Bias and Context

In order to do the best job possible, Market researchers need to be aware of their own biases which arise out of their own context. That sounds like so obvious- so why am I writing about something so basic?

In the past few months I have gotten new insight into my biases and how my context influences my interpretation in several ways. Being a seminary student and learning about how the context of the New Testament influenced what was written was one eye opener among many others in the academic setting. But I have also been reading some popular books that opened my eyes that seem applicable to market research.

Daniel Kahneman’s summary of the field of behavioral psychology Thinking, Fast and Slow is about the biases we humans have in our thinking. It’s worth reading from two different perspectives in respect to market researcher – how we do market research (which I will address in a later post) and how we analyze and interpret results. One of the ideas I took away from this book is that like all other human beings, we market researchers take shortcuts in how we analyze things that then influence our decisions. Kahneman makes the point that we need to do that- we couldn’t live our lives as we do if we didn’t “think fast” in most of our lives. But we need to recognize what we are doing and reexamine it occasionally. I love his example on page 112 of how he came to recognize that even he was guilty of using a statistical rule of thumb instead of going through the calculations, which resulted in his experiments failing more often than they might have done if they had been powered correctly. How often do we do that kind of thing in our field? I suspect more than we realize.
The second book that I am reading that has helped me see my biases is Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. This entire book uses data to counteract our ingrained belief that violence has been getting worse. His evidence is impressive but you can tell from his comments he believes he is fighting an uphill battle. How often do we face a similar situation? He references Kahneman’s work several times but perhaps he would have had more success if he tried to think about how to apply Kahneman’s principles to change people’s minds. I think there’s a wealth of opportunity in this new field of psychology to affect both how we both do research and then persuade people that we are right.

But back to market research. How can we market researchers get out of our own viewpoint so that we understand our own biases? And how do we help our marketing colleagues do the same? To do that it’s is crucial to take on another person’s point of view, to empathize with them. I remember a marketer and a moderator at a focus group on a diet product making fun of the respondent’s anguish about losing weight in the back room. At the time, I was struck by how disrespectful that was. Importantly, I think their judgment kept them inside their own skin and put up a wall between them and the respondent. Thus they lost an opportunity to gain insight into the target audience – what about the respondents made them so anguished that the initial reaction of observers was that they were ridiculous? That is where the power of both marketing and market research is.

This is one reason why I think attending focus groups is so important- when we rely on vendors to provide us with the report and/or rely on videoconferencing (which face it, practically no one really watches), we lose an opportunity to get inside respondents heads, to empathize with them. Years ago, Dick Fordyce of J&J felt focus group attendance was so important that he set a boundary that his group would not do qualitative research unless Product Management would commit to attend. The research would be cancelled if they didn’t show up. Given the concern about travel costs and pressure on people’s schedules, that sounds ludicrous today but I think there is a lesson here.

But I also think that we can set up ground rules so that we get even more out of focus group attendance. Some high end qual groups have special tasks for back room respondents to complete – I would suggest that any way to help respondents pay attention and to get inside respondents’ heads would be a good thing. When I was at Ogilvy, we used to write before and after statements as part of the strategy documents– making sure that we understood how a typical respondent thought about the product or category now. What if we gave assignments to focus group attenders to take the point of view of a certain respondent and write a 3 sentence paragraph from their point of view at the end of each group? I am sure there are lots of ways to accomplish focus group attendee engagement and identification with respondents; readers please chime in with ideas.

For those folks who absolutely can’t be there, video and audio do have a role. The right video or audio clips are very powerful – for those of you who don’t know, there are now businesses of creating clips for presentations. I think one of the powers of ethnographic research is to get people into the viewpoint of their customers – which has perhaps become even more important as people travel less.

In my New Testament class, we got inside people’s heads by researching other people’s context and their interpretations of a particular Bible verse. It was eye opening to see how context affects interpretation. What if a Market Researcher had to state our own context and how they thought it might affect interpretation of the data?

Finally, think about other ways to get outside your own viewpoint. Reading books is one (especially books that might challenge you), so are outside activities. One outside activity that we might not think about is volunteering. Volunteerism is good in a lot of ways- it makes us grateful for what we have and does provide needed services if done right. If you work directly with people who need help, it may have a side benefit of taking you out of your own viewpoint for a while. I know serving in a soup kitchen opened my group’s minds as to what homeless people face in their day to day life.

Readers: what benefits do you see of getting outside of our viewpoints? Do you do it? How? Any books you can recommend or techniques?

