At Nobles Research we offer customized research solutions to help our clients better understand their target audience. We accomplish this by having a wide range of qualitative tools and techniques.

Over the past year we have had the opportunity to bid on and conduct several Online Bulletin Board focus groups (OBBFG) for our clients. This issue of the Insight highlights some of the benefits of this tool.

Mission Impossible

The challenge was how to best gather feedback on the respondents' experiences with the product over a two month period of time. It would be way too time consuming to travel to interview each person. It would also be naïve to expect the college students to mail in a questionnaire every week regarding their experience.

Given college students' familiarity with the internet, emailing and instant messaging, an OBBFG was suggested as a way to learn about each panelists' experience in real-time.

In the first two weeks of the study the students would be required to log-in every other day to share their experience with the product. In the following weeks, they would log-in once a week.

Unfortunately the scope of the project changed. However this tool would have allowed the project team to gather "real time" feedback from a target audience spread out across three states.

Making Connections without Making Connections

Oh, the joys of business travel! All of the glamour of business travel can be quickly tarnished when you plop down in the middle seat on an airplane and you have to jockey for a place to put your elbows.

This next case study involves a retail client that used an online bulletin board to increase their fundamental understanding of how people shop for their product. Their bulletin board lasted for three days and included thirty-five respondents from over twenty different states.

The discussion flow was set-up so they could get the benefits of a 1-on-1 interview and a focus group. Panelists provided their individual responses to the questions before seeing how the others responded.

Then they were able to comment on the responses of others.

Essentially, we were able to conduct thirty-five 1-on-1 interviews and have a focus group without the client leaving their offices. They were able to connect with their target audience.

This client was able to stay connected throughout the research with their advertising agency that was located in a different city through the virtual backroom. In the virtual backroom, they were able to send messages back and forth regarding specific comments made by a respondent. They were also able to send messages to the moderator to ask specific questions to a specific respondent. All of the backroom conversation occurred without the respondents' knowledge. Just as the entire group's discussion was captured in a transcript, so was the backroom discussion. The virtual back room made it easy for their team to stay connected, regardless of their location.

Getting More Out of Each Respondent

The advantage of a focus group is that you can learn from multiple persons at one time. A panelist's response may prompt a thought in another and the respondents can work together to build ideas. This is also true of an online bulletin board. However, with an online bulletin board you can "hear" or "read" more from each panelist.

In a two hour focus group with eight respondents you may hear each person speak for at most 15 minutes. In the study I just referenced for our retail client, the respondents were asked to visit the bulletin board twice a day to answer questions and respond to the posts of the other panelists. Over the course of the three days, each panelist probably spent 60 - 90 minutes providing responses to our questions.

The respondents were recruited and paid incentives that were comparable to a two-hour focus group.

The panelists provided us with so much feedback that at the end of the study we had a transcript that was over 170 pages in length.

There are several reasons why panelists provide more feedback on an online bulletin board. They participate at times that are convenient for them, can take more time to formulate their responses and they can respond in anonymity.

An online bulletin board can allow you to get more out of each respondent!

Contact us for an interactive demonstration of this tool!

Nobles Research has extensive experience designing research to help its clients uncover truths about their customers. We would love to assist you in creating a research plan to better understand your target audience. We look forward to the opportunity to serve you.