Chuck Murphy and Maggie Bright discuss the shift towards digital mediums in qualitative research, with a resurgence of in-person requests and projects.
Chuck Murphy 0:00
Hi, everyone. I'm Chuck Murphy and I'm joined by Maggie Bright today, as usual, we're always have us right. And today we're going to talk about qualitative research in 2025. What's been afraid this? Where are we going? And I think the question we've been pondering lately is, you know, obviously, if you were to go back 10 years, almost 100% of our qualitative research was done in person in some way. And then, over the last 10 years, especially over the last three years, we accelerated very quickly, we, you know, there was points where 100% of our qualitative research was done through some digital medium. And now we're seeing a resurgence in in person requests and projects. And just kind of curious as trying to put the put the hat on, if I owned qualitative facilities, would I be investing in opening up more? Because a lot of closed during COVID? Or is this? Are we on the way back to some of them like a 5050 split, or we're going to stay in this zone, where digital is the de facto? And so I just thought it'd be an interesting conversation to discuss that since it's, it's such a key question for industry. So figure, there's no one better to talk about that with than Maggie right?
Maggie Bright 1:21
Yeah, I think it's a fascinating question. I will say, personally, I did my first in person qual a couple of weeks, and it probably about six weeks ago. And it was fun to get back out and be, you know, behind the climbing glass, so to speak, listening to participants in person and kind of feeling very connected to the research again, not that we're not connected in a digital sense. But it was nice to be there and to feel very present during the research. So I will say that I there's a plug for that. And just that, as a professional who does this, it was nice to be back on the road again, which I don't know if that's just a result of COVID or my personality. But I really enjoyed being there. So I hope that we I think that the pendulum is definitely swinging from 100% digital or online qualitative to include more in person. And I hope that that remains the case. Are we going to we're going to throw out percentage like what percentage we think it'll be in 2025? Are we going to have a discussion and
Chuck Murphy 2:21
then we can make fun of whoever's wrong, and two years, it'll give us your we're just building our pipeline, Maggie building are both
Maggie Bright 2:27
going to be wrong, let's just put that out there. And so you can we can equally make fun of each other.
Chuck Murphy 2:33
It is funny. It's funny how this stuff works, though, right? I mean, we've talked a little bit about this in the last month or two. But you know, we went through a period where we just didn't even have any clients requested person for a number of years, right. And it got to the point where it didn't even expect them to request it. And then it was kind of surprising that all of a sudden, this year, we're seeing a lot of different companies in different industries have a preference for doing things in person, which is great, because it was kind of like oh my gosh, back to the person all the sudden. And it was really interesting. I've also done in person recently. And then we've I was talking to another one of our colleagues the other day who we just did a thing last week where, you know, they had a huge background, which is the first time in a long time, there's been like, you know, 20 plus people in the backroom. And it's just interesting. And then we feel like we saw this after COVID with travel. And we've seen it in some other industries, where all the sudden it was just kind of like, oh, yeah, this is just coming back. And then when it does come back, it comes back fairly quick. It's so if something happened this year, whatever, I don't know if it's like a break in the weather or what, where people are like, this adverse, and let's go. I
Maggie Bright 3:44
have a few hypotheses around this. I think that companies or clients at companies, and then their clients within those companies Miss connecting with consumers in that way, I do think no matter how great the platforms we use digitally are, and they are great, I think you can get most of the insights, I think you can get the direction that you need to make decisions about, you know, either next steps of research or you know where to go with your brand. But I think that there's something missing in terms of that sort of the human nuances that you get from watching people interact in person with each other. And I think our clients were starting to miss that. And I missed that too. I think it adds a depth to the research that you could debate is necessary in all instances, you know, it's not, it's not written necessarily directly into the objectives, but it adds something in terms of the context and the richness of the research to see people in person, even if it's in a focus group facility, which is kind of sterile, almost, but there's just something about them interacting with each other that adds a dimension to the research that you cannot get, in my opinion, digitally. I still strongly believe that most of our qualitative research will have And, you know, through an online or digital platform, I think it works really well. I think that, you know, that was one of the benefits of COVID is that, that the technology and the platforms that we use are really good, the moderators adjusted very quickly to be able to be extremely effective in those projects. And so I think I still think that way, more than half of our research, qualitative research will be done that way. But I think that there are certain projects in which it just makes so much sense to actually connect with people. And whether that's, you know, traditional focus groups, or I mean, think of Think of how much more richness you can get in ethnography by just being next to the person that you're interviewing. And I so I think that stuff is coming back. And for good reason. I will say, though, I think that there's a challenge ahead for the facilities that are still in business are going to come back to business because I felt like they were out of practice when we went there in person. quickly pick back up, but there was a marked difference in terms of the efficiency of those facilities, from pre COVID times and, you know, I applaud them for staying open. So I certainly don't want to criticize, but I think that there's some there's some room to be made up, just in terms of the logistics of you know, in person restarts.
