We’ve been facing tradeoffs since the Garden of Eden, and they shape all of our decisions.

There are a lot of good frameworks for thinking about consumer decision-making, but Tradeoff Analysis is one of my favorites. Often, much of the assessment individuals engage in when evaluating alternatives involves weighing what they are giving up against what they’re getting in return. Utility, a term from the field of economics, refers to the ability of something to satisfy needs and wants. Realizing this, and using my Utility Tradeoff Model, provides valuable opportunities for smartly designing, conducting and analyzing qualitative research.

Why are tradeoffs so important? Consider General Mills during the early 1950s. They had introduced Betty Crocker cake mixes in 1947. Sales, originally brisk, plateaued a few years later. This made little sense given the selling proposition – pay a small premium over the cost of the component ingredients in exchange for convenience. That offering seemed like a winner in a postwar America focused on time- and labor-saving innovations. After conducting focus groups, the company realized that what they thought was a simple tradeoff was actually more complex. It became clear that the product was actually TOO easy to use; all that was required was a box of mix, some water, and a few common kitchen implements.  But, because it asked so little of a 1950s American housewife, it made her feel that she wasn’t giving enough of herself in preparing the cake. The solution: eliminate the powdered egg in the mix and have the user add her own fresh ones. Problem solved! The lesson learned: because the product was too easy, the user wasn’t just paying an economic price, she was also paying a price in self-esteem, and that became too much to pay in exchange for convenience.

Why recount this case? It’s about tradeoffs! Here was a situation in which the company understood what their consumer was getting, but didn’t fully understand what she was giving up. And that’s why tradeoff analysis is such a useful tool. It provides a framework for looking at both sides of the value proposition– the benefits AND the costs—so we can obtain a full understanding of how a product or service creates utility.

We all seek to maximize utility. But, contrary to the pronouncements of classical economists, there is more to utility than money and other quantifiable factors. Utility is complicated, and squishy and messy. That’s a lot of what the field of behavioral economics is about – providing a more nuanced and complete definition of utility – and the Utility Tradeoff Model has some of its roots in that field

I was originally exposed to behavioral economics in the 1990s by Vic McGee, a former business school professor of mine. Vic had sent me some academic journal articles on the topic by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. My takeaway from these papers was that utility is much more complicated than I’d originally been taught, that money is only one building block of utility, and that decision making is not always as neat and rational as we’d like to think. So, in the combination of my going-in knowledge of consumer tradeoffs and what I was learning from Kahneman and Tversky, the Utility Tradeoff Model was born.

The Utility Tradeoff Model is based upon the premise that consumers express utility in terms of five currencies, with each decision carrying both gains and losses. Those currencies are:

• Time

• Energy

• Money

• Performance

• Self-esteem

So, the idea is that consumer decision-making is essentially an exercise in unconscious mental algebra, with the decision maker figuring out which of the five factors go on which side of the equal sign to make the equation balance.

In future newsletters I’ll go into detail on these currencies, as they all benefit from a bit of unpacking. All have multiple dimensions, some of which – in a given situation – contribute to utility, and some of which might detract.  Some dimensions are pretty straightforward – even quantifiable—while others are much more subjective.  I’ll also provide a detailed, specific blueprint for how to use this tool.

Tradeoffs are the stuff of life. In a world of finite resources, we’re always giving something up for what we get. Just as Eve was confronted with the choice of paradise or wisdom, we are constantly reminded that we usually can’t have it all. This realization shapes individuals’ perceptions and decisions, so we need to be aware of it when designing and executing research.

“Ah, look at all the lonely people.” These days loneliness is everywhere, and that has important implications for qualitative research.

Not long ago I wrote a post on scarcity, and what a scarcity mindset does to perceptions and decision making. Often, when we think about scarce resources, we tend to restrict our thinking to things like time and money. But there are a lot of resources for which scarcity can affect our lives, and a particularly resonant one right now is social scarcity—loneliness.