More and better insights

Insights, insights, insights.  I’ve spent a lot of time debating whether something is an insight or not.  There’s a lot of talk about what insights are and how to get them. In my view, insights are a new way of looking at things that leads to game changing behavior, leads to competitive advantage, leads to being worth the cost to fund a Corporate Market Research Department.  Without insights, Market Research ends up just funding projects without really accomplishing anything.

So how can you improve insights?   I think that we need to realize that, as a form of creativity, insights require different thinking skills.  In his new book, Imagine, Jonas Lehrer describes two types of thinking:

1.  Convergent thinking- all about analysis and attention- the type of thinking market researchers use most often.
2. Divergent thinking- described as “unexpected thoughts when logic won’t work”- which is a good description of the kind of thinking that leads to the deepest insights.

Aha!  This means that the typical market research thinking doesn’t yield divergent thinking.  This starts to explain why market researchers may usually be so poor at coming up with insights.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Everyone is capable of divergent thinking, in the right conditions -different types of conditions other than the extreme focus and analysis that market researchers are used to.  To prompt divergent thinking and thus better insights, we need to encourage people to get out of their routine way of solving problems and approach things in a different way.

I recommend reading Lehrer’s book, to help you understand this topic in more detail.  Interestingly, the book starts with a market research story – how ethnographic work and breaking the rules on testing new products resulted in a new breakthrough product for P&G.  It’s worthwhile reading for Market Researchers just from that stand point.

Imagine: How Creativity Works

Following are a few of they ways I took away for how to create conditions more appropriate for generating insights (using divergent thinking processes):

• Do things to get into a positive mood
• Relax and take a break
• Capture early morning thoughts (set your alarm clock for a half hour earlier so you can lay in bed and think when you are half asleep)
• Pay attention when you are daydreaming
• Surround yourself with blue (Hmm, what if each MR department had a blue “insight” room)

There are some surprising suggestions later on for group creativity that I won’t summarize including why brainstorming doesn’t work.

The fact that insights require a different type of thought pattern probably explains why our analytically heavy market research community has been relatively poor at generating insights.  But it seems that there are things we can do to change that, it is not immutable.

Market Research that can help develop award winning advertising

I think there is a key difference between two different types of research that many market researchers don’t realize – the difference between research that helps develop creative materials and research to evaluate creative materials.  I have worked at and with several different ad agencies and been trained myself on how to run brainstorming groups, so I bring a slightly different perspective than many market researchers.

To get us on common ground, I’ll start from the idea that Market Research has the ultimate goal of selling more but that it doesn’t sell per se.  The premise is that is that if the company understands the customer and his needs, then the company should sell more by developing better sales materials.  That’s why it pays a company to have a good Marketing Research department.

One important way to contribute to better sales is through advertising. So, an important role that Market Research can play is to participate in creative development.   The danger is think everything market research does is evaluative and not to recognize when you are helping to develop creative work.  Evaluating too soon keeps the creative ideas from fully developing and becoming award winning work.

The key principles I learned in my ad agency and brainstorming experience about how market research can contribute to developing great creative work are:

1. Your goal is to help the entire team develop the best advertising for the brand.  This means giving the ad agency what they need to do a good job.  You need to treat them as a customer.  (I realize this may seem backwards, but it’s a concept that has helped me.)  I have occasionally seen market researchers treat them as lower forms of life.  I have seen market researchers take pleasure in criticizing early creative work before it should be evaluated – calling it ‘dreck’ or ‘terrible’.  I call that abuse because of the effect that I see it has on creatives.  Many creatives hate market researchers because of the way they have been treated.  Because they have been previously abused, of being abused, if you want to take my approach, you will have to approach them and have to build bridges to the creative department.  Do it, it is worth it if the brand sells one more package.
2. It’s hard to create brilliant advertising – if it was easy we could all do it.  But it is not and we can’t.  And that’s why they need your help.
3. Ideas are very fragile, when first developed they can be killed very easily, even if they are potentially brilliant – you need to look for the germ of brilliance because it doesn’t come along very often. Don’t evaluate too soon, wait until they tell you it is finished.
4. Creative types careers live or die based on how well their ideas do.  This means that creative types are very protective of their ideas.  Respect that.  If you don’t, you may make an enemy.
5. Give creative folks what they need.  Ask them if they are getting what they need.
6. Creative types appreciate market research which helps them understand their customer better and gives them insight into how the customer is reacting to their work.  Help them understand.
7. Don’t forget your role.  You are not in the creative role – you aren’t trying to fix what is wrong, no one is interested in your creative ideas, that’s not what you are getting paid for.  (Marketing folks can get away with it, but not marketing researchers.)

