Online tools for the Qualitative Research

®

www.wordcycle.net

● Why the qualitative online marketing research becomes a “must”: how you can use it, why you need it

● Wordcycle is an innovative platform for your qualitative online researches which offers 2 modules: the community module and the instant-chat module.

● WordCycle cand be yours, with your logos, without appearing: it can give you the platform or the whole research, you can choose what you need!

● WordCycle’s tools are unique and powerful: have a look!

In this document…

Elements of the scenario

● The recent evolutions in marketing are shifting the focus on new topics compared to the past, even the most recent one

● These years are characterised by an evolution from an approach that is mainly to consumers to another one that is mainly through consumers: in the management of the marketing mix, it is becoming more and more important to involve the consumer, to work together to attain goals

● The timings of decision making are tighter and tighter, they are faster and there is less and less space for long term strategies, that leave instead space to short term tactics

● The complexity in understanding increases, because the creation of value for a brand is more and more spread and less controllable: we are in the era of communication 2.0

● The importance of the Internet in everyday life and in the buying habits of consumers is continuously increasing

● Today, 38.1 mbillion Italians have access to the Internet from a proprietary device that allows them to communicate freely (Audiweb 6/2013): this is 80.8 % of Italians between 11 and 74 years of age.

● The great majority of them uses social media or keeps in contact with other people thanks to the many text apps that are available on the web (messenger, skype chat, Facebook chat…) and on the different devices (whatsapp, text messages, viber…)

Talking on the web, especially in writing, is a habit…

…AND EVERYONE DOES IT.

Elements of the scenario

● New questions arise that need to be answered

● It is necessary to find a new kind of answers to traditional questions

● The technological developmnet offers new opportunities that allow to answer to questions that were not answered before because it was too complex and expensive to do so

● It is necessary to have new investigation methods and tools to suit them to the new ways of communication 2.0

There is more need for innovation, also in research

New answers are needed

What must be the meaning of ‘being social’ for

a big brand?

How is it possible to convey the concept of premiumness in cultural contexts where down-scaling is in place, without losing the historic customers?

How can a corporate webs

ite be

used to promote engageme

nt?

WHAT RELATION SHOULD THERE BE BETWEEN AN app AND A COMPANY’S WEBSITE? WHAT SHOULD THE APP DO AND WHAT SHOULDN’T IT DO ?

How can you investigate a cross media campaign?

Where does a young woman find

recipes? Does she look for the dish

she wants to prepare or for the

ingredient she has at her disposal?

Is home banking seen in the same way in Milan and in Moscow?

What are the right questions to ask in a customer satisfaction survey at a national and international

level?

What does innovation in the kitchen mean?

Why carry on a qualitative survey on the web?

A qualitative survey on the web

● ...starts a ‘quality dialogue’ with existing, perspective and

former customers…

● …widens the opportunities of hearing the opinion of the target

● …optimises time and costs

...it starts a quality dialogue with customers…

…it widens the opportunities of hearing opinions

…it optimises time and costs

● Because it allows interaction between targets in different locations and because it is often useful to allow the interaction of people who are far from one another, whatever the meaning of ‘far’

● Because it allows people to tell their story when, how and from where they find it more convenient and practical and this is more useful for the research, in the researcher’s opinion

● Because some topics demand a certain privacy to be discussed

● Because it allows to «get into» consumers’ everyday life by making the relation with the brand more actual: you can investigate better into everyday life if you do it exactly when it is happening

● Because it allows an investigation at more levels (symbolical, dialogical and ethnographical)

● Because it allows to come into contact with the consumer for a longer time: answers often come from a deeper and more detailed reflection

● Because often the Client needs to elaborate on ideas that came up from the participants who took part in the discussion during research and he/she wants to be able to test them here and now

● Because the Client may want to follow discussions without moving from his/her desk

● Because, together with traditional research, it multiplies its explicatory power

● Because, by choosing the web, you can concentrate economical resources on what really matters for research, leaving aside the majority of traditional ancillary costs

WHY …

• is a tool that was created by a group of

researchers with researchers in mind; it aims at obtaining quality results in

online qualitative researches in an easy and intuitive manner, even when

compared with the results of the most performing traditional methods.

• It is a web platform for online qualitative research, which offers 2 modules:

The ASYNCHRONOUS module Community

The SYNCHRONOUS module Instant-Chat

• The platform has many tools aimed at obtaining clear, in-depth and

complete results: projection tests, instant poll, multiple-quote, direct

answer, tests on personality traits, and so on.

