Recession can prompt unusual levels of creativity.

With constraints to deliver more impactful research

within a shorter time frame and lower budget,

qualitative researchers need to take maximum

advantage of their creative skills by crossing the

boundaries of their discipline. The staged

innovation approach of Air France and KLM

to develop new transfer concepts illustrates

how to move beyond the barriers of time,

methods and professions.

What to expect?

Introduction: difficult times require

a changing mindset

Turning the threat of recession into an

opportunity

The start of the global recession is characterized by the fall of Lehman Brothers on September

15th, 2008. The on-going economic uncertainty we have been facing since, is affecting

business and public sector alike, causing both threats and opportunities. The wave of bad

economic news is eroding confidence and buying power, driving consumers to adjust their

behaviour fundamentally and perhaps permanently. Throughout the recession, consumers sought

out and were exposed to a growing array of tools, techniques, programs and emerging

technologies – from list-making and comparison sites to stepped-up loyalty and rewards

programs – to help manage spending and maximize savings. This more thoughtful approach

to buying has evolved into an appreciation for cheaper brands, new channels and formats while

consumers are even learning to do without whole categories of purchases

(PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Kantar Retail, 2010). In every recession marketeers find

themselves in poorly charted waters because no two downturns are alike. Companies need to

understand changes in consumer behaviour and fine-tune their strategies according to evolving

consumption patterns (Quelch and Jocz, 2009).

The confrontation with many uncertainties

increases the need for research, as business is

seeking every bit of data to close a deal or find

lucrative markets. In addition to the severe threats

caused by recession, opportunity also abounds, as

economic downturn can be the catalyst to make

organisations even more relevant, producing a

return for the business. Srinivasan, Rangaswamy

and Lilien already introduced the construct of

„proactive marketing‟ in the International Journal of

Research in Marketing in 2005. Their research

indicates that firms who develop an intense

marketing response during recession can actually

improve both market and business performances in

comparison to firms who cut back, waiting for the

recession to pass. Brad Bortner perfectly articulates

the paradox market research agencies are facing as

a result to the economic downturn in a Forrester

report written at the beginning of the recession

(Bortner, 2008):“Fewer dollars will be available for

new studies, while the business will demand new

ideas more than ever.”

The direct connection between uncertainty

and the need for research is changing the

expectations of organisations towards

researchers; they need to do more with less.

The challenge of providing better results

faster and at a lower price is prompting

unusual levels of creativity in the research

industry.

Increased expectations confront researchers

with their boundaries

Although the uncertainty affects market research

as a whole, we believe qualitative researchers

can play a central role in increasing the

business impact of research, not only based

on their skills, but also because the focus in

research is shifting from representative to

relevant (Verheggen and van Slooten, 2011).

The rise of Social Media generated a move

towards the use of data which has not been

collected in accordance with traditional market

research methods. New tools allow researchers

to connect with more consumers, over a longer

period of time, and to integrate a variety of

techniques to generate a holistic view on the lives

of consumers.

Reports from moderated research blogs and

communities are not representative according to

the definitions of market research, but naturally

cannot be ignored on account of the numbers

alone. With constraints to deliver more impactful

research within a shorter time frame and lower

budget, qualitative researchers need to tap

into the opportunities provided by new

technological tools and take maximum

advantage of their creative skills by crossing

the boundaries of their discipline.

In an innovation project to improve the transfer

experience for frequent flyers of Air France and

KLM, we challenged the following boundaries to

increase the business impact of the research:

• Boundary of time - How can we build a bridge between past research on a topic and the current

information needs? How to design the approach for impact now and in the future? How to conduct

research faster and at the same time increase the opportunity to truly connect with consumers?

• Boundary of methods - How to transcend the boundaries between qualitative and quantitative

research? A hybrid methodology allows you to approach the research question from multiple angles and

gain more knowledge from the same project.

• Boundary of professions - How to learn from other disciplines on communicating results for

maximum impact? Which techniques can we apply to really get to know our stakeholders? In the

redefinition of roles, we even broaden our scope to evaluate the role of consumers in research.

With this paper we want to trigger qualitative

researchers to move beyond time, methods and even the

boundaries of professions by sharing examples of the

approach we applied in the co-creation of transfer

concepts for Air France and KLM.