I am proud that my market research work helped to develop advertising that has won awards, I think I contributed to that through my understanding of the creative process. (I hope my agency colleagues agree. )

Note that I am available for training based on the ideas in blogs, for speeches and for consulting work on creating a climate where these ideas can flourish. Please contact me at karenjtibbals   at  yahoo  dot com  to learn more.

“I never rely on Market Research”

This quote from Steve Jobs is really challenging for those of us in Market Research to deal with.  Here is the full quote:

“Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’  But that’s not my approach.  Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘if I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’’  People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.  That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.” (Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Thorndike Press, 2011 (large print edition), Page 806-7) Here’s a link to the amazon page for the book:

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=karenjtibbals-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1451648537&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

If you know very much about Steve Jobs and how he built both Apple and Pixar, you know that this quote is literally true. He did not use Market Research to understand his markets or understand what consumers wanted.  He didn’t get help from consumers to design his products or to help make any decisions.  He used his own instincts and opinions – he listened to others but he often disregarded what other people said.   And he was very, very successful at creating products that people not just like, they love them.  Customers lined up for days on the first day the new iPhone and the latest iPad were are available.  So, he seems to have had a point.

So what does that say about the profession of Market Research?    Does that mean what we do is useless?  Or is there something we can learn about how we should do our job?

Here are a few of my thoughts about Steve Jobs and market research:

1.  This worked for Steve Jobs because he was the target market for his products.  He was less successful in other ventures (for example, with his computing company NeXT) when he didn’t understand the customers and their needs.
2. He had great insight into how needs and technology can intersect and that gave him great power.  It made him a genius.
3. He had extremely exacting standards, beyond what consumers who are more casually involved in a product would have, so went above and beyond what consumers might tell you about quality.
4. But he was right that consumers may not know what they want until you show it to them.  And in fact, consumers may not even know what they want when you do show it to them if it is cutting edge.

What can we learn from his attitude towards market research?

1. If we aren’t in our target market, we need to totally understand them.  That means really getting to know them, not just listening to a report from our market research vendor. It means investing time in going into the field, and making sure our marketing colleagues do so also.
2. Don’t assume that your target audience can tell you what they want.  A story from a different source illustrates this point.  A certain car company which wanted to increase market share for their mini-van conducted a study to ask consumers what they wanted.  The answer came back “more cup holders.”  But more cup holders didn’t work to sell more mini-vans.  What finally worked was ethnographic research that provided the identified a problem that moms had in getting their young kids who were in car seats out of the car.  The moms needed to walk around the car over and over again to get the kids.  Adding another door on the driver’s side met that need and increased sales.  Moms didn’t know what they needed, and it wasn’t what was asked for, but once consumers saw it, they knew it met their needs.
3. If something you are doing breaks a current paradigm, consumers may respond negatively to it even if it may ultimately be successful.  The critics’ initial reaction to the iPad was negative (no USB cord, no multitasking, no Flash, etc.) but criticism faded when people got their hands on it and we all know how successful the iPad is.  Another example is the research for the Aeron chair got the lowest scores ever seen in market research because it broke the paradigm.  Before Aeron, comfort meant using lots of padding and, until customers sat in it and felt the benefits of it, no one could know that.  Aeron has become an industry standard.  Swiffer from P&G is still another example of breaking a paradigm and the initial negative reactions in market research.  (See the new book, Imagine by Jonas Lehrer for details.)
4. You may need to do unconventional research to get the kind of true insights that a genius like Steve Jobs had. All of these products went ahead, but in some cases market research was a stumbling block instead of a stepping stone. In order to avoid this, Market Research may have to step up to the plate to do things differently.  This type of research has to be thought through carefully and it can’t be done by a formula or automated.  It needs a human being who has time to devote to it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.  Please post your thoughts or email me if you don’t want to make them public.

Note: Mike Garcia did some work for Apple and has added some additional insights in his reply – be sure to read it.

How can management support introverts ?

To build on what I wrote about last week, (how introverts can make changes to make themselves more effective), this week I will address the issue of managing a group of introverts, specifically how to manage introverts so that they are more effective in an environment in which their effectiveness is judged by their ability to interact.

To start, let’s look at this as if it were a marketing problem – and it is- we need to market Corporate Marketing Research to increase its perception of providing value!

First, what are your product characteristics?  Take an inventory.  Who are the people you have – not just market skill levels but personality types and skill at interacting with others.  Next assess what your department and individual standard operating procedures are.

Second, customer attitudes:  What are the attitudes of brand management and top management towards your group and towards the individual players.

