According to Philip Graves, a market research consultant in UK, conducting focus group discussions and surveys in order to learn about people’s habits, wants and needs are misleading and dysfunctional. He cites several examples, including cases regarding Coca Cola, Mc Donalds, KFC and Google Search.
He believes that asking people questions and noting down answers is not the best way to go about this, but rather, through observation and the big data gathered through the observation of peoples’ habits.
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1 Comment
Niti Bhan
Its called thick data, not big data. Its small but highly representative samples, deeply observed contextually. Anecdotes matter as do outliers. Also known as exploratory user research or design ethnography.