We’re all spending a lot more time at home these days, and having far less in-person interaction with friends, family and colleagues than we used to. Loneliness has been a growing problem around the world for a number of years, but it has become particularly acute in recent months. Recent studies – which are cited at the end of this blog post – have shown a significant uptick in feelings of loneliness since the onset of social distancing.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is not something we should ignore.  Socialization correlates closely to life expectancy—it’s one of the reasons women outlive men in most of the world.  It’s also has clear connections to overall health, mental health, and to factors specifically linked to immunity and recovery from disease. One statistic I’ve seen is that chronic loneliness is as debilitating as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Yikes.

So, clearly, loneliness is something of which we need to be aware for our own well-being.  But it’s also particularly important to keep loneliness in mind right now when conducting qualitative research. I, and many of my fellow qualitative researchers, have noticed recently that our online research respondents are pretty open about feeling lonely—in fact, while it used to be that people felt that talking about their loneliness was an admission of failure, as they were admitting to not having a social network to support them, COVID has changed all that; loneliness has become socially acceptable.

This increase in loneliness seems to be leading research participants to have more need than usual to bond with researchers and their fellow participants. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it can lead to participants who are more engaged, and often quite grateful to be participating in the research. One reason people are participating in your research is simply to connect with others. It’s important to give them an outlet for this desire— fighting it is only going to get everybody frustrated. However, this also needs to be managed, as it is possible for lonely participants’ need to connect to distract you from your research objectives.

That being the case, here are a few approaches that I have been employing recently during online focus groups and interviews to address loneliness.

Say ‘hi!’ Before the group starts, take the opportunity to say hello to the people in the virtual waiting room. You can give them a bit of information about how the research is going to proceed, show them the cool features of the online research platform (markup tools are particularly fun to play with), and get to know them a bit. You can even introduce them to the tech support people and maybe even the client, if appropriate. This is time well spent.

Create community. As a general rule, the more you can create a sense of fellowship in the course of conducting research, the better your research is going to be. When you’re dealing with pervasive loneliness, this becomes even more important. For an opening exercise, get people to share details about their lives, and then to look for similarities.  When people find commonalities with others, they feel more connected and less alone. I like to ask somebody to start the introductions by sharing two or three things about themselves. They can be anything—things they like to do, things that make them unique, things that they’re passionate about, etc. Then, ask the next person to share three things, with at least one that relates to at least one thing the previous person said. There you go—ready made connections. Bear in mind that this is a bit more time consuming that a typical intro exercise, but is worth the extra time.

Provide positive feedback. I’ve noticed recently that some participants, because they’re consciously aware of how lonely they feel, worry that they won’t do a good job in the group or interview. So, I make sure participants know they’re doing great. I compliment them on being particularly thoughtful, on being especially candid, on disagreeing with somebody agreeably, on answering a complicated question very artfully, etc.  This is always a good research practice, but it’s particularly valuable now. Remember that words matter. The things you say to the participants in your group have a profound effect on how they feel, and how they participate in your research.

Have some chitchat. Don’t underestimate the value of a little bit of small talk, and build in some time for it. For the most recent online focus group studies I’ve done, although the planned discussion was 90 minutes, I scheduled a two-hour group (and paid the participants accordingly). Once the group started, I let the participants know that we weren’t quite ready to start, so we’d begin in about fifteen minutes, but that we would still end at the scheduled time. So, we had a free fifteen minutes just to chat about anything we wanted. These have been fun discussions: people have talked about what they’re watching on Netflix these days or a new recipe they created, have shared pictures of their kids and pets, and have used the screensharing feature to share fun YouTube videos. By the time we started the group, everybody was in a good frame of mind and we had a great discussion.

The guiding principle here is to be kind, compassionate and empathetic. Loneliness is a very human feeling. It needn’t compromise your research if you have a plan to deal with it.

