This lecture talks about the basics of consumer research for business and innovation and also details about the in-depth interviews.

1. Consumer Research
Yesoda Bhargava

2. Introduction
• Consumer research helps you to understand the motivation and purchase behaviour of the
targeted customers.
• Helps businesses or organizations to understand customer psychology.
• It uses research techniques to provide systematic information about what customers
need.
• Using this information, brands can make changes in their products and services, making
them more customer-centric. This increases customer satisfaction.
• In-depth understanding of customer decision-making process helps in design of the
product, deciding its price, establishment of distribution centres and promote a product
based on consumer research insights.
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3. Example
• A consumer electronics company intends to understand the thought process of consumer when
purchasing an electronic device.
• This will help the company launch new products, manage the supply of the stock et.
• Carrying out a Consumer electronics survey can be useful to understand the market demand,
understand the flaws in their product and also identify issues that influence the purchase of their
goods.
• A consumer electronics survey can help the company to gather information about the shopping
experiences of consumers when purchasing electronics, which can enable a company to make well-
informed and wise decisions regarding their products and services.
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4. Consumer Research Objectives
Goal of
Consumer
Research
What consumers
want in a
product.
What attributes
are missing ?
What are they
looking for?
Every good business idea needs
efficient consumer research for it to be
successful.
Consumer insights are essential to determine brand
positioning among consumers.
Understand their
buying pattern.

5. Types of
Research
Qualitative Research Quantitative Research
✓ Focus Groups
✓ One-to-one interview
✓ Context/Text Analysis
✓ Questionnaire/Surveys
✓ Secondary data analysis

6. Qualitative Research
• Descriptive in nature.
• Uses open-ended question to gain meaningful insights from respondents. What are close-ended
questions?
• Focus Groups: A discussion involving a small group of highly validated subject experts who come
together to analyse a product or a service. ~6-10 respondents. A moderator is assigned to the
focus group, who facilitates discussions among the members to draw meaningful insights.
• One-to-one Interview : Researcher asks open-ended questions to collect data from the
respondents. Heavily depends on the expertise of the researcher. Probing skills required.
• Content/Text Analysis: Researchers analyse social life by decoding words and images from the
document available. Eg. Twitter Data Analysis. Nowadays, inferences are considerably drawn
based on consumer behaviour on social media.
• Case Studies: Understand an experience or conduct comprehensive examination through cross
comparison of cases.

7. Quantitative Research
• Is all about numbers and statistics.
• Online surveys, questionnaires, and polls are the preferred data collection tools.
• Data obtained is then statistically, mathematically, and numerically evaluated to
understand consumer preference.

8. Type of Data
• Data gathered first hand by the
researcher himself.
• Real time data.
• Time taking.
• Surveys, observations, experiments,
questionnaire, personal interview,
focused group discussion, etc.
• Crude form.
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• Data collected by someone else
earlier.
• Past data.
• Quick and easy to access.
• Government publications, websites,
books, journal articles, internal
records, past survey data or
registry/census data.
• Refined form.
Primary Data Secondary Data

9. Consumer Research Process
1. Develop research objectives: Why is the research being conducted? What do you wish to
understand? A clear statement of purpose can help emphasize the purpose.
2. Collect secondary data : collect secondary data first, it helps in understanding if research has
been conducted earlier and if there are any pieced of evidence related to the subject matter that
can help you to gain some insights about the consumers.
3. Primary research: In this, the team or organization collects their own data or employs a third
part to collect data. This could be qualitative data or quantitative data.
4. Collect and analyse data: Data collected is analysed and inference is drawn to understand
consumer behaviour.
5. Prepare report: Report containing the findings and methodology of study is prepared.

10. Depth interview
• One-to-one interview between a single respondent and highly trained researcher.
• Provide new insights about the new product development, positioning, and re-
positioning of the brands.
• The interviewer speaks little, giving the consumer time to express thoughts and
behaviours.
• The researcher must establish an atmosphere to encourage the consumer to open
up.
• The researcher probes for response from the respondents.

11. Steps involved in Conducting in-depth interviews
Develop a sampling strategy : Whose attitudes and beliefs
matter to your research, how will you find these people?
Writing an in-depth interview guide: guide contains questions
that will be asked during the interview.
Conducting the interviews: Contact potential respondents to
complete an interview.
Analyse the data: Making sense of the findings.

12. Advantages and Disadvantages of in-depth interviews
Depth: Can uncover valuable insights, and
enable you to find out the “real story” from the
people.
Disclosure: Respondents are more likely to open
up on a one-on-one basis.
Quality of data: Skilled interviewers are able to
respond to questions and probe for greater
detail. Questions can be added or altered in real-
time if needed.
Short timelines: Data can be collected faster
than any other research methods-usually within
a few weeks.
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Challenging and time-consuming analysis:
Qualitative data obtained from the interviews
can be ambiguous, resulting in a more difficult
analysis, particularly for less-experienced
analysts.
Requires high-level training and skill: Needs
well-trained and highly-skilled interviewers.
Less skilled interviewers has a risk of
increasing the possibility of bias.
Small numbers: Given the length of each
interview and the associated costs, the number
of in-depth interviews you will complete for a
project will be small.
Advantages Disadvantages