The new tool for online surveys

It is a completely proprietary system and data which are recorded and produced inside it are completely unconnected to the web and are not accessible to anyone who does not have the right permission!

The new tool for online surveys

Wherever you want to carry on a research, WordCycle is with you:

the world is in your hands.

● Both WordCycle modules are available in differente languages…and if you need one that is not yet available, just say the word and you will have it in an instant!

WordCycle is multilingual: the world is at your fingertips!

● The platform is made to suit the colours and logos of the user, so it can become a product of the reseracher/institution that uses it in every aspect: regardless of this, each chat room/community is identified by a banner that is chosen by the researcher, with their logo/the logo of their institution and the name of the Client, if appropriate.

WordCycle is yours/your institution’s

We do not want your Clients – you can call WordCycle the way you want to and use your logos: it is your product.

The process

1. START2. SETUP

3. ONLINE RESEARCH4. RESULTS

• Creation of the work team

• Definition of participants, goals, research project, time and costs

• Definition of the researh discussion areas

• Recruitment of participants

• Setup of the online platform for participant access

• Definition of the discussion outline

• Communication about the start of the research

• Access to discussion activities by participants, with an expert as a moderator

• Ghost access to the discussion activities by the Client

• Qualitative analysis of the gathered information

• Formal drafting of the report

M.MONITORING

…at the same time

M. MONITORING• With a read-only

account, Clients observe the phases of the research and communicate with the researcher to get deeper into existing topics or to suggest new ones

● Both the client institution and the end Client can observe the different phases of the research, by always being in contact with the researchers: the outline of the research also takes shape while the research is ongoing!

● The research brief allows to choose the most suitable tool depending on the goals and on the time available.

…what do you need?

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…what do you need?

1. The synchronous module: INSTANT-CHAT

● The WordCycle Instant-Chat module is part of the platform and shares its main guidelines: it is optimised for qualitative research, it is a proprietary system, data are not accessible to users who do not have the right permissions: unlike the Community module, this is a synchronous module, that is to say that all participants are together in the virtual room for the whole session.

● People are recruited by means of an exclusive invitation through a link sent via e-mail and they participate by connecting at a set time and for a set duration (1.5 h / 2 h) from any device with a internet browser (tablet, phablet, smartphone etc.), they choose their avatar and start following the moderator in the discussion

● Both users and moderators can post emoticons and links, thus opening the chat to any kind of multimedia content

1. The synchronous module: INSTANT-CHAT

● XX

INSTANT CHAT module: a screenshot

2. The asynchronous module:THE COMMUNITY

● XX

2. The asynchronous module: THE COMMUNITY

• The WordCycle Community module is made purposely for qualitative research through the ‘virtualisation’ of the room of traditional focus groups.

• It is asynchronous: participants do not need to be in the virtual room at the same time; people participate on a personal invite, and they connect when, from where and as long as the want (with a set minimum allowed activity).

• It is enough to have a network connection, be it by landline/mobile, and a pc/tablet/phablet/smartphone/web TV/console with an open browser.

• A qualitative researcher with specific training feeds the conversations and manages the research process, by using the numerous tools of the platform.

The participants

● Each user, selected by regular/list/panel recruitment, receives an invitation e-mail from the platform, that was prepared by the researchers and explains what they need to do during the research: the e-mail contains a link to log into the community for which the user was recruited.

● The user logs in and chooses an avatar, a motto to represent them and a unique password (the user name is set by the researchers): from that moment on, user name and password will allow the user to access the community directly through www.wordcycle.net

● Once he/she logs into the community, the user finds a first topic of discussion, where, through the appropriate tool, he/she can leave a message, following the requests of the moderator, containing text, emoticons, images taken from the web, their own images, links. Every day/when needed, the moderator adds a new topic

● When posting his/her comment, the user can quote another user or the moderator, like a message that someone else posted in the community or write their thoughts in a regular post , complete with emoticons, images, links…

● Every time a moderator posts a new topic or a new contribution or when someone quotes the user in their post, the user receives an automatically generated e-mail with a link to the appropriate topic in the community that encourages him/her to post something too.

