Longitudinal Qualitative Research (LQR)
When your targeted market space & expectations of user groups are changing on a whim, exactly when do you choose to conduct research and how long?
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Management Inc. is now rebranded as “The Product Web”
Now… on to today’s topic:
Ideally when does one conduct market research?
Take a look at that graph. Referring to product teams across industries and across the world, the perception people carry is market research is an activity that ought to preempt everything else, somewhere around or in parallel to the Ideation / Inception phase.
And, that’s not altogether wrong either. Because if one were to take an idea from inception stage and then blindly jump ahead to the product build stage, they are sure to face a pretty bumpy ride ahead, like someone driving a car on a busy highway with a blindfold. The probability of that ending up in a disaster is pretty high.
But with disruption being pretty rampant given the timeline of 2023 and the fact that all those market dynamics could change on a whim, is it really going to suffice if one gets on that research bandwagon at the inception / ideation stage leaving it at that?
The simple and obvious answer is, NO.
But then there arises a bigger problem of having to catch up with the changing market trends & catering to those needs. A team altering the product offering over every one of those findings sounds pretty unreasonable and impractical as well.
So, how does one go about managing this entire landscape?
The answer could be rooted in Longitudinal Qualitative Research.
LQR (Longitudinal Qualitative Research)
Definition:
“LQR (Longitudinal Qualitative Research) is essentially a form of a research activity that involves the collection of data with an acute focus on studying & tracking behaviors that show any variance ranging from continuity, endurance, transition, causality over a really long period of time”
The key here in this definition is the stress on the “length of time” which is a major factor and if it ought to qualify as LQR then it ought to involve research conducted over a really long period of time in what may as well be phases / cycles.
The main motivation behind pushing research into really long tranches of time is to observe, gauge & measure behaviors in the markets over a diverse set of user groups whilst enumerating & enlisting their problems, emotions so as to identify patterns that could form the basis to shape the product offering accordingly.
Historically one would usually associate LQR with the field of medicine / drugs. Given that the drugs ought to be subjected to a variety of tests on ethnically diverse groups prior to them even applying for and obtaining approval as an industry norm & to qualify over that efficacy benchmarks the effects ought to show a sign of positivity overall, holding up for a long time across changing environmental conditions.
Question:
But, how does one go about conducting LQR in a given scenario? Is it about the extrapolating the same snippet of research or does one ought to think about improving the reach?
Methods / Types of LQR
When all these methods of research are qualitative essentially, there could be a few subtle changes to the questions and their framing so as to include the time parameter as a mandatory constraint to be factored in which makes it qualify as LONGITUDINAL.
1) Historical
It is the most common form of research there is. “Historical qualitative research” essentially starts over digesting an idea and formulating a comprehensive plan to collate all the data required whilst analyzing them and perhaps segregating them across their sources.
Collating all that historical data was a problem and could still end up being one in some niche areas given the lack of data itself. When it could be done over conducting secondary research hitting proprietary sites online over a regular case, one may as well have to get down to exploring a few primary research methods in such cases.
For ex:
Here are a few questions:
What is the average efficacy of those substitute drugs in the market?
How do you feel about the drugs that were recently banned by the FDA?
Here a way to turn that research longitudinal:
What’s the average efficacy of the drugs currently available in the market to treat an ailment as opposed to the ones used earlier that now stand banned by the FDA?
2) Grounded Theory
When traditional research starts off with a hypothesis over obtaining utilizing knowledge gained and then collecting data to either prove or disprove it grounded theory starts with collecting data first and then analyzing it closely so as to produce a few odd theories adding inferences in there to substantiate the factoids found.
And the reason it is termed “grounded theory” is because it is ground collectively with the voices of in market which could be spread out over interactions, social actions and their experiences. To conduct one just pops relevant questions to the individual users and records those opinions. But to qualify as LQR one may need to conduct it over a really long period of time.
For ex:
Here are a few questions:
What percentage of men care about hair fall as compared to women?
Do brilliant students really pay attention to regular classes at school every day?
Are employees really happy with the facilities on offer at their workplace?
One could turn them into longitudinal by framing it as:
What’s the average age group at which men really begin to worry about hair fall as opposed to women?
How do students performing brilliantly & consistently across age groups react to the regular classes being held at school every day?
Are employees across organizations & sectors happy with facilities on offer at their workplace?
3) Phenomenology
It is proved beyond reasonable doubt that we humans are social animals and we tend to remember the experiences that we went through better than plain simple facts. Assuming there were, it would have still been very tough for the survivors of the Titanic to remember some specific events related to how the giant ship sank but the same people would have no great trouble in remembering the scenes from the James Cameron cult classic.
So, in order to understand behaviors of the users it could be easier if one opted to tune their line of questioning so as to closely orient towards the specific experiences the user might have had in a parallel vein, which is how “phenomenology” ought to be effectively employed.
For ex:
Here are a few questions:
What effect did that fairness cream have on your skin tone?
Would you agree that an hour spent on treadmill is more effective to brisk walking?
Would you agree that picking MNCs over startups improves one’s chances of quickly advancing up the ladder?
To turn them into longitudinal, you could work on the framing like so:
How long did you continually use that fairness cream to get a permanent glow on your skin?
How strongly would you agree to the fact that an hour-long usage of a treadmill everyday over a year’s span proves to be more effective in comparison to the same time allotted to brisk walking?
Which of those product roles across MNCs & startups would you say is more effective in advancing up the ladder quicker?
4) Ethnographical / Narrative
The culture and its influences do have a major impact in influencing the behavior of the users and user groups. Studying cultures holistically and as a collective entity does make sense when one is looking to build products targeting those specific ethnic groups which may no doubt be a mass market nonetheless.
Ethnographical research is predominantly conducted to understand, analyze and factor in the characteristics of an entire culture or a race or specifically a given ethnicity. Inspired from anthropology the researcher could target & study of set of highly specific aspects so as to unravel a slice or two from the chapters of the lives of the people in the sample space. Given how this would so obviously require lots of time researchers do tend to drift towards other forms of qualitative research like Phenomenology (as described earlier) to get to their data quicker, the advantage here being people and their inherent ethnicities or cultures don’t change on a daily cadence.
For ex:
Here are a few questions:
What kind of clothing would Ethiopians prefer as a default choice?
Does wearing leather of any form have an adverse effect on your skin?
To turn them into longitudinal, the framing ought to change to:
How likely are you to agree to the fact that Ethiopians always prefer minimal clothing all throughout the year?
Does wearing leather of any form have an adverse effect on your skin irrespective of the change in seasons & the weather?
5) Case studies
At times it is possible that one needs to study, understand and tabulate a host of parameters. When some of the parameters one is looking to study may already be known defining a boundary wall over that expectation hitting the field for research, it is possible that some of them may be unknowns, as in one may not have any idea of its existence prior to conducting research. And that scenario makes a classic case for conducting “case studies”.
Case studies could be invaluable source under some constraints like:
Need to focus on deep behaviors gauging all those changes over multiple external stimuli / a specific stimulus
Facts, notions, behaviors seem to change sporadically without an essential pattern
The boundary walls seem unclear over the context calling for more research to be conducted
In case they aren’t already available over secondary research resources / channels one could get into either one or more of data gathering or conducting interviews or continuous observation.
For ex:
Here are a few questions:
Undertake a research activity as a case study to understand how people would react to music being played at a considerably higher volume while at office during working hours
And that could be turned longitudinal by changing it to:
Undertake a research activity as a case study to determine what people at an office consider loud music & how they would react to it at different times of the day or week with a variance in hall occupancy / concentrating on deep work / who it is being played by