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Page 6 of 7 Case studies This section gives an overview of some examples where bulletin boards have been applied to business-to-business research. Research with senior IT managers NOP World Business commissioned this study not only to demonstrate to interested clients how the boards work, but also to explore a number of issues with senior IT managers that had arisen across projects conducted for several different clients using groups and face to face interviews. This target audience has become ever more difficult to recruit effectively for discussion groups – particularly in London which is usually the chosen location because there is a sufficient source of large companies. There are several reasons for this problem: IT managers are over-researched in the South East, and are contacted often on a weekly basis to take part in studies; companies are becoming more restrictive about their employees participating in research; if the recruiter does not have the name of a contact in the IT department of a company, it can prove very difficult to progress past the main switchboard. We felt therefore that boards offered an alternative or complementary avenue, to reach new business to business respondents outside London for group discussions. Also, based on our experience, the problem is not unique to the UK – similar issues are arising in other European countries. As a result, our clients are starting to consider what they could effectively achieve through this alternative means of reaching respondents. An ongoing need that clients have is to understand how their brand is perceived in comparison with its competitors; we saw this study as a good opportunity to conduct a ‘temperature test’ of these brands. To explore all these areas, a board was convened with 12 senior IT managers from medium and large companies who had enterprise-wide strategic responsibilities. Size of company was defined by number of employees, and a mix of respondents was recruited from companies with 500-999 employees and 1000+ employees. We found that, in a few cases, we were able to persuade very senior executives to take part primarily because they did not have to make the time to attend a group, which even then they might have had to miss. The general consensus amongst the respondents was that they appreciated the flexibility of the format, and that they would be happy to take part again. Peer interaction was another positive outcome from the project. 6.1.4. Paul 17-Mar-2005 09:33 AM Very interesting actually reading what other people have to say on the subject in question. There is no wrong or right answer and I find it very informative too. The board lasted three days and participation rates remained high, with nine respondents of the original 12 making it to the final day’s questions (although 10 respondents did answer the bulk of the questions). The findings themselves have already helped to convince one client that online bulletin boards can generate valid and detailed findings (as similar – but less detailed - results had been observed in face to face discussions). The following quote is from that client – from a global IT company - on having observed this bulletin board (while in France), and indicates areas in which he can see a use for the technique. This should prove an appropriate methodology in a number of situations. I think in particular of collecting target reactions to 'pain points' or validating messages for a PR or advertising campaign. Also, the recruitment of participants in focus groups is proving so difficult in certain markets that such advances are truly welcome and should be positively received by a number of research users. Concept evaluation research NOP recently undertook a bulletin board project for a global transportation and customs clearance brokerage company. Having developed a large number of service concepts, the client needed to test them in the US, Canada and Latin and Central America. The target audience were import / export / logistics managers. Boards were chosen as a suitable approach for a number of reasons. To begin with, the client was keen to ensure that a wide spread of locations was covered in each country, thus reducing the likelihood that the findings would be too heavily weighted towards a particular location. A further important reason for selecting bulletin boards lay with the stimulus material: the number of service concepts to be tested could not adequately be covered in the ‘typical’ two hour group discussion or one hour depth interview. In contrast, respondents in this study had six days in which to give their considered responses to the services. The level of detail achieved in their responses to a large number of concepts would not have been possible in a face to face scenario. Although not the deciding factor in choosing boards, the client liked the idea that key stakeholders in the research would still have the opportunity to view the discussions. In this case, an equivalent viewed, face to face research design would have been prohibitively expensive. Even so, the analysis required for this study turned out to be very labour intensive because of the amount of material shown. Customer experience evaluation A large international publisher had set up a pilot scheme whereby certain of its US customers (academic librarians) were able to deal with a third party to receive key services rather than having to deal with the publisher direct. The client wished to obtain feedback on its customers’ experience of the trial (positive and negative perceptions etc.), the effectiveness of the communication channels now in place, and on how the new system could be improved. This target audience was especially niche, low in number, and spread widely across the US. Group discussions, although the favoured approach, simply would not have been possible given the audience’s geographical dispersion and the low number of individuals on the pilot scheme. The suitability of the method was reinforced by the respondents’ culture which values highly the sharing of information and which quickly embraced the use of online communications. It also enabled clients to ‘attend’ from the US and the UK. The bulletin board was very quick to launch, helped by the willingness of respondents to take part in research using a convenient format that was both familiar and innovative. Of the 18
respondents who initially agreed to take part, 14 actually did so, with nine of them participating in the entire discussion. However, despite reminders, only one respondent followed instructions to log on at least once a day and many logged on only a couple of times during the course of the week which undermined efforts to moderate the discussion more carefully. In an attempt to encourage respondents to answer all the questions, the moderator set up some of the questions so that participants could not move on to a question until they had answered the previous one. However, this set-up was not liked by all respondents. One participant in particular became frustrated by this device, which appeared to act as a means for him to vent some frustration at the client (as described earlier in this paper). The moderator posted a public message thanking him for his comments and a private message to the participant explaining how the client genuinely valued his input and wanted to look at ways of improving the system. Interestingly, when the moderator had phoned the respondent as a final recruitment check before the group started, he was extremely polite and more than happy to take part. Although purely anecdotal, this does raise the question of the extent to which the face to face approach would have influenced the openness of these respondents. In this instance, it is unlikely that these librarians would have been so frank in a one-to-one discussion. The project delivered conclusive results, which are currently helping the client to develop its outsourcing operation. Company evaluation A financial investments firm based in the US was keen to understand how the financial advisers who promoted their products perceived the company, and the Group as a whole. In particular, the study looked at the strengths and weaknesses of the company in the context of competitive organisations. The client decided that boards would be appropriate because of the spread across the US of their customer sample, and the need for a group discussion environment. Two boards were run, each lasting six days; one board consisted of core customers and the other of what were considered by the client as ‘at risk’ customers.
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