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Quals secret weapon

AQR deployed a crack team at the latest AURA seminar showcasing great qualitative research thinking to 100 client-side insight professionals, says Giles Finnemore.

We were both "adjacent" and "in the moment" — looking at how agencies borrow skill sets to amplify impact and at additional insights delivered by in-context approaches. Northstar and Jaguar Landrover stepped out from behind the proverbial clipboard to create a small but really intimate community of key customers that moved vehicle design forward and also got internal teams immersed in who their customers are.

Sign Salad and Premier Foods went through the semiotic journey of Mr Kipling’s Exceedingly Good Cakes and how qual helped hone a new brand proposition. Behavioural Architects aided the Amateur Swimming Association in finding ways to turn round declining uptake: behavioural economics provided in-depth consumer understanding and strategies for change. Then Jigsaw used a range of techniques to build a multi-layered analysis of the emotional impact of a betting brand combining facial coding and delayed impact analysis with qual’s secret weapon — the sensitivity of the qual researcher.

After lunch, we turned to "in-context behavioural research", and the benefits of online research "fast" and "slow". Razor’s team gave a snapshot of how they use Whatsapp as a pre-task — both to generate insight and get respondents more engaged. Nationwide worked with RDSi to get customers blogging. It may have been online but the approach was all about giving time to reflect on motivations for switching and to document their actions. Freeview and Join The Dots used online and mobile research to understand the experience of choosing a TV provider and churn. Finally, The Nursery discussed Customer Journey Research and challenged the use of the term ethnography where we are framing the whole exercise with questions!

Feedback from AURA members included "very practical examples", "good inspiration", and "really worth attending". Our many thanks go to team AQR for a great programme and ensuring AURA members had many insights and tips to take away.

 

Giles Finnemore
Copyright © Association for Qualitative Research, 2016

About the author

Giles Finnemore

Giles is Chair of AURA, the client-side insight community for sharing expertise and inspiration. AURA is for client-side insight professionals who seek to raise their expertise and impact within their organisation. They are a unique insight sector community which offers member organisations continuing personal development, inspiration and peer-to-peer support. Giles has been Chair for two years and a Board member for four years.