Qualitative research that shows why your customers do what they do.
Depth interviews, focus groups and ethnography, planned around what your team needs to understand or decide, so what you hear from customers can change what you do.
When you need to know why.
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You can see what customers do, and can’t explain why.
You hear the reasons in customers’ own words, and what it would take to change what they do.
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There are several stories to tell, and you need one to lead with.
People hear each route as they’d meet it, so you can choose knowing how each comes across, and to whom.
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A survey is coming, and it needs the right questions.
We learn the words people use about your category first, so the survey asks about what matters to them, in their terms.
Interviews, groups and ethnography.
- Depth interviews and focus groups
Why people choose, use and switch, heard one to one, in pairs or in a group, in person or online.
- Ethnography
In-home visits, shop-alongs and digital ethnography, when the answer is in what people do more than what they say.
- Co-creation workshops
Your team and your customers work on ideas together, so concepts start from what people want.
- Product and prototype trials
People use a product or prototype in their own routine, at home or on the job, and show us what works.
- Expert interviews
People who know a market, a technology or a trade from the inside, for the questions customers can’t answer.
- Semiotics and cultural analysis
What the packs, advertising and design in your category signal, read alongside what people tell us.
The reasons, heard firsthand.
Our qualitative research: AQR Qualitative Excellence Award finalist, twice.
- Finding the story for a new smart home device Qualitative evidence from both audiences on each messaging territory, and a positioning recommendation for the new device. What happened next The product later launched.
- Positioning a new outdoor tool range in a shared aisle An evaluation of in-store positioning routes and pack options, with both groups of shoppers. What happened next The range later launched.
- Hearing couriers out on the support they get A debrief on support from the courier’s side, with recommendations. What happened next The company then commissioned further research from us.
Qualitative research in one market or many.
The method follows the question, and one program often needs more than one.
For a financial services company, we met affluent savers online and at home, went through their plans with them and brought their families in, before the company decided what to say to them.
For a food company, a digital ethnography went deeper with the audience its team chose, once several opportunity audiences had been set out and sized.
Qualitative work in other markets is run with preferred local moderators we have worked with for many years, chosen to our own standard. Our digital ethnography is individual and fully moderated, so each person works one to one with a moderator.
Before you commission it.
Can you run it in several countries?
Yes, in one market or many, with the markets compared side by side.
Do you use jobs to be done?
Yes, when the question is why people choose, switch or stay. It shapes whom we talk to and what we ask, and what you receive is in your customers’ own words.
Is antedote a qualitative research agency?
Yes. Depth interviews, groups and ethnography are a core part of what we do. And because we are a consultancy, what people tell us can be measured, or built into a strategy, when the question calls for it.
How do you get beyond what people say to what they do?
By watching as well as asking. Ethnography in homes, in store and on people’s phones shows the routines and workarounds people don’t think to mention, and interviews then explore why.
Can our team watch the research?
Yes. Your colleagues can sit in on interviews and groups, in person or online, and hear customers firsthand.
Do you run qualitative research with business audiences?
Yes, with the people who specify, buy, use and sell: IT buyers, chefs, arborists and site managers among them.
What do your customers do that you can’t yet explain?
Bring that question, and the decision it feeds. We’ll suggest who we should hear from, and how.
A partner or director will reply.