Within the industry there’s still a great reliance on direct questioning. There’s a tendency to ask people what they do, and to rank their emotional responses using rational, often numeric scales. Even the use of emoticons in surveys still masks the numbered scale behind the different smiley faces.
Why, when the market research world has been embracing the thinking of Daniel Kahnemann and his ilk for the last decade, are quantitative surveys still based around explicit questioning, when the drive from clients is all about uncovering (and measuring) the implicit?
To do so, is reducing the people we’re talking with to numbers. It doesn’t actually value their behaviour, or their emotional responses, but aims to reduce them into nice, neat numbers (preferably percentages to show to the board!) And in so doing, risks losing all the nuances and insights that can truly make the difference in launching successful brands or designs, because you’re failing to appreciate or capture the reality of the consumer’s world.