Tagging as a new online research tool

As you would know by now, this blog is all about new methods to do research. It's about how to get rich data from your consumers in a digital world. Only recently I cae across a pilot presented by Ruigrok Netpanel in late 2007. This Dutch research firm is running an interesting pilot where participants can tag products. According to Ruigrok, tagging is not only a way to organise information, it can also be a powerful tool to get feedback from consumers on products. A first demo of a ‘tagging research tool’ was presented early November 2007 at the Dutch Marketing Information Event. This could be a new way of measuring web-site effectiveness or new product concepts. Online panel research today mostly is a static one-way method of asking questions in a survey that most of the times originated from a face-to-face questionnaire. Web 2.0 is all about sharing of information and one way of doing so is by tagging.

Inspired by 2.0 application Fleck, Ruigrok decided to do a pilot with tagging. When the company conducts tagging research, panellists receive an invitation to make leave digital notes. These notes can have a positive or negative emotion. The idea is simple, participants can tag for example websites by placing colored tags and comment on it. This can be done alone or in a group process, moderated by a researcher.

Using heatmaps ('tagclouds') the tool will show what elements of tested concepts trigger the most attention.

A first pilot showed that the data was comparable with their more traditional quantative and qualitative methods. The new research tool showed that this method could get open response, quick feedback, easy to analyze, visual attractive and fun for the participants. But above all, it seems to be an interesting new tool that is fun to do: an experience itself.