Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:
Please submit your answers to all questions to your choice of 3 Real-Life Research Cases below
Each case write up should be approximately 3 pages single spaced.
Case 1:
Sonic Goes Mobile
Sonic Drive-In has recently reviewed information for a number of surveys involving various types of product evaluations. All the surveys were completed online with customers recruited from their proprietary panel. In addition to the actual survey data and other information, the online interviewing system captures the browser that the respondent used to complete the survey. Analyzing the “browser used” data, Sonic has observed a slow but steady increase in the number of individuals completing the survey on mobile browsers, including tablets and smartphones. The most recent results show a big jump in this percentage from a year ago, with an average of nearly 30 percent of the more recent surveys completed on mobile browsers.
Several managers have attempted completing some of these surveys using their own tablets and smartphones. They like the idea that using these platforms increase the options for the consumer and that these devices permit consumers to take the surveys at times and in places when and where they previously could not. However, their experiences in testing the surveys on their mobile devices have suggested that they may need to change the way they design questionnaires to accommodate smartphones and tablets.
Questions
1. What are the impediments and difficulties associated with completing surveys on mobile devices?
2. What changes does Sonic need to make in its survey designs to take advantage of these new survey platforms?
3. What about mixing survey results taken on laptop computers and those taken on mobile devices? What cautions, if any, would you have?
4. Might the inclusion of mobile devices, along with laptops and desktops, improve the quality of the sample? Why do you say that?
Case 2:
Procter & Gamble Uses Its Online Community to Help Develop Scents for a New Product Line
When Procter & Gamble was developing scents for a new product line, it asked members of its online community to simply record the scents that they encountered over the course of a day that made them feel good. By week's end, they had images, videos, and simple text messages about cut grass, fresh paint, play dough, and other aromas that revealed volumes about how scent triggers not just nostalgia but feeling of competence, adventurousness, comfort, and other powerful emotions.
This scents project illustrates how mobile enables discovery around a specific sensation. But P&G also embarked on an ambitious attempt to get a more holistic understanding of its consumer—who she is, where she goes, what she sees. So, using a research application, community members were asked to share beauty moments—the sensory experiences and encounters with beauty products and brands that they have during the week, both at home and out in the world. A great deal was learned about how they feel at different times of day, in different contexts, about what triggers them to use an existing product or try a new one.
Beauty is a highly subjective attribute and feeling beautiful is a highly dynamic state. So P&G enlisted its community members to help it go deeper, not just through more personal, one-to-one sharing via these mobile apps buy through collective collaboration. After all, while emerging new tools and apps make people more accurate reports, they still have to be willing to do it. That's why it's so important to be able to establish intimacy, trust, and relationship in one venue, like an online community or series of advisory group meetings or online chats that you can then apply to mobile projects, and vice versa.
In this example, P&G was trying to discover the parallels and discrepancies between how others see them. So community members simply used their phones to take pictures of themselves in the moment—at home or at work—and post them, along with their own critique. Then other community members privately and anonymously commented on the images.
“This is me after work. I am still wearing work clothes, tired, but feeling good,” wrote one brave volunteer beneath her uploaded picture. “I see my smile, yet again, I also see that my face needs powdering and my eyes are tired.”
But is that what other women saw when they looked at her? Some glances were pretty sharply appraising. “She seems to have a bit of acne,” one unsentimental member wrote. “Her nose ring doesn't go with the rest of her,” wrote another. “Bright, happy eyes!” observed one admirer. “Absolutely great smile. White teeth,” wrote another. Overall, the “critics” were kinder than the subject.
Is it surprising to learn that young women are harder on themselves than others tend to be? Probably not. But the deeper lesson in this experience is about the positive potential of collaboration—between technologies (mobile vs online), between consumers, and between consumers and brands.47
Questions
1. Do you think P&G used the right research method to answer the research question? What about mall interviews or IDIs?
2. How does a company recruit the “right” respondents for its online and social media communities?
3. Researchers talk about getting “richer understanding” from online communities. What does this really mean?
4. How might a firm like Estee Lauder use this information? Should they also create an online community? Have they done so already?
Case 3:
McDonald's Listening Tour
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one-third of US adults and approximately 17 percent—or 12.5 million—children and adolescents are obese. It goes without saying that marketers are regularly the targets for consumer advocacy groups looking to take action against the obesity epidemic and fast-food restaurants and other purveyors of fatty and sugary foods are often at the center of the obesity debate.
McDonald's formulated a corporate response by announcing a long-term plan geared toward offering improved nutrition choices, including adding produce and low-fat dairy options to Happy Meals, reducing sodium and added sugars across its menu, and increasing customers' access to nutrition information. The plan also includes a long-term qualitative research project, a nationwide “listening tour” featuring McDonald's leadership and key decision makers, including senior director of Nutrition Cindy Goody, McDonald's USA president Jan Fields, and CMO Neil Golden.
The listening tour was designed to gather input from local audiences on the company's nutritional messaging, sustainability, and overall brand promotion. McDonald's menu has changed over the years, and the goal of the tour was to take feedback from various audiences. This would help with menu adjustments and help determine how the company can be more sustainable. The entire premise was based on a two-way dialogue.
McDonald's approached the sessions with guidelines that varied, depending on the audience. It was not simply a wide open discussion on any topic that came to mind. Several tour stops were to speak with minority consumers; other stops included the Blog Her conference, a social networking conference for female bloggers. Other groups visited included the American Dietetic Association's Food and Nutrition Conference, a group of PTA members and educators in Washington, DC, and a group of students at Duke University.
McDonald's found out that most people felt the firm was on the right track. In other cases, the company found that it needed to do a better job telling McDonald's story. It was not getting credit for things that it was doing. For example, McDonald's has an iPhone app with nutritional information, but very few knew about it. Others didn't realize that McDonald's menu is completely customizable. If you don't want pickles, then you don't have to have pickles. And if you want lettuce and tomato, all you have to do is ask.18
Questions
1. Is the listening tour really qualitative research? Why or why not?
2. After the findings are presented to management, should quantitative research be done?
3. Couldn't McDonald's just have done focus groups instead?
4. Other than focus groups, what qualitative techniques might McDonald's have used?
