Social Media vs. Focus Groups

Perhaps the most discussed topic in research marketing these days is social media. It’s hard to look at a conference agenda, industry magazine, or blog without seeing someone’s opinion about using social media in research. What has been in much shorter supply is any sort of evidence of social media’s usefulness as a viable research tool. Here are some interesting insights…

In a recent interview with AdAge, Massimo d’Amore, CEO for PepsiCo Beverages Americas, stated that “we don’t consumer-research ads anymore. The best consumer research is the social network. So we develop new ads using the best judgment of our team and the agency. We put them on the air and for the first 24 hours we track what’s being said. … If needed, we go back in the editing room, and fix it.”

Recently a market research company conducted a study to evaluate whether and how social media mining might replace other qualitative methods like focus groups. Here is what they found:

There was a great deal of consistency between what was heard in the live focus groups and what we read on the Internet forums. The primary conclusions that any researcher would draw from each approach were the same. The alignment wasn’t perfect – but good enough to make social media mining a viable alternative to focus groups in this scenario.

Our main takeaways were the same, but we did see some differences among minor points. Many of these difference simply reflect natural differences in the make-up of the “participants.” In fact, the differences between the groups and the forums weren’t noticeably bigger than differences between the individual focus groups.

Some differences resulted from methodological differences between the two approaches. The two biggest methodological differences were:

Interaction. We interacted with the participants in the focus groups, but not on the forums. So, we could steer the conversation in groups with probes, drawing out more detail in some cases.

Motivation. People came to our groups because we invited them and we paid them (just like every other focus group). People came to the forums because they had something to say or were seeking information.

What does this mean?

It means that, in some cases, social media mining can be an effective substitute for traditional focus groups. This test project has shown social media mining will get essentially the same information as focus groups, but faster and more cost effectively.

I say social media mining can work “in some cases” because, like every other research methodology, it has to be applied intelligently. Using social media mining instead of focus groups can work in situations where you are trying to get a general feel for the nature and range of opinion in the market, as we were in this scenario.

Social media mining seems to be best suited to exploratory research. This is the type of qualitative you might do at the beginning of a big qual/quant project where the goal of the qualitative is to sketch the broad outlines of the situation, frame the issues, or suggest hypotheses for quantitative testing.

This approach isn’t going to work for explanatory research. Qualitative projects where the primary goal is to understand “why” requires a two-way dialog so the interviewer can probe answers. This is more often the type of qualitative you might do on its own or as a follow up to quantitative to understand context.

Does this mark the end of the world as we know it? Should you stop hiring qualitative researchers and simply subscribe to one of the social media mining tools out there?

That would be a mistake. There isn’t an automated tool that can do this work. The mining tools out there can help to identify forums where relevant discussions are happening, but you need a real live qualitative researcher reviewing, assembling, and interpreting what’s there. The value is in the analysis, and if the person doing it isn’t experienced, well, garbage in, garbage out.



Other reference:
How social media can be used to dialogue with the customer

Tags: Focus Group, Marketing Research, Social Media
Posted in Interests, Reference, Research, Social Media