One of the major challenges for people working in marketing areas is the one of collecting consistent and reliable information about customers and, in particular, about their decision-making and purchasing processes. A typical marketing research takes place in a room, where a bunch of experts asks some predetermined questions to a group of people. Clearly, the risk of obtaining answers with a bias given by the particular way in which the interview has been structured is very high: stilted questions and presence of researchers end up with strongly influencing the customers’ answers. People are lead to think about solutions that maybe they would have never spontaneously considered in the everyday life. Therefore, the result is never completely trustable and satisfying, since we have seen that the emerging data cannot reflect the real purchasing pattern of a free and normal individual.

A very original solution to this concerning problem comes from a new app for smartphones: Journey HQ. Why is it so innovative? Simple: it allows to get rid of both the abovementioned intrusive features that affect the reliability of a classic marketing research, questions and question-setters. The app, which is notably developed by experts instead of techies, gives the opportunity to the customer to track his purchasing pattern as he prefers: writing, taking pictures, recording audios or videos. The participants are also encouraged to express their emotions and feelings at every stage in order to give a more detailed insight, but basically they are not forced to do anything, since the core value of the app is to preserve the spontaneity.

                                 Journey HQ app

When people log in and record their purchasing steps, data are immediately sent to a website enabling marketing researchers to follow their customers’ pattern step by step and to analyze it through a range of analytics tools. The potential of Journey HQ is now pretty evident. The quality of the gathered data will be incredibly improved with respect to the “old-fashioned methods”: marketers will be able to access to a wide range of information and to capture the real-time thinking of people, something which is just impossible to achieve by an ex-post question-based research.

Certainly the application is still at its first stage and the new methodology needs to be tested and adjusted. However, if experts keep working in this way, attempting to free marketing research from bias and external intrusions through a smart use of technology and social media, the benefits could be dramatic, not only for marketing and
ethnographic studies, but also for consumers.

Sources:
http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/journey-hq-customer-journey-app
http://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2014/oct/02/want-fully-understand-customer-journey-get-customer-do-it/