Right here! Right Now! - The use of ‘present tense’ in narratives

Narratives are powerful as a data collection tool in qual research. Story telling is interesting as much as it is intuitive. We all are used to hearing and narrating stories.

The process of story telling in research brings forth - the tiny juicy details around a consumer’s experience that can make any researcher’s day! These nuances are what make one consumer’s shopping trip or washing moment different from another. In a researcher’s quest for attaining a near perfect understanding of the consumer’s experience - it goes without saying then that more the details recalled while narrating an incident – the more vivid is the description and proportionately higher is the understanding and appreciation of such an event.

Story telling most often happens in retrospect and narration most often involves use of the past tense. But what were to happen if we were to take the less beaten track and start narrating stories in the present tense.

While writing about my experiences some days back I found myself oscillating between tenses. On the one hand – rules of grammar learnt in high school forced me to use the past tense, on the other hand I found writing in the present tense helped an easier recall of the tiny details that served to bring the story to life.

When we narrate in the present we relive the moment while narrating in the past is analogous to recall. When we recall something – we are distant (to a certain extent) from the emotions that are associated with an event – it is like watching a sepia toned image in an old photo album. Reliving is experiencing the event with its emotional paraphernalia.

(Taking a bit of a detour – the present tense is actively used in psychotherapy in dealing with repressed emotions / memories – to aid subconscious feelings and emotions in coming to the fore and to experience the event in full blast as it were – while when the therapist wants his client to disengage emotionally - the client is often asked to metaphorically see the event in a picture album / tv screen)

This does not mean that just encouraging consumers to use the present tense in narrations would do the trick. Since we are used to narrating in the past tense – it may warrant some prodding / setting an example to / the consumer. Encouraging the consumer to use as many of his sense organs (olfactory / visual / auditory / kinesthetic) as possible would definitely aid the process.

It is not without reason that the use of present tense to narrate an incident of the past is called the ‘vivid present’. Writers have experimented with the use of the ‘vivid present / historical present’ in literature. Why not experiment with it in qual research I’d say?

Describing pain…On how can research be designed to help consumer’s articulate emotions?

A tear in my knee cartilage has meant that I frequented a physical therapist – where I was often asked to give a report on the nature and extent of pain I felt.

I started to describe it but something just did not feel right…

I did not have the right words – resulting in a 2 minute long winding sentence - that gave the therapist only a vague idea of what I felt inside

The therapist tried to understand more by asking me questions….which did not do either of us any good

Was it a stretch or a pain? I could not discern

Was it bearable / unbearable? Even if it is bearable – what does that tell you – my threshold for bearing pain could be far higher than that of another individual

How would you rate it from 0 to 10 where zero is no pain and 10 is the maximum?
How do I know what maximum pain feels like? It certainly is not zero, but unless I don’t know the maximum where do I pitch it on the scale?

The whole experience reinforced two things I have known and learnt but haven’t paid enough attention to – perhaps the first hand experience was necessary to appreciate the nuances

a) Emotions are subconscious. Emotions surpass language. Language offers a surrogate way of understanding emotions but words cannot totally and accurately describe what one feels. Try articulating - what you feel when you feel happy / what it means to be in love...and you'll find yourself grappling for words

b) Emotions are felt and sensed as an amalgamation of visuals, images, sensations – its difficult to isolate these sensory perceptions and describe them individually. Also some of these sensations are so subtle and so much beyond our conscious understanding and expression that even if you know how you feel – translating it to words for even a reasonably articulate person is quite an uphill task

All this makes me now a little more sympathetic and sensitive towards research respondents who say ‘I just cannot describe how I feel on seeing this ad’ or worse still remain silent or say I don’t feel anything at all. Those are not just respondents behaving lazy or indifferent. Those are very real flaws in the way we question consumers and design research.

Visualizing emotions may help – asking consumers to close their eyes and
Describe what they see, hear, smell
Where in their body they see it
The colors / images they see or the sounds they hear etc

An exercise in visualizing emotions could not only make it easier for consumers to articulate those – (rather than trying to answer a blanket question like what do you feel?) but also it could offer cues that could be used in designing communication.

(Where is the emotion felt in the body / how it is seen inside etc – for instance adverts for pain relieving tablets often show pain in originating from the affected part in concentric circles and warm colors)

Doing this exercise while the consumer is mentally relaxed with his eyes shut – would mean a greater probability that his focus / attention is inward driven

If getting a rating on the emotion is crucial to the research design then design a scale that is more consumers friendly. This is one good example I found (read last para) where the scale uses everyday experiences from the consumer’s life as benchmarks – rather than abstract descriptors.

This brings me to a related issue – how appropriate is it to compare / aggregate responses pertaining to emotions – since emotions are a very subjective an individual experience, perhaps also influenced by the cultural set up one is part of.

For example – one child understands of pain or happiness - could depend on his experiences / what he is made to understand about pain by his peers or influencers, the physical, emotional, social environment he grew up in.

I guess this would deserve some more reading and another post.

Brand exposure – How much is too much?