Note: Below are links to some other good resources about loneliness.

https://socialself.com/loneliness-corona/

https://www.valuepenguin.com/coronavirus-loneliness-survey?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=f3e6bb82c2-MR_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-f3e6bb82c2-152047705

https://www.hrsa.gov/enews/past-issues/2019/january-17/loneliness-epidemic

When I conduct research, I often like to have conversations with participants about hopes and fears. Lately, we’re talking a lot more about fears than hopes.

Risk— and its mitigation— has always been at the heart of marketing. Think about why marketers issue coupons or take temporary price reductions. It’s partly to reduce the perceived risk of trying a product or service. Why do brands put testimonials in their consumer communications? Or work so hard to get good online reviews? Because this information reduces perceived risk. The list goes on and on. Nearly every marketing tactic is aimed, at least in part, at risk. Think about, on the most fundamental level, what a brand actually is. I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that a brand is a promise—a reason to believe that the user or consumer experience will be a positive one. So, the very process of establishing and maintaining a brand is a perceived risk reduction strategy.

And that’s why risk has always been one of the fundamental things we study in market research. So much of the research I’ve done over the course of my career has been about either understanding risk, or about evaluating the effectiveness of marketing strategies and tactics at addressing specific risks.

This is a particularly important issue now; we’re all living in a world fraught with risk. I have friends and colleagues who have felt unable to leave their homes since March because they see the dangers as being too great. As a researcher, I’ve interviewed a lot people who suffer from chronic diseases over the past few months. The Pandemic-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named has dramatically altered their relationship to their health conditions. Because they see their condition as being a risk factor if they become infected with you-know-what, they report having become more compliant with respect to taking medications, and state that they are being more diligent at adopting a healthier lifestyle.

When it comes to the actual practice of research, risk has become a particularly resonant issue. Like my colleagues and clients, I’m eager to get back to conducting in-person qualitative. But it’s hard to know when the benefits of doing so will outweigh the dangers. And, regardless of how my clients and I feel, will research respondents be willing to participate face to face?

Because we are more conscious of risk in our personal and professional lives, it’s valuable to be able to think and talk about risk in a clear, organized and detailed manner. Which means that it’s helpful to have some frameworks to think about risk. One of the most useful tools I employ when trying to understand risk is my Perceived Risk Model, which I developed several years ago. It’s a good way to understand specifically how individuals see the risks they face. The model breaks perceived risk down into six specific types: physical, resource/asset, functional, psychological/self-image, emotional and social.

I’ve found that these perceived risk types are characterized by questions people ask themselves when evaluating risk. By watching out for questions like these when talking with research participants, we can get a sense as to the specifics of how they perceive risk.

Physical — “Could this be harmful? Could it injure me or make me ill? Could it endanger others?”

Resource/Asset — “Do I have time for this? What else could I do with the time or money this will require? Can I afford this? What could be the financial effects of an adverse outcome?”

Functional — “Will this perform as expected and required? Will it do what I need it to do? What are the chances of it failing to function as needed? What are the possible ramifications if it doesn’t perform well?”

Psychological/Self Image —“Am I doing the right thing? What does this say about me as a person? Will this decision affect how I view myself?”

Emotional — “Could this cause sadness or disappointment? Do I have the emotional reserves to handle this if it works out badly?”

Social — “How will this affect how others see me? What will this do to my standing within the groups and organizations with which I am associated?”

Here’s an example of how examining risk can lead to important marketing insights. A few years ago I was conducting research on a dietary supplement for individuals with a rare metabolic condition. Patients had, for years, resisted using the supplement, despite strong evidence that it would noticeably improve their health. The client had long believed that the primary concerns for users were linked to functional risk and resource risk, and so they had built their communications to patients and the registered dietitians who treated them around mitigating these risks. They provided data that the product would positively affect patient health, and was well worth the high cost because it could help patients avoid even more costly problems associated with the condition. However, these tactics were largely ineffective. Conversation with patients and dietitians about perceived risks revealed that the single biggest barrier to usage was actually social risk. It turned out that diet supplementation was perceived by influencers within the condition community as being either ‘unnatural’ or a sign of weakness. Once the client started orienting brand communication around this perceived risk, the business began trending upward.

