Running engaging Market Research Online Communities. Social media has gained considerable human relevance. User-created content, citizen journalism and online social interactions (e.g. conversation, collaboration, participation, sharing, connecting) are embedded into the daily lives of consumers. With the different semantic waves of the web, the entire market research process and industry has undergone clear changes. Market research has changed from asking questions to having conversations with consumers. Online Research Communities have proven to be a viable environment to engage with consumers as well as marketing executives in a connected and participatory way. What makes research communities unique is that they assemble consumers to interact in an asynchronous longitudinal setting by applying social media techniques. Companies outsource tasks to a crowd (e.g. product and service creation and testing) in an open call in order to bring consumers inside organizations all the way up to the boardroom. Research communities bring true consumer connect between marketers and their target groups as they use interactive tools to tap into social interactions between people, and allow a more equal relationship between researchers, brands and participants.

2. Introduction

3. Social media has gained considerable human relevance. User-created content,
citizen journalism and online social interactions (e.g. conversation,
collaboration, participation, sharing, connecting) are embedded into the daily lives
of consumers. With the different semantic waves of the web, the entire market
research process and industry has undergone clear changes.
Market research has changed from asking questions to having
conversations with consumers. Online Research Communities have proven to be
a viable environment to engage with consumers as well as marketing executives in
a connected and participatory way. What makes research communities unique is
that they assemble consumers to interact in an asynchronous longitudinal
setting by applying social media techniques. Companies outsource tasks to a
crowd (e.g. product and service creation and testing) in an open call in order to
bring consumers inside organizations all the way up to the boardroom. Research
communities bring true consumer connect between marketers and their target
groups as they use interactive tools to tap into social interactions between people,
and allow a more equal relationship between researchers, brands and participants.

4. Why are research communities so hot today?
Just like any information technology they bring And still there is a friction between the ability and
automational, informational and desire to conduct research communities in our
transformational value (Day 1994; Grover et al. industry. The status of online research communities
today is comparable to teenagers and their first
1996; Mooney et al. 1996). They may bring
automational effects because, for example, sexual experience. Everyone says they are doing
communities allow quickly tapping into a sample of it, everyone wants to do it … but in the end no-
consumers on a specific topic that presents itself, one really knows how to do it well. This situation
which makes getting the answer to a specific is reflected in the Greenbook Research Industry
question more efficient. The informational value Trends 2013. 45% of researchers indicate they have
emerges from the fact that the inherent quality of plans to use online communities in the future
consumer understanding we get is of better quality. (ranking 1st out of 17 emerging technologies), while
Consumer input is multimedia, embedded in 40% of clients claim the lack of knowledge is still a
people’s life context as well more reflected and limitation for them. (GRIT 2013)
reasoned. Transformational outcomes of research
communities lay in the fact that research Hence, there is a need for an overview and some
communities allow to perform tasks which were concrete tips on how to run online research
previously not possible without the asynchronous communities.
technology and engagement over time. Examples
are in combining research communities with mobile
technologies as well as integration in social
networks.

5. Online Research Communities: types
& applications

6. When positioning online research communities 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 nethnography methods
like social media listening, scraping and ethnographical,
qualitative observation.
Positioning Online Online research communities assemble consumers
purposefully though; consumers who wish to engage
Research Communities and co-create with brands. Communities are upon
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.

7. In terms of taxonomy there are
several labels and definitions for
research communities used in
practice today, which may lead to
some confusion and 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), bulletin
boards, blogs, community panels, on-
going communities, etc. (see table 1).
What they do share is that they are all some sort of asynchronous discussion platforms but they vary in terms of
duration (short term and ad hoc to on-going), 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, surveys, diary blogs, one-on-one interviews).

8. As mentioned, research communities can vary in terms
duration and intensity. But when do you need a short
versus a long term community? As often is the case in
research it depends on the management and research
objectives marketers have. Research communities can be
used throughout the marketing mix for understanding,
developing, implementing or optimizing marketing offers (see
figure 1). For consumer insight, for example, 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 market testing, 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.

9. It’s not about technology, let’s bring
the consumer into the boardroom

10. Often times the focus these days is on technology and tools while what the
common ground real communities should share 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 provides a holistic understanding. This
can only be achieved by means of creating engagement at different levels,
however.
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 needed is method engagement. This implies that
researchers should propose 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 which
implies to create impact at the client management side.

