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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Social Networks for Focus Groups

Fairly obvious, good examples in this space, in WSJ:
The New Focus Groups: Online Networks
Proprietary Panels Help Consumer Companies When Del Monte Foods was considering a new breakfast treat for dogs, it sent out a note to an online community of dog owners asking them what they most wanted to feed their pets in the morning. The consensus answer was something with a bacon-and-egg taste ... The online community, called "I Love My Dog," isn't some random chat room or yet another Web site for dog enthusiasts -- the group was created by Del Monte. Its 400 members were handpicked to join the private network, which the company uses to help create products, test marketing campaigns and stir up buzz.".... '
Del Monte work also covered in a detailed MarketTools case study.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Del mOnte case is an innovative initiative for actually engaging with consumers and forming a long term relationship to gain insight and support.

You are absolutely right that this has to be done carefully by reaching out and selecting participants carefully
and then taking care not just to sell to them.

A useful adjunct to this and quite often a necessary first step is understanding where people are talking about
particular products, services or brands in existing social media and extracting insight from this. This is important because:

- This opinion mobilises further opinion both online and offline
- It is spontaneous, freely expressed, unfiltered and not censored
- It allow you to access profiles that can be difficult to reach by other means: competitor customers, potential
customers, former customer, opinion leaders

The link below is to a paper I have contributed to the Journal of Online Research on the subject:

http://ijor.mypublicsquare.com/

Let me know if you have any questions or if you reference the paper.
Jon Moody - Socialware
www.asomo.net