Chuck Murphy 6:22
Yeah, no, I mean, there's there's no question that it's, it's different. And it's so hard for, it's hard, you know, it's like, like anything else? Like, it's, it's hard to be in practice, if you haven't had as much? Yeah, like, they just haven't had the reps. They haven't had as much time with people there. It was, it was no, like, we've all talked about this before, but it was noticeable being in facilities this year, how different it felt, than pre COVID. And it's understandable. And it's like, I feel bad for them. Like we, you know, we were really lucky that we're in an industry that was able to do everything remotely. And it's it's, you know, some of these people got hit really hard and it sucks. Do you use do you think the majority 2025? what's your what's your number?
Maggie Bright 7:11
I wrote down a number because I weighed so you should write yours down before I say mine out loud.
Chuck Murphy 7:17
Okay, I will write my down right now.
Maggie Bright 7:19
I have a range. So if you want a range, that's fine. I wrote her
Chuck Murphy 7:22
the exact number. Oh, wow. Ever otherwise we can't figure out who was close.
Maggie Bright 7:27
Alright, fine, I will write an exact number. Okay, I've written the exact number I've circled it. I think 25.4% of our work will be in person in qualitative in the future.
Chuck Murphy 7:41
Is that really what you put it? Did you pay 25.4? I
Maggie Bright 7:44
actually put 15 to 25%.
Chuck Murphy 7:48
Wow. So I put 75% Digital was a while we have the exact same number
Maggie Bright 7:52
we do. Except for my point for that I
Chuck Murphy 7:55
don't think we're ever gonna get the answer close enough that we could decide to pay for. But it matters.
Maggie Bright 8:00
So that every four projects that that sounds that's
Chuck Murphy 8:04
really crazy. And it's funny, I do think it's I think you said this, but I want to say it to
Maggie Bright 8:11
the best form of flattery, right?
Chuck Murphy 8:13
I want to say it even more striking with the union. No question in my mind that there are huge benefits to doing this in person. There's no question in my mind. And I think the benefits are even more for the non researchers for the stakeholders, basically. Because I think we're so used to it reminds me a little bit of quantitative research, where I'm gonna read quantitative research all the time, I could be very swayed by a chart a number. I know what goes into that chart, I know how hard it is to get a certain delta between two numbers. And so I could find that very compelling. But people aren't around that stuff all the time. Just look at it be like so what, like you don't I mean, it doesn't it doesn't impact them that I and I think there's a similar thing that happens in court where like, when you have stakeholders standing in the backroom, especially together as a group, when you have multiple people, you know, from even different roles. And they hear even if it's a small group of you know, for eight or whatever it is, customers talking about something. There's like a light bulb moment where then they start to see things and then they get to share that, you know, there's no question in my mind that that that happens in a different way. I always think of the whole movie theater example. Like if you go and sit next to your friends in a movie theater, your cell phone is off, you're watching the screen. You know, it's loud, it's big. You are experiencing that movie at the same time. You could go home and each watch that movie on Netflix and put your you get up more your phone might ring you're not necessarily together. It's not quite you may not have as much of a shared experience. Yeah.
