The Problem With Asking Questions

Sometimes the worst thing you can do in market research is to start asking someone questions.

This seems counterintuitive in a profession that seems based upon the asking of questions, but when you ask someone a question, you then get an answer. And once you have an answer, you then start making assumptions and developing hypotheses and asking more questions, all based upon that answer.

But what if that answer is unreliable?

This is exactly the issue that Roger Dooley at Neuromarketing addresses in his post entitled “How ‘The Interpeter’ Screws Up Market Research” . Quoting from a lecture by Michael Gazzaniga, a prominent Neuroscientist:

“The same split-brain research that exposed shocking differences between the two hemispheres also revealed that the human left hemisphere has the interpreter. The left brain interpreter’s job is to interpret our behavior and responses, whether cognitive or emotional, to environmental challenges. The interpreter constantly establishes a running narrative of our actions, emotions, thoughts, and dreams. It is the glue that keeps our story unified and creates our sense of being a coherent, rational agent. It brings to our bag of individual instincts the illusion that we are something other than what we are. It builds our theories about our own life, and these narratives of our past behavior seep into our awareness. “

The problem then for market researchers is that if I ask someone a question, particularly about subjects that they haven’t given much thought to or don’t particularly care about - such as why do they prefer Brand A over Brand B - their interpreter is more than happy to provide some answer from their narrative, rather than giving a “Don’t know” or a “I don’t particularly care”.

The result then of random questioning is that the quality of consumer research starts to slide downhill, as Frank Martin perfectly illustrates in this example of a very muddled use of qualitative research, which shows some poorly recruited consumers being asked poorly constructed questions about a story board advertising clip.

I believe the first step in dealing with “the interpreter” in consumer research is to acknowledge its existence. The second step is to then lead with research that is behaviorally based, in order to establish the context and rational reality of a particular business issue.

It’s when that context is established, then the researcher can then start asking questions. But they always need to be listening for the voice of “the interpreter”.