Mobile Qualitative Research methods for researching the Cost of Living
Getting real-life perspectives directly from the Voice of Customers
Researching consumer behaviours in the Cost of Living Crisis
As we approach the end of 2022 and the winter months are just in sight, all eyes are on the continuing rise in living costs for many households around the world.
“Large numbers of people are worried that they will not be able to afford to keep buying groceries if prices continue to increase at the current rate” (Charlie Weston)
As all demographics in society begin to feel the crunch more than ever, all industries will be searching for ways to improve their services by meeting the needs of new and existing customers.
“As prices rise and create financial problems for many, consumers are responding by changing their shopping behaviors and preferences to ensure they can meet daily expenses” (Nielsen IQ)
The key to meeting the needs of consumers is by identifying the pressing issues they face. How can consumer brands achieve this? By asking consumers the right questions and getting a sneak peek into their everyday lives, organisations and brands can begin to unfold the real complexities households face in this emerging cost of living crisis.
In recent months the team at Indeemo have seen an influx of clients spanning from Marketing teams, UX Researchers and Research Ops teams, and Consumer Insights teams with requirements that can help them better understand the impact of the cost of living crisis for their users and customers. Here, we want to share with you a brief guide on how you and your team can take an exploratory yet in-depth approach to researching the real impact of this international crisis, such as changes in behaviour, new problem-spaces and any emerging unmet needs.
First, choosing the right approach to your research.
Choosing the best Mobile Qualitative Research method
This might go without saying, but there are countless ways that you can build an understanding of your customers. Typically, and moreso, traditionally, market research and multimarket research adopts a quantitative approach to understanding the needs and expectations of user personas and consumer segmentations.
However, to get a more contextual, in-the-moment understanding of the real impact of the cost of living crisis, many of our clients are looking for qualitative research alternatives that allow them to dig deeper and find out what really matters.
Below, we share a variety of qualitative research tasking methods that can be used as foundations to, or clarifications of, larger quantitative research studies and segmentations.
Pre-Tasking for Focus Groups or In-depth Interview research
“Pre-tasking is an asynchronous, mobile qualitative research methodology that enables you to capture moments like these ahead of your online IDIs or Focus Groups” (Indeemo).
Pre-Tasking is one of the most popular mobile qualitative research methods that is transforming the way that researchers and brands understand customers.
The concept is simple, whereby you and your team capture various aspects of your research participants' lives, behaviours and experiences before you jump into IDIs or Focus Groups.
2. Consumer Diary Studies
Consumer Diaries is one of the richest and most informative qualitative research methods out there for understanding consumer needs and behaviours. The goal of a consumer diary study is to simply task research participants to document their lives over time. We often work with clients who require a deep dive into the consumer's path to purchase behaviours or when brands need to bring segmentations to life using video diaries.
Diary study techniques, these days, are harnessed by mobile diary study tools like Indeemo. Here, consumers record their path to purchase and buying journey behaviours with the use of Video diaries and photographs. This use case surrounding the consumer consumer path to purchase research through a diary study method can be most useful.
3. Digital Ethnography
Digital Ethnography is embedded with all the principles of qualitative research. It has become a key component in the recipe for understanding the impacts of the cost of living crisis. The key difference between digital ethnography and traditional ethnographic techniques is that digital ethnography can be completely asynchronous. This has many benefits.
First, you, the researcher, are not required to be present for observations. Second, you significantly reduce the researcher effect by not being physically around your research participant - simply minimising the risk of bias. And lastly, the data and insights you capture are seamless and instantaneous. Each video upload and every task completion is streamlined directly to you for analysis.
Task Design tips when using Mobile Qualitative Research methods
Fieldwork durations for mobile qualitative research, be it for digital ethnography or consumer diaries, will require at least 1-2 days of activity, but, on average, our clients conduct 5-7 day diary studies.
There are two central points to know.
First, when adopting a mobile qualitative research approach to your consumer research, this does not mean it will be long, drawn out, and require too much time on analysis. Many UX and consumer insights research teams work with an agile approach. This means that your fieldwork can be as short and snappy as you wish. In the context of the Cost of Living Crisis, you can easily design your fieldwork to capture daily routines such as the uses of household appliances that only require research participants to take a photograph using the Indeemo App and upload it straight to your researcher dashboard.
Second, depending on whether you are doing exploratory research or have specific questions you need answered, the tasks that you build into your qualitative research design will vary.
