How & When to Use Online Qual for Designing Successful Consumer Studies

While most market researchers have used online qual, there are many practitioners who may not be aware of the multitude of online qualitative applications for various research initiatives. There are still a great deal of misconceptions or old perceptions about how and when and how to use online qual to deliver to get closer to understanding the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of your customers and prospects.  The fact is online qual, driven by amazing leaps in technology, now offers more options than ever before for insights strategists to engage respondents and uncover deeper, more emotional insights.

Here are just a few examples of how you can innovate using an online qual platform for your market research projects:

Digital Ethnography

Embed respondent activities utilizing video and image uploads to follow consumer behaviors in-the-moment and over time. A less invasive and more natural way to do in-home ethnos.

Multi-day Attitude & Behavioral Studies

Conduct highly engaging multi-day deep dives to understand product usage, consumer behaviors, competitive landscapes, as well as the emotion and psychology of buying decisions.

Concept Testing

Share and gain thoughtful feedback on your concepts and ideas in virtually any format including video, print, animatics, words on a page, logos, or other stimuli. Our proprietary Multi-Day Concept Rotation Technology utilizes an algorithm to achieve true rotation balance over multiple days. Quant questions can be mixed in as well to make it quant/qual.

CX (Customer Experience)

The online platform is customizable to deliver maximum insights for understanding customer journeys. This allows you to understand the decision-making process as well as the human emotions and experiences that drive engagement with brands right through the path-to-purchase and beyond. Tools that are innate to consumers such as in-the-moment video and mobile diaries allows respondents to provide deep, rich insights into their thoughts and behaviors as they happen.

Pre-focus Group Homework

Apply a digital approach to tried-and-true analog focus group methods, such as collage and storytelling, to supercharge your groups while saving time and inspiring better dialogue in your live sessions.

Journaling & Product Usage Diaries

Online qual is the perfect tool for allowing consumers to create in-the-moment journals and diaries using mobile tools to document experiences and behaviors anytime, anywhere.

Home Use Testing

Develop custom reporting activities soliciting feedback on test product placement in a real-world setting using mobile, video tools, and diary features.

Innovation & Product Development

Inspire respondent creativity and collaboration to develop new ideas and enhance existing ones. Some platforms, like Aha!, allow you to shape the  platform’s features around your own methodologies and innovation processes.

Mobile Missions/Store Trips

The best online qual platforms feature mobile-friendly activities that enable respondents to spontaneously provide information as it occurs, while giving you the ability to capture real, in-the-moment reactions and decisions.  It is ideal for capturing video and images, as well as open-and-closed-ended responses from respondents in-store, at home, or on-the-go.

Longitudinal Community Studies

Create and cultivate a large community of respondents from whom you can strategically mine insights over long periods of time (i.e. a year or more).

Internal Company Brainstorms

Leverage an online platform’s collaborative tools to conduct internal ideation and innovation sessions that allow your team to efficiently generate breakthrough ideas.

Trend Identification Research

Create studies using customized activities to capture emerging trends and cultural phenomena before they become mainstream.

Custom Methodology

Work with an experienced online qual team to build templates using your own proprietary approaches and methods. Integration of multiple projective techniques within large quantitative studies on other platforms via an API is also possible.

If you would like to hear more about the multiple uses of our own online qual platform, or how we can collaborate on Custom Methodologies, please click here.