Time-Extended Depth Interviews are conducted in several venues: Online Research Forums, Phone, or Research Communities. It delivers a marketing research tool to keep pace with the real world that people experience.

Time-extended qualitative interviews provide repeated contacts with respondents over several days. The benefit is that they allow for respondents to replicate the real world consideration environment as they review product concepts, advertising copy appeals, brand positioning presentations or other marketing stimuli.

This innovative research method delivers to decision makers and market researchers research information that keeps pace with consumer and B2B buyers' "research accessibility lifestyle," in that it replicates the time they take to think about product and brands. This marketing research tool yields a qualitative research process usually far more robust, insightful, and productive than earlier-generation methods.

Online Time-extended Discussion Research: Factors and Trends

Here are the factors and trends that make time-extended online interviews so attractive:

Expanding Marketing Research Technology

As marketing research technology expands - we are able to connect with buyer influencers and decision-makers to capture more and better information. Online interviewing is exploding for both quantitative and qualitative research. Online tools surely increase speed and data collection management. Yet, they offer something far more important: simply, we are able to do more by using this technology.

Buyer Accessibility for Real Research

We must use new research technologies because technology itself is changing the way people move through life and transact their work. Part of the change involves privacy, mobility, and communications modes. People are harder to connect with, period: less use of land lines, heavy phone screening, growing perceived value of time, and more. In a word, people are more reachable and open if the marketing research technique fits with their lifestyle. If they participate in a study, they want that connection convenient, flexible, and on their terms. The online time-extended focus group delivers that.

Time-Extended Depth Interviews: Single or Group Discussions for Qualitative Research

The online time-extended discussion methodology essentially is a hybrid between a group discussion and individual depth interviews. That is, the interviews are moderated by presenting questions and topics with participants seeing or not seeing the responses of others as we determine during the moderation of of the group. We also are able to reveal appropriate visual exhibits for participants to view as they address