So, once it becomes clear that risk is playing an important role in consumer decision making or behavior, use this Perceived Risk Model to understand that risk on a more granular level. This is just one analytical tool for understanding risk. I have quite a few more risk tools in my toolbag, and I’ll be devoting a number of future newsletters to them, so stay tuned.

I’ve had some discussions recently with clients and researchers about in-person qualitative research versus qualitative conducted via webcams. One point I hear made is that online conversations don’t yield the same level of engagement, intimacy and spontaneity as face-to-face ones. While this is a fair point, it’s often overstated—the difference isn’t as great as some might think. And one factor that gets overlooked is that webcam research allows you to do things that are difficult or impossible to do in person. There’s a pretty long list of tasks that work well online, and no reason to list them all here. But here are three of my favorite things that are particularly easy with webcams.

Geography

Sometimes, when designing in-person qualitative, I’ll try to discourage clients from conducting the research in too many locations. Not only is this time-consuming and expensive, but, if your qualitative will be followed by quantitative, you can get your geographic dispersion easily and cost-effectively in your quant phase. However, sometimes clients truly need a large number of markets represented in the qualitative data—this is particularly common in shopper insights studies. In situations like this, the webcam can really be your friend. You can recruit from a national (or even global) sample, and can include participants from a large number of markets in your study time- and cost-efficiently. And remember—you don’t have to do all your qualitative online. I’ve frequently conducted studies in which we began with one or two in-person markets, and finished the study online with a broader geographic sample.

Aggregated Data

When collecting reactions to stimuli (such as package designs, advertisements or new product concepts), it’s often helpful to be able to create a visual representation of all of the participants’ reactions. Online research platforms make this particularly easy to do, as many contain markup tools that allow participants to record their responses directly on the stimulus, with the back-end software aggregating all responses into a single visual presentation – such as a heat map – in real time. Yes, you can do this sort of thing with in-person research as well, but it’s often a slow, painstaking process.

Hybrid Qual/Quant Research

Most online qualitative platforms have built into them some type of polling question function. This allows you to quickly send a quick, closed ended question to your participants and capture everybody’s quantified response in real time. As with aggregation, while you can do this in person, it’s a lot easier and faster online. And here’s an even more exciting qual/quant wrinkle: there are online tools that will allow you to construct an agile (one- or two-day), fully integrated approach that starts with a large, geographically dispersed quantitative sample and ends with on-the-spot qualitative groups or interviews selected right out of your quant sample. So, at the end of one or two days, you’ll have statistically reliable quantitative data leavened with qualitative insights executed at blinding speed — an integrated study providing higher order insights that can replace time- and money-intensive multiphase research. This approach lends itself to all manner of strategic and tactical tasks: positioning, brand communication, concept development and testing, even segmentation.

These are just some of the unique capabilities webcams provide. I haven’t mentioned a number of others such as bringing a whole new level of feasibility and realism to ethnographic research, rapid textual analysis, or the ability to move participants easily among group discussions, individual interviews and bulletin boards.  But I hope this was enough to pique your curiosity. One final thought: qualitative researchers often can be extroverts – sometimes extreme extroverts – who tend to forget that some research participants can actually be a bit uncomfortable with face-to-face interactions. That little bit of space you allow those people by conducting an interview via webcam can be just enough to make them more relaxed and forthcoming. So, in this time of social distancing, embrace the webcam. It can bring unique qualities to your research.

I’ve had a lot of discussions recently with colleagues about ethics, some specifically regarding market research, some more broadly focused. We’re living in unusual times, and ethics have become a particularly fraught issue. Public health imperatives are going to require aggressive testing and contact tracing protocols among the population for the foreseeable future, and this will inevitably raise privacy concerns, particularly when you consider the technology-based solutions being proposed. We’ve also come face-to-face with such issues as the allocation of resources and the economic value of a human life. Market research is facing ethical challenges as well. Many clients are justifiably interested in understanding how the current public health crisis is influencing consumer attitudes and perceptions, as well as openness to new product and service ideas. However, this can raise difficult questions about how we identify, select, question and compensate the individuals participating in our research.

