On the shoppers’ trail

First it was ethnography, the research method used by anthropologists and social scientists, that was adopted by marketers to study consumer behaviour. From Nokia to Godrej to Xerox to Ford, companies have used ethnography in their research toolkits to get the cultural context and inside-in view of the consumer.

Today, it is all about netnography, which investigates the consumer behaviour of communities on the internet.

A keen interest in subjects such as psychology, sociology, anthropology as well as knowledge of technology/the internet and social media and practice of qualitative research techniques is needed to start as a netnographer, says Mrutyunjay Mishra, co-founder, Juxt Smart Mandate, a data business company.

Globally, companies use netnography a lot to understand the behaviour of consumers hanging out on the internet. In India, where only a minuscule population is on the internet, netnography is still nascent, though with the growth of e-commerce firms whose shoppers are all online, it is picking up.

The digital revolution has caused a major change in consumer habits. For instance, today, a couple watching TV together might see a tourism ad and open their iPad and quickly book a ticket.

To keep pace with this consumer, market researchers have had to change their methods and tools too. So much so that gathering consumer insights has become a whole different ballgame.

There’s technology, there are algorithms, there’s neuroscience, there’s artificial intelligence, there are consumer experience labs equipped with sentiment-testing devices all helping the new-age market researcher.

Data collection goes hi-tech

Right from research design to presentation of findings there’s an influence of technology in market research, says Mishra of Juxt Smart Mandate. Today, there is a variety of new software that helps researchers target the right sets of consumers for what they want to measure.

There are tools such as eye trackers on retail shelves or mood-sensing devices that give qualitative inputs. Data collection points have expanded enormously – the consumer is being tracked literally everywhere, from retail stores to her e-mail inbox to her mobile phone and social media. Web cookies, social listening tools, beacons, sensors, location data services, loyalty cards are all transmitting information to marketers.

Quick actionable insights

So fast is the information flow to the researcher that he or she no longer has the luxury of waiting to deliver actionable insights to clients.

Says Joginder Chhabra, Market Intelligence and Consumer Insights, LG Electronics India, “Today it is all live, real-time data in our retail surveys. Earlier we could take a week to study the data and put out insights. Now the analysis is instant and available to both manufacturers as well as suppliers.”

Companies are able to do so much with these insights. For instance, FMCG heavyweight ITC, which has one of the deepest distribution networks in the country, uses an algorithm called Schemulator to develop schemes for each outlet, based on the real-time data it gets from the stores. If, say, a particular biscuit brand is doing well at an outlet, then very quickly, the company can roll out a customised incentive scheme for that brand. It can offer a discounted three-pack package of that biscuit, for example, at that store to leverage the demand even more.

With more and more marketers now taking such data-driven decisions, it’s not surprising companies are now investing more in market research. “Budgets for market research in most companies are growing by 40-50 per cent,” says Chhabra.

However, he says it will take time for many of the new global techniques of research to be deployed in India. There is too much heterogeneity, too much differentiation and segregation in the Indian population for some of these tools to be used, he says. Also, he points out that Indian firms still prefer quantitative data sets over qualitative research – though that is slowly changing.

The use of neuroscience – or the study of the subconscious reactions – too is fairly minimal here. It is used more to test communication campaigns. And while surveys have moved totally online in the West, in India, it’s not possible to do that. “Online is still not a substitute of offline (face-to-face, paper, pencil, in-depth interviews), because Internet represents only a part of the Indian universe. It definitely represents certain geographies, demographics and socio-economic class very well,” says Juxt’s Mishra, adding , “ I can bet that surveys among “urban branded product/service consumers/households” don’t require any face-to-face interviews anymore in India.

Tracking the digital consumer

Global Web Index is the world’s largest study of the digital consumer. Jason Mander, Head of Trends at the research firm, who oversees all of GWI’s content, shares the methodologies behind its studies.

What are the advances in netnography that help you understand the online consumer better?

The biggest area of evolution is the combination of active and passive data. Previously, people tended to use only one set of data be it “active” data (self-reported by internet users) or “passive” data (behaviour observed via a cookie dropped on a device, or via other tools which run in the background). Both sets have their advantages; for example, active data gives you information about motivations, interests and attitudes and means you are talking to an individual rather than an IP address (allowing you to track people across devices).

Passive data is best for observing things such as the time spent on websites, number of times people visit a certain site, things they have purchased or looked for online (areas where people might be a little inaccurate when trying to recall these details). When you combine both datasets, you get a rounded view of the consumer.

What else is new in online consumer behaviour research methods?

The move to mobile forms of surveying is especially important, particularly as time spent on these devices continues to increase. There are also now much more engaging question formats, surveys which optimise depending on which device someone is using, and so on.

How important is researching social media behaviour?

This has become increasingly critical as so much time is now spent on social networks. Our latest research, in fact, suggests that one in three minutes spent on the internet is on a social network (rising higher among younger demographics). Also relevant here is that so many providers are trying to integrate even more activities inside social media – e.g. commerce, watching content, searching, and so on. This will only accelerate further as Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and WeChat continue to evolve from messaging apps into fully-fledged social platforms in their own right. So, as we do more and more on social networks, understanding behaviour will continue to grow in stature too.

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