Maggie Bright 9:57
And I think to what what is So what has struck me over the last couple of years? And I see this? This is absolutely not a criticism of any brand is that I do think that there is some of the decisions that are made have become more business decisions and less sort of like human decisions. And that sounds really campy. But I think that we, we, as a society, just we have less personal connection to other people in that society because of COVID. And therefore, it's easy to make decisions without thinking through, okay, who is the actual end user? Or who is the what is the face of the person you look like that's going to be touching this product and things like that. And I think the in person qual brings that back in a way that a digital qualitative experience can't. And I mean, I don't know. I can't, you know, put it into words exactly how powerful it is just to see people in a room talking to each other and seeing how they're, you know, their facial expressions change, and a lot of, you know, their body. You know, like the gestures they're making that you can't pick up online as easily, because they were, you know, wearing these little squares. But when you're in person, you can physically see them turning away from other people or leaning in or how excited their facial expressions are when they want to talk about a topic or, you know, when you when you're reviewing stimuli, which there's a great platform to review stimuli online, but when they are actually like reacting to an ad, or those types of things, you'll get so much more if you're doing it in person than online. There's no quicker Yeah. And having said that, I think there are still perfect projects to do digitally that don't require that sort of, you know, emotional element to it. I mean, there's plenty of instances where, you know, you can have a very candid and insightful conversation digitally. And it works just fine. And it's, you know, there's a lot of efficiencies to that. And so I certainly don't, I would never say one is better than the other, I think they just achieve slightly different objectives. And so that's the that's the key piece, like, how often do you need that really human piece of the puzzle, to be part of the insights and the final? You know, the final report or deliverable, because, to me, that decision maker of which one you use, and then budget? Yeah,
Chuck Murphy 12:10
it's kind of it's not really better versus just strings. It is interesting to note that we both, we both were like, hey, the future is probably 75% Digital, which is a big number like I kind of I kind of I'm a little bit surprised that I missed it definitely surprised that both of our numbers were the same. And I'm a little bit surprised that we both landed on a pretty high percentage of digital it's it's hard to fight the convenience and budgetary like thing, right, that the travel expenses are huge. The travel annoyances are huge. You know, we had one that one last week were, you know that there was all this travel things and the moderator got stuck in one city and some clients got stuck at a different state. I mean, it's you forget, we were so used to that it was actually really interesting to it was the thing that fascinated me a little bit about this about, you know, it's like what they see with kids when time goes by faster than you think. But I've done so much coal research in my life. It's just ingrained in there and think about it. And I actually didn't really think about the fact that I had traveled for focus groups and a couple of years, I was like, oh my time that we didn't do this. And then it also dawned on me how many junior people in our industry had never done this. I was like, Oh my God, we've never been in the back room. Like I was like, Wow, that's so crazy. Because like so much of our our life was that for so long. And I
Maggie Bright 13:30
think it's important that people do that both on absolutely side of the equation as suppliers. I think it's important that clients do that experience. I think it's important that stakeholders see that because it does put into perspective, all the things that go into research and the way that we come to the conclusions that we come to it's a very, it's it's not an accident that when people ask us what we do when we say Oh, market research, and they're like, Oh, so you do focus groups. Like I feel like that's that fundamentally people think of as market research. And if you're not doing that anymore, then it's sort of, it's like you're missing a fundamental step to the learning process.