Tasks for a Diary Study typically focus on the what, when, where and how of consumer behaviour and experiences e.g. beverage occasions over the course of the week. Consumers can take a quick photo or record a short video and upload them in the moment for you to analyse. However, the real super power of mobile qual is the ability for you to use comments and push notifications to surface the whys of various consumer behaviours.
This is critical, simply because when research participants are asked to describe how they feel about a product, or why they are choosing to cut back on their leisurely spending habits, you will soon uncover a range of unknowns that may not have been captured through other approaches.
This leads us to tasking, and uncovering the golden nuggets to tackling the cost of living crisis.
Tasking strategies for mobile qualitative research
Think about how and when you want to assign tasks to your respondents. Most projects will typically assign 5-10 tasks to be completed asynchronously or repeatedly over a period of time.
For example, a diary study on energy consumption will usually have several tasks that can be responded to at any time. Indeemo’s mobile ethnography platform supports several types of research tasking strategies.
All at Once Tasking for capturing consumer behaviours and routines
In this task list type, all tasks will be shown to the respondent at the outset of the project, until the final day of fieldwork. This ensures respondents know from their first login, what is expected of them for the duration of the project.
This method of tasking is often applied to pre-task projects where showing all of the tasks to the respondent at the outset will not have any impact on the quality of the responses. It’s also useful for light touch diary studies of consumption moments.
For example, if your study is related to energy consumption or utilities, the following tasks can be used for researching your target audience:
Day in the Life of Home Appliance Usage
Use photo tasks for participants to take photos of the electrical appliances in their home
Use video tasks where consumers take you on a safari around their home and talk about their various appliances - what they like / dislike etc.
Use a photo task to get consumers to document every appliance they use in a typical morning, afternoon or evening routine.
Use video tasking to get consumers to reflect back on their usage of appliances over the course of a typical day and get them and how it has changed / will change because of the cost of living crisis.
All at once tasking is particularly powerful for repetitive routines or research where there is no specific timeline or sequence for the behaviours and routines you need to research
Sequential Tasking for understanding specific topics and consumer behaviours
Sequential tasking should be used for projects where you want respondents to carry out tasks in a particular sequence but do not want the respondent to see the upcoming tasks until they have completed their current task.
With reference to the Cost of Living crisis, we have an example below for you to get a rich understanding of how sequential tasking can be formulated related to cost of living perceptions and behaviours.
Video task for getting to know your target consumer pesona. Who they are, where they live, who they live with etc.
Use selfie videos to get them to talk about their current financial situation, how they feel about it, what stresses them out etc.
Then get them to upload a series of photos relating to changes in behaviour around the purchase of certain items or activities as a result of the cost of living and why.
Mobile Screen recording is particularly powerful to understand how they search for advice online with respect to financial planning, budgeting or switching utility providers for example.
Scheduled Tasking for week in the life consumer diaries
Scheduled tasking allows you to set a specific time and date for your task to appear in the app for your target consumer, and also to be hidden if required. When a new task is released, the respondents automatically get a push notification to their device, alerting them of the new task’s availability.
Scheduled tasking works extremely well when we want to get an understanding of the changes in people's behaviours, thoughts and feelings over time. E.g. Where energy consumption becomes more costly, how do consumers use household appliances during the weekday versus the weekend.
Alternatively, how have consumer shopping habits changed over the course of a weeke.g. a week in the life diary of consumer purchases and cost of living during the summer versus a week in the life of consumers and cost of living during the autumn/winter months.
Below is an example of a typical task list that is used to understand consumers thoughts and feelings as they change over time, for example:
Use photo tasking to get them to take pictures of their pantry or refrigerator to understand what brands they currently have.
Get them to take screenshots or photos of shopping lists to understand how they plan their weekly shop.
Use videos to get them to record their in-store shopper experience and specifically how they select one brand over another at that critical point of purchase
Use video tasking to understand meal time and how they cook during the course of a week versus a weekend. What changes in behaviours have they made as a result of the cost of living crisis.
Used scheduled tasks to understand beverage occasions over the course of a week or weekend and again how have their routines or behaviour changed
Let us support your Mobile Qualitative Research method research
Regardless of whether you are a Food and Beverage Brand trying to research beverage occasions, a Fintech Company trying to research tipping behaviours or a University trying to understand the path to purchase, mobile qualitative research is a powerful research method for truly understanding the real world impact of the cost of living crisis on consumers, users or patients.
If you’d like to discuss a specific mobile qualitative research method or learn more about the capabilities of the indeemo platform, please get in touch.
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