Running Research Communities in Asian Markets

Online Research Communities (MROCs) are the new star in market research.

These online platforms connect a company with a group of interested

and interesting consumers to collaborate with them in qualitative

research projects. With the rise of social media, Asian consumers are ready,

more than ever, to co-create the future of brands and products/services. Are

Asian companies ready for it as well?

This paper shares tips, illustrated with cases, on how to successfully

collaborate with consumers in Asian markets.

What to

expect?

Many brands are looking at the Asian

markets for growth opportunities. According

to Bloomberg, five of the top ten emerging

economies lie in Asia. China, Indonesia and India

are leading the pack. It is the rising middle class in

these regions that creates business opportunities.

Consumer spending in a country such as

Indonesia, for example, is already close to the

levels in developed economies (McKinsey

Quarterly, 2013). With these fast economic

developments, Internet adoption rates are

increasing rapidly. Today, no less than 45% of

Internet users live in Asia (Internet World Stats,

2013). When it comes to social media, Asia

continues to be of significant interest to

marketers, brands and anyone with an

interest in social trends around the globe.

Asian consumers are ready for co-creation

Our Social Media Around the World Study

(InSites Consulting, 2011) shows that in Asia,

six out of ten social media users are connected

with brands and 90% of them want to help

brands in co-creation activities. So, not

only do consumers want to connect with

brands, they also want to collaborate with

them. 30% of these people prefer to

collaborate via a closed online community.

These developments offer great opportunities

for online market research, such as Online

Research Communities (MROCs) or Consumer

Consulting Boards, as we prefer to call them.

Online Research Communities:

types and applications

When positioning Online Research Communities or

Consumer Consulting Boards in the social media

research space, we should distinguish them from

the ‘natural communities’ and ‘social networks’

where content and conversations self-generate

between consumers. Researchers can tap into

these for knowledge via ‘social media netnography’

methods such as social media listening, scraping

and ethnographical, qualitative observation.

Online Research Communities assemble

consumers purposefully through consumers

who wish to engage and co-create with

brands. Communities are ‘invitation only’ and with

a marketing and research motivation. These private

research communities focus on a specific

product category, brand or customer

segment.

Online Research Communities allow

marketers to observe, facilitate and join

conversations between consumers.

Consumers enjoy this more participatory research

approach and the interaction re-introduces the

social context often missing from other research

approaches that conceive the consumer as

subordinate and approach them in a top-down

isolated fashion.

ongoing), intensity of

moderation (longer-lasting

communities are less intense or

community panels are even just

a form of access panels),

direction of conversations

and the number of research

techniques used (ranging from

synchronous online discussion

groups to surveys, diary blogs

and one-on-one interviews).Table 1

In terms of taxonomy, several labels and definitions for research communities are used in practice these

days, which may lead to some confusion - some may even debate whether all of the labels classify as real

communities. The labels range from online research communities over Market Research Online Communities

(MROCs) to bulletin boards, blogs, community panels, etc. (see Table 1). What they do all share is that they are all

some sort of asynchronous discussion platform but they vary in terms of duration (short term and ad hoc to

When we compare research communities to the traditional qualitative methods such as a focus

group, it is the long-term, asynchronous connection that creates interesting benefits.

Where focus groups only give a snapshot of reality, research communities enable participants to

think and rethink over time, beyond one’s first reaction. In order to identify the key benefits

of this relatively new method, we use a simple but very useful framework. This

framework enables to check the method effectiveness on three levels: ‘automational’,

‘informational’ and ‘transformational’ benefits (Day 1994; Grover et al. 1996; Mooney et al. 1996).

1.

2.

3.

Communities may bring automational effects because, for example, communities allow to quickly

tap into a sample of consumers on a specific topic that presents itself, which makes getting

the answer to a specific question more efficient.

The informational value emerges from the fact that the inherent quality of consumer

understanding we get is of better quality. Consumer input is multimedia, embedded in people’s

lives’ context as well as more reflected and reasoned.