Chuck Murphy 14:11
I mean, Maggie, I've seen you know this, but I've spent a lot of money the last decade of my life working with a lot of different tech companies and the tech companies are often have a very engineering culture and market research is, you know, it's not their forte, the way is that built into the some of these companies the way it is some more traditional companies. There's always this element of people that don't understand research that are just like, well, it's easy. You just ask them, and I always tell people is like, look, asking people is a big part of our job. There's no question right? We ask people a lot of questions. And there's a big part of our job too, which is, you know, I don't think this gets said out loud a lot. But a big part of our job is deciding when not to believe what people say. And you know, not for nefarious reasons, but there's a lot of things that people say or think or do that are you know inconsistent and not necessarily reliable. You know what I mean? And those kinds of things, I always think about like a poker game or something like when you're just, it's so much easier to watch someone react to something, and know if they're not telling the truth to the moderator when you could see their whole body when you can. And that's a big part of what people like us do. It's like, Hey, listen, I know, they said they buy that they're gonna buy it. They don't like it. They're just being delayed, and it's hard to do over zoom, you could still do it a little bit, but it's harder. So yeah.
Maggie Bright 15:31
I mean, I think that there's, we've always known that there's a big disconnect between actual behavior and aspirational behavior, right. And it's very hard to tease that out quantitatively, we have all these different tools and methods that we use and trade offs, and, you know, asking questions in different ways, but you, it becomes very clear quickly in, in person, qualitative research, who is talking about their aspirational self versus their actual self. And, you know, there's, there's some skill to figuring out that too. So if you haven't been sitting in the back room for a long time, you don't also hone that craft, which is really important to what we do as well. But I totally agree with you, I think it's so much easier to pick out those nuances when you're there. And the the conversations in the backroom, are also, you know, as a younger researcher, that's how I learned about how companies works and brands worked. And like it built this great foundation of how marketing works across different companies. And you know, what the, you know, there's always a stated goal or a research goal for the project, but it helped me understand what the business goals were, for the project or for the bigger picture. And I think that piece of it, once you get to know your clients better, makes you a better researcher on every project that you do for them in the future. And I really felt like that was such a fundamental piece of my education. You know,
Chuck Murphy 16:52
you you're learning to be a professional. It's funny, there's things you said there that I want to respond to both, and I kind of can't have to pick that let's go with that bar. Because I think this this does dovetail very much with the conversation that's happening a lot now around remote work is that when you have, you know, in the case of qualitative research, you often have whole days, if not a whole week, sometimes multiple weeks, with this group of people that are tasked with making some decision, right. And there's a lot of downtime when you travel together. And when you are in between, you know, sessions or whatever, whatever it is. And you learn so much about how different roles work and how and what people care about. And I think that that's a huge advantage of something like this, that it does dovetail into this, this, you know, this work discussion, and some older people are like, Hey, I'm worried. If younger people only learn in a remote environment, then a lot of the younger people in Tennessee, like the, they're, they don't believe the older people, oftentimes. And I think that like, I'm an older person now. So I'm gonna make a little bit of an older person case, but there's
Maggie Bright 18:03
a younger person, I'm an older stuff,
Chuck Murphy 18:05
and whatever bucket you want, we don't judge here. But um, you're, you're younger, you're younger.
Maggie Bright 18:14
on the younger side, hold on,
Chuck Murphy 18:16
it is it is true, right? You spend these weeks and you get to know, you get to ask a lot of questions about like, Why do you think about this that way? Or what you which what's your role versus this role? Because you know, a lot of these, you know, when you get into some of these big companies, that the departments or roles can be very confusing, even for people that work there. But I got, what do you do. And it's interesting, too, that we, you know, we're obviously on one side of this business, we talk a lot about that. But this benefit we're talking about, it applies to people that work at the same company, too, because they often don't get to spend time with these people in different roles. And so it's it is a really big thing. Now, it does come at the cost of a lot of hassle get stuck in airports, and, you know, being out of the office, all that so so there is there is a downside to it.
Maggie Bright 18:57
But there's I agree with you, I think I'm a very visual person. And so as I listen to focus groups, I take notes, and I put them on stickies. And I mean, it's very, it's sort of it makes sense. In my mind, I don't know if it makes sense to anyone else. But it's a way to collaborate in the moment in the backroom and to get more creativity and to develop a report that is more reflective of sort of the holistic view of both the consumer, the client, the stakeholder, you know, it, it creates, if done correctly, I think being in the back room together creates a much more impactful final deliverable, and probably more, you know, better decision making.
