Bringing New Life to Qualitative Research With Real People in Real Life

Let’s get real for a moment.

We all know that market research can add tremendous value to your business – assessing the numbers and understanding the statistics can really help you build a business case, make better informed decisions, measure success and results, and make your stakeholders happy. But sometimes, it can be just so clinical and neatly packaged into a few charts or grids. While that has its place, real life just doesn’t always add up so nicely.

There are disruptions and interruptions that can upset that balance. And that’s the point where qualitative research begins to break the surface – understanding those funny little creatures we call ‘people’.

At Ipsos, our qualitative research team aims to distil the insights that help you connect more meaningfully with people to improve their lives. And we do that by putting real people at the center of everything we do.

Real People

At Ipsos UU we get as close as possible to Real People to help our clients connect their brands with Real Life.

We don’t talk ‘consumer’, ‘shopper’ or ‘lapsed users’. People don’t wake up in the morning wondering which brand to buy today. Instead, we focus on Real People in all their flawed, perverse glory. Real People are complex. They’re full of contradictions and inherent tensions. They continuously adapt to their environment and stimulus around them.

Real People don’t always tell the truth. Sometimes they lie. They pretend. They imagine. But that’s OK. There are ‘layers’ of truth, and each layer tells a story. Even when people lie they tell us the truth. Or at least a truth about themselves or their real intentions. Real People aren’t aware of everything they do. They don’t do what they say. They can’t always express what they think or feel. So to understand Real People we need to jolt them out of autopilot, take them out of their comfort zone and unearth their instinct.

Hot and Cold

Communication needs to entice and convince the projected self and products needs to fulfill the real self. And knowing this truth about real people, we do both HOT and COLD research.

What does this mean? Well, you needn’t worry – it doesn’t mean we are doing focus groups in a sauna or an igloo (unless, of course, that’s what you need). But let’s examine each.

HOT thinking is intuitive, instinctive and unconscious. It’s dominated by emotions formed through associations. It’s fast and uses little energy. It’s about what we feel and how… not what we think.

COLD thinking is rational, logical, and reasoned. It is slow and energy intensive. And it is about carefully thought out responses, not instant feelings and emotions. It is a robust analytical framework that helps make sense of life.