Understanding the Heart of the Consumer

A client reached out to Civicom Marketing Research Services because they needed help conducting a three-day asynchronous Digital Ethnography (DE) project. They planned to recruit 200 respondents for 150 completes and do online mobile ethnography activities.

This study involved at least two-thirds of the respondents engaging in an unmoderated 15 to 30-minute trip to a national pharmacy retail chain. They were instructed to shop or pick up a prescription while taking pictures or recording videos for customer journey mapping.

The goal was for the customer experience with the national pharmacy retail chain to be better understood. The retail chain wanted to capture an end-to-end view from the customers’ perspectives on their journey to, through, and from a pharmacy retail chain. The results of an asynchronous Digital Ethnography project would deepen the retail chain’s understanding of their customers from an outside-in perspective. We used the Civicom Chatterbox platform for the study.

This study included several phases of research and client work sessions. All sessions were to be completed in 3 weeks. Included were:

• • • 17 30-min moderated shopping activities with webcam IDIs
    • 150 Chatterbox completes (3-day online bulletin board)
    • 88 unmoderated shopping activities (via Chatterbox)

 The respondent quotas consisted of:

• • • Recruit: gen pop
    • Gender: 40% male, 60% female 
    • Age: 18-75 years old 
    • Geography: US

Other demographics – track (close mix) Hispanic/ Latino origin/ race/ household income/ gender orientation/ geo mix/ purchasing activity

Tools/Services Used:
CiviSelect Recruiting
Chatterbox Online Bulletin Board
CyberFacility – Web IDIs and Mobile Ethnography

Originally, all project activities were supposed to be accomplished within four weeks. However, some changes made by the client caused Civicom to squeeze recruitment on a rolling basis to complete Phase 1 participants within the first week. Meanwhile, Phases 2 and 3 had to be completed within two weeks.

Although Civicom prepared for this project by initially pooling candidates, we still had to make many adjustments. Recruitment had to be cranked up to meet the adjusted timeline. We sent invites to our database, reached out via social media, and relied on respondent referrals. In the end, a total of 320 profiles were delivered to meet the target completes within the given timeline.

We also increased the incentive amount to encourage participation. Considering the time needed (3 days) for each complete, we constantly had to replace unresponsive participants to reach our target – this is where the 320 profiles came in handy. Many follow-ups, reminder calls, emails, and text messages were also done.

Overall, the advanced pooling of candidates helped immensely. Preparing ahead of these potential challenges gave us the opportunity to achieve the target participation rates, especially with the timeline.

Moreover, our client reached their recruiting and data collection goals with great skill and quality results. The national pharmacy retail chain identified various customer experience opportunities in retail, pharmacy services, and health across all interaction channels to improve customer engagement, retention, and acquisition.

Our client researcher and the national pharmacy retail chain were delighted with the service Civicom provided for their customer journey project, and they look forward to working with us again in the future.