Chuck Murphy 19:38
Because this is the second thing I wanted to talk about what it's like with this, this backroom idea from a different angle to which is you know, we mentioned it earlier, it's about listening to customers, right? When you can see someone's whole body. You get a much greater sense for how they're reacting to things. It's much easier to read or write when you're in the backroom. If there's something that a Uh, you know, a customer, or a moderator or a researcher thinks that a stakeholder doesn't agree with, when you're there together in person. First of all, it's much easier to see that right? You could see right there, and then it's like, oh, they don't agree with that. So now why now what? Let's Good, let's you can kind of you have these time to say, Hey, listen, okay. So the customer says, your product is not a good value, like, and, you know, oftentimes, there's even even among businesses, there's a tendency to get defensive, right? No, it's a great value for XYZ reason. So okay, let's, let's have that discussion. It's a lot easier in person to address the barriers that stakeholders and different groups have. And I always had it as a goal. This is like a, you know, under the line goal, that wouldn't be stated too often. But, you know, this is how I always thought about it is on the big questions at hand, you know, traditional qualitative research for would go Monday to Friday, right? Friday, you're traveling home, in when we were when we were leaving that airport Friday, I wanted to have consensus among the stakeholders for the big things, I thought for the for the, for the top three to five, like, Hey, these are the big things coming out of this that I think, and if you don't agree, I want to know now why we're in person, because later if there's a 40 people in the room, we're not to be able to have this discussion. But if you don't agree with what I see, why, what do you see that I don't see why in person, you have that downtime, when you're, you know, could be sitting in an airport or sitting in a bathroom and debriefing and be like, wait, what do you see, and they're there, you know, this goes both ways. But there's plenty of moments where a researcher see something that, you know, a marketer or product person might not, but then there's also plenty of moments where someone who's deeply in a category hears or sees something that someone like us who's who's bouncing between categories may not necessarily see it as like, Okay, wait, let's talk about that. And, and why we're still there, we could dive in and the next session, or change the guide, or do whatever we need to do to, to delve more about that. And I think that's a, that's another big benefit that too often on Zoom, it's like, Okay, I've got half hour between these two meetings, I'm gonna go walk the dog, or I'm gonna, you know, whatever. It's just like people, they go in a different direction. And there's not that time where you argue about storage systems, they argue, wait, you're gonna debate like different thoughts.
Maggie Bright 22:06
I mean, that we do a lot of strategy or activation sessions as part of projects. And my thing that I always say to clients is, listen, the the, the most sort of impactful piece of this is not a single thing I will ever write, in the discussion guide, or the exercises we create it is the fact that you've got all of these people in the same room together for two hours. Like that is the most, like, that's the, the key. And I think that's what focus groups doing, because it's not even two hours, it's like, you know, 12 hours with constant input coming in, that forces you to reassess, you know, like, okay, are my parameters I have set for what I thought I was gonna learn? Are they correct? Am I filling in things that I already knew? Or am I expanding? You know, my knowledge set, and I think that's what's that's the piece of the puzzle that is so valuable about the in person component is that you're you're actively having a dialogue with these people who normally wouldn't all be together undistracted. And there's consumers that are too and the one thing that I think I can see, evolving, and I think it's already evolved, but you know, we think of in person qual often as this, you know, we're in a facility, you know, these traditional groups, but I think what was happening prior to COVID, is that we were, we were sort of lowering those barriers, because and I think this is a result of people are just more open to sharing now than they weren't 1015 years ago because of social media. And so what was happening more often, as we were saying, Okay, let's get out of the focus group facility, let's do more, you know, what started as shop alongs and then became, no digital ethnography is but they were there, I think that there's going to be more interesting applications of in person qual. And that's what's going to be even more exciting about this field, there will always be traditional focus groups in person, but I think we'll see more of the kind of, you know, rather than a very structured in person conversation, we'll be doing more of the like, you know, watching consumers in their habitat almost more. I don't want to say anthropological because I think we'll be asking questions while we do it. But that's where I see this 25% That's in person. I think a lot of it will be really creative, as opposed to just traditional focus groups.
