SALAD BOWL OR MELTING POT?
- BLURRING THE EDGES
The Role of the Qualitative Researcher, in a World of Diversity
From a modern society bound by ‘Reason’ and ‘Rationality’, the 21st century moves
towards postmodernism, where identities are complex, multiple, and continuously
evolving, arising out of changing responses to our economies, society, technology and
our local cultures. We live in a post-Weberian world, and we need new ways of
understanding to make sense of the multiplicities of distinctions that flow around us in
contemporary times. My paper articulates my quests and concerns about our role as
qualitative researchers - in an emerging global culture, do we press towards ‘one size
fits all’… an iron cage of what George Ritzer calls McDonaldization, where modern life
has become increasing subject to efficiency and control, or are we at ease in a world
where the cultures are not, have never been homogenous, and need to be disentangled
rather than deciphered?
Let us - each of us, step outside the skin of qualitative research, and take a selfreflexive look at what we normally do in our day to day work… specifically, let us take
a look at the last ten projects we may have conducted. For most of us, these studies are
likely to have been part of a ‘grand design’ where we met distinct usership profiles
(loyal users/ indifferent users/ non-users), in clearly differentiated psychographic
segments (‘early adopters’ / ‘laggards’ or whatever constitutes the specific
nomenclature for each brand / category), defined in homogeneous income or socioeconomic groups – and more and more, in a globalized world, we do this across
countries, working to tight deadlines, following a rigid time schedule of doing depth
interviews or face-to-face focus groups.
Often, we are complicit in this, since we help to set it up in the first place. In other words,
in a rapidly changing world, we find that our response has been, perversely, to follow strict
rationalized systems. I propose that this is increasingly leading to complacency and a
commodification of qualitative research, that those of us in the AQR and the QRCA
need to watch out for. Although we qualitative researchers like to present ourselves as
the intuitive, touchy-feely experts, what do we do? We continue to keep our audiences
in distinct silos that may be logical, and even easier (less of a headache) to handle but
then, we completely lose out and miss out on the nuances of all that takes place ‘at the
edges’ as people are increasingly thrown together in a connected, plural and symbiotic
planet. The border is where all ‘conflict’ as well as mergings takes place. We treat
our studies as constituting of – a) people who stay separate as in a ‘salad bowl’ rather
than those who are gradually blending at the edges more and more, even if never
completely into one another as in a ‘melting pot’, or b) we use the lens of globalization,
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and hope that all are part of a melting pot rather than one, where local cultures, even
within a nation, strive harder than ever, to stay separate, as in a ‘salad bowl’.
Blurring the Edges
We postulate that it is in ‘the blurring of the edges’ that the qualitative researcher plays a
significant role. She or he is the witness in the breaking out of grids; in the percolating
into the spaces of heterogeneity; in the ‘reverse gaze’ (e.g. what the ‘have-nots’ feel
about the ‘haves’, the ‘locals’ feel about the ‘globals’), that then leads to clearer
definitions of who is the customer in an ever-changing world. The end-result is often a
set of rich and actionable insights.
Some examples of studies conducted, where we gained by closely studying the ‘blurred
edges’:
 For an anti-ageing study, we made heterogeneous consumers come face to face…
After the completed focus group of the upper-class non-users, each in their 40s,
the participants stayed back and watched the focus group of the younger, far
more middle class users. While their comments and the degree of surprise being
evinced, in the back-room were quite revealing in itself, what was even more
interesting, was getting the two groups to interact. Initially, within the format of
the tail-end of the second focus group, and later while they ‘chilled out’ together
over a meal, and individual microphones that they were wearing captured their
‘small-talk’ with one another. This study led us to out-of-the-box new thinking –
that stepped beyond the usual age / usership definitions, and was
acknowledged by the client (Unilever) as path-breaking work in creating
strategy.
 For a university campus study on the Tata’s (the case study presented at the 2005
biennial AQR-QRCA conference that won us an award), our triangulation
technique stretched to the impromptu spending of long nights watching the
students working, across the two years of post-graduate study, on class projects.
Many unpredictable insights got generated. I mention ‘impromptu’ because –
obviously – this was not part of the original plan, nor was it billed to the client as
‘time-costs’.
 For a recent youth study, the ‘followers’ psychographic profile stayed back to
watch the ‘style leaders’ – and later interacted. What was intriguing to note, was
not just the predictable effect of the style leaders on the others, but how the
supposedly ‘powerless’ followers found occasions to subvert the power of the obviously
more looked up-to style leaders, in their speech and mannerisms.
