Glossary

Behavioral research seeks to understand interactions between living organism and material world be it social, cultural or material environment. Human behavioural research is mostly conducted within psychological, anthropological or ecological theoretical framework and tends to explain manifested behavioural or thinking abilities in a mechanistic way and on natural grounds as an instantiation of universal mechanism non-exclusive to specific context. It often applies naturalistic and evolutionary theories to understand researched phenomena. Well-designed research will serve with conclusions that will predict future behaviors in different contexts thus help to explain geographically unrelated phenomena based on single underlying mechanism and with a required level of statistical accuracy. Behavioral research often relies on quantitative methods ranging from standardized psychological measurements to physiological and motor behaviour measurements that are often composed into one research procedure conducted in controlled environment with carefully selected participant sample.

Experimental lab & field research focusing on psychology of buying decisions, personality factors, economic behaviors, and social interactions. A wide range of strategic information about consumer decision making process are approachable with elementary techniques only such as semi-structured interview, questionnaire, yet the other deduced from online behaviour – as customers search for relevant information or during the online purchase process. Those more delicate phenomena driving, biasing or constraining decisions such as perception of value, locus of attention or emotional reactions can be analysed only in controlled laboratory environment that allows to focus on details without background noise or use special analytic devices that cannot be employed in real-world settings. Despite present state of research readiness we witness companies are often naive to what really drives or hampers customers’ decisions, which obstacles they need to overcome in decision and purchase process or what is it they value the most in given product category. We are confident to identify major factors explaining large portion of behaviour and present it the way that helps to foster right type of strategic designs for a better fit with customer preferences.

In the classic era of ethnography filed research often meant fully dedicated researcher able to devote one or two years of his or her life to the field research. In present times, this is not always the issue, though the inner rationale stays the same – by arousing the interest of the researcher in order to be fully sensitive to what she sees or hears, one can grasp the problem in its full richness and complexity. Data from the field can comprise observations, notes, short interviews, photos, videos. However, artistic this may sound, field research can often bring knowledge that runs deep under people’s intuitions about the topic thus deliver radical reformulation of the issue and serve with possible solution. Now classic example speaks of the observations at the surgery room that uncovered the true logic of behavior of medical stuff, knowledge previously non-existent and this led to the change of design of technical device used by surgeons, to the full satisfaction of both client and producer.

Survey research is widely used method of inquiry to tackle respondent’s attitudes, sentiments and behavioural tendencies. It is used by many, though often in a poor way, asking leading or double-barrelled questions and ending up with only vague or self-affirmatory answers. The seeming ease of asking questions hides genuine fragility of this method. Ill-conceived design can easily slip into half-baked answers and misleading findings. For instance, far too many customer satisfaction surveys actually asks respondents to directly indicate how satisfied he or she was. From initial step of finding the right theoretical frame and coining the well-formulated questionnaire items over testing logic to proper sampling and administration, survey research begs for experienced researcher with true insight into the topic and methods.

This method belongs to a classic social research toolbox. The technique renders occurrences of themes in texts, speech, or visual material visible and as such it is also part of a process how classic ethnography proceeds from “pure” observations to significant findings. By way of analysis, the material is condensed and reduced, with meaning structures appearing from original texts by virtue of interpretative work of analyst. The resulting data can be further quantified and analysed by statistical methods. Content analysis usually also traces connections between these topics across analysed material. Consequently, it also focuses on how meaning is generated in social space. By tracing these underlying connections it is continuous with a discourse analysis that reaches even further in tracing meanings and power relations.

You have the data, we have the right type of knowledge to find the right way through it. Your data can be in nature quantitative or qualitative. Everything starts with in-depth assessment of your research aims and design, continues with data cleaning, analysis and concludes with interpretation and reporting. We can handle various types of data even signal from physiological measurement and we are ready to search for deep connections, test hypotheses and search for regularities. And since we collaborate with the best minds there are out there, so in case we burn out with your data, there is always someone to help us out.

Discourse analysis

Modern day discourse analysis lays on premises of critical theory rather than analytical linguistic approaches. As such analysis does not refer to formal linguistic aspects of what is being said, that is to ways how certain speech utterance can meaningfully be articulated, but rather to underlying formative aspects that allows certain utterance to be legitimate. That is discourse analysis seeks to uncover the background of the utterance related to knowledge and power and it often traces these formative links on long horizontal and vertical distance. It is a great tool how to approach hotly debated topics be it in commercial or public sphere. For instance behind the project of new shopping mall or city square reconstruction, there usually are many divergent voices speaking, often defending with their distinct standpoints and different goals. By effecting discourse analysis on publicly available textual content, for instance in public press, we in fact uncover formative forces that exist before these utterances and helps to recognize different interests and spheres of legitimacy of opposing camps which are invaluable source for public policy makers and commercial subjects alike.