Transformational outcomes of research communities lay in the fact that research communities

allow participants to perform tasks which were previously not possible without the

asynchronous technology and engagement over time. We are now able to follow people over a

longer period of time and co-create products or services with them from start to end.

As mentioned online research communities can vary in terms of duration and intensity. But when do you need a short-

term community and when a long-term one? As is often the case in research it depends on the management and the

marketers’ and businesses’ research objectives. Research communities can be used throughout the marketing

mix for understanding, developing, implementing or optimizing marketing offers (see Figure 1).

For consumer insights, communities are

used at the fuzzy front end of product

innovation or for consumer immersion.

In a development marketing phase new

value propositions are developed for

product concepts, brands or activation

campaigns. Implementation

communities are organized when

products or services are about to be

launched and need testing in the

market, e.g. for beta testing or in-home

user tests. Finally research communities

can be used for gathering feedback on

customer experience and satisfaction

processes.Figure 1.

In situations where managers have one very specific goal, a short-

term community will often suffice to satisfy the research needs.

The fact of the matter is that for running a successful

community one needs a show or a screenplay to keep the

engagement with and between all stakeholders. Concretely,

with only one very specific management goal, it is hard to keep up

momentum and activity. If on the other hand managers have a

combined need or want to have a continued finger on the pulse

with their target group over the longer term, ongoing communities

are more suited. In other words, the number of underlying

management objectives directly determine the activity plan

of a community.

The status of Online Research

Communities today

There is still some level of friction between the ability and

the desire to conduct research communities in our industry.

The status of online research communities today is

comparable to teenagers and their first sexual

experience. Everyone says they are doing it, everyone

wants to do it… but in the end no one really knows how to

do it well. This situation is reflected in the Greenbook

Research Industry Trends 2013. 45% of researchers

indicate having plans to use online communities in

the future (ranking 1st out of 17 emerging technologies),

while 40% of clients claim the lack of knowledge is still a

limitation for them (GRIT 2013). Hence, there is a need for

an overview and some concrete tips on how to run

online research communities - and specifically on

how to run them in Asia.

It is not about technology

Often the focus these days lies on technology

and tools while the common ground that

should be shared by real communities is

engagement. Unlike Internet access panels,

participants in a research community talk to each

other as well as to researchers and marketers.

Consumers exchange ideas in their own consumer

language and raise questions and answers which

researchers sometimes did not even ask. In other

words, the social context and interaction is

important and provide a holistic

understanding. However, this can only be

achieved by creating an engagement at different

levels. First, there is a need for natural

engagement which implies that consumers

have to identify with the topic or the brand

under investigation.

A second form of engagement that is required is

method engagement. This implies that

researchers should ask questions in a fun

and challenging way to increase

participation and quality of input (e.g.

gamification, infotainment, challenges). Finally,

research communities need to create impact

engagement and impact at the client

management side.

Engaging with participants - natural and method engagement

Many practitioners focus on the absolute number of people they connect with

in research communities. While important, we argue that sample size is

subordinate. What is really important is the number of interactions

per discussion thread which can only be created through engagement

with consumers. Setting up an online research community is technically

easy, but in order to make interactions useful and effective, researchers need

adequate processes for (Schillewaert et al. 2011):

Natural engagement

1. Purposeful sampling. Researchers are advised to create natural engagement by sampling brand

fans or consumers who show an interest in the topic when recruiting for online research

communities. True, these consumers are “biased”, but at least they reflect an illustrative consumer

reality and generate in-depth discussions.

2. Small is beautiful - better short and intense.

Depending on the research objective, research

communities can last a few weeks or months or be

ongoing, they can have 50 or several hundreds of

participants; it depends. But one needs to be aware

that longer and larger communities need higher

engagement and require more resources.

Lurking can increase with too many participants or an

over-whelming number of posts. A paradox? Not

really. When participants see too much information

they disconnect because they are convinced their

opinion has already been voiced and will add less or

no value.

Method engagement

1. Adapt the context and environment to the target group. For example, let participants choose

colors and the name of the community or put topics and questions on the discussion agenda. Foresee a

social corner (next to the actual discussion space) where participants can interact ‘off-topic’. If required,

moderators should guide participants this social corner. That is when a community is for and by

members.