 Dr. Bob Cook, of Firefish Limited, (an agency that Proact loves to work with, for
what we feel is a matching irreverence in attitudes!) once planted a person
dressed in dirty & smelly clothes as a participant, in a detergent focus group, in
London.
 The response to McDonald’s amongst so-called extremely satisfied Indian
consumers: Once they went back after a ‘happy meal’ – we decided to make an
unscheduled halt and say hello, at a few typical modern Indian homes… we
learnt to truly understand the new space ‘Western fast-food’ was creating,
within the context of staple Indian meals… for instance, pizzas and burgers were
non grata for at least a week afterwards!
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
In a study that Proact helped to conduct in India, for Nokia, on its M-Blog
mobile, we noticed the new hazy space between SMSes (texting) and online,
amongst the nextgen (more later).
The Plan of Action we follow at Proact, is this: We deliberately allocate around 15% of
our time, to a ‘surprise’ part of a project that will help us to blur the edges:
What can be done that is unusual? Different? Stretched? Crazy? (And we
don’t necessarily mean in terms of merely introducing a ‘new technique’!)
From the perspective of the consumer / the client / ourselves?
What can come together, that is not quite analogous in the usual sense of the
word?
Although the study does not entail home visits, can we pay a surprise one
anyways? (Easier done than said, in gregarious India  ) Indian perception of
society is logically embedded in diversity, in multiple meanings. Long and
rambling conversations with one or two participants, person-to-person - i.e.
as a meeting of friends with no agenda, and not necessarily as anything to do
with the subject under study, even after the rigors of a time-bound focus
group/ IDI is over, have a deep and abiding vitality of its own.
This 10 to 15% is not to be measured in terms of money or time. When we do not charge
the client for it, we are allowed to dig in our heels, and do a couple of mad things that clients
tolerate and soon learn to appreciate. Often, we even tag the client along! We need to think
of it as gaining a richness of understanding, since it also attunes us to have a high
tolerance for dead-ends – very often, it may not lead to something that is tangibly
‘profitable’, and for precisely this reason, will overall lead to a less-anxious creativity, in
the rest of the study.
It is the creation of space within our cluttered and crowded schedules and minds. In
other words, the 15% is not necessarily to be bunched together at one point of time – it is
the space we create anywhere, within the delineated markings of the project, where we
are ‘free to think, to feel, to do’. Necessary when we are in a business that pressures us to
come up with that ‘next brilliant insight’ all the time, and as we negotiate the binary
space between the client who pays us, and the end-consumer who to be ‘studied’ as a
unit of analysis, and ‘conquered’ as a potential buyer . Says Larry Huston, VP
Innovation at P & G, in an interview about the attitude that large organizations need to
have. ‘We need to act like little companies who don’t have too much of money, be open
to the outside world and make connections. This leads to a really deep understanding of
what’s needed for the customer…. creativity is about connecting things’. Well, most of
us here are lucky enough to be the little companies that he is referring to!
An example of a successful idea that has recently emerged while the world has
‘blurred at the edges’ is the recent ‘microblogging’ has taken off in the Asian
marketplace. Microblogging, i.e., blogging on cell phones via SMSes is on its way to
become an absolute sell-out among compulsive cell phone users and enthusiastic
communicators, says a cover page article in an Indian newspaper, The Hindustan Times.
"Microblogging is redefining what a conversation is all about, blurring the line between
SMSing and blogging, and between the private and public,” says an Indian microblogger. “Blogging on the phone has no extra baggage that blogging on a computer
carries: you don't have to be grammatically correct and your blog post could be just any
stray thought”.
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What’s more, with over 100 million Indian cell-phone users added, in the past 15
months, most do not belong to the top-of-the-heap computer-savvy population. With a
working knowledge of the phonetics of the English alphabet, they are able to use it to
‘blog’ in Hinglish, or any other Indian language! At Proact, we have recently been
conducting ‘cell-phone’ blog groups, amongst non-English speaking consumers, for a
few clients, with very encouraging results.
We noticed this ‘at the edges’ aspect as early as last year in March while conducting the
India leg of the Global Village project of our worldwide QRCA initiative. It was easier to
get to the young participants via SMSes (as all Indians prefer to call texting), and often,
they would ask ‘Can we blog to your online questions here, Tannu?’ - Tannu, or
Tarannum being a young 23 year old female moderator, at ease with the new texting
lingo, since this was seen as immediate, as well as the feeling of fulfillment and high at
knowing the message was being read by Tannu, even as the ‘delivered’ report was
coming back in, on the young 15 and 16 year olds’ cell-phones!