Case: My Transfer for Air France and KLM

For most travellers the „transfer between

connecting flights‟ is a phase in their journey

they would happily skip. Transfer flights are

chosen mainly because there is either no other option

available or travellers need to make a trade-off

between time and costs. It is crucial for airport

and airline companies to understand the needs,

expectations and emotions of those travellers.

This is particularly relevant in developing delight-

evoking moments and in adding something positive to

moments like a transfer, which is characterised by

negative emotions. Increasing the focus on the

customer experience is relevant for Air France and

KLM, as major airlines continue to struggle in the

recession. In addition to further improving this

experience to increase loyalty, there might also be an

opportunity to develop additional business activities in

the transfer journey. To gain insight and to develop

and validate new concepts to optimize transfer

services, the Customer Insight team and the

R&D Customer Ground Experience team of

Air France and KLM connected with their

frequent travellers in a staged innovation

approach.

The kind of insights which can inspire ground-

breaking consumer-relevant innovation can be

timely and costly to generate. Traditional methods

often require a lot of observations or face-to-face

time with consumers and run the risk of merely

giving specific answers to known questions, rather

than exploring peoples‟ lives looking for inspiration.

The backbone of this project, a Market

Research Online Community (MROC),

involves different types of frequent flyers and

integrates a variety of plug-ins like a personal

Multimedia ethnography blog and an Ideation tool

to match the specific objectives of each stage. An

MROC is a relatively cost-efficient answer to more

complex research questions as it connects more

people over a longer period of time while facilitating

in-depth discussions. MROCs were developed as a

research methodology to take advantage of the

characteristics of modern consumers, matching

their social media behaviour and emphasizing the

dialogue between brands and consumers.

InSites Consulting defines an MROC as “a small group (up to 150) of highly engaged people joined

together by a common passion, connected online for a longer period, who are systematically engaged

by applying various social media techniques for different business objectives, especially co-creation

or even collaboration”. By definition, MROCs are not representative, as they work best with participants who

identify with the topic and/or the brand hosting the platform (De Ruyck et al., 2010).

In the co-creation of new transfer concepts we applied the following 3 steps:

Figure 1: Overview of the staged innovation approach

1 Insightment

In a first stage, the research community was used to detect new needs and frictions from

transfer passengers. We started with Multimedia ethnography (Verhaeghe, Van den Bergh &

Colin, 2008); 39 frequent flyers reported their transfer experience on a personal blog on the

community. Through 400 observations in text and pictures we were immersed in the world of the

transfer passenger. The meaningful observations from this blogging stage were further shaped in

the discussions on the research community. The blog stories and community discussions were

analysed through info structuring and pattern detection while visual analysis principles (Pink,

2007) provided understanding in the pictures. This phase resulted in 68 insights combined into 10

insight platforms.

2 Ideation and concept development

During a 3-week ideation and concept development community, another group of 46 frequent

travellers joined forces in generating over 450 ideas and comments, resulting in 32 new transfer

concepts. The MROC environment is particularly stimulating for idea-generation

exercises; consumers receive challenges based on the detected insights and can build further on

each other‟s ideas to make them more relevant. With these creative consumer tasks, it is crucial

to provide a stimulating environment by also discussing trends and best practices. As

gamification elements have proven to increase participant engagement in MROCs (De Ruyck and

Veris, 2011), we added a countdown to the challenges, addressing the competitive nature of

people to come up with as many ideas as possible in a limited time frame. No competition without

a reward: the most popular ideas were visualized by the industrial designer in our project team.

3 Quantitative validation

During a concept selection workshop, the four consumer-generated concepts showing the

highest relevance for both travellers and Air France and KLM were integrated in a

quantitative idea screener. The results guided a workshop to re-write the concept boards and

develop the final proposition.

In every stage, we challenged the current status

quo, making this case a perfect illustration of how

qualitative research can re-invent itself.

Throughout the paper we‟ll refer to specific

elements of this case study to show how

qualitative researchers can move beyond the

boundaries of time, methods and professions to

increase the business impact of research.

