Clarity Technique™

 

Allow respondents to tell you how they really feel - and why they feel that way

 

Have you ever been frustrated with your efforts to understand how your target consumers really feel about a product or service? 

 

Ever felt that research participants are unwilling or unable to share with you their true emotions and feelings?

 

What it is:

 

The Clarity™ Survey, from Beacon Systems, Inc. is an anonymous, 10-minute paper and pencil survey that can be a significant improvement over traditional market research methods such as focus groups, interviews, or attitudinal inventories because of two important characteristics:

 

1. It requires that respondents first identify the emotions that they experience when they consider a particular topic, and then elicits the reasons for those emotions; and

 

2. It elicits the intensities with which emotions are felt, corrects for the emotional    baseline of respondents at the time of the survey, and determines the  importance of the associated issues by aggregating the emotion intensity scores for a statistically significant number of respondents.

 

The result is data that reflect how individuals feel, how much they feel that way, and, of greatest pragmatic value, why they feel as they do.

 

People have feelings about every imaginable topic, however dry or technical.  Some topics create emotional responses that dwarf logical reactions. Clients are using Clarity information to make decisions on a variety of business and organizational issues including:
  1. addressing the causes of customer dissatisfaction;
  2. strengthening the sources of customer loyalty;
  3.  addressing the roots of low morale or attrition among employees  
  4.   choosing more effective advertising and promotional themes, imagery and wording 
  5.  reformatting retail presentations;         
  6. identifying on the most convincing new product and service ideas        

Think of Clarity as a market researcher’s stethoscope, with which you can listen to the heartbeat of the consumer/employee regarding almost any topic --  from large issues like brand loyalty or corporate mission, to small details like specifics of product design, packaging, advertising, or employee communications.

 

Steve Curtis, Ph.D. developed this survey in 1993, in his performance psychology work with athletic teams at Indiana University.  The survey was initially used to evaluate morale issues within teams and was immediately found to be extremely effective at eliciting, what appeared to be, the “whole truth”  from large groups of team members.

 

The methodology was validated for business applications, and since 1994 has been used in more than 120 research projects with companies that include: IDS/American Express, Hallmark Cards, Kroger, Anthem Insurance, CIGNA Insurance, GRE Insurance, Clarian Health Care, Indianapolis Star and News, Aristokraft Cabinets, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, St. Vincent Hospitals, Taco John’s, Spiegel, Kellogg’s, GTE, Cinergy, Provident Bank and Northern Telecom.

 

The survey has proven to be valuable in external, market research as well as internal, human resource applications.  Clients have used the survey to evaluate brand equity, brand positioning and communications strategies.  Human resource applications have included studies of morale and organizational performance.

 

The only other method that approaches the level of disclosure obtained with the Clarity™ survey is an in-depth interview conducted by an interviewer who can spend the considerable time required to create a high level of trust with the respondent.  It is apparent, however, from many of the graffiti-like responses to the Clarity™ survey, that a large number of Clarity™ responses would never be offered even in a highly-trusting, interview environment.  

 

One powerful Clarity™ design is the comparison of responses to an imagined ideal experience or product with a real experience or product.  The ideal elicits positive emotions that the respondent would like to experience to a service or product.  These emotions are then linked to imagined, idealized features or characteristics of that idealization.  The gap between the emotions elicited by the ideal and the real is revealing of ways that the group could be more fully satisfied.  Importantly, the correlations that result from these Ideal/Real comparisons are also frequently predictive of actual brand loyalty and/or market performance.

 

Frequently this Ideal/Real gap analysis reveals previously unrecognized or under-appreciated aspects of the experience or product.  Such revelations can create powerful new perspectives for improving customer satisfaction, closing the Ideal/Real gap, and increasing loyalty or product  performance.

 

How it Works: Resonance™ data is gathered privately, via a paper-and-pencil survey.  Anonymity heightens candid response.  The technique includes a critical “calibration” for in-going emotion state.  It takes a mere seven minutes to complete and reveals how individuals feel, the depth of that feeling, and why they feel as they do. 

 

Benefits, Applications: The Resonance™ technique delivers deep and meaningful content about issues with significant emotional content; because it is such a simple and quick procedure, data can be gathered before or during group sessions, and used as a valuable adjunct to qualitative feedback, particularly on highly sensitive or deeply embedded issues.

 

Suggestions: The Resonance™ technique can be a methodology unto itself, or can be grafted onto other methodologies, such as traditional or on-line focus groups, with the addition of a brief self-administered questionnaire gathered during screening or check-in. 

 

Clarity is a product of, and is trademarked by, Steve Curtis, PhD.