As well as looking at the various methodologies published in my last blog, our research methods this week covered a number of different areas all based around the crucial rationale of examining arguments from differing perspectives, a skill which can prove vital in business as it can enable you to put yourself in the customer/ client profile’s shoes in order to understand their needs. After all, there is not point leaping headfirst into a new business venture because you personally think it’s a good idea when in reality there is no market for your product/service etc to generate sufficient revenue.
We first considered what could be classed as a ‘profile’ when considered within the context of a company. What we quickly discovered was, despite it being a commonly used piece of terminology for a ‘type’ or ‘category’, opinions differed when it came to defining what information should be included when constructing a profile. We narrowed it down to the approximate points of:
- Ø Type of industry/sector?
- Ø What the company stands for? Key aims/values?
- Ø Size of company? (i.e small localised business/ mass global scale)
- Ø Target Market? (relating to age, salary, gender, lifestyle etc)
- Ø Products? Value Proposition/ USP?
- Ø History of the company/ Reputation (how established within industry?)
- Ø Rate of growth/future projections?
This led us to consider the challenges faced when developing specific customer profiles and the external themes and factors of influence that may have to be taken into consideration when developing coherent marketing strategies. This led onto a discussion of some of the following, as potential thematic areas for research:
Developments within the digital economy. Ability to foresee future through more advanced trend & forecasting analysis. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and how this could perhaps inhibit creative licence. Effects of economic climate on social culture (creative industries tend to rely on disposable income) Comparing and contrasting differing consumer needs (i.e geographical locations rural/city, age groups , wealth etc) Issues of 21st century multi-culturalism and idea that ‘one size no longer fits all’- growth of individualism thus people no longer fitting into demographic groups, difficult to establish what the ‘norm’ and mass market actually is. Customer psychological dilemmas of quality vs. price. Environmental issues affecting business- do consumers have higher opinions of brands/companies that are more ethically aware? What are cost implications for consumer & business? Effects of social media in reaching new markets. I recently read an article in the guardian online dated 2009 with the headline ‘all the world is a screen’ (a pun on Shakespeare’s famous quote of ‘all the world is a stage’), discussing the effect of the growth of technology and digital media on the arts and whether this has had a positive or negative effect. One of the arts council’s key aims is to utilize this new medium in order to increase young people’s involvement in and attendance at cultural and artistic events with the belief that the future of the creative industries depends upon this. On the one hand this could be successful due to the fact that technology has enabled new strategies such as e-marketing and promotion via websites and social media thus allowing arts organisations to reach wider audiences, particularly that of the newer generation who are familiar with such tools. However, technology also could be seen as a lethal competitor towards the business of live events as it provides a sense of free ‘in-house’ entertainment (i.e. online film streaming) and thus a deterrent from people going out to spend their money, particularly within the current economic climate, to see the ‘real thing’. It got me thinking how this compares perhaps to the links made between the explosion of the gaming industry to the rise in childhood obesity; how video games have seemingly replaced the more traditional forms of outdoor activity. Has technology become such a hold over our everyday lives that this shift is now not plausibly reversible?
I had a look at a couple of theorist books this week that epitomise the contrast between positivist and interpretivist approaches. The first was the ‘Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ by Thomas S. Kuhn, who discusses the problems with scientific historians persistently drawing on secondary sources from the past to merely compare a scientific theory to that of it time to test its integrity, as opposed to using the permanent contributions of older science to explain how this can be used to our present day advantage. He identifies some of the major turning points of the scientific revolution as the work of Copernicus, Newton and Einstein stating that what has set these apart from their predecessors was the ability not to simply reject other theories in favour of their own incompatible with them but instead use what has gone before and expand on this thus ‘transforming the scientific imagination and the world within which scientific work was done’, demonstrating the fact that even science, which is based around fact and quantitative data, is inter-disciplinary and didn’t develop in the methodical ‘clear cut’ sense that many would believe. There are two points I take from this to apply to my own work, the first being the importance of applying any research of past disciplines into a contemporary context. While I believe it is important to analyse the strengths and weaknesses within previous business strategies, it’s important to always relate these to our present day circumstances in order to progress forward. The other is the idea of not completely discarding business competitors, but instead identifying their weaknesses and capitalising on these.
I also had a look at the ‘Phenomenology of the Social World’ by Alfred Schutz, who discusses the underlying idea that all concrete social phenomena should be stripped and traced back to the modes of individual behaviour, that ‘sociology is no longer the philosophy of human existence. It is the particular science of human behaviour and its consequences.’ He also states that the social world is ‘far from homogenous’ and is instead given to us in a ‘complex system of perspectives’ thus implying that world is constructed from differing interpretations of each other’s subjective experiences. This theory emphasises for me the importance of primary research within business; that you can only really understand target markets and consumer needs through taking a more ethnographic approach by placing yourself within the research (whether this be through observation, face to face interviews & focus groups etc) as opposed to merely relying solely on traditional secondary sources which can cause you to become externally distanced from that which you are researching, unless used as a means to support your own primary findings. It also serves as a reminder to what I mentioned in my introduction to this blog post, that there is never just one answer to any investigative problem and that everything should be examined from multiple standpoints.
No comments:
Post a Comment