Crossing the boundary

of time

Increasing impact by going back in time

There is no lack of data in the business world; in addition to research reports from the past and consumer-

generated content on social media, an increasing number of organizations is also retaining information

from their customers as a „by-product‟ of their activities. Customers do not only know that data like flight

bookings and preferences are collected, they also expect airline companies to use this knowledge; for example

by applying a personalized approach or feature recommendations. It is important to address market research as

an element of this „big data‟ reality; research studies are set up in isolation too often. At the research agency‟s

side, the challenge is to keep surprising clients with even more results and recommendations. To move from

„insight‟ to action, research should not only focus on the here and now; it should close the gap with the

past to understand how to be successful in the present. In order to be truly impactful, results from one project

should built on existing knowledge. However, a database with all existing insights on a topic is often lacking. It is

key to link parts of unstructured information and qualitative researchers have the skills to cross this boundary.

Figure 2: Illustration of how we crossed the boundary of time

The Customer Insight team and the R&D Customer

Ground Experience team of Air France and KLM are

conducting research in order to provide its

passengers with the best service at a continuous

pace. Although previous research was not focussed

on the transfer process, there already was a lot of

knowledge available spread across different reports.

Therefore we organized a workshop at the

beginning of the project to connect the dots

with previous research. In fact, we applied similar

techniques that qualitative researchers use in info

structuring: each participant to the workshop was

asked to go through the previous research and had

to pick the three most important transfer learnings

from each report. For each finding, we further

probed to detect the insight explaining the finding.

This exercise was wrapped up by clustering the

insights based on the findings across research

reports. It is an illusion to think that all information is

explicitly captured. Often, marketing decisions

are made based on the assumptions

marketeers have about their client. In order to

also capture this more implicit information within the

company, qualitative research can help us by

bringing marketing assumptions in the organization

to the surface.

Projective techniques, typically applied to reveal emotions

of research participants, can also be applied to our clients.

Based on personification techniques we developed a

board game to place the Air France and KLM team

in their customers‟ shoes, allowing us to map all the

current assumptions about their needs. The team members

were all assigned a persona representing a typical

passenger. During the board game, they had to come up

with needs and problems their persona could have during

transfer. In order to stimulate out-of-the-box thinking, they

were given probing cards revealing more information about

the persona. This could be both a more intrinsic

characteristic of the persona (e.g. always being up to date

with the latest technologies) and contextual information

(e.g. returning from a 3-week long business trip and

missing the family).

Figure 3: Board game

The workshop lead to a knowledge map summarizing all existing insights, knowledge and assumptions

present in the organisation before starting the actual insightment (phase 1). The Connecting the dots

workshop resulted in 26 insights leading to the definition of 5 consumer insight platforms. As a result,

we could focus on the blind spots in the knowledge map during the research. Given that it‟s not always

obvious to proof the ROI of such research studies, this approach also allowed us to indicate the added

value of new research by comparing the knowledge present at the start of the project with the insights

gained during the observation with frequent travellers. This observation phase helped us to discover 68

insights, 42 of which were new, which is a 61% increase. Five more insight platforms could be added.

Moreover, the research also rejected 6 of the 26 assumptions which were generated during the

workshop. It is clear that by tapping into knowledge and assumptions from past research, we

can increase our added value in the present.

Faster, better, stronger

First of all, it allows us to go

beyond one single feedback

moment of our customer.

Knowledge gained in a first stage

can be applied immediately,

which automatically gives the

discussions more depth.

Moreover, it is also a faster way

to turn around research results.

Based on the initial findings,

actions can be defined and

immediately also checked and

improved by consumers.

Secondly, it allows us to get

more out of the moment.

There is an increased opportunity

to connect. As not only the

consumers but also the Customer

Insight team and the R&D

Customer Ground Experience

team at Air France and KLM have

access to the MROC whilst it‟s

live, this increases the

engagement within the team.

The transparency of the

methodology allows stakeholders

to follow the conversations of the

participants and to probe on

important topics.

Tools like Daily Consumer News,

Highlight Mailing and Intermediate

Update Sessions manage the

efficiency of staying in touch with your

community. By engaging

stakeholders with these tools, they

are more likely to act upon the results

of the study (De Ruyck et al., 2011).

Market Research Online Communities are typically conducted for a longer time span (3 weeks to on-going).

The asynchronous longitudinal nature of communities has several advantages:

The Air France and KLM team was kept up to date

with the most striking and refreshing consumer

stories of the day. Seeing pictures of transfers and

reading the transfer stories from the minds of

consumers allowed them to better connect with

their target group. The „opportunity to engage‟ was

also extended by allowing each team member to

follow a passenger from packing his luggage all the

way to his/her arrival at destination.

