As one of my many summer jobs I have found myself being employed to take part in and conduct consumer research. I have done this work before and have never really questioned the methodology of it. However this summer, since doing my own research, I can't help thinking what a massive waste of money and time it is.
I was not surprised to read in Buy.ology that it has been proven that people lie in consumer research. Respondents say what they think the correct answer should be, or they can be swayed by other members of the group or the interviewer. Sometimes they are unable to articulate or understand how they feel towards a product.
It seems to be like this because no one cares. The interviewer and the interviewee are in it for the money incentive. Next week I will be running interviews on soya milk and I can say I don't particularly care about soya milk and I'm pretty sure the people I convince to answer a couple of questions for a fiver won't care either!
When thinking about my own research it is clear that this style of research is not right for my project. This led me to look into probes. A probe is a personally made pack of items introduced into someone's life developed for research. The probe can be adapted and manipulated by the recipient to tell their story and reveal information about the topic the researcher is interested in.
Gaver wrote an article on cultural probes that really focuses on the richness of the data you are able to collect. Although the data may not be quantitative, the investment of time from the researcher and the participant is apparent in the results obtained.
I am now in the process of making my own shopping bag, to act as a probe as the next part of my investigationinto the behaviour of window shopping.
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