One of the main points pointed out when crucifying the focus group as a qualitative research tool is its artificiality, its way of abducting the consumer from his natural context and putting him in a moderation room. As a reaction to this shortcoming, marketers occasionally turn to more ethnographic approaches, such as IHV, AST, etc. The idea is to ensure that the researcher is integrated into the natural context. If for focus groups the ideal is to go as deep as possible, for IHVs it is amazing.
In this context, Web 2.0 emerged with all its potential for networking and socialization and, shortly after, the idea of using it as a research tool. Add this to the marketing guru frenzy when everyone is desperate to buy a ticket to some bold, barefoot marketing gods saying the same fundamental things but with different wrappers, all heralding web 2.0 as the second coming. And just like that, you get a wave of enthusiasm towards research on YouTube. Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Yahoo Messenger, forums, online communities, etc. Now everyone can hear everyone. And at this point something very interesting happens: people start to think that this is a great tool that researchers can use to take advantage of real feelings, writing, etc. of consumers. As a result, a long list of arguments emerges in favor of stalking online communities, ranging from low cost to raw and uncorrupted data.
What almost everyone seems to forget is exactly the background. Yes, people are not inhibited by a moderator, a mirror, and a camera, but they are inhibited by themselves, their peers, the medium, and many others. Take Twitter for example. There you choose your crowd. Friends, people who seem to share common interests, or common friends are the usual choices. On top of that come the thought leaders, the cool people of the day, and somewhat more official sources: the companies. And all these little birds tweet. But they tweet for a reason: they want to be perceived in some way (a small sparrow wants to be seen as a hawk), or they want to belong to a certain crowd (the duck trying to keep up with the swans), they want to have access to cool links, etc. And all of these reasons alter what they tweet about, how they tweet, when, and with whom. And here comes the cunning fox thinking that all he has to do is listen to the tweets and find out where the little birds keep their eggs. So he goes to search.twitter.com/ and puts in “eggs.” And he sees the sparrow boasting about his big nest in the mountains, the duck says that he doesn’t have time to lay eggs because he is busy with facials and thinks “to make money”. But he really has no idea.
Coming back to the real world, we have to understand that all these web 2.0 developments offer us new ways to conduct research, but they don’t simplify it to the degree of a Google search. It simply provides us with more sources of information that we have yet to interpret against the context. So don’t think that the further away from the moderation room, the more real it is.