Most of the research I’ve done in the past three months has been healthcare related, and I’ve encountered situations in which some difficult ethical issues arose. Some of these involved how we recruited research participants, some related to the use of those participants’ personal information, and some were about the interpretation of research findings. In none of these situations was there a single, clear, correct answer. As often happens, we were working in those all-to-common grey areas.

I’m not the only one who’s preoccupied with ethics these days. The European Union and the State of California, to name just a couple, are also interested. Both have passed legislation intended to bring more ethical practices to the treatment of personal information, and more such regulation is sure to come.

As the philosopher Will Durant once pointed out, “we are what we repeatedly do.” His point was that excellence is habitual, but he could have just as easily been talking about ethics—the key to being ethical lies in habits. But what, on a practical level, does that mean? Many years ago, I learned from a very wise man, Rabbi Charles Kroloff, that ethics can be less bedeviling if you get in the routine of asking yourself a series of questions when contemplating a dubious course of action. Here they are.

How does this thing you’re thinking of doing square with accepted codes of conduct?

Is it legal? Is it allowed by your company’s policies?  Is it consistent with your industry’s ethical standards? The market research world has no shortage of codes of conduct, and they’re worth reviewing periodically (I’ve included links to several at the end of this post). Personally, I’m a big fan of the golden rule – “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” —do you risk violating that? You might decide to proceed despite your intended action being against some rule or other, but it’s a good idea to devote a few minutes’ thought to whether this is wise.

How would you feel if your actions became widely known?

Would you be comfortable with that? Would you want your clients, or colleagues, or friends to know? How about your spouse, or kids, or siblings? What if your mother found out? If the idea of people whose opinions you value knowing what you’ve done makes you uneasy, that’s a pretty big red flag—proceed with caution. I’ve never accepted a finder’s fee for referring another supplier to one of my clients, because I wouldn’t be comfortable with my client knowing about it.

What if everybody did this? 

Would the world be a better place, or would it be diminished? Dropping your used gloves on the asphalt isn’t a big deal if you’re the only one who does it, but if everyone coming out of the store follows suit, things will get messy in a hurry. Misleading research participants about the nature of the study in which they’re participating might not do too much damage if you only do it occasionally, but if we all start doing it all the time, the whole research world could blow up. If your contemplated action being emulated by everybody in your industry would cause problems, it’s probably not OK for you to do it either.

What are the potential consequences of my actions? 

This is probably the most important question of all: what could happen if you do this thing? Do you risk prison? A fine? A lawsuit? Losing your job? Being run out of town on a rail? Dirty looks from people you don’t care about? Another great philosopher—Maimonides—once wrote … “a wise man is one who knows the consequences of his actions.” I think we often find ourselves in sticky situations because we didn’t take some time to think carefully about the possible endpoints where our actions might lead. Avoiding the conscious contemplation of outcomes is a very human thing to do—it’s uncomfortable, and often requires you to rethink your plans. That’s why this is a particularly valuable habit to develop. I’ve always suspected that the Enron disaster might have been averted if somebody had just said, ‘hey everybody, there’s no way this ends well.’

So, there you have it: four simple questions for worrisome situations.  If you make them a habit, you’ll make ethical behavior habitual as well.

Links to various research industry codes of conduct:

https://www.qrca.org/page/ethics_practices

https://www.esomar.org/what-we-do/code-guidelines

https://www.insightsassociation.org/issues-policies/insights-association-code-standards-and-ethics-market-research-and-data-analytics-0

https://www.intellus.org/Standards-Guidelines/Code-of-Conduct

https://www.ama.org/codes-of-conduct/