Random Thoughts
June 12, 2023
Thinking back through the 25+ years of my career in the qualitative consumer research industry (I prefer using the term “end-user” rather than “consumer” as I stated previously because of “consumer’s” negative connotation—only consume things), I have never really had to explain why clients should outsource end-user insights gathering to professional agencies. That’s primarily because all the clients that I have dealings with already incorporated end-user insights as key elements in their business decision-making process. The reliability, objectivity, and unbiased nature of the insights gathered are crucial, and outsourcing this process to a professional agency is therefore a no-brainer.
As I have decided to now focus also on targeting startups as potential clients for One16 (of course besides the regular research buyers), I am now beginning to run into this very basic question often—"why should I spend money and outsource qualitative end-user insight gathering to an agency when I can do it myself?”.
So let me take this opportunity to answer this very question for all the potential clients who are not research fluent (especially qualitative). I am going to give you four main points that I believe are powerful enough to encourage you to at least become open to the idea of outsourcing qualitative end-user research:
Qualitative research is a science, it is not as simple as just asking people questions. Over the years (I believe qualitative research started as a commercial practice as early as 1940’s post WWII era when consumerism began), different approaches, methods, and questioning techniques have been developed (with the advent of psychology) to help researchers unearth reliable deep insights. It takes years of training and practice for a qualitative researcher to be fluent in those methods and techniques. I have personally witnessed an untrained client-side executive who tried to conduct the interview himself, but he could not even control the basic mood of the interview as he underestimated the nervousness he felt. This in turn made the respondent (“respondent” is how we referred to the end-user being interviewed) feel extremely uncomfortable, and that limited the respondent’s willingness to open up and speak, and the findings became very shallow.
Never underestimate the importance of remaining objective and neutral during the interview.This is extremely difficult to do if you are the client themselves. Imagine a scenario in which you wanted your business idea to be right so much that you started to ask leading questions to respondents so that they would tell you that (often times you are not even aware you are doing it). Professional qualitative researchers have no stake at the table, we can remain objective and neutral during the entire interview process. This, in turn, allows the respondents to tell you truthfully and in an unbiased manner how they really feel about the subject matter in question.
It is actually far less costly (potentially) to outsource your qualitative research than to do it on your own, considering the high likelihood of an untrained professional conducting the interview incorrectly and therefore getting unreliable end-user intelligence. The opportunity costs (the time and effort needed to not only recruit the target end-users but also to conduct the interviews themselves) are therefore immense. And not to mention that the qualitative research team you outsourced to is an entirely separate team with expertise in marketing that you can rely on to give you different perspectives. Doesn’t this make the outsourcing option a more “cost-effective” option at the end?
Professional qualitative research firms give you access to a diverse end-user pool to talk to, that otherwise would be difficult for you to reach. Every research firm out there has built up a respondent recruitment network that allows them to reach the target end-users. And there is actually a complex process that we go through to ensure the end-users recruited are the ones we want to talk to. But on the client side, one needs to ask oneself the question of how one can possibly get a range of target end users to talk to. Ultimately, I suspect the best-case scenario would be just recruiting friends that might or might not fit the profile. In this case, you would run into a whole different range of potential interview biases that would influence the research results negatively (e.g. friends would just tell you what they think you want to hear so as to remain friendly).
Hopefully, here I have given you enough reasons why you should outsource your end-user intelligence gathering to professional firms like us. But of course, the outsourcing option should be left to research for critical business decisions especially given the tight budgets that startups usually experience. But that is an entirely different subject to dive into, of which, I will be writing about in the next post (“What business decisions are critical enough to spend qualitative research money on?).
Well, on that note, that’s it for this week. As usual, I hope this helps you in some way, but feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts. As always, follow us on our LinkedIn page for more!
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