Online Qualitative Research is Taking Off

I believe that in time, we will look back on 2020 and talk about it in the same tones as the industrial revolution, the advent of cheap air travel and the emergence of the internet. 

US ecommerce growth in Q2, 2020 alone was the equivalent of the previous 16 quarters. Our routines and rituals have been completely changed due to Covid. We are in a digital, omnichannel ‘new normal’. This means that brands not only have to completely transform their approach to doing business, they must also transform their approach to understanding their customers.  

This, I believe, is going to be a boon for online qualitative research and this article shares my thoughts on why this is the case.

My Perspective - Eugene Murphy

Full disclosure: I am not a qualitative researcher. I am a lucky husband, a proud dad and an engineering graduate who has spent over 20 years doing everything from banking technology to startups, to architecture, to social networking. 

For the past 5 years however, I have been the Founder and CEO of the Mobile Ethnography platform, Indeemo. In this time, my team and I have had the privilege to support thousands of research projects for everyone from freelance consultants to many of the best loved brands on the planet.  

As a result, I believe I have a unique perspective on qualitative research and innovation. 

This year we have seen a surge in investment into qualitative research by brands that have for decades focused primarily on analytics and big data - the quant side of the market research equation. 

We expect this trend to continue and I personally believe that qualitative research is entering an era of significant growth that is being driven by digital transformation.

The Evolution of Online and Mobile

Why is qualitative research entering a new phase of growth?

To share my reasons, please let me step back a little bit. 

About 25 years to be precise. 

“Online” i.e. the internet kicked off in the mid 90’s. Thanks to 56k modems it was possible to “log on” and go “online” using your desktop computer. However, the internet was a difficult place to figure out until Google launched in 1998. The internet was instantly searchable. Then came the dotcom boom of the late 1990’s followed by the dotcom bust in the early 2000’s. 

Sitting at your desktop typing into chat rooms was the norm until Steve Jobs walked out on stage in 2008 holding an iPhone. He put “the internet in our pockets” and in an instant everything changed. “Online” evolved to “mobile” and we’ve never looked back. Neither did Facebook. 

Facebook made geography history. We could now connect with family and friends wherever they were in the world. 3G connected mobile phones fuelled an explosion in sharing, an unwitting digitisation of our daily lives. Fast forward to 4G and cheap mobile data and suddenly it was possible to share more data, faster. Suddenly video sharing exploded and this gave rise to Tik Tok! Why? 

Every smartphone is now a high-end video camera and once 5G rolls out, communicating in video will be high definition and virtually free which opens up a whole new era for qualitative research that will be dominated by mobile and video. 

The Emergence of Big Data and AI

This explosion in mobile connectivity meant that even our refrigerators, heating systems and CCTV cameras now had an internet connection. This led to exponential growth in the amount of data being produced which in turn led to the emergence of ‘big data’ and ‘data science’ as professions.

Brands have been grappling with big data for a decade now and, despite having more data than they can literally handle, the brands we speak to confess that they have yet to truly unlock its potential. Cue the emergence of AI and more specifically machine learning. 

AI’s superpower is interpreting large swathes of data to find patterns which it can “learn”. Machine learning can provide us with more of what it infers that we like. As a result, it has gamified us into pigeonholed, digital content echo chambers that are feeding us more and more of what we’ve previously engaged with. Is it any wonder society seems so polarized? Take platforms like Twitter and Facebook as examples - we are increasingly splintering into groups of us and them. 

This hyper-personalised version of the internet that we are all now being served has led to a massive erosion in online trust. It’s hard to believe anything you read online these days. And if you are a brand that relies on social listening for trends and insights, how can you trust that what is being said online is what people really believe, think and do? 

Here’s the thing. You can’t.

One need only look at the percentage of fraudulent accounts to realise the extent of the challenge.

The Achilles Heel of Quant

What does this mean for qualitative research? 

Brands that have ridden the 20 year wave of tech innovation are the ones that will succeed whether we like it or not. They have harnessed big data and machine learning to outperform and disrupt more traditional incumbents. We are seeing it more and more now since COVID-19. 

But I believe that their sole reliance on data and analytics is also their achilles heel. I believe they now need to really embrace qualitative research. Why? 

They are tech enabled, ‘digital by default’ and drowning in a sea of data and analytics. None of them operate in a physical medium where they get to meet their customers face to face. Unlike businesses that actually talk and serve their customers, human to human, these digital by default brands experience their customers through a lens of big data and analytics. The institutional understanding of their customers is derived solely from quant and analytics. 

They have zero day to day human connection with their customers and this is a huge blind spot which qualitative research can help to illuminate.  

The Last Mile of Insights: Why?

Sure they know what we browse. They know what songs are in our playlists. They know what we watch. They know what we consume, what we play, what we search for, what websites we visit. What we share, what we favorite and what we like?

However, big data and AI have a last mile problem when it comes to understanding human behavior. It can tell us everything about what we do but it will never truly understand why. 

It takes humans to properly understand humans and we believe it always will. Sure, AI will do some useful heavy lifting like text analysis or video transcription or object recognition, but AI will never pick up on nuance or will never appreciate the impact of context. 

Simply put, it will never feel, and technology and data driven brands are starting to get this now. 

Why Digital Transformation is a Boon for Qualitative Research

As a result, we believe that for digitally enabled brands to truly innovate, they need to put multimedia, real life, context rich, in-the-moment, human, behavioural data back into their data sets. And to do this, they need to do more qualitative research. 

They need to understand the why. 

Why we tap, click, like, share and purchase. 

They know that qualitative research is how they can surface the why’s. They appreciate that they did not historically have the expertise in house to do so. The people I speak to in Qual are telling me stories of big tech hiring qualitative researchers at scale from traditional consumer focused brands.  

Our clients are talking of an explosion in demand for qual researchers from traditionally tech and data driven companies. 

Our data from 2020 confirms this and this is why we’re so bullish on Qual. 

Time for Qual to go Omni-Channel

However, in the same way COVID has forced a necessary digital transformation on pretty much every industry, the qualitative research industry also needs to change. 

• Qual needs to evolve to be able to operate remotely and in an omnichannel manner. 

• Qual needs to evolve to better help brands understand omni-channel experiences and journeys. 

• Qual needs to quickly catch up with this digital transformation and help brands figure out human behavior in every context and on every medium.  

The qualitative researchers who can quickly embrace modern research methodologies and offer clients a capability to understand omnichannel human behavior will quickly find themselves turning down work. 

And to do more qual in an omnichannel era of physical disconnection, you need to leverage online qual and Mobile Ethnography. 

• Nothing else will help brands punch through all of that obfuscated anonymous data. 

• Nothing else will help brands see the people behind the pie charts, the emotion behind the analytics and the why’s that motivate the what’s. 

The Benefits of Mobile Ethnography

Mobile Ethnography is an agile way to remotely connect and cut through the layers of obfuscation and anonymity.

• It brings video proof of contextual, in-the-moment, real life human behaviour back into the data set. 

• It punches through NPS scores with videos of people showing you exactly what their experience is when engaging with your product or service. 

• It puts context on your bounce rate metrics using mobile screen recordings that allow you to watch and listen as users double tap on their phone to jump to your competitors website and make that purchase for 12 cents less. 

• It’s that multimedia, in the moment daily diary study that brings your anonymous survey to life with repetitive footage of what people actually do in their everyday context. 

• It’s what participants emote and sometimes confess in selfie videos recorded when there's no one else in the room. 

That’s why big data, AI and quant will never replace qual. 

This is why I believe qual is only getting started. 

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