Third: Analyze.  Using the above, do a swot analysis for your department.  Where is the congruence between the inventory of characteristics and the image?  Where is there a disconnect?  Why is that?

Depending on the disconnects you find, the basic suggestions I have are to focus on the key elements to support increasing effectiveness in interactions:

Negotiation and Persuasion for Market Researchers- while a regular negotiation course could probably help, it would be great to help people develop skills at dealing with brand managers with real issues.  We can clue in our staff on the usual agenda of brand managers (to make their mark and be noticed so they can get their next promotion), what their personality type usually is (extroverted, unlike our staff) and some successful ways to build a good relationship (such as convince them that you will help them look smarter in front of their boss).  There’s lots more, but you get the idea.

Presentation skills for Market Researchers-  An off the shelf presentation skills class or commitment to something like a Toastmasters program would be useful.  But there are some different issues in presenting lots of data.  For example, there are two different ways to build a slide deck – start with the conclusions or build to the conclusions.  Which is better in which situation?  How much time should you allot per slide depending on the audience and the density of the data?  And by the way, how do you present data?  On a very practical level, setting expectations for a practice session with their direct superior is another easy way to raise the standards.

Being effective in meetings- A true introvert’s weakest point is probably his or her effectiveness in meetings.  You can help by setting clear expectations of behavior in meetings, with coaching and cheer leading from the side.  Another way to help is to set up non-threatening situations so they can practice meeting behavior – such as a role playing session between peers or any practice in meetings.

But beyond support, you need to be clear that these interactive elements will be included in an evaluation. It doesn’t matter if the study they shepherded through the system was elegantly designed, using cutting edge techniques and came in thick binders with lots of findings and recommendations if those findings don’t make a difference.  A key element of  an individual’s performance has got to be is how much difference their work made.

I’ll close with a snippet from Steve Job’s biographer.  In recounting the story behind the movie “Toy Story” he says that the key belief that Steve Jobs and John Lasseter of Pixar had that “products have an essence to them, a purpose for which they were made.  If an object were to have feelings, these would be based on its desire to fulfill its essence. ….  if (a glass of water) had feelings, it would be happy when full and sad when empty.”  (“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, page 418).

I believe that market researchers essence is to make an impact on business decisions.  Although they will have to stretch themselves, the more decisions they make an impact on, the happier they will be.  And the better off our companies will be if Market Researchers start becoming the catalyst for smarter and smarter decisions.

Tips for Introverts to excel in a world that values interaction

To take what I am saying about introverts to the next level, I would suggest that in order for the work of an introvert to be fully appreciated and acted upon in a world that values interaction, there are times that introverts should act like extroverts.  In fact, that Susan Cain, in her new book on introverts called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, includes a chapter titled: “When Should You Act More Extroverted Than You Really Are?”  (Its on my proposed summer reading list but I haven’t read it yet.)

The question I will address is: how you do that?  If you are a true introvert, it isn’t easy to act like an extrovert.  But I have done it, so I will speak from my own experience of what has worked for me.  Readers (especially you introverts out there) please chime in with other suggestions.

The basic tool that helped me to be able to act more like an extrovert, even though I am not one, is preparation.  Because I feel more confident when I have thought out what I want to say, preparation becomes key for me.  I use it in situations ranging from telephone calls to meetings to presentations:  I may write out my talking points for a phone call, or a meeting.  Although I may never look at my notes again, I know I have them and I know I have thought about the issues and feel better prepared.  I know that if I get flustered, I can pull out my notes and buy some time to refresh my memory. I rarely need to do that, but just knowing I can is comforting.

Here are some more detail about how to use preparation helps me to act more like an extrovert specifically in a Market Research setting:

A. Presentations-If, like most introverts, you don’t like giving presentations, you are not alone.  The number one fear people have is public speaking, which is ranked before death.  But if you want your thoughtful, insightful work to be appreciated, then you need to learn to overcome that fear.  You don’t need to love giving presentations, just to be able to do a relatively good job.  So how do you overcome it?  You probably already know the answer but maybe this refresher will help:

1. I’ve already said preparation- one of the best ways to feel good when going into a presentation is to be thoroughly prepared.
2. Practice- there are two parts to practice –

• one is your general presentation skills. The more you present the more comfortable you will feel presenting.  Taking a class or seminar on presentation skills is a great thing to do – I’ve taken both Dale Carnegie and American Management courses myself, but Toastmasters is much cheaper and has the advantage of not being for a limited time.  You can work on presentation skills in Toastmasters at your own pace.
• The second is to practice each presentation.  You will feel more confident and do a better job if you practice.  If possible, practice in front of another person.  But even if you can’t practice in front of another real live person, taking the time to gather your thoughts and then say them out loud to yourself helps you come closer to approximating what an extrovert would do. I also use preparation to write out my thoughts on my hard copy slides and use it to prompt my thoughts if I get stuck.