11. 1 Engaging with participants - natural &
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:
 Purposeful sampling. Researchers are  Small is beautiful and better short and intense. Depending
advised to create natural engagement by on the research objective research communities can last a
sampling brand fans or consumers who couple of weeks or months or be on-going – they can have 50 or
show an interest in the topic when recruiting a several hundreds of participants – it depends. But one needs to
for research communities. True these be aware that longer and larger communities need higher
consumers are “biased”, but at least they engagement and require more resources. Lurking can increase
reflect an illustrative consumer reality and with too many participants or an over-whelming number of posts.
generate in-depth discussion. A paradox? Not really. When participants see too much
information they disconnect because they are convinced their
opinion has already been voiced and adds less or no value.

12. Method engagement (1):
 Adapt the context and  Build the community. Once  Engage as many
environment to the target participants are screened and stakeholders as possible.
group. For example, let participants recruited, “kick off” sessions are Engaging members of the
important to build engagement on a marketing team, senior
choose colors and the name of the
social as well as informational level. management or a well known
community or put topics and expert from the industry or
questions on the discussion Such sessions discuss the research
academia to participate in the
agenda. Foresee a social corner agenda and objectives, the client is
discussion spurs activity
(next to the actual discussion presented and participants get
levels tremendously.
space) where participants can acquainted.
interact “off topic”. If needed
moderators should guide
participants to such a social corner.
In doing so the community is for and
by members.

13. Method engagement:(2):
engagement
 Moderators should develop the C-factor –  What we ‘do’ to people is as important as what
the “C” of community manager. Good
we ‘ask’ them. Give participants tasks to perform
moderators have good writing skills, are
and play games with them which generate insights.
creative and apply “social media” in human
We can make people generate information for us by
interaction. Moderators need to be aware that
introducing more fun elements and creativity. In his
community discussions can last for too long
book Brain Rules (2008), Dr Medina posits that we
and moderators need to pay attention to
often ignore how the brain works, and so do we
steering interaction. There is an important role
researchers. If we would apply some of his 12 rules to
for researchers and community moderators in
how researchers can generate information, we could
building identification with the community,
get more productive. As an example, there are five
keeping up the engagement with the topic to
rules that are particularly relevant for market research:
keep the discussion going while not letting
(1) „exercise boosts brain power‟ (rule #1); (2) „we do
members over-socialize and drift away from
not pay attention to boring things‟ (rule #4); (3)
the researchers‟ agenda. Too strong social
„stimulate more of the senses‟ (rule #9); (4) „vision
relations among members of a research
trumps all other senses‟ (rule #10); and „we are
community can be counterproductive as they
powerful and natural explorers‟ (rule #12). In doing so
lead to irrelevant discussions.
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.

14. Engaging with internal stakeholders –
2 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 to the boardroom. Because of their very
nature online research communities allow to do this, but researchers need to create internal engagement
and change management. Market research studies are not only about formal presentations, knowledge
management and communication programmes. The informal „hall talk‟ is an equally powerful way to have
managers use and share intelligence. The most powerful is when research is a conversation starter
and generates lively stories about customers. This can be done in three phases:

15. Phase 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),
achieve different game levels and unlock extra information when progressing – at least something
worth talking about..
Phase 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.
Phase 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 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).

16. Conclusion
Market research is in a state of limbo. Research communities can help to bring the
consumer into the boardroom by means of creative intelligence generation methods,
making sure research is a conversation starter to stimulate management responsiveness.
We need „enacting‟ research communities that create ENgagement and ACTivation
among clients as well as participants, through gamification, stories and experiences.

17. References

18. Day, G. (1994). The capabilities of market driven organizations. Journal of Marketing, 58, 4
(October), pp. 37–52.
De Ruyck, T., Knoops, S., Schillewaert, N., Coenen, G. and S. Rodrigues (2011), Engage,
Inspire, Act, ESOMAR Congress, Amsterdam.
GRIT (2011). http://www.greenbook.org/PDFs/GRIT-S11-Full.pdf
Grover, V., Teng, J., Segars, A.H. & Fiedler, K. (1998). The influence of information
technology diffusion and business process change on perceived productivity: the IS
executive‟s perspective. Information and Management, 34, 3, pp. 141–159.
Medina, J. (2008) Brain Rules. Pear Press.
Mooney, J.G., Gurbaxani, V. & Kraemer, K.L. (1996). A process oriented framework for
assessing the business value of information technology. The DATABASE for Advances in
Information Systems, 27, 2, pp. 68–81.
Schillewaert, N., De Ruyck, T., Ludwig. S. and M. Mann (2011). The Darkside to
Crowdsourcing in Online Research Communities, CASRO Journal, pp. 5 – 9,
http://issuu.com/casro/docs/casro-2011_journal

19. Want to know more about
research communities?
Tom De Ruyck
Head of Research Communities
+32 9 269 14 07
tom@insites-consulting.com