Daily consumer news Highlight mailing

During the Ideation & Concept development, the

involvement of the client team was vital to stimulate

the frequent flyers in their generation of relevant

ideas. A communication plan was set up to evoke

curiosity and motivate the Customer Insight team

and the R&D Customer Ground Experience team of

Air France and KLM to clear some time in their

busy schedules to visit the community and join the

Intermediate update sessions. This communication

plan took full advantage of the excitement

generated during live interaction moments, by

sending debrief pictures and quotes of participants,

while also sharing teasing insights.

Figure 4: Example of highlight mailing

Intermediate update sessions

To keep in touch with the ideas and discussions on the Ideation & concept development community,

InSites Consulting organized weekly update sessions, sharing top level results with Air France and

KLM, facilitating an online brainstorm to focus and probe on surprising elements. This close

connection allows us to tap into another advantage of MROCs: given the longitudinal connection, we

can adjust the conversation guide at any given moment in time based on what we are learning,

supporting an agile research design. In conclusion, qualitative researchers should embrace

longitudinal research approaches allowing you to not only conduct impactful research in a

quicker way but also to get more out of this valuable moment of consumer connect.

Crossing the boundary

of methods

The roots of marketing research lie in the US polling

industry of the 1930s and George Gallup‟s conviction

that one could anticipate the voting intention of millions

of voters nationwide by asking a representative cross-

section of the public (Worcester, 1983). Qualitative

market research as we know it also originated in the

US under the title „motivational research‟ in the 1940s,

based on psycho-analytic principles of identifying

unconscious or repressed needs, notably through in-

depth clinical-style interviews with small samples of

consumers. After emerging with promises of psycho-

analytic insight, it succumbed to warnings about its

statistical unreliability and subjectivism, before entering

the era of love and understanding, and the time of the

creative consumer. It then expanded, but some argue

„dumbed down‟, until it had reached the current stage

where the multi-source, interactive, emotional, ethical

consumer-cum-king has taken over (Cooper, 2007).

While differentiating between quantitative and

qualitative skills is favourable for the quality of

the research, we can‟t be limited by thinking in

silos. Too often we think in terms of types of data

(textual, visual and numeric) and data collection

methods (surveys, discussions, observational

research), while the strength is often in a fusion of

research techniques (Verhaeghe et al., 2010). But how

to make a quantitative researcher comfortable with

qualitative research and vice versa? Are we - as

qualitative researcher - not too often afraid to cross the

boundary with quantitative research? In our search for

new innovation during the transfer process, we created

two hybrid research design; the one where we

analysed qualitative data with a quantitative

mindset and the other where we integrated

emotions, typically a goal of qualitative research,

in a quantitative concept screener.

Figure 5: Illustration of how we crossed the boundary of methods

Quantitative skills in qualitative research

Although qualitative research is conducted on a non-representative sample, is it still possible to quantify the data.

For example: during the observation (blogging) stage of the research, we collected over 1000 consumer stories,

each highlighting different aspects of the transfer experience. Each of the stories was tagged according to an

analysis framework. This was not only the start of the info structuring, but a deliverable by itself. We uploaded all

the tags on post level in a Consumer story dashboard. This is an online reporting tool for visual & unstructured

information which allows the qualitative researcher to intuitively analyse qualitative data in a quantitative way. Once

the results were uploaded, we could easily compare the rich input on many dimensions like type of airport, stage in

the transfer process and type of frequent flyer traveller, without the need of any statistics. With a simple drag &

drop, the different dimensions were visualized, making a very intuitive tool for qualitative researchers to work with.

Moreover, it allowed us to quantify which need

was most prominently present in the consumer

feedback but also to compare the stories of for

example Air France vs. KLM passengers.

Analysing the results with a quantitative

mindset via this dashboard allowed us to

prioritize qualitative insights and compare

them for different target groups in a much

easier way considering our large sample of

observations and consumer stories. Figure 6: Consumer story dashboard

Qualitative skills in quantitative research

Similarly to the previous challenge, we also looked for

ways to bring qualitative aspects into quantitative

research. We closed the research project for AIR

France and KLM with a quantitative idea screener of the

new concepts that were developed based on the

gathered insights. One of the main goals in qualitative

research is to grasp the irrational, more emotional

customer. But what about measuring emotions in

quantitative research? In many cases, measuring

emotions in quantitative research is done in a very

rational way by asking people to indicate which emotion

they feel. Also, one can wonder to what extent

consumers are aware of all their emotions and if they

are even able to answer this question directly. However,

in this project we experimented with three

alternative ways of measuring emotions, in order

to see whether we could also reach this emotional

depth with quantitative research; through „dual

tasks‟, „indication under time pressure‟ and a „picture

collage‟, benchmarked against a direct indication of

emotions.