Microblogging is helping people release a lot of creative energy free of cost. During a
recent virtual meeting organized by the QRCA this February, where the Global Village
project was discussed, the issue of less ‘interaction’ between online participants was
raised. Perhaps ‘blogging’ itself is indicative of a deep felt human need in a busy global
world – to be heard than to listen? Perhaps, even while we aim to master online focus
groups, we find that the young world (at least Asia) has already effortlessly moved on to
another paradigm. Newsweek, dated December 24, 2007 has recently highlighted this
potential as well. Moore’s law – that states computing power available in the world
doubles exponentially every few years – seems to be as evident in our field!
Today the non-reductionist task, for all of us, is to unravel this conundrum: What are
the dynamics of the system that take place in the context of ‘flow and uncertainty’ rather
than ‘order, stability and systematicity’ (to quote Arjun Appadurai)? What are the
‘telecommunal’ landscapes of the future, as the world evolves at breakneck speed?
We qualitative researchers are ‘pronounced guilty’ from the outside (there are 1.9
million google hits to the combination of words ‘Focus Groups Useless’!), by more wellknown and strident voices (Malcolm Gladwell et al) that continue to marginalize our
oeuvre, with dismissive comments such as :
‘Researchers are the bete noire of the communications industry – they do not
understand creative inputs.’
A leading Indian ad film maker calls quali ‘the tyranny of research’ since he sees it
as ‘sitting in judgment’ on his good creative work (and whose beliefs, I pointed
out, on a public platform in India, were biased and incomplete).
‘Much market research fails to ratify anything but the status quo.
There is very little psychological justification for the notion that you can find out
what people think about an idea-particularly a revolutionary new idea-by asking
them,' says Mr. Gladwell.
Even while we work-horses chafe at the bit at what we see as this ‘ivory tower talk’, all
we do is continue to be the quiet and diligent service-providers, the invisible glue that
holds the marketing task together. My argument here is to suggest that we need to
transform how we perceive ourselves even before we get others to perceive us
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differently. If qualitative research is an art, we need to see each project that we accept as an
individual ‘work of art’. It is no longer enough for a quali researcher to ‘wear’ a ‘hat’ –
such as, say, a ‘youth hat’ or a ‘child-hat’, during the strictly adhered to hours-ofinteraction with the young consumer, since a ‘hat’ is only part of an outer attire.
It is not even to be ‘youth-like’ or ‘child-like’ since this behavior is also mere
camouflage. It is increasingly, to plunge into the melting pot, and become the audience as much
as the client – spontaneous, provocative, even daring. The audience needs to be taken out of
the silos of stereotypical market segments that they are all beginning to guess they
belong to. They need to feel valued, taken seriously, treated as individuals.
An article on marketing trends for 2008, in the February issue of Research World, the
magazine from ESOMAR, highlights that ‘traditional concepts’ such as customer
satisfaction, continues to be ‘very important’ as a key trend, among marketers. Well, it is
time to get all who seek this ‘customer satisfaction’ to join in and ‘get your hands wet’.
In India and its neighboring countries, fellow QRCA colleague Pia Mollback-Verbec and
I have begun taking a series of workshops, invited by clients such as Unilever, on the
appreciation, actual conduct and then, the analysis of qualitative research – combining
examples from the East and the West. Unless quali is participated in, in all its
manifestations by the users, we can never expect individual stakeholders to appreciate
its extent, potential – as well as skills necessary.
Make the Invisible Visible
We are the (invisible!) locus between the client and the ultimate consumer, attempting
to unify all the opposing voices, and we need to remember that we can raise some
‘inconvenient truths’. By magnifying the tensional resonance between homogeneity and
heterogeneity, to take a phrase from Houston Baker. By – sometimes - not trying to
reconcile all differences.
While we hope to be the point at which all contradictions are resolved, we also need to
see the marketers (and the communicators!) from the consumer perspective as both the
‘partner’ (who provides the excellent service we need) as well as the ‘other’ (who
expects me to pay for it). When we are ready to question the system ourselves as
researchers and members of the team, (in terms of debate and sustainability issues - in
the overall analysis, is this brand or product really making the world a better place?),
when we ‘truly’ help the consumer grow (rather than aim for a larger share of her
wallet), that is when we will fulfill our role, and be confidently acknowledged as
experts and partners, acrossboard.
As the indispensable catalyst in the client-customer equation, I believe, we will
reappropriate our inherently strong position.
Thank You!
Piyul Mukherjee
http://proact.co.in
http://proactblog.blogspot.com
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