● The moderator manages the topics according to the research plan, and is allowed to edit or delete any irrelevant posts

● In order to post topics, he/she has an administration area through which he/she writes the topic, attaches an image (everything is shown in the home page of the community) and creates the first post for that topic, specifying his/her requests: he/she can choose to open ‘regular’ or ‘special’ topics

● The order of appearance of the topics, which indicates their relevance, is editable at any time; topics can also be closed if there is nothing more to add

● The moderator writes in a different font to be easily identifiable; he/she can post comments in the topic, like the other users, and can also use the multiple-quote feature, which allows him/her to quote multiple users asking them the same question by writing it only once (it will be visible to all the other users)

● In the control panel, through the Statistics feature, the moderator monitors the activity of each user and their degree of participation. Also from this panel, he/she can send a mass e-mail to defined user groups with the one-to-one feature (without any risk of spam for mail/web server clients)

The moderator

The control panel of your research with WordCycle

The client

● The Client will be able to follow each phase of the community or communities that he/she promoted, observing everything, unseen (he/she never appears in the users list), in read-only mode: he/she will not be able to post but he/she will be able to address the moderator in order to go deeper, edit, re-launch topics of interest.

● The WordCycle community has an extremely easy flowing structure thanks to which, along with the moderator, the Client can choose to edit the research plan, its outline or the topics during the research or to build the research together with the moderator and the researchers depending on the outcomes of the discussion.

2.1 Community tools

• There are ’special’ topics that the moderator can post: – set groups of projective exercises based

on photo elicitation to trigger the discussion on the imaginative level, in order to access conceptual and experience levels that are less rational and therefore more real

these can be projective exercises based on Client’s images that WordCycle uploads purposely

– multiple answer instant poll with closed questions

– “Direct answer”- requests meant for a single user, that the others cannot see

‘Special topics’

‘Special topics’ tools

DREAMS ANIMALS

SYMBOLS

EMOTIONS ARCHETYPES

INSTANT POLL

DIRECT ANSWER

TESTS ON

PERSONALITY TRAITS

Inspired by the work of Jung, Campbell and Propp, there are 48 of them and they represent concept nodes and very representative images: given a topic, users can choose some of these and comment on them, by explaining what it is about the icon that is aligned with the topic discussed. These icons, like the others that are contained in the WordCycle tools, are proprietary.

The most effective projective tests for a unique research experience

The ‘archetype icons’

The most effective projective tests for a unique research experience

The dreams icons:

These are other very representative images that contain surreal elements and have a very high narrative power; given a topic, users can choose some of these and comment on them, creating a narration on the discussed topic by using the situations and scenarios that are proposed.

The most effective projective tests for a unique research experience

The symbol icons:

these are around forty common images with a deep cultural impact; similarly to the archetype icons, given a topic, users can choose some of these and comment on them, connecting them to the topic.These original WordCycle icons, unlike the archetype ones, allow to work at a symbolic level with a strong link to perceptions.

The most effective projective tests for a unique research experience

The animal icons:

the most classical of projective tests here is completed with a visual rappresentation: each user links the topic/concept to the animals and explains the features of the animal which made him/her link them together.

The icons of current emotions:

these proprietary icons are inspired by the famous work of Ekman on recognition and expression of emotions; they allow the expression of emotions triggered by the different inputs, be it text or multimedia, and these emotions are divided by type. The advantage of these icons is that they work on the instincts.

The most effective projective tests for a unique research experience

Tests on personality traits

Tests on personality traits:

users can be ‘measured’ through this tool in search of fundamental traits that can be useful for the research (e.g. degree of innovation, openness to others, attitude to risk, etc.). Automatic administration modules, which use standard scales and tests, will help the researcher deepen their knowledge of the users and assess their contributions in a more accurate manner.

Instant poll and Direct answer

Instant poll:

multiple choice questions, requests to sort a list of concepts, indications of preference and ratings: all this can be done with a tool with a simple interface.

Direct answer:

this allows the moderator to ask a user a question and to get their answer without the others seeing it: in this way, the other users will not be influenced until the moderator thinks the time is right.

The Online Eye-tracking Tool and the Online Tachistoscope

WordCycle and SR Labs co-operate to create two great remote tools you can use either during a community session or an instant chat session: the Online Eye-tracking Tool and the Online Tachistoscope. Your interviewees only need a webcam to perform theese tasks from home!• The Online Eye-track tool: the tool records all the data from the sessions and creates

heat-maps showing the most viewed parts of your on-screen stimulus or the most common eye-paths during the screen exploration.

• The Online Tachistoscope: the reaction times/the recognition times generated by the stimulus are recorded and mapped to evaluate its visual impact and its persistence in memory.

WordCycle gives you only what you need:

● …the complete research, with a final report and presentation, if needed…

● …the field and the moderation, with a consulting support while projecting the research, without the final report, if you prefer to make it by yourself…

● Moreover… remember that you can make WordCycle your product, with your brand or the name you prefer.

Different service levels

Thank you for your time.