Both the dual-task methodology as the time

pressure measurement find their grounds in

neuropsychology. Recent evidence in this domain

teaches us that our brain has two parts: a

reflective and rational route – which is involved

when we are really „thinking‟ – and an automatic

route – which makes very quick effortless

decisions based on past behaviour and the

emotional evaluation of past actions (LeDoux,

1996). Through quantitative research, we

question the rational part whereas in order

to get a thorough emotional measure, we

should connect to the emotional brain. One

way to do so is through the dual-task methodology

(Gilbert, 1989; Pashler, 1998; Baddeley, 2000), a

technique from cognitive psychology. While

indicating all emotions they experienced with a

certain concept, participants were asked to

remember a set of symbols shown prior to the

emotional measurement.

Previous research (Kahneman, 2003) has shown that

this cognitive load will put more pressure on the

rational part of the brain and will therefore allow

participants to answer with their emotional brain. In a

neuropsychological technique we asked participants to

indicate their emotion per concept under time

pressure. Bargh (1997) and LeDoux (2000) reported

that the emotional route in the brain is much faster

than the rational route; by limiting the response time to

milliseconds, one can avoid giving the rational brain

the time to answer.

A third technique was not based on neuropsychology,

but again on tapping into projective techniques

where participants were asked to make a collage

with pictures expressing their feeling towards a

certain idea. With this last method, we wanted to see

if we could apply a very common technique from

qualitative research on a massive scale in quantitative

research. All pictures were previously validated among

a subset of 20 coders. Per emotion, we selected

pictures that were uniquely identified as being part of

one specific emotion. By doing so, we wanted to check

if we could „quantify‟ the results at the end of the

survey to their emotions.

We benchmarked the tree alternative emotional

measurements with also the traditional quantitative

measurement where we asked consumer directly to

indicate which emotion they felt in a predefined list.

Also, during the idea and concept development

community, we presented the same ideas to

consumers and probed for emotional reactions.

This allowed us also to compare the results obtained

by a quantitative method with those from the

qualitative method.

The results showed that measurement of emotions is definitely not only restricted to qualitative

research. Including emotional and implicit measures in quantitative testing can help us detect

emotional differences between groups and may help us complete the picture that we obtain

qualitatively. It also helps us reveal emotions that consumers may not be aware of or that consumers find

hard to admit.

In conclusion, qualitative researchers should embrace quantitative methods. Analysing qualitative

results with a quantitative mind-set can help prioritize findings and compare them between different groups.

Moreover, quantitative plug-ins can help us reveal emotional (and social desirable) differences which can be

difficult to admit in the social setting of an MROC.

Crossing the boundary

of professions

Figure 7: Illustration of how we crossed the boundary of professions

Changing role of researchers

We should leave our ivory towers as researchers by learning from related disciplines, like

strategic consultancy and advertising. Current presentations and materials produced by

researchers fall far short of the mark. As a result, research buyers are currently still

dissatisfied with the impact that research has on their business with one in ten verbal

presentations and as many as one in seven written documents evoke discontent (Langer and

Banks, 2011). Clients do not want a simple presentation of results and surface findings which

are superficial, linear and one-dimensional, but demand a much higher level of consulting which

assumes deeper analysis, non-linear and multi-dimensional assessments of the respondents

(Alioto, 2007). Davison (2011) is also acknowledging the lack of research output in driving

change and motivates researchers to know, understand and talk to their audience. “Clients are

consumers too and they are confronted daily with slick forms of information daily on the

Internet”.

Qualitative researchers tend to be better storytellers

and, critically, are better at structuring their stories than

their quantitative counterparts, perhaps because they

don‟t have a wealth of statistics to fall back on and have

to put more of “themselves” into their stories, according

to the experience of Langer and Banks (2011).