2. Build the community. Once participants are screened and recruited, ‘kick-off’ sessions are

important to build engagement on both a social and an informational level. Such sessions discuss the

research agenda and objectives, the client is introduced and the participants become acquainted.

If not naturally present, engagement has to be created via the research methods used:

3. Moderators should develop the C factor - the “C” of Community manager. Good

moderators have good writing skills, are creative and apply “social medial” in human interaction.

Moderators need to be aware that community discussions can last too long and moderators need to

pay attention to steering interaction. There is an important role for researchers and

community moderators in building identification with the community, keeping up the

engagement with the topic to keep the discussion going while not letting members over-socialize and

drift away from the researcher’s agenda. Too strong social relations among members of a research

community can be counterproductive as they lead to irrelevant conversations.

4. Engage as many stakeholders as possible. Engaging members of the marketing team, senior

management or a well-known expert from the industry or academia to participate in the discussion spurs

activity levels tremendously.

5. What we ‘do’ to people is as important as what we ‘ask’

them. Give participants tasks to perform and play games with them

which generate insights. We can make people generate

information for us by introducing more fun elements and

creativity. In his book 0 (2008), Dr Medina posits that we often

ignore how the brain works and so do we, researchers. If we were

to apply some of his 12 rules as to how researchers can generate

information, we could get more productive. As an example, there

are five rules that are particularly relevant for market research: 1)

‘exercise boosts brain power’ (rule #1); 2) ‘we do not pay attention

to boring things’ (rule #4); 3) ‘stimulate more of the senses’ (rule

#9); 4) ‘vision trumps all other senses’ (rule #10) and ‘we are

powerful and natural explorers’ (rule #12). In doing so, researchers

play on the engagement and brand relation of participants.

Allow participants to do what they like, surprise them with

something special and check out their reaction.

Engaging with internal stakeholders - impact engagement

If we are completely honest, a lot of the research that is commissioned

does not have the necessary impact. Unfortunately, research has

commoditized as clients search for ‘more and cheaper’, not true

transformation or added value. Still, the core of market research

should be to bring the voice and ideas of consumers inside

organizations all the way up into the boardroom. Because of their

very nature, online research communities facilitate this, however

researchers need to work at creating internal engagement and changing

management. Market research studies are not only about formal

presentations, knowledge management and communication programs.

The informal ‘corridor talk’ is an equally powerful way to have

managers use and share intelligence. The most powerful way is when

research is a conversation starter and generates lively stories about

customers. This can be done in three stages.

1. Engage the internal audience via positive disruption. Create a friction in terms of

contrasting management knowledge with actual market situations via e.g. games and

quizzes with managers. Let executives participate in a consumer quiz to learn about

consumer findings. By answering questions about consumers, they receive social status

(e.g. a badge), reach different game levels and unlock extra information when

progressing - at least something worth talking about.

2. Inspire executives by allowing them to observe, facilitate and even join

the consumer conversations in the community. Allow executives to participate in

the community.

3. Activate managers to increase their usage of market research studies in their daily job by

means of using creative and inspiring sessions and organize internal news

streams and infotainment (e.g. via Twitter updates, newsletters, infographics, mood

boards).

By creating internal engagement, the executives’ knowledge

will increase, they will converse about the study at the water cooler

and will continue to observe consumers beyond the mere report (De

Ruyck et al., 2011).

Three tips for running MROCs in Asia

In the past few years, we have run a lot of global and local communities in Asian

countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, China, Japan and India. These communities

were powered by global brands in Fast Moving Consumer Goods - Unilever, Heinz, AB Inbev and

Heineken - and brands active in the durables category - Philips, IKEA and Quinny. Based on

these cases, we have identified three tips for running successful communities in Asia.

By default, we conduct these studies in the local

language. Meta-research on our communities

has taught us that members participate best if

they can write in their own language. Taking part

in an English-speaking community for a non-

native speaker can be hard. It has a rather

negative influence on the intensity of

participation and the level of detail and nuance

when one is talking. That is why it is preferred

to conduct communities in the native

language of the participant. For a global

project to evaluate the IKEA catalogue, for

example, we conducted five local communities

in, among other countries, China. All

moderators for these local communities

were trained community managers and

part of our Global Community Moderator

Network.

