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GfK HealthCare | July 2011 | |
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Getting to Why – Uncovering New Perspectives on Familiar Topics: 10 Reasons to Take a Creative Approach to Qualitative Projects  By Donna Kelly, Chief Consulting Officer and Stephanie Ludwig, Division Manager “We need to figure out why physicians are choosing Drug X over Drug Y and we don’t think it’s just cost.” “What really motivates patients to seek out information about this disease?” “Do we really understand why our drug is not performing as well as our competitor’s? We have great data for our drug!” “Our drug message needs an emotional hook.” We’ve all participated in discussions where the above goals are part of the research plan. We have all also participated in research where such questions have been posed directly to respondents. Upon conclusion of such research, the researcher and team are left with the feeling that we really didn’t get to the bottom of the issue. Sometimes this is because there is more, but the respondent may not be fully aware of the influence of specific drivers. In almost all research programs, even those where there is a strong scientific story, to get the full picture of the market influences we must examine the topic more deeply. To get at the “whys,” qualitative research will be needed. Examining the topic more deeply is not just about why, it is also about understanding how to get to why. How do we best get to the psychodynamics that are critically important but potentially less rational and less in the respondent’s awareness? Arriving at a deep understanding of why is a complex process and ambitious goal that requires techniques beyond simply asking open-ended questions. Here are 10 reasons for taking a more creative approach to get to the why. 1. Our changing industry requires creative changes in our thinking The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing dramatic changes:
In other industries, pursuing motivations via creative and innovative approaches has gained wide acceptance. For example, a recent New York Times article (May 30, 2011, Focus Groups That Look Like Play Groups) described a consumer goods research approach where women were asked to create a “sensory safari” – they selected items within each of the five senses to represent the product category. Techniques such as the sensory safari have been widely used in other industries as a vehicle for investigating motivations. Agencies that conduct market research for the pharmaceutical industry need to look outside pharma for new ideas and approaches. Pharmaceutical market research teams need to demand innovation from their agencies as well. We are also in need of new research platforms. Ten years ago, online qualitative research did not play a major role in market research for the pharmaceutical industry. Today, this is an essential tool in any agency’s toolbox, given the need to reach new customers who may not have the desire or the ability to come to a studio. As our customers continue to change, to keep up with them we will need to continue to pursue new venues and new methods. 2. Our market is dominated by rationality Particularly in contrast to other customer groups, health care professionals (HCP) have traditionally been portrayed (by themselves and by the industry) as being rational and fact based in their thinking. The rational headset HCPs think they bring to their work is exactly what makes creative approaches so successful. For people whose professional life requires a very left-brained (rational/logical) approach, being put in an open, creative environment can be inspiring and sometimes even a relief. In this environment, the HCP is allowed to approach his/her professional world differently:
There are ongoing discussions regarding how much incentive we should pay to participants – while the HCP’s time investment should be recognized, no one wants the professional respondent whose primary goal for attending is to collect the incentive. In Daniel Pink’s recent book, Drive, he summarizes alternative ways of viewing what motivates people and questions whether the industrial age assumption – that we have to use carrots and sticks because people intrinsically don’t enjoy their work – still applies. He provides examples such as Wikipedia and Linux, where new products were developed without providing participants any monetary reward. Rather, people participated because of their engagement in the process – e.g., interest in the recognition they’d receive and the reward of doing something they found mentally and emotionally satisfying. We need to think about engaging our HCP respondents in ways beyond just a monetary reward. If we look at the lines of questioning we put respondents through, we quite often do astonishingly little to engage them, either mentally or emotionally. Creative approaches to research allow our target groups to reflect on their intrinsic motivators, which will increase their emotional engagement and should increase the feeling of personal reward and satisfaction when participating in the research. Marketing research professionals owe it to themselves, their clients and their respondents to create more engaging approaches to research. 4. Re-engaging the research team brings fresh perspective Not only are our respondents possibly jaded by the same stale questions, our research teams may also be! A certain tiredness with traditional qualitative research can be noticed. For professionals who have observed hundreds or possibly thousands of focus groups and IDIs, they may feel they have seen and heard it all. If we continue to do research the way we have always done, the questions themselves seem repetitive, just like the answers we get from our respondents. No big surprises or aha effects are expected, and in these cases it feels more like a step in research that simply needs to be checked off rather than a true search for new meaning. Creative approaches allow a fresh perspective, surprising answers come up and emotional involvement is ensured on all sides. Last but not least, why not simply have more fun at work by doing something very out of the box and creative? 