Senior management at Procter & Gamble are busy proselytizing “immersion” – direct interaction with the people who buy their brands - as the best means to get in touch with the needs, wants and desires of consumers. Some in our industry have interpreted the push to get marketers to interact directly with consumers as a threat to traditional research techniques. But is there really a conflict there?
An article in Strategy Magazine on the turnaround led by P&G CEO A.G. Lafley reports that as part of the “internal revolution” at P&G, research methodologies were re-examined along with operational structure and processes. Much of P&G’s traditional research, in which the marketer plays the role of objective witness, has been replaced with programs which bring marketers directly in touch with consumers and their everyday lives. Jim Stengel, global marketing officer at P&G, calls these programs “consumer immersion experiences.” In the name of consumer immersion, P&G marketers are spending time working in shops in Mexico and conducting in-home observations of U.S. pet owners.
Stengel sees immersion as one of the keys to consumer-centric marketing. In an interview reported on Magnosticism, he says “Consumer-centric marketing makes no assumptions. It begins with, ‘who is your consumer, and what’s different about her?’” According to Stengel, most companies can’t provide a very good answer to that question. Explaining P&G’s emphasis on immersion, he says “What we’re now trying to do is let people, without a filter, really be with our consumer and be in her life.”
(It is interesting to note that at the ANA conference in October, Stengel developed this argument by pleading with the audience to “Stop thinking about consumers and start thinking about people.” Why? He suggests it is because we tend to observe consumers and interact with people. Interaction can help marketers be more empathetic toward people who use their products.)
All this talk about immersion has some in the research industry wondering if it represents a threat to traditional market research techniques. Will senior management try to get quicker, more insightful answers by sending their marketing teams out on shop-alongs and live-alongs instead of conducting traditional research? Stengel’s comment in the Magnosticism interview, that P&G use “all the quantitative stuff you’d expect us to look at,” hardly sounds reassuring.
But is P&G using immersion to replace research or to enhance it?
If, as Stengel suggests, most companies have a poor idea of who their customers are and what is different about them, then anything that challenges assumptions and shakes things up is surely a good thing. Earlier this year, I reported that Mark Beeching of Digitas said we needed to imagine ourselves into the mind of the customer, and “Love, like, or at least think and feel like the customer.” What better way to do that than actually interacting with them?
Few business people can extrapolate from a report or set of numbers to thinking and feeling like the person who buys their products. Relying on secondhand accounts, and interpreting them based on their own experience and concerns, they are divorced from the reality of peoples’ lives. Thus they fail to understand how their company’s products and services might be improved. Seeing someone wrestle with packaging, deliberate between spending the remains of the week’s budget on snacks or cereals, or select clothing based on comfort rather than appearance can bring home the results from research in a much more meaningful way.
I believe most of us would benefit from combining the shallow view provided by most traditional research with the much more in-depth view provided by participating in peoples’ lives. However, the two are not substitutable. Without the context of professionally conducted qualitative and quantitative research, the risk of an insight from immersion turning out to be trivial, biased or just plain wrong is high. But equally, we should admit that without the context of experiencing the lives of real people, our research may run the risk of being opaque, uninspiring and unappreciated by those that need to use it.
So what more can we do to get close to the real decisions and frustrations of peoples’ lives? Is immersion the best solution, as Stengel suggests, or are there other alternatives? What has worked best for you?
(27 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
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December 27th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
I agree. I would argue that the ultimate question is: What is the connection between participative insights and traditional quantitative research? Where do they meet, and how should we frame them relative to one another? How do we make them sing together?
Certainly, they both play a major role. The argument for participitave, immersive techniques stems from questions about how in-touch traditional quant methods are with our ability to deconstruct decision-making processes. Then again, with immersive, qualitative techniques, one needs to dimensionalize and categorize data, which are often richer, spontaneous and unstructured.
Finally, read number ten of my “top trends impacting marketing measurements” list, from November 2006:
Reevaluating relationships with whom and what we measure. As consumers become more empowered, the disciplines of measurement and research will increasingly cater to them (just as marketers are doing in general). Top-down, “people-are-subjects” measurement approaches will need to evolve toward greater propositions of relationship, loyalty, value, trust and reciprocity.
Full post here at attentionmax.com.
December 27th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Hi Max, thanks for the comment.
It, and your post, are interesting reading, particularly since I have just finished re-reading a chapter in Girenzer and Todd’s book on fast and frugal heuristics. In it they argue that people make decisions based on very simple rules. The rules differ according to the situation but they remain quick and simple to apply. A lot of what they say makes absolute sense when it comes to how people choose between brands (I will probably write a post on this soon) but it did make me think that the trick is not to figure out the rules in play in a specific context but to figure out how your brand can take advantage of them. Immersion may help do that by allowing us to suspend our own judgement.
Funnily enough, in justifying their belief in the positive power of heuristics to allow humans to make “reasonable decisions” Girenzer and Todd also knock the “heuristics and biases” program of the 70s that showed how preconceptions and biases can lead to irrational decisions (for instance recency bias).
I guess tis just proves that there are two sides to every coin. Traditional research can be impartial and accurate, but runs the risk of being conceptual and detached. Immersion can be stimulating and contextual but may lack rigor and impartiality. As you suggest, we need to bring them together to get the best currency.
December 29th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Very interesting commentary.
As contextual immersion relates to online media, it seems to be a very natural progression of Jakob Nielsen’s web usability studies. The potential for engaging online consumers is amplified by an understanding of what they do in a particular web space.
It seems natural to understand and leverage Gigerenzer’s ‘rules’ to a degree, as interactivity heightens consumer response and awareness as well as qualitative data.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:58 am
Thanks for the comment Michael.
Maybe we should adapt Jakob Nielsen’s five quality components to market research presentations and reports.
Learnability: how easy is it for people to understand what the presentation is intended to tell them?
Efficiency: how quickly can the information be translated into action?
Memorability: faced with a decision at a later date will people remember the relevant findings?
Errors: will people accurately remember and act on the insights from the research?
Satisfaction: will the end-user feel that the research was insightful and actionable?
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:24 am
Well made points, although I am not sure that anything here is really ‘new’, once again it seems to me to be a reworking of the basic ‘old school’ research principles…which over the years have been eroded by over stretched research budgets and ‘off the shelf’ research products (which inadvertently have the effect of reducing the imperative to really understand the issues/consumer/people).
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:42 am
Thanks for the comment. If the points I made serve to remind people of good practice that’s good enough for me.
You seem to imply that “basic ‘old school’ research principles” are devalued by not being new. For the most part I doubt there is much wrong with most of the principles, just the practice.
Would a review of new approaches be useful to you?