B. Preparation can help with meetings.  Meetings occupy a particular place in hell for many introverts.  Not only does one have to spend lots of time with other people, you may be called upon to talk and you can end up clamming up. (It’s no surprise that research shows that introverts are more likely to be silent in meetings than extroverts.) Further, many meetings seem a waste of time, which makes us feel self righteous about not liking meetings and avoiding them  Plus of course, you can avoid being present mentally in a meeting by focusing on your smart phone or your computer.  But it is my contention that meetings are where the hard work of getting your insights appreciated happens.  It is where your point of power is, it is where the interaction happens.  So you need to make the most of meetings.  How can you prepare so you feel more comfortable talking?

• Prepare by reading and rereading- there may be prereads for the meetings, if so, read them.  You may have reports that would be helpful – if you don’t know their contents intimately, reread them.
• Prepare by thinking- you know the topic of the meeting and you have collected information on the topic, do some thinking before the meeting on the topic.  What speaks to you of everything you read? What are your conclusions?  If there were three things you wanted to ensure that the group took away from the meeting, what would they be?  What things would be great to learn in this meeting?
• Prepare by talking- try to catch people in the hall and get their thoughts and share yours.  If you know what at least part of your audience is thinking, that will make you more comfortable sharing your thoughts. Or you may find your thoughts shifting as you talk to people.   The more you do this ahead of time, the more you will feel comfortable in the meeting.
• Prepare by bringing materials- if there is a study that is particularly relevant, have a copy of the report with you. But if you didn’t bring it, or if there is something else you want to consult,…..
• Allow yourself an out. It is ok to say, “I’ll get back to you on that.”  This takes some of the pressure off and then makes it more likely that you can set that aside and fully participate in a discussions other topics.  Otherwise, introverts like me will tend to clam up for the rest of the meeting, which doesn’t allow you to present yourself at your best.

But don’t feel obligated to push yourself all the time.  Recognize that you need alone time to refresh so make time in your schedule for it. Don’t try to be an extrovert most of the time, pick your battles.

Readers, other suggestions for tools you Introverts have used to act in a more extroverted way?

Introverts and Interaction

Two weeks ago, I got the most comments ever on the topic of whether introverts dominate pharmaceutical market research and whether that has created a problem or not.  The gist of the comments follow:

1.Yes, there are a lot of introverts on the client side of pharma market research (one estimate from a supplier- 98%).  Others noted lots of introverts on the supplier side as well, especially in non-sales positions.

2.  No, its not a problem if introverts dominate because either you need a mix of people or that introverts are really, really smart people.

Full disclosure here:  I am an introvert (mostly).  I need to recharge my batteries after being with people and I need to prepare myself to join a group of people.  Obviously, I also agree that introverts are really smart people and may well be the best people for the job of corporate market research.

BUT – similarly to the person who raised this issue at the PharmaMR Conference, I think there may be a nugget of an insight here.  Bear with me as a reconstruct this argument.

As part of trying to cope with the various pressures facing the pharmaceutical industry (decreased reimbursement, poor R&D productivity, increasing regulatory requirements) Corporate Market Research departments have taken a hit in headcount and budget.   While this may be a cyclical phenomena (as suggested by one reader), it seems like a (potentially permanent) structural change to me.  This is at least partially because of the two trends of outsourcing and automation.

As I stated in an earlier post, McKinsey identified three types of work – the two that are most relevant for this discussion are transactional and interactional.  Transactional work is repetitive work that is more easily outsourced and/or automated, so is most likely to go away as a source of employment in the developed world.  Interactional work has a stronger future in the developed world.

So, I see a potential problem if the corporate market research departments are mostly populated by introverts, who feel best when they spend most of their time alone, but the future is brighter for work that depends on interaction with people.  If corporate market researchers don’t spend enough time in interaction, if they follow their own tendencies to avoid interaction, then they may not be doing that part of their job as well as would serve them (and the companies they work for).

If you agree with this, then I would suggest two different courses of action:

1. On a personal level, if you are an introvert, give some thought to how you should push yourself to increase your interaction with your clients (or for those you supervise, same thing)

2. On a department or industry level, what kinds of things can be done to support introverts in the important work of interaction?

I will be posting ideas in the next few weeks so stay tuned. As always I welcome your comments.