5. Creative approaches motivate the marketing research professional If you find yourself nodding and agreeing with what has been covered thus far, then it follows that the marketing researcher (on the agency side) may feel tired of the same old methods as well. For the experienced qualitative researcher from the agency side, nothing is more gratifying than to propose a creative way to answer a question, to execute such a project for the client and for the client to feel they gained new insight by trying a new approach. 6. Cost and time efficiency can be a benefit Getting to the heart of the matter may mean the ability to reduce the number and/or scope of traditional projects that were part of the standard life-cycle research plan. A creative aspect can be introduced to the traditional, more rational project (e.g., including a personification exercise as part of a rational positioning project for a new product), or a totally new approach can be used to layer new insights to prior, more traditional work (e.g., psychodynamic role-play to understand the market space beyond the perceptual maps created from quant work). 7. Changing the frame of reference brings the research outcome to the next level Using creative and simply different techniques means taking people out of their normal frame of reference. This effect allows access to the subconscious and hard-to-verbalize content – not only for us, but also for the participants themselves. If we start asking different questions, we will get different answers – answers that are more meaningful and break through the human psyche barriers of rationalization and social justification. As a basic example, imagine that we ask a physician what he thinks of Drug A – his/her rational answer may be that it’s no different from Drugs B and C, so cost is all that matters. However, imagine we instead asked the doctor to pick an object in the interview room that perfectly matches Drug A and another that does not match Drug A at all, and continue this same exercise for Drugs B and C. This simple exercise provides a very different basis for the conversation leading to a different answer than if we just asked the basic, rational question. 8. No translation of results is needed – the meaning hits the emotional nerve Archetypes, deeper meanings of symbols and representations are often used in the therapeutic setting, in literature and film, and in academic psychological literature. Creative qualitative techniques enable us to tap these phenomena in research. As an example, for a patient journey project, patients suffering from a psychiatric illness created collages: One focused on the experience of living with the disease and the second collage was about how the patient would feel if successfully treated. The pictures below do not need explanation – it’s easy to understand which represents the experience of the condition and which represents how successful treatment would feel.  As the examples above demonstrate, representations, metaphors and images that come from creative qualitative approaches often need no translation – they are so striking and emotionally resonant that they can summarize an entire strategy. They certainly can be used for internal communication purposes. Sometimes these representations can also be transferred into HCP or patient communication, having the power to create great impact by touching the subconscious aspects of the topic of interest. 9. We will find the logic in the illogical When we research in the traditional Q&A model, we are often confronted with illogical statements, ambivalence and even contradictions. The research can leave us feeling unsatisfied – questions remain because the respondents may not be able to tap the full reasons behind what they do. By using different approaches, we have a greater chance to find the logic in the illogical. What seems to be ambivalence, at first glance, turns out to be the basis of insight. As an example, a new product came to the market with an excellent profile. Already existing in the market is a well-established product whose profile is not quite as good. While the new product seems to have clinical advantages, it is not being up-taken as expected. A role-playing exercise (where physicians played different parts, including the MD, the patient, various drugs available, the disease symptoms, etc.) revealed that physicians’ primary goal in treatment is to try to avoid getting caught up in managing difficult patients and they know the old drug and what to expect so can streamline their patient interactions. The new drug will require more time and effort. Understanding what seemed like contradictions leaves everybody involved in the research feeling more confident that we’ve gotten to the core of the problem/issue. 10. We can provide deliverables that engage our audiences Research that is engaging for the participants is easier to communicate to other stakeholders that were not directly involved in the research process. Video clips, audio clips, representations created by the respondents (e.g., collages, personifications) can be provided (e.g., on a website for the company, as part of the final report, as a stand-alone deliverable). A deliverable that captures the voice of the customer and may also speak in the powerful language of visual representation is far more engaging than a set of PowerPoint slides populated with too many bullet points. As a specific example, we conducted research with patients suffering from a chronic condition and the images they created in their collage work were so powerful that our final deliverables to the client were these images and a few patient verbatims (vs. lots of bullet points). There was little need for explanation – the pictures spoke volumes. (The following shows one example from this report)  In conclusion, there are a number of strong arguments for why the market research plan should include more innovative and creative qualitative approaches. We will uncover new answers, we will more fully engage our respondents and research team and we will provide deliverables that are richer and more meaningful. Providing this type of research result is one of the best ways for marketing research (both the agency and the internal client MR team) to demonstrate the value they bring. |
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