Research-Live.com recently reviewed 'Consumer.ology' by one Philip Graves. It's a balanced review, considering the line advanced by Graves (ex client-side researcher) is about as dumb and unoriginal as Rambo 12. The 'argument' is, because what people say does not correspond to what they do (hold the front page of Research, Marc) there's no point talking or even listening to them. Just watch what they do.
This blinding insight apparently happened after the author finished bombarding some poor sods in Leeds with questions in a focus group. After he turned his tape recorder off they started having a proper conversation and talked about doing something different to what they'd told their interrogator. He used this as evidence that talk was deceptive, rather than that he might be a shit moderator.
Unhindered by any such doubts, he went on to discover that people do psychoanalysis but still can't get to the bottom of their own thoughts and that our emotions shape our decisions, therefore we cannot identify what we want and don't want. (I can however identify with 100% accuracy one recently published book I will not buy.)
He says it is an illusion that we can ask people what they think and learn from it. I re-read that particular gem a couple of times to check I wasn't mistaken, but that is what it says. There goes journalism, then.
He advocates 'doing away with' attitudinal research and using only behavioural research, prototyping and live testing concepts. (That wouldn't be his new line of business, by any chance?)
There are only two slight problems with doing only behavioural testing. One is the cost of making prototypes and paying for live test markets. The other is that behaviour is not as predictive as he makes out. Are the results of the test market guaranteed to be replicated nationally?
More fundamentally, behaviour has to be interpreted, which is not as easy or as reliable as you may think. For example, someone's body language in a recent interview suggested they were completed bored by the concepts being shown. When this was suggested, they said that the room was stuffy and they were not unable to concentrate. The concepts went down rather well after the window was opened.
We would agree that behaviour and observation is 'under-reported' in market research and we have been doing a lot more ethnographic research over recent years. Talking and listening to people in research is not about asking questions, it's about having good conversations with the right people. Good conversations reveal motivations for behaviour and provide context for understanding it.
One really powerful tool for combining the best of both worlds, conversation and observation, is the co-discovery interview, which we have described elsewhere. It works because it allows people to interpret and reflect on their own behaviour, which generally gets deeper into the issues that matter to the client.
It's not rocket science, it's not even an -ology, but it works. You can take our word on that.
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