A cluttered marketing environment forces marketers to come up with innovative solutions to makes their brands seen. I’m beginning to wonder whether in the world of brands does the concept of ‘over exposure’ and the ensuing ‘consumer annoyance’ and the theory of diminishing returns hold true – or is it a matter of plain simple arithmetic

Greater Exposure = Greater no of touch points for the consumer = higher brand recall = Greater likelihood of brand in the consumer’s consideration set = Greater possibility of purchase

If I look at it as a consumer I would perhaps like to be reminded about
A) A brand at the point of purchase or
B) During the process of consideration (evaluating alternatives).

Some one please tell me…

Why would I want to be told of new content on TV while I am cooking breakfast?

Or think of what sun tan lotion would suit my skin while I am in a loo

Or the next time I need insurance - would I ever think of taking insurance from this company just because they hang a board outside my apartment politely telling visitors to not park in the driveway. I would not!

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in the power of salience and its residual effect on my purchase but in an effort to make your brand visible don’t barrage my world with disconnected, meaningless exposure. There is a greater likelihood that efforts like this this and this which push the brand in my face and on my egg will result in residual discontentment.

The arithmetic is simple – though the from where I see it the equation looks a little different

To me…

More disconnected exposure = More clutter = Higher Irritation for the consumer = Greater numbness to ‘in your face’ advertising = More money and time spent on finding newer avenues for brand visibility = MUCH More clutter…

Untill today - I did not know such a word existed!



brand exposure, brand salience,

So what does a qualitative researcher really bring to the table?

It is not uncommon to oversimplify qualitative research as an approach and the contribution of the researcher to the process. Two or three key factors contribute to this widely held belief.

1. The flow of knowledge around commercial qualitative research has for a long time been oral tradition. Researchers learn by observing and practicing what they observe on the job.
2. The industry has very relatively fewer entry barriers. Researchers could have a background in any of the social sciences or management disciplines at the least. At the worst it could be field investigators graduating as interviewers and moving on to handling entire research projects.
3. As a discipline it is open, flexible in its approach and draws from many related fields and most importantly is evolving continuously. An eclectic approach like that makes it a complex task to commit to paper the tenets and the boundaries that define this discipline.
   

With the result that many a times – what is often a complex and well-thought out task gets reduced to this widely held belief

‘After all what is scientific about talking to a bunch of women over coffee and cookies and how difficult can it be’

True. It is in principle not a difficult task to chat over a cup of coffee but what one would get as a result of such a conversation is questionable. So if it is not just chatting over coffee and cookies – what does a (good) qual researcher really do?

A good qual researcher over time, acquires an intense understanding of two worlds – one being that of the consumer and the other that of the client. Her immersion in these two worlds results in her becoming fluent in the language and culture of both these domains.

And the skill is not just in having an external awareness of this expectation. It is being aware of it and internalizing it till it becomes second nature. It is holding both these positions simultaneously and constantly moving between them

This constant shift of perspectives keeps happening within the mind of the researcher ALL the time.

From the time she is designing research – thinking about how best the clients need for information would be met keeping in mind the kind of the consumer segment being targeted.

To the info gathering stage – where mostly in a matter of 2 hours – she needs to get a bunch of strangers in a room not only comfortable with her but also with each other –enough to create an open and safe environment for them to air their views and respect the differences and yet not so comfortable that they digress to talking about whatever they feel like.

She has her mind (If I may put it like that) split into many fragments. A part of it is constantly evaluating how much headway she has made vis-à-vis what she has set out to achieve. Through another she has her eye on who amongst her group of eight have / haven’t had enough air time. Who dominates and needs to be managed, who needs to be encouraged, how to break the cycle of group consensus when she sees evidence of that or how to deal with spontaneous emotional outbursts on part of a respondent without losing time and yet not making the respondent feel alienated. She has her ear finely tuned in to catch subtle statements made by respondents that lie just outside the scope of research but could throw light on a significant part of the information puzzle if explored in detail. She makes a judgment call about which of these threads to explore and at the cost of what, which ones to ignore and what she could lose as a result. Then there could be chits being sent in from the client viewing room prodding her explore something. Many a times it could be a topic that has been discussed and closed. How does one re-visit it without losing time? Sometimes it involves making a snap decision to let it pass. And most of all while she is constantly evaluating her alternatives – she needs to make sure that she keeps her bunch of respondents perked up through the two hours so that they don’t lose interest in the discussion and start thinking about their kids back home or what’s to be made for dinner.

I recall some sessions I witnessed where the researcher had completely lost herself in the interview with a woman from a fairly low socio economic background. Within minutes, the researcher had put her at ease, latched on to her lingo, incorporated her slang, adapted her line of questioning to reflect her situation, mirrored her posture and her way of sitting and to an outsider it seemed like it was one woman talking to her confidant – not a respondent to a researcher. Within minutes of the interview getting over – I saw the same researcher talking to her Dutch client. Her language reflected an understanding of his business. She had translated the information she had gathered from the respondent to what the implications it had for their marketing team, neatly summing her crisp inferences to findings that were not only interesting to hear but also relevant and actionable.

Doesn’t all this call for more skill than a simple chat over coffee?

qualitative research, qualitative researcher, on being a qualitative researcher