Therefore they are the ideal partner to take the lead in

setting new communication standards for the market

research industry. The storytelling approach is not only

applicable to qualitative data, but can also inspire our

quantitative counterparts to be more creative and

generate more impact. In the transfer co-creation of Air

France and KLM, we did not only focus on our role as

consultants by organizing internal workshops, we also

advertised the research results during the project.

Although only 4 consumer-generated concepts made it

to the final phase of Validation, the other 28 transfer

concepts also expressed answers to relevant consumer

needs.

Therefore all consumer-generated concepts were

integrated in a Deck of Idea cards, providing Air

France and KLM with a playful way to review

and apply the findings. Although it may not be

feasible to implement them in the short term, the

Customer Insight team and the R&D Customer Ground

Experience team of Air France and KLM will start every

meeting on the project by discussing one of these

cards, its potential and the implications on existing

services and communication. The Deck of Idea cards

embodies the afterlife of this project and is a trigger

referring to the other deliverables.

Figure 8: Deck of Idea cards

Although the research methodology is already moving beyond the boundaries of time and the deliverables of

the research can make a lasting impression, there‟s a role for researchers to think along with clients

in translating findings into implementation in the business. As we started the project with an

intensive workshop to create a knowledge map, we also organized a workshop after each phase to move

from „insight‟ to action and define the next steps.

1 Workshop after insightment

The results of the insightment were not only highlighted in a presentation where we indicated how

our research had added to what was already known, we also took advantage of the power of

creative techniques in an Immersion and ideation workshop. All insights were presented in an Insight

museum – the walls of the workshop room were covered with insight platforms, consumer quotes

and pictures – allowing marketeers to discover the consumer stories behind a certain insight

themselves. Through various projective techniques like the Brand alphabet (Coming up with

solutions as if we were another brand, e.g. Google or IKEA) or the Crazy round (Losing all sense of

reality to come up with the perfect solution), people were probed to come up with actions and new

product ideas based on the insights.

2 Workshop after ideation & concept development

A successful concept needs to fit both the strategy and objectives of Air France and KLM and the

needs of consumers. During a Concept selection workshop the most popular consumer-generated

concepts were reviewed with these factors in mind, resulting in the composition of 4 concepts to

move forward with to the next phase.

3 Workshop after quantitative validation

To generate true impact and surprise with the results from the quantitative and emotional validation,

we didn‟t just present the results, but we organised a Concept casino, requiring all the attention of

the Customer Insight team and the R&D Customer Ground Experience team and providing them

with a positive disruption. Each member of the teams received a number of poker chips. By

presenting the scores of the different concepts for one KPI at a time, they could place their bet on

the concept scoring the highest on unprized buying intention, for example. Not only did this stimulate

a competitive, informal and creative atmosphere, it was also impactful in translating the results to a

rewrite of the final concepts.

Figure 9: Concept casino

Changing role of consumers

In challenging the boundaries of our professions,

there are opportunities to reach out and also to

redefine the role of consumers in research and

innovation. Business success is contingent upon the

adoption of innovations, new products, services,

processes and ideas. In turn this is dependent upon

consumers‟ acceptance and perceptions of an

innovation. Traditionally, the consumer is treated as a

„passive‟ player in this process, mainly because

consumers are often relegated to the role of „validator‟

through traditional methods of consumer inquiry

(Roberts et al, 2005). Following the emerging view

(Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000 & Van Belleghem,

2012) that organisations should extend their search

for competencies by co-opting consumer competence

as a competitive strategy, our frequent flyers were

challenged to take up the role as researcher and

innovator in this project.

We gave up our expert status by involving

consumers to take part in the analysis of the

research results through crowd interpretation.

The crowd interpretation takes place in a game

embedded in the insightment community. Participants

are presented with the transfer stories from their

peers and are asked to analyse them with the

research questions in mind. For this study, we

challenged the transfer passenger to detect new

needs and frictions in the consumer stories of the

other participants. After the analysis, the original

contributor of the post could judge the interpretation

and provide additional feedback. Previous research

(Verhaeghe et al, 2011) has taught us that applying

crowd interpretation leads to 20%-40% of additional

insights. In the case of this study, involving consumers

as research lead to an extra 21% of additional insights

from the same data.