Local communities by default

While being in local contact with participants through a

local moderator, you still grasp the advantages of

having a central/global project team and content

overview when ‘connecting the dots’ on a global level.

Figure 2. IKEA @home community

That being said, there can be good reasons to

opt for a global English-speaking

community: non-native executives of the

company who want to follow the discussion,

limited budgets or the fact that one is in search of

global consensus on a given subject rather than

an understanding of local differences. An

example of the latter is our global ‘Shape It’

community for ketchup giant Heinz. The goal of

this project was to come up with a new and

uniform design for the shape of the next

generation ketchup bottle. Participants in

more than 10 countries, a.o. China and Japan,

took part in the same community to reach global

consensus.

Figure 3. Heinz Shape It community

Local communities by default

When designing your community, it is important to

take into account the technological differences

within the Asian markets. For example, when

we look at Indonesia, the Internet population is

mostly mobile (est. 55%). In the scenario of mobile-

only communities, we need to work in a more task-

based framework and ask more questions that can

be answered in a short and convenient way. Wisely

rethinking the mix of research tools and

adapting them to the small screen is a must. In

order to facilitate the community members at best,

the technology needs to fit the daily routines of the

target group. For example, we launched a global

community for the stroller manufacturer Quinny. The

goal of the community was to immerse with 120

‘urban parents’ for three weeks and to explore their

daily routines when moving around in the city (one

of the Asian cities in the study was Kuala Lumpur).

Facilitate Asian consumers to participate

anytime, anywhere

In order to capture their experiences on the go, we

enabled the parents to share as much

contextual and personal information of their

environment as possible through a dual screen

mobile community application. ‘Dual screen’ refers

to the parallel usage of desktop and mobile

connection. The ‘dual screen’ community solution

enabled members to also perform ‘offline’ tasks,

such as sharing the parents’ hotspots of the city,

spotting new trends and sharing opportunities for

the brand, in the heat of the moment. This dual

application resulted in 2,900 posts, including 433

photos, generated by 60% of the participants, 22%

of whom actually used the mobile app. This result

shows that this solution has given us the richness

of an ethnographic study and the depth of

several consecutive focus groups.

Now that we know that mobile is important for collaborating with consumers in Asia, the next question

we need to tackle is how to use it. Based on in-depth analysis of the Quinny case study, we have

identified three learnings for approaching mobile communities (Willems et al, 2013):

1. Stimulate recurring visits by several

challenges a day. A mobile app increases

community engagement. Community analytics

show that mobile users login 2.3 times more

and view 1.4 more pages compared to the non-

mobile members. They make 65% more

contributions, meaning that they are more

engaged with the community. In order to keep

their attention, community managers need

to stimulate recurrent mobile visits and

offer relatively more challenges on a daily

basis compared to desktop-only usage.

Facilitate Asian consumers to participate

anytime, anywhere

2. Design challenges requesting multi-media

feedback. The mobile application generates

more visual feedback. While mobile/dual users

contribute 1.65 more posts, they only use half

the number of words compared to desktop-only

users (47 vs. 87 words). One might expect that

the reason for the short wording is because of a

speedy contribution and a smaller screen. We

observed however that the wordings are

replaced by a different, more visual

contribution such as a photo or video (6.2

photos by mobile-dual users vs. 2.6 photos by

desktop-only users). These results imply that

mobile communities need to include a lot more

yet shorter challenges requiring multi-media

feedback.

Facilitate Asian consumers to participate

anytime, anywhere

3. Launch challenges targeted at contextual

and personal situations. The mobile

contributions have had a major impact on the

richness. While mobile generated only 41% of

the total number of photos, the relevancy of

those visuals is much higher; of all tagged

photos, the researcher allocated 52% of the tags

to photos generated by mobile. This shows that

the mobile component is of crucial

importance to fully understand the

contextual and personal situation of the

user group and to uncover richer insights.

