up with new and creative uses of mobile handsets, they would be very limited in their answers. Help them out a little with some examples and they will start to generate great ideas all on their own. This is what we did here. We primed the pump, if you will, and once done, the ideas began to flow. |
| Outcome | Successful project. The many ideas that were generated by the focus group participants, the service suppliers and the manufacturer's research staff were whittled down to a short list, some of which were taken up and others dropped. This was also a feeder into a large quantitative study covering both consumers and service providers. |
| Contact: John M. Jessen |
| Copyright © 2006 Soundings Research |
| Last update: 04 / 2010 |