Report R1.2 Research as a Human Practice Seminar Leader: Biju Dominic biju.dominic[at]yahoo.co.in The seminar was structured in two parts. The first part focused on the human/emotional aspects of market research and the second part dealt with the relationship between cognitive neuroscience and marketing. Part 1 This part involved a critical reflection on some common market research practices. It questioned the meaningfulness and relevance of the kind of data collected through interviews, surveys, and focus group techniques. By using some of the results of cognitive neuroscience, it was argued that some of the common ways of doing market research might need to be replaced with new approaches. The seminar started with the observation that about 80% of new products fail and about 50% of adverting expenses are wasted. It was argued that poor market research is one of the possible reasons. Market research is usually done by asking questions to respondents and then analysing their responses in a systematic way, usually employing various statistical techniques. However, this involves many assumptions and expectations about the relationship between what the respondents say and what they really think, believe, or practise. In reality, respondents are only human, hence emotional beings. They are subject to cognitive characteristics of the human brain, personal influences of the researcher, immediate priorities, various social compulsions, etc. Examples of the research done to develop advertisement campaigns for Pepsodent, Axe, and Rexona were discussed. Fundamental Questions in Market Research Why research? Most people do not like to change and adjust to new situations. About 80% of the all the market research is done to reinforce the existing conclusions. Research reports are also used for reassuring others (and avoiding questions!). However, a marketing professional needs to use the results of market research in order to develop marketing strategies, which come with a degree of guarantee for success. What to research? Most market research tries to find out facts or points of view. Both are difficult to capture for many reasons. First, what people say is not necessarily what they do. Second, even if we get a reliable picture of facts or points of view, these may not really be the relevant ones. How to research? There are many issues related to the practical aspects of conducting market research. When a piece of research is conducted by getting field assistants to fill up questionnaires, the quality of the responses is not very high because of the low involvement of the researcher. Many researcher-respondent interactions can be characterised by the ‘sin of suggestibility’: a particular question or statement can trigger a particular thought in the mind of the respondent producing a particular response, not necessarily representing how the respondent normally thinks. Using sophisticated statistical analyses on data so generated does not help one arrive at high-quality conclusions. The following two research approaches were discussed from the point of view of how well they address the above issues: 1. Embedded Research: In this, the researcher is embedded within the reality that is being subject to research (similar to the embedded journalists during the Iraq war). 2. ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique): In this, the researcher avoids verbal responses and allows the respondents to speak through images. In one example, the researcher gave a set of photographic cameras to a group of people to take one picture each of their own community-life that they think is representative of their culture. Some common patterns were found in those pictures that captured some aspects of their culture. Given the criticisms of the survey approach in market research and the arguments in favour of the case study approach discussed in the seminar, there was some discussion comparing the two. One question was about choosing the right case that would produce the correct picture of the whole population. The answer was not very clear. It seemed that getting the correct picture of a population through a survey technique is equally problematic. Therefore, the real answer may lie in using experience and insight in unravelling the important facets of a complex reality and retaining an open mind about revising the result with accumulated experience. Part 2 This part dealt with neurology (science of brain) and cognitive psychology (science of mind). It seems, a number of ideas in marketing and market research are based on very old thinking in the cognitive sciences. However, with new thinking developing in these areas, there is a need to review the fundamental ideas in marketing (e.g., USP, positioning, etc.). A rethinking can start with the following principles. Heuristics Principle: The brain is not as rational as it is made out to be by classical economics. Most decisions are really arrived at by using heuristic devices, of which we may not always be aware. (A reference was made to the work of Daniel Kahnemann, who got the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty”: http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/2002/index.html) Reciprocation Principle: We try to repay whatever another person has provided to us. Contrast Principle: If two things are presented one after another and the second one is different from the first, we tend to see it more differently than it actually is. Social Proof Principle: In arriving at a judgement, we often follow the multitude. We try to find out what the others think in order to determine what or how we need to think. The current thinking in neuroscience supports the following positions, which provide a very different basis to develop marketing thinking (and market research) for the future: Position 1: Decisions are based on emotions, as well as rational thinking Position 2: Decisions depend on types of memory Position 3: Memory is of two types, explicit (short term) and implicit (long term) Position 4: Our memory stores things in the form of images, through engrams, i.e., distributed network of neurons Position 5: Memory is never a direct reproduction of stored perceptions; it is always a reconstruction, based on the type of cue presented to the brain In discussing these, a contrast was drawn between fundamental research (as conducted by university professors) and applied research (as conducted by marketing professionals). There was a suggestion to appreciate the similarities between these two. A researcher, no matter what the context of research is, usually has to step out of the normal flow of life to pursue research. At some stage, the researcher steps back into normal life. For research to be a meaningful human practice, some value addition must take place at this stage. References Heath, R., & Howard-Spink, J. (2000). And now for something completely different: Current thinking about the brain means we need to change the way brands are researched. Market Research Society Conferences. (Source: The World Advertising Resource Center, http://www.warc.com/) Roxburgh, C. (2003, May 19). Hidden flaws in strategy (Parts 1 and 2). Businessworld. Plessis, E. du, & Hollis, N. (2002). Low investment processing: Is it HIP enough? Admap, Issue 430. (Source: The World Advertising Resource Center, http://www.warc.com/)
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