This past year I have been working with a small team at Hallmark to understand if social media is a good tool to understand people. This was a very interesting project that had a lot of ups and downs along the way. It is time to start sharing what we have learned.
As you are probably aware, social media is having a dramatic impact on just about everything and market research is in the thick of those changes. At Hallmark, the goal of our market research group, which we call Consumer Understanding and Insights, is to help the company gain an understanding of and empathy for our consumers. We pour a lot of time and money into this effort because it is at the core of our company, our products, and our services. It is also something we have been doing since the inception of the company when JC Hall (our founder) used to watch consumers in his stores and then intersect them after they were finished shopping. He would ask them why they purchased what they did and why they didn’t purchase other things. From those very early days in Hallmark, understanding the consumer has been ingrained in our culture.
Along the way we have built a solid toolbox of traditional techniques to accomplish the goal of understanding the consumer. One thing we noticed early on in this project is that the idea of using social media to understand consumers challenged a lot of the paradigms of those traditional techniques which caused it to be a very polarizing subject. We felt like the best way to address this was through education and a clear articulation of those paradigm shifts. That is why this white paper was created.
To cut to the chase the main paradigms that we wanted to address through the paper are:
Data Transparency – Social media data is, in general, public and accessible to anybody. This includes being visible to all divisions within a company, and other businesses.
Data Ownership – Traditionally, there has been a clear understanding of who owns particular consumer data. For example: sales data is owned by the retail department, focus group data is owned by research, email open rates are owned by the marketing group, etc. This is different for social media data due to the data transparency described above. As of now, No department or group really “owns” social media data.
Blurring Boundaries between Research and Other Divisions – As a result of the transparency of the data and lack of clear ownership, what remains “in-bounds” or “out-of-bounds” for a division is blurred. Even more importantly, roles that used to be reserved for each division have now blurred as well. Within social media, any of the divisions can utilize the same data. When it comes to engagement, the consumer often does not clearly distinguish between whom they are talking to when they talk to somebody from a brand or company. Everybody is speaking on behalf of the brand. This can create new challenges for traditional research personnel.
Control of the Environment – The researcher previously controlled as many aspects of the listening environment as possible (e.g. recruiting based on specific screening criteria). Social media data generally comes uncontrolled, unedited, and unsolicited.
Blurring of Qualitative and Quantitative – The once separate worlds of qualitative and quantitative research are further blurred by the influx of social media data. The potential and possibility for both qualitative and quantitative researchers to utilize social media data is evident, and a valuable benefit.
Shrinking Space between Brands and People – Social media has “leveled” the playing field for both consumers and brands. Individuals creating compelling or “sticky” content, have the ability to equally-compete for attention with any other media sources. Share of voice is no longer solely a function of size and budget expenditures.
Re-thinking Sampling – Social media data may not always accurately reflect the targeted consumer. In addition, for given topic or source, a disproportionate amount of content may be generated from a subset of contributors. This goes against the traditional researcher paradigm to find a representative sample of the target market.
Influence – Because of the disproportionate contributions of some authors, the notion of influence becomes an added dimension for researchers to consider. This idea is expanded upon in the Peer Influence Model in Empowered by Josh Bernoff. Social media data will be more beneficial to exploration and learning applications instead of projections because of this notion of influence.
Relationships are the Ultimate Sources of Insights within Social Media – As response rates continue to decline for research efforts, the ways of encouraging respondent participation are evolving. The Market Research Executive Board suggests the way to gain participation is now based upon how you can add value to the consumer. This is more than just reimbursing them for their time via incentives. Social media research ventures into the realm of building a relationship with consumers and adding value to their lives.
Take a look at the rest of the white paper and let us know what you think.