13. Guide to writing in-depth interview questions
• Ask open-ended questions:
• Questions should reveal what respondents are thinking-not what you think they are thinking.
They should encourage an expansive, detailed reply.
• Use open-ended questions especially at the beginning of an interview to identify themes.
• You can use close-ended questions later to narrow responses, to bring greater focus to key
questions or clarify and confirm points.
• Ask effective probing question
• Probes reveal greater detail by clarifying or expanding upon earlier responses.
• Good probing generates conversation: the focus is on the response, not on the person providing
the response.
• Example: What else? What does that mean to you? Please help me understand that.
• Ask respondents to think back
• Ask them to think back to a specific event and reflect on personal experience.
• This invites concrete, specific responses, and ground respondents in their own experiences,
attitudes, and beliefs.
• You want to know respondent’s opinion, not popular opinion.

14. • Keep questions simple
• Think of the shortest, most direct way to ask a question (with respect of
course).
• Avoid questions with multiple interpretations (do not ask two questions at
once in a question)
• Avoid asking ‘why’
• ‘Why’ puts the respondents on the defensive; these questions sound like an
interrogation, feel rude or have unpleasant associations.
• Instead of ‘Why do you prefer that type of program’ ask ‘What are the major
reasons you prefer that type of program? What do you like about it?’
• Be cautious about giving examples
• By giving examples, you risk limiting respondents’ responses (they may not
think beyond the example).
• Consider using examples as part of your probing questions, after respondents
have already given their input.

15. Ordering your questions
• It is not only important what questions you ask and how you ask them – you
must also consider the order in which you ask specific questions.
• Some suggestions
• Move from general to more specific questions
• Asking broader, more general questions first will provide a context and prepare respondents to give
more considered responses to the more focused, specific questions that follow.
• Ask positive questions before negative questions
• Ask the respondents to talk about both the +ve and –ve aspects of an experience, situation, program,
etc., but ask them to talk about the good parts first.
• This makes people feel more comfortable talking about the bad parts.
• Ask unaided questions before aided questions
• Get respondents to respond to a question in their own words before following up with specific probing
questions.
• Example: “What is important to you, in terms of how children spend their after-school time?”
• Allow them to answer before going on to ask: “How important are things like safety for your children
while being outdoors?” etc.

16. Conducting the Interviews
• Conduct your in-depth interviews in an environment in which the respondent feels most
comfortable.
• You may arrange to conduct interviews by telephone, but if you have time and resources, let the
respondent choose the location of the interview. Eg. Home, workplace, quiet restaurant, or a coffee
shop.
• It is good to make appointments in advance.
• To conduct a successful in-depth interview, begin by introducing yourself and the study.
• It is important to establish good rapport with the respondents and put him/her at ease.
• Your main responsibility is to listen and observe as you guide the respondent through the
conversation until all the important issues have been explored.
• Follow these strategies to improve the quality of your in-depth interview experience:
• Active Listening: Listen and rephrase what was said to ensure that you are completely understanding what your
respondent is intending.
• Patience: Allow the respondent to speak freely, gently re-focusing the conversation if it wanders off track.
• Flexibility: Be open to slight deviations from the topic which may require rearranging or reordering questions, or coming
up with new questions.

17. Recording comments
• In order for an in-depth interview to be successful, you must have a way of capturing the
information.
• Memory is an unreliable tool.
• Prefer to audio-tape the in-depth interviews. It is relatively easy and inexpensive way of
capturing information.
• Audio-tapes are useful for later transcription or translation.
• Always ask a respondents’ permission before audio-taping an interview, particularly when
conducting interviews by telephone when respondents are unable to see the equipment.
• It is suggested that you tell respondents: “I will be taking notes as we go along but will record
the interview for accuracy”.
Field Notes Audiotape
Ways to record
respondents’ comments

18. Other ways to record interviews
• Video-taping
• Transcription: An interview that has been recorded (video or audio) is transcribed
verbatim. The transcript is typically a word-processed document that can be used either
on the computer, or printed as a hardcopy reference. Can be very time-consuming. People
often hire professional transcriptionist.
• Translation: In case the interviews are with a population that speaks a language other
than your own, you will need to have the interview translated. Or if you want to share the
interviews with people who understand other language, you would need it translated.
Very time consuming, and requires specialized knowledge. Professional translators are
hired mostly.

19. Analysing in-depth interviews
• Involves reviewing the records of the interviews and taking notes to keep
track of the findings that are emerging.
• It is common to get overwhelmed by the quantity of “verbal data”.
• The two most common strategies for organizing notes are:
• Organizing by question : Record your notes as “answers to questions”. Example, for the question,
“What is important to you in terms of how learning is assessed in an educational environment?”,
you would record respondents’ remarks relating to this question.
• Organising by theme: Group comments that speak to specific themes (pre-determined and/or that
emerge in the course of an interview). Example: themes related to question “What is important to
you in terms of how learning is assessed in an educational environment” could be concept-
retention, ability to practically execute the lessons, memorization etc.
• You may also use both strategies concurrently.

20. Example
Interview I: Link, Link2 (better interview)
Interview II: Link (rural setting)