Research In A Petri Dish: Learning From Communities

GROUNDSWELL BLOG — The problem with market research is that, while it can generate some pretty actionable insights, it’s expensive. If you do surveys, it’s always a struggle to get enough people to generate a large enough sample without breaking the bank – and when the survey’s done, pray you don’t find out that there was some question you forgot to ask. For qualitative feedback, there’s always the trusty focus group, but to make sure those insights are on target you’d better do eight of them all around the country, and there goes the budget again. There must be some way to do research with a group of your customers who want to stay in touch, are on call whenever you want them, and respond well to follow up questions. In fact, there is. It’s called community research. Here’s how it works...