Approaches

Our tailor-made research is designed with a clear and deep understanding of both our clients’ management needs and the decisions they will make based on the results. Our success in that area begins with our involvement at the proposal-writing stage. We ask challenging questions and develop “think-pieces” that offer new perspectives.

Defining a research approach that can inform an organization’s direction for the future often means incorporating the perspectives of audiences and constituencies with differing interests and perceptions. Our approach ensures that the research asks the right questions of the right audiences, employing state-of-the-art research methodologies adapted to the specific objectives of each project.

Most importantly, our approach ensures the usefulness of the research outcomes. Our studies don’t just report information; they tell a story that makes findings vivid and clear.

Focus Groups

We design our focus group studies to foster a rich intellectual exchange and elicit emotional responses among carefully screened participants.

Full and mini focus groups are typically used to explore issues in a qualitative, non-statistical context. The perfect methodology for the ideation phase of concept development, to test advertising creative, or to explore sensitive issues, our group studies are conducted in-person in formal facilities, in conference rooms, or online in formal research community rooms.

The majority of our consultants are highly skilled qualitative facilitators, collectively moderating hundreds of groups each year across the country.

In-depth Interviews

In-depth interviews are successful for studies involving highly targeted populations, such as professionals and executives, special types of consumers, or industry specialists. We have developed inspired approaches to accessing traditionally hard-to-reach audiences and we use both traditional and projective techniques.

Our interviews are designed to elicit rich, thoughtful information on complex topics, rather than just “check-off-the-box” answers. Our consultants have the depth and breadth of experience to question intelligently and to dig underneath “pat” answers.

Surveys

Depending on the audiences and the objectives of the study, we implement web, phone, or mail surveys. We conduct surveys with consumer, business, and professional audiences in many different languages and always go the extra mile to provide our clients with the information they need as efficiently as possible.

Melior’s consultants are also skilled analysts for our quantitative research studies, when statistical validity and numerical data on which to base decisions are required. Survey research provides the foundation for understanding underlying issues and measuring options. We design questionnaires to capture not only the “what,” but also the “why” of the topics we study, by mixing customary close-ended questions with more original, stimulating open-ended queries.

Verbatim Text Analysis

Often, the answers to the open-ended questions asked in survey research that can provide rich insight. We’ve always offered the value-added service of text analysis for our clients. The verbatim responses are coded to quantify the results and reported as quantitative information. More importantly, our analysts actually read the responses which help to provide nuance (the underlying “why” to the “what”) to the closed-ended questions. We don’t just provide a “data-dump” of responses, but an insightful analysis of the stories behind the ratings.

For more information on our research approaches, contact us.