Qualitative Research in the 21st Century
Why do some online communities work
Revealing the secrets with social and cognitive psychology
Jamie Hamilton, Lee Eyre, Misia Tramp & Marco Vriens
Abstract
For anyone seriously interested in Research 2.0, online communities have been on the radar for a while now. The big question is, ‘how can they be made to work for research purposes?’
In March 2007, nqual, Intrepid Consultants and Microsoft came together to create IT Pro – a highly successful and innovative online ‘advisory council’ of English speaking IT professionals across the UK, USA and Canada who can be consulted on a range of topics, ranging from products and services right through to strategic issues.
With contributions from all of the key-stakeholders involved in the project, this presentation will explore how insights garnered from Social Identity Theory were applied during the conceptual and technological design stages of IT Pro, and how they continue to underpin the successful ongoing management and growth of the community.
Jamie Hamilton
Nqual, UK
Jamie is a founding partner and Managing Director of nqual. Founded in 2005, nqual set out to solve the problems of conducting qualitative research successfully online. Their first product, Rich Focus (an online focus group facility) was launched in March 2007, and their first online community research portal went live a month later. Both solutions are recognised as being amongst the most advanced research tools of their kind in the world.
Prior to setting up nqual, Jamie held a 6 year tenure as General Manager of WOW, an international, independent toy company, where, amongst other things, he set up a market research department. He recently gained an honours science degree in Psychology, and is passionate about applying the theories he has learned.
Lee Eyre
Nqual, UK
Lee Eyre is the co-founder and Operations Director of nqual. Previously, Lee worked for Orange as a Senior Organisation Development Manager where his primary task was to create an agile, customer focused organization. Lee’s experiences at Orange taught him the vital importance of rapid, accurate and insightful research to businesses, and seeing the potential of the internet to enhance this process lead him to create the nqual along with Jamie.
Misia Tramp
Intrepid Consultants, UK
Misia is a founding partner and Joint Managing Director of Intrepid. Having gained her degree in Mathematical Engineering from Bristol University she joined BEM, a specialist customer relationship consultancy as a Director working in Financial Services, Telecoms, IT, Leisure, Travel and Tourism. It was there she met her Intrepid co-founder Liz High and decided to form Intrepid.
Today Misia heads up Intrepid's R&D and Operations departments. Her main focus however is as Lead Consultant for Microsoft, where she has worked on a global and regional level over the past nine years. Misia is constantly developing new methods and techniques to meet client needs and can be regularly seen on the conference circuit.
Marco Vriens
Group Audience Marketing Manager, Technical Audience Global Marketing Team, Microsoft Corporate (HQ), USA
Marco Vriens is Group Marketing Manager at Microsoft where he leads the Audience Intelligence and Marketing Decision Support team for the IT Pros and Developer audiences. Marco has published over 50 papers in academic journals such as J. of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, etc. and industry magazines. He published two books, Conjoint Analysis in Marketing (1995), and Handbook of Marketing Research (2006). His work covers topics in conjoint analysis, discrete choice modeling, direct marketing, marketing strategy, missing data imputation, survey design, service quality, and how to organize the market research function for optimal impact.
KEEP ME INFORMED |