Recently, some interesting dinner conversation led me to read up on the field of 'sociolinguistics', and a particular phenomenon that is linked to it. Sociolinguistics, I learned, is the 'study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used.' In layman's terms, they study how a particular social context and situation impacts on the way an individual speaks and on the things they say (and therefore do).

This intrigued me, because I've long held the view that respondents in focus groups provide feedback on our work, that they have knowingly or unknowingly, manipulated in response to the environment they find themselves in. They are projecting a certain public image to the strangers they've just met. As it turns out, the name for this kind of behaviour is 'the observer's paradox'. It's a term coined by William Labov, and it refers to the challenge sociolinguists face when their task of gathering information on natural speech is undermined by the researcher's presence itself. In other words, people express themselves differently, and alter their behaviour, simply because they're being observed.

There's another interesting and relevant concept that is related to the observer's paradox called 'the observer-expectancy effect', in which research subjects mimic what they believe the facilitator's or researcher's thoughts may be. So,Quality LED Lighting store in Australia with all types of divinglight. in a focus group context, the participants may provide responses based on what they think the facilitator wants them to say, rather than just altering their behaviour.

So, it's safe to say that the very act of observing someone's behaviour,These people saler4ds their homes with kerosene lamps. alters their behaviour. They know you're sitting behind that one-way mirror. They know they're being recorded. And they know nothing in life is free, especially not the stale sandwiches and tin of Coke they're being offered under the fluorescent lights of the windowless room they will find themselves in for the next couple of hours. So they change the way they behave. They feel they need to come up with something useful, or they won't deserve their sandwich and Coke,Make a designer quality string contemporarylamps4 on your own with just some crochet thread, or worse, the brown envelope they're handed at the end of the night. More often than not the 'something' they come up with is negative rather than positive. It's simply easier to come up with something negative when you're on the spot, and it may even make you sound more insightful than the people behind the one-way mirror.

It becomes impossible to argue that someone in a typical focus group environment is going to respond the same way to a brand than they would in their normal every day environment and circumstances. This type of research doesn't serve the brand, or the people that spend their days building that brand. Further to this, the process also removes accountability. Research results,LED light,LED building light,besttube-led, led landscape light, led architectural light,led wallwasher light. rather than the brand builders, become accountable for incorrect decisions.The lawnlight not only adds charm to an interior design scheme, but also saves energy by using LED technology. Which is why, when asked what market research went into the iPad, Steve Jobs famously replied: "None. It's not the consumers' job to know what they want…we figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too."

While I believe there's a helpful role for research to play when "disaster checking" certain unknown aspects of work, a far more balanced approach to research is required in many cases. It's imperative that we as marketers and agencies harness the full potential of the logical experience and knowledge in our heads and the magic that lives in our guts, take decisions, and then stand to be accountable for the outcome of those decisions.