As COVID-19 continues to spread, market research planners are embracing more “virtual” methods to conduct qualitative fieldwork. These virtual platforms eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings and respondent and client travel while still maintaining the sense of interpersonal connection that underpins qualitative research.

Many tools, platforms, and service providers already offer various virtual solutions—all of whom are amplifying their marketing efforts to ensure their clients and the industry can minimize the disruption to their business plans. Amidst the flood of options, we at Shapiro+Raj have assembled a brief list of our recommendations for a variety of common virtual qualitative research designs. While this is by no means a comprehensive list, we hope it will help you better understand your available choices.

Virtual Interviews or Focus Groups

The heart and soul of focus groups and individual interviews is the personal connection between moderator and respondents. Expert moderators attune to the verbal and nonverbal cues of respondents as they engage in question probes and projective exercises that uncover the rational and emotional drivers of behavior. We recommend FocusVision’s InterVu (www.focusvision.com) as the virtual platform that most closely replicates the in-facility experience. InterVu uses webcams to bring the respondents and moderator together, a virtual backroom with an instant-message style chat feature so clients can share their reactions and pass notes to the moderator, and various bookmarking tools to help find interesting content when the recorded sessions are being analyzed. Importantly, the InterVu service provides a live support technician to help respondents get connected and troubleshoot tech glitches, allowing the moderator to focus on the research. The only thing missing is snacks for the backroom!

We’ve found that for market research InterVu is superior to general-purpose web conference tools like WebEx, Skype, or Zoom because it’s built for researchers with both moderator and backroom-specific features. Alternative research-focused platforms like Civicom (www.civicom.com) are also worth considering, especially if you do not have a master agreement with FocusVision.

Bulletin Boards and Online Diaries

Bulletin boards comprise an important and distinct research methodology that allows respondents to collaborate directly with each other, but on a timeframe that meets their needs. Boards can last several days for a single-project design or can last for months when functioning as standing panels. Related to bulletin boards are online diaries, which have a similar user interface as bulletin boards but are geared toward a series of multimedia activities for respondents to complete on their own. Diary activities are usually kept private from other participants, but of course are submitted in real time for researchers to review and probe against. The most robust online diary tools also support geo-activation of activities, which helps capture in-the-moment reactions at crucial times and places on the path toward purchase.

We like Qualboard from 2020 Research (www.2020research.com) for bulletin boards but are intrigued by others like Web Creator Suite that are built around innovative respondent interfaces to encourage social engagement. On the diary side, FocusVision’s Revelation (www.focusvision.com) is an excellent tool for online diaries and advanced mobile ethnographies. It’s easy for respondents to use on their smartphones and strikes the right balance between powerful features, and ease of both setup and analysis for researchers.

Large Scale Qualitative Events

A new breed of tool has captured our interest of late: qualitative research events. These bring dozens of respondents online together at the same time for a mix of personal and group activities. The technologies allow for larger sample sizes than traditional qualitative research and an astoundingly fast turnaround of key insights from the event. We love them for iterative qualitative research where larger sample sizes are required to make the next stage-gate decision.

At Shapiro+Raj, we’ve used Invoke (www.invoke.com) to host these qualitative events. Invoke works well for stimuli-driven research where respondents choose, rate, rank, etc.—all the while explaining their “whys,” which Invoke immediately tabulates. Invoke even allows for moderators to ping individual respondents with probes, ensuring that the most unique insights get the attention they deserve while the event progresses. Remesh (www.remesh.ai) has also come onto our radar for these events. This platform really shines in categorizing open-end responses using AI technologies—doing it live so that respondents can both respond in an “unaided” way using their own words and then vote their level of agreement on the “aided” set of responses as categorized and distilled by the AI.

We’re focused on helping our clients continue to unlock market ready insights in a safe, effective manner. The Shapiro+Raj team uses our own proprietary tools like S+R AQuA™, S+R ZediApp and the Client Portal plus many others in addition to the ones described above, to make sure we can do just that. If you’d like to learn even more about these platforms or share a successful virtual research story of your own, please get in touch with us so we can find the perfect solution for you and our colleagues in the industry.

Quick Cheat-Sheet to Virtual Methodologies

Stimuli driven research. Consider Large Scale Qualitative Events
Geo-activation for questions? Consider an Online Diary
Real time responses in respondents’ daily lives? Consider an Online Diary
Respondent interaction a necessity? Consider Virtual Focus Groups or Online Bulletin Boards
Quick turnaround with a large sample size? Consider Large Scale Qualitative Events
As close to in-person as possible? Consider Virtual Interviews