• Enterprise Interviews®
• Ethnography & Observational Research
• Idea Generation/Creative Sessions
• Laddering/Means-end Chaining
• Scripting/Cognitive Process Interviews
• Repertory Grids & Sorting Procedures

Enterprise Interviews®: extensive detailed interviews conducted in visits at customer and non-customer sites, with the active and personal involvement of your entire team. These give you a clear, common and cohesive understanding of your customers' needs, and the long-term strategic direction of your business.

Ethnography & Observational Research: allows researchers to understand the culture and environment in which products are purchased, used, and evaluated. It helps to overcome some of the inaccuracies and omissions in self reported data on attitudes and behaviors.

Idea Generation/Creative Sessions: in these highly energized and focused sessions, our expert consultants employ a variety of techniques to encourage respondents to generate innovative ideas and solve problems creatively. This information can then be used for new product development, strategic directions for advertising or marketing communications and process improvements.

Laddering/Means-end Chaining: is an in-depth, one-on-one exploration of how consumers translate product attributes into personal values and underlying psychological motivations. Used extensively for customer segmentation, brand and product image assessment, and development of advertising or market strategies.

Scripting/Cognitive Process Interviews: used to explore the step-by-step process or logic in customer decision making or behavior. This technique focuses on how individuals think or behave in order to determine critical turning points and influences that shape decisions and behavior.

Repertory Grids & Sorting Procedures: determine how individuals differentiate and categorize key features and benefits of your products or services. These are particularly useful when you need to develop the full array of attributes that may be considered in selecting or evaluating products.

A large consumer durables manufacturer was interested in developing a world class website where consumers could find detailed information on not only their company and full product offerings but also detailed information specifications, options, and ways to order customize products. They developed a test site and were interested in getting thorough diagnostics about the site including its layout and graphics, the completeness and clarity of its informational content, as well as its logic and how easily consumers could find the desired information.

While many suppliers were recommending simple online focus groups, Burke recognized that why and how consumers would use such a site would affect their appraisal of the site. Thus, Burke conducted a series of in-depth interviews in which a trained Internet qualitative consultant could observe and interview respondents who were actually using the test site to obtain information of interest to them. Using this combination of observational and cognitive process interviews, our researchers were able to identify any number of design and content weaknesses that would have frustrated visitors to this website and possibly caused them to terminate their visit without finding the information they wanted.

During the interview, the interviewer received continuous print-outs of each page visited, in the order it was selected. These became the basis of the report in which logical flow of movement was noted along with detailed diagnostics concerning terminology and visual cues on each page that assisted or mislead respondents in finding their way through the site. Additionally, complete annotations were included showing full diagnostics on the graphics and informational content of each page. With this very detailed and complete analysis of all aspects of how consumers used and evaluated the test site, this manufacturer made major revisions in the proposed site in order to more sensitively and completely meet the needs of their prospective customers.