Chuck Murphy 24:16
I actually thought you would be because of some of those thoughts. I thought you were gonna go closer to like 40% live. I was I was surprised that we were on the conservative side.
Maggie Bright 24:25
I think that the ease of doing it digitally is so compelling that it's going to be hard.
Chuck Murphy 24:34
I know. It's an efficiency. It's an efficiency cost savings. So it's hard to fight the low cost product.
Maggie Bright 24:41
Our timelines have accelerated so much in the past five years. That to do in person qual in some of the timelines that that we are working with is hard. I mean, it is an all hands on deck effort. It's doable, and we're hoping that we can do it. We just did one a few weeks ago. That was crazy fast. So, you know, it's still doable. But I don't know that the appetite is always there, because that also requires a ton of effort on the client's part too. Yeah. So I just don't, you know, I think there will be applications for in person qual more than 25% of the time, but I don't think the appetite is there from well,
Chuck Murphy 25:16
and I think the best the best people at the best brands will, this is something that really took me a long time to see when I was younger in my career, but you already talked about this a little bit, but it's the what I've always thought is kind of the best people at the best brands want to be a person and know how to, to reach consensus relatively quickly in person. And so I think they'll always they'll always see that benefit we're talking about when you say like the the biggest accomplishment is actually getting everybody in the room at once and agreeing that we're going to make a decision here, because and that is very hard to do. Very few people could do that. So I think this, there's, there's these really wise people that will see the value in that, you know, and they will still pull to it for that reasons, even if there's a cheaper, more efficient way to do it. But that is a big, big benefit. Perhaps the biggest one is, is to be able to sit there and have the debate. And I was shocked with that early in my career, the first couple of times I saw someone really good. Do that. And it doesn't even necessarily be the researcher, it could be the stakeholder, right? But when you see people that are really good at kind of working across different groups of people, and reaching a consensus in a way that feels very natural, holistic and non forced. And then I was struck the first time I saw that happen, you see, it's almost like you see a handshake deal made. And then two years later, when it's rolled out as a presentation, you're like, This is all a formality. This was all done two weeks ago, like every single thing. And you're like, oh, wow, that's really smart. The way they did that, right, instead of you know, so So I think there will always be that. And I know we've we've touched on this fringe, but I think we should explicitly say there are really cool digital tools now. So I see. And I think some people think that we're going to be 100. And a lot of there's a lot of digitally native moderators now, right? Wait till the AI moderators start logging on and doing all the work in one day. That's a whole
Maggie Bright 27:07
other podcast. Yeah, we
Chuck Murphy 27:09
could do a podcast on that.
Maggie Bright 27:11
I agree with you, though. I mean, I do think depending on the complexity of the project, and the weight of the decision to be made, I think that's another key piece to whether or not you do it in person or online. And to me, if you have this really crucial business decision to be made, that is, you know, fundamentally going to shift your business or you know, it's a it's a something that you really need consensus on in the same room like you, you almost have to do that in person because that it's harder to get there, like you said, through a digital platform,
Chuck Murphy 27:45
although I am thinking about now for the for the you know, there was that project you did where you have you almost have the in person war room, and then they had the feeds coming out of people. So there could be alternative solves for that. But I think the most important thing here is that we both write down, I'm gonna have Nicole, hold us to this tune in July of 2025. We're gonna go back and we're gonna make our best estimate and see how close we were to getting.
Maggie Bright 28:11
Okay, are we basing it on our book of business or on some more global we've
Chuck Murphy 28:18
got two years to figure out how we're gonna, how we're gonna size this market and decide if you're gonna be our job, but I love it. Thanks for being with us today. This was fun. I mean, this
Maggie Bright 28:30
was great. I could have gone on for hours but I won't.
Chuck Murphy 28:34
Alright, have a good day everyone. Bye.