Facilitate Asian consumers to participate

anytime, anywhere

Next to technology, the native moderator

also helps us adapt the framework of

conversations. A different culture also means

different attitudes and values, leading to a

different way of reacting to questions, tasks and

challenges. When comparing the Asian

countries to the European and American ones,

we learned that the Asian community

members tend to perform better in

feedback exercises instead of in co-creative

tasks. They are less used to taking initiative

compared to European and American

participants.

Adapt the framework of conversations: more

group challenges generating feedback instead

of individual co-creative exercises

Also, these community members are more

comfortable talking about the group instead of

sharing a lot of details about themselves and

their lives. One of the main techniques that

fits this culture is what we call the ‘co-

researcher’ technique.

This technique was used in a recent study we

conducted for Philips, where we set up a three-

week insight-shaping community about

sleeping problems with 50 Chinese

consumers. To account for the sensitivity of this

medical topic, we invited 10 of our participants

as co-researchers to deepen our research

conclusions and help identify the underlying

values. After our analyses of the community

outtakes, these participants were presented our

findings and asked to challenge them. In

performing the task of co-analyses, these

participants were asked to explain our initial

conclusions from the Chinese cultural

perspective, to illustrate our findings with their

own personal examples and also to go beyond

our first impressions. By means of qualitative

coding of co-researcher discussions, we found

Adapt the framework of conversations: more

group challenges generating feedback instead

of individual co-creative exercises

that in 14% of the co-researchers’ posts, the

conclusions were challenged (nuanced or

rejected). This means that every one out of

seven posts includes new information that

helps fine-tune our conclusion. For example,

the meaning and importance of well-being was

challenged by our co-researchers. Where our

conclusion initially was that Chinese consumers

value well-being, it’s more about being healthy in

order to work hard, earn more money and

ultimately improve life status. Working this way

with co-researchers created truly unique insights

that were key for Philips to find the right

positioning in the Chinese market. We, as

researchers and marketers, would never have

uncovered these insights from an online

distance (Schillewaert et al, 2012).

Adapt the framework of conversations: more

group challenges generating feedback instead

of individual co-creative exercises

The case of Philips shows how co-researchers

help us validate and improve our

hypotheses from a cultural perspective. Next

to helping us understand the Asian culture, co-

researchers also help us compare the Asian

cultures to the West and capture the global

overview in a multi-country study. We recently

ran an MROC study in 18 different countries,

three of which were in Asia, for three weeks, for a

multi-national Fast Moving Consumer Goods

company. Referring to our first tip in this article,

all 18 countries had their own community

“Chinese just want to earn money to Improve living

standards. Health is absolutely of their concern, but

the well-being is not, because they are not aware of

that.” - By Cuihua, co-researcher of the Sleep

Well community

platform and local native moderators,

allowing all participants to express themselves

in their local language. After three weeks, we

opened up an extra discussion room and invited all

members who could express themselves in English.

In this room, we asked the members to become co-

researchers and challenge the conclusions on

themes that were thought to unite all countries. Five

cross-country findings were launched in the global

room. Three of these statements were confirmed on

a global level whereas the other two were countered

and therefore need to be adapted on a local level. In

this context, co-researchers can help the

researcher to compare Asia with other parts

of the world and find the global overview

more rapidly and more easily.

The future is now

While a research community method is already mainstream in the West, the method is still in its

infancy in the East. The interest in this flexible way of working however is increasing rapidly. The

fast adoption rates of smartphones, the increase of Wi-Fi and the improved access to local Internet

cafés enable consumers to participate in online and mobile-enabled communities. The time is

now to start collaborating structurally with your consumers. Let’s explore this new

method and discover fresh insights!

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Tom De Ruyck

Managing Partner &

Head of Consumer Consulting Boards

InSites Consulting

Anouk Willems

Research Innovation Manager

InSites Consulting

Erica Van Lieven

Founder & Managing Director

Direction First, Australia

www.insites-consulting.com

Thank you!

@InSites

[email protected]

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www.slideshare.net/InSitesConsulting