A well-presented market research report is a vital part of a company’s decision making process. Collecting the information is just the start: we must make sure it is accurate, pertinent to the client’s needs, and as clear as possible.
Successful presentations are created, refined, and delivered by experienced professionals who exercise attention and care. A good report will enable the organization to reach conclusions and take meaningful action. A poorly crafted presentation that lacks focus will leave the client confused and unable to proceed. When an entire meeting is spent talking about a side issue that was not the focus of the project, you know the presentation isn’t very good and an otherwise fantastic research project will not impact the business.
Dimensional Research makes it a priority to present findings in a way that tells a clear story and inspires the company to take meaningful action. One of the best ways to achieve this is by allowing the voice of the participants to come through in the report.
Dimensional Research includes sample participant quotes in all our reports. Since participants are ensured full anonymity, we never share their identities, but we always include in our reports participant quotes that communicate overall findings very specifically using the same language as the target buyer.
The resulting report is highly valuable to the client, because participant quotes reveal subtle attitudes or perspectives that the summary findings don’t communicate effectively. They yield useful insights by clearly conveying the participants’ motivations or pain-points and by uncovering hidden issues.
A good example from our daily lives of how participant quotes enrich research findings is the Zagat restaurant guide. Take The French Laundry restaurant, for example. Glancing at the general findings, it’s clearly a very good restaurant, since it received high ratings. But when you read participant quotes such as “fantastic enough to halt all conversation” and “wildly imaginative”, you get a true feel for the spectacular experience the restaurant offers.
In the same way, including participant quotes in a technology market research report allows companies an important glimpse into the issues. Last week I had two conversations with IT professionals who were concerned about managing their virtual environments. If the report said just that, it would be accurate, but consider what the tone of the participants actually communicated:
FIRST PARTICIPANT: “That’s a great question. I don’t know. We should be concerned, of course.”
SECOND PARTICIPANT: “We’re very concerned about virtualization. When everything is hidden, diagnostics is much harder.”
There is as great opportunity to sell immediately to the second participant. The first participant needs education first.