Mail surveys increasingly are giving way to online questionnaires, because this format allows for instantaneous data collection and analysis (rather than waiting for printed surveys to be mailed and returned). Online questionnaires are also more flexible and cost much less. In both cases, however, while respondents are likely to be more honest because they can participate anonymously, we can’t be 100 percent sure who actually responds to the survey or whether the same person is responding multiple times. To design and administer your own surveys (for free!), check out http://www.surveymonkey.com.

Brand Tags, another ingenious application of Web research, shows visitors the logos of big companies and asks them to type in the first word or phrase that pops into their head when they see the logo. Within a few days after it went live, the site attracted more than thirty thousand visitors. Results of these snap reactions are reported as a tag cloudtag cloudA format for displaying survey results in which the size of a word corresponds to its frequency among responses; a frequently chosen response will appear very large on the screen, while a rarely chosen response will appear very small.—a format in which the size of the word corresponds to its frequency among responses. Frequently submitted words are shown in giant type, while rarely submitted ones look tiny on the screen. This type of data is merely suggestive because we can’t be sure who responds, but it can be an eye opener to advertisers. For example, two popular responses for Wal-Mart are cheap and evil, one of Burger King’s largest tags is fat, while people label Toyota with words like quality and reliable—but also boring.^[141]

Telephone surveystelephone surveyA means of soliciting feedback by calling consumers by phone; this technique has lost popularity as respondents screen calls or put themselves on do-not-call lists. offer even more flexibility in questioning, but they suffer from higher cost and often have lower participation because respondents screen calls or put themselves on do-not-call lists. Unfortunately, in recent years telemarketers who masquerade as survey-takers poisoned the well for legitimate research companies; in some cases when they call (usually during dinner!) they lure unsuspecting respondents into answering questions until they reveal toward the end that they’re actually selling something.

However, as mobile phones continue to evolve into the “third screen” for many of us (the first two are the TV and the computer monitor), it’s likely that enterprising researchers will discover new ways to collect people’s feedback via their phones. For example, the startup company Mimieo offers an application that enables a client to capture respondents’ emotional reactions to an ad or product on their iPhones.^[142]

Face-to-face interviewsface-to-face interviewsData gathering technique in which a researcher speaks directly with a respondent, asking questions from a predetermined script or letting the respondent say what he or she wants. provide the most flexibility in questioning—it’s clear to the researcher if the respondent is having difficulty understanding the question—but they are time consuming and expensive. They are also less likely to yield truthful results, for two reasons. First, being face to face with the interviewer, respondents may tend to give answers they think the interviewer wants to hear. Second, the interviewer’s biases (none of us is bias free, much as we may wish to think of ourselves that way) may skew the results.

Figure 5.4. Brand Tags

For example, the city of Las Vegas decided to use focus groups to get a sense of how it should advertise itself in other countries as a tourist destination. The city worried that its “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” campaign in the United States might not play well in countries like Mexico, which has a more Catholic and conservative population. To find out, the city held focus groups with travelers. The results of the focus groups showed that Mexicans were comfortable when the Vegas story lines fit with family customs and did not allude to casual sex. In the United Kingdom, in contrast, focus groups showed that the ad campaign needed more sex, not less, to catch the attention of U.K. audiences (who tend to see more provocative and explicit advertising). About a dozen focus groups of middle- and upper-income British men and women under age fifty-five revealed that the American tagline wasn’t compelling enough for irreverent British tastes. “In the U.S. we think our slogan and ads push the envelope, [but in Britain] for our message to have the same impact we discovered that we need to make it edgier,” said Rob O’Keefe, account director at R&R Partners, the agency for the Las Vegas tourism group. “We need a bolder brand statement articulating that you can do things in Vegas you can’t do anywhere else.”^[144]

Focus group disadvantages to watch out for are that people may be too tired to think after a hectic day, or that they may say what they think the researcher wants to hear, or that they may even feel pressured to make things up. Also, focus groups take people out of their normal lives and put them into a quiet room, which may lose the context of the real experience. For this reason, individual or group interviews in natural settings may be more desirable. Having a collaborative discussion with consumers in places where people actually use the products in question, such as a bar or laundromat rather than a research lab or an agency’s conference room, may provide more fruitful ideas. Some companies try to get consumers’ input across multiple stages, from focus groups to natural settings like supermarkets (if the product is a packaged food product) to journal entries that consumers record. This multifaceted approach imparts richness to the ideas, rather than just a slice that a phone interview or focus group can yield.

Video Highlight

John Mayer

Could you give John Mayer your honest opinion about a new song?

Finally, qualitative data can be gathered through an ethnographic studyethnographic studyA data gathering method in which a researcher visits a person’s home or business and directly observes how the customer uses a product in a realistic environment., in which a researcher visits a person’s home or business and directly observes how the customer uses a product. For example, when it designed its Quicken software, Intuit sent software engineers to consumers’ businesses to watch how they used accounting software. The program was called “follow me home,” and the reason for watching consumers in their homes was to seek a natural, unscripted setting. Intuit continues to listen to customers through all sorts of channels, including blog posts and feedback buttons on the software itself. The 2006 version of Quicken, for example, included more than 121 customer-recommended improvements.^[145]

The ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi went even further: when it was working on a new campaign for its client JC Penney, the agency assigned staffers to hang out with more than fifty women for several days. They helped the women clean their houses, carpool, cook dinner, and shop as they observed the women’s behaviors and emotions. This may not be the most glamorous task for the researcher (do they do windows?), but as Saatchi’s global head of strategic planning observed, “If you want to understand how a lion hunts, you don’t go to the zoo—you go to the jungle.”^[146]