To return to the current issue's contents page, click here.

To return to the contents page of the issue that this article appeared in, click here.

Comments Please!
Send us your thoughts on this article and we will post them in our Comments section. Or, go to The Measurement Standard Blog Edition and post your comments there.

Jenny Schade's
Making It Count

Hitting on Guys in Bars
and Other Tools of the Trade for Obtaining Customer Feedback

or... Research at the Scene of the Dime

In a sports bar in downtown Chicago, my colleague and I approach a twenty-something guy. I'm doing the talking and she's ready with her clipboard.

"Excuse me," I begin. "Can we speak to you for a few minutes?"

"Yeah, just a second," he responds. He leans over to one of his buddies and whispers, "I can't believe this, we just got here and already chicks are hitting on me!"

He returns to us. "Hi!"

"We'd like to ask you some questions about the video games here,"I explain. "It's market research. Our interview will take about 15 minutes and we'll give you $25 for making time for us."

"Oh," he replies. "Well, I guess that sounds okay. What are your questions?"

Our interview begins:

Q: "Why do you come to this bar in particular?"

A: "My friends and I probably come here two or three nights a week. I don't have to plan anything – it's all here for me. All I have to do is show up."

Q: "Do you ever play the video games they offer here? "Why or why not?"

A: "More often than not, we play video games. It's something to do and after playing one a few times, you can actually get better at it.

Q: "What do you look for in a good video game?"

A: "Something happens on the screen and I have to do the right thing. It makes me feel kind of good when I do well. A couple of weeks ago, I was winning and this one game made all sorts of noise. Pretty soon, I had a crowd gathered around me. It was this game right here – let me show you what I mean…"

His responses exemplify why doing these interviews on-site is so valuable for obtaining practical information for our video game manufacturing client. We've quickly covered a lot of ground in this interview and it's all very important to our client:

• The idea that this sports bar patron is a "regular" and looks to the bar he frequents to provide easy entertainment.
• The fact that he develops a sense of competency as he plays a video game.
• The emotional reward he receives when he interacts with a game and it signals to him and to others that he is succeeding.

When we multiply this single interview times the 30 video game players we will talk with this week, we start to recognize some patterns. Product innovation and marketing recommendations emerge almost effortlessly. For example, our research immediately suggests:

• Developing new games that offer increased interaction and lights/sound acknowledgment of winning players.
• Offering bar promotions that provide patrons with added entertainment and rewards such as video game tournaments and play-offs.
• Capitalizing on players' desire for feeling competent by publicly recognizing winners through a bar "Wall of Fame."

Research At the Scene of the Dime

By being on-site for these interviews, we are able to talk directly to our client's customers and observe them in their natural surroundings – their habitat, so to speak. We're catching them off-guard and encouraging them to share how they use our client's products as well as what they value about them.

This case study about interviewing video game players in sports bars is an example of going directly to your customers and conducting research in the field rather than having them come to a research facility to learn about their opinions. Traditional qualitative market research that takes place in a focus group facility can be very informative, however, it is invaluable to observe and talk with customers of certain kinds of products and services right where they make the purchase decision or, as I like to call it, "Right At the Scene of the Dime."

By talking with customers as they are pulling out their wallets to plug dimes – or dollars – into video games, we can capture their top-of-mind thoughts and emotions, gaining insights into their needs and connections with our products.

Jenny Schade's Three Questions for Determining Interview Location

So how do you identify when conducting research in the field would be advantageous over a more traditional setting? Ask yourself Jenny Schade's Three Questions for Determining Interview Location:

1. Is there a benefit to observing the people we want to interview in the setting where they actually use our products?
2. Would it be easier/more cost effective to go to our respondents rather than trying to recruit them to come talk to us?
3. Do others influence how our customers interact with our products?

In the case of our video game machine producing client, our responses to all three questions were affirmative.

1. It was tremendously beneficial to observe the bar patrons on-site and understand the other attractions that competed for their attention.
2. It was actually quite easy to recruit respondents in the bar, rather than paying for recruits that might not actually show up (probably because they were in the bar that night!).
3. Only by observing our respondents were we able to understand the role their friends and other patrons played in their choice to play video games and keep playing throughout the evening.

Following are examples of other research initiatives that we deemed more appropriate to conduct in the field rather than in a professional research facility:

• Interviewing construction workers at their sites regarding the qualities they seek in the truck boxes that house their tools in the back of their pickup trucks. Doing the interviews at the work sites enabled the workers to show us the truck box features they preferred and respond to product ideas under consideration.
• Running "rap groups"of teens in their after-school clubs to identify the program offerings they found most appealing. Holding the sessions at the schools greatly increased participation and allowed us and our client to understand the situational pressures faced by club members.
• Interviewing bakery employees right on the assembly line as they frosted and put together cookies and cakes. This setting helped us see directly the logistics involved in the workers' responsibilities and understand their reactions to corporate initiatives that they felt were insensitive to their needs. (This was also memorable as the only time I ever conducted interviews while wearing a hair net! Just picture the "The Lucy Show.")

When you really need to see your customers in action, there's nothing as effective as conducting research in the field. Whether that means putting on your construction hat or a hair net, you're sure to gain an in-depth perspective on what motivates your customers to invest financially – and emotionally – in your products.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers. Subscribe to the free JRS newsletter on www.jrsconsulting.net/newsletter.html
© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2007

You know you need to measure your results, but chances are there’s never been enough money in your budget for evaluation. Until now.
KDPaine & Partners’ new Do-It-Yourself Dashboard system combines a Web-based application with professional consulting to enable PR professionals to customize their own PR dashboards. Look here for more information.

1. You’ll learn how to use hard numbers to prove the results of your PR efforts. (Plus, it's free.)

2. You’ll learn which are the right vendors for your measurement projects. (Yes, it's free.)

3. You’ll learn how to design your program right from the start to be easily measureable. (Plus, yes, it's free.)

Click here to
get your free
subscription now!

177 Main Street, Berlin, NH 03570
603-369-6098, 603-326-4940 (fax) www.measuresofsuccess.com