And that‟s not all! In addition to reaching out to research participants to improve our analysis in

the first phase, we also involved consumers in taking research to the next stage by using

it as the starting point for an ideation journey. 46 frequent flyers joined a 3-week Ideation

& Concept Development community; half of them were selected based on their innovator profile

– challenging the norm and in search of what is unique and original – combining a focus on

functional benefits with social independence. The other half were influential – accepting the norm

and in search of what is relevant – being team players with a focus on social benefits. These two

target groups collaborate on concepts which are both new and relevant (Van Belleghem and De

Ruyck, 2012).

Figure 10: Ideation tool

Although gamification is already fully embedded in online research communities (De

Ruyck and Veris, 2011), we took it to the next level by addressing the participants‟

collaborative spirit. Instead of attributing rewards to a participant or community level, based

on the achievements, each and every idea initiated by one of our frequent flyers received a

status. By commenting on the idea, participants were challenged to improve it and up the its

status from mining, rough diamond, cut diamond to diamond ring! As a reward, the most feasible

ideas with the highest status were visualised by one of the industrial designers in the project

team.

Figure 11: Example of a concept board visual

Conclusion

The goal of our quest to cross the boundaries

of our qualitative research is to increase the

business impact of research. We moved beyond

the boundaries of time by digging into the past upon

the start of the research project. By taking

advantage of the longitudinal nature of research

communities we were able to create an impact not

only more rapidly but also in a better way. We went

beyond the boundaries of methods by

analysing our data with a quantitative mind-

set and by taking advantage of (new) ways of

measuring emotions implicitly. We left the

boundaries of our profession behind by using best

practices of related disciplines like advertisement or

journalism in the presentation of our results.

Moreover, we welcomed consumers as co-

researchers, allowing us to get more out of the

same data.

There are two business implications we can

already share, while other exciting innovations are

still pending. One of the final concepts which

made it to the final phase, the Mobile

transfer application, is currently being

investigated by Air France and KLM based

on the insights and ideas of their frequent

travellers. Since even travellers with a lot of

experience are looking for more control on their

transfer process, several minor improvements will

be carried out, like a new in-flight transfer video

anticipating the information needs of transfer

passengers. In addition to the final propositions

and the 28 other consumer-generated ideas, the

formulated guidelines on how to approach the

transfer journey of frequent travellers will be the

starting point for many other new initiatives in the

future.

In times where researchers are challenged

to do more with less, qualitative researchers

can take full advantage of their skills by

crossing the boundaries of their discipline.

The examples provided in this paper don‟t have

the ambition to provide a complete answer to the

barriers we‟re currently facing, but are designed

to be a source of inspiration in order to trigger

other researchers to think outside the box. Every

research project has the potential to reset the

boundary of time, methods or professions.

Qualitative researchers can further develop their

skills and apply them not only to interact with

participants, but also to create more impact

towards clients. There is a need however to broaden

these skills; from advertising research results to

providing consulting to take research from „insight‟ to

action. We should familiarize qualitative research

with quantitative techniques. On the other hand, we

also need to let go and reach out to empowered

participants who are willing and able to add value to our

analysis phase. With this change in expectations, the

profession of qualitative researcher becomes an option

for people with a background as varied as industrial

design and general management. The composition of

multidisciplinary teams will not only fuel the cross

fertilization of skills, it has the power to bring projects to

the next level and do more with less.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Bas de Luij (project manager of

the Insightment phase), Renée Van Dalen (community manager of

the Ideation & concept development community), Rosa Cruells

(for analysing the Quantitative validation), Thom Rommens (for

analysing and comparing the emotional measures) and the other

InSites Consulting employees who contributed to the success of

this project. Special thanks to Mike Friedman, Assistant

Professor of Marketing at Université Catholique de Louvain for

sharing his expertise on emotional measurement and last but not

least to the complete Customer Insight team and the R&D

Customer Ground Experience team of Air France and KLM for their

enthusiasm and passion for taking this project forward.

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Tom De Ruyck

tom@insites-consulting.com

@tomderuyck

http://www.linkedin.com/in/

tomderuyck

+32 9 269 14 07

Thomas Troch

thomas@insites-consulting.com

+32 9 269 12 26

Research team

http://www.linkedin.com/in/

thomastroch

@thomastroch

Annelies Verhaeghe

annelies@insites-consulting.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/

anneliesverhaeghe

@annaliezze

+32 9 269 14 06

Thank you!

@InSites

marketing@insites-consulting.com

http://www.facebook.com/insitesconsulting

http://www.slideshare.net/InSitesConsulting