Northwestern University Athletics is using Facebook to poll fans on its basketball court redesign. Most of the responding fans are voting for an all-purple court (NU’s colors are purple and white.) It is hard to imagine traditionalists and players seeing this as an advantage. Viewed on ESPN it would probably seem to many as the visual equivalent of the vuvuzela. Is this a smart way to use social media to engage fans, to generate interest and obtain feedback? On Facebook, the crowd is self-selective. With just 200 “likes” on the Facebook page (out of hundreds of thousands of actual fans and paying spectators), outliers with the largest megaphones can drive buzz and appear to sway opinion, just like one spooked cow can start a stampede.
The advantages of a representative sample are well-known. So how can we crowd-sample? Here are a few firms that find the “right crowd.”
- Trada builds specialized crowds that help companies create and improve ad campaigns on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
- The University of Oxford hired Chaordix to create a custom-made crowd to help them brainstorm ways to reduce maternal mortality in developing countries.
- To tap expertise outside the company, Medtronic relies on Innocentive, which offers “challenge driven innovation”. Companies anonymously describe technical challenges to which members of a “global community” submit bids. A company then decides whether to option the proffered solution.
- Big Idea Group’s Insight Clubs are private, online consumer communities of 50 to 300 members focused on uncovering innovation opportunities in products, services and marketing for its clients.
Experiments show the “social influence effect” causes us to adjust our thinking to the feedback of the crowd by mindlessly imitating each other. As we become increasingly networked, the vocal crowd seems to speak for the group, yet may mean less. It is important to know how the “crowd” fits in with the rest of a population or community, or you could end up with a purple people eater.
Recently an industrial design firm asked me to develop a market research plan. The approach included qualitative interviews of IP phone industry key players and typical users. Later a focus group would comment on a product prototype. So, I wondered, could crowdsourcing be a viable alternative to the focus group?
CE companies use crowdsourcing in product development. Dell’s IdeaStorm allows consumers to vote on features they want to see in Dell products. Intel and Asus created WePC, which doubles as an Asus sales site and a serious attempt to gain community input into the PC design process. Having access to a loyal fan base can be an ongoing source of free ideas and labor. The practice builds interest in the brand and creates communities of users. It’s often cheap and fast research. And, given all of the online and social media tools available today, it’s easy to implement. Why create a product and offer it to consumers when you can optimize two-way communication on the Internet and learn, before putting in too much time and effort, exactly what it is they want in the first place?
Focus groups come at quite a cost – both time and money. They are only one means to an end. Like other data-collection methods, focus groups research is an excellent methodology for many kinds of consumer research but not for all. Times to use it are when:
- Relatively little is known about a given product (service, etc.)
- Dynamics of a group best elicit respondent opinion
- You want to personally observe reactions to the product
- You need to probe to understand
- Results are needed quickly
- Actual dialog can be used to develop surveys for subsequent quantitative research
Crowdsourcing is not smart when attracting and registering a crowd is not feasible nor when proprietary or competitive considerations do not allow public airing.
When major development or budgetary decisions hinge on the results, I’d argue that crowdsourcing could add a valuable data point to a comprehensive research plan. It could provide input for product developers, designers and creative directors but certainly cannot replace them. And it is not a replacement for focus groups.
Although the practice of crowdsourcing isn’t new – interviews, focus groups, customer feedback, and surveys have been around for decades – Jeff Howe first used the term in a 2006 Wired magazine article. Since then it has become a buzzword that describes an invitation to imagine, interact, and inspire. It is used by companies that want to be perceived as modern, tech-savvy and networked.
Crowdsourcing is defined as the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call. With the Internet and social networking popularity, such “calls to action” can attract thousands of individuals, especially when they are motivated by obsession, competition, money, or all three.
Some say crowdsourcing drives better innovation, deeper insight and competitive advantage. The notion of crowds creating solutions is appealing. After all, we want to believe that working together we can do anything.
In a short four part blog we will discuss how crowdsourcing can be a part of an overall plan to foster technological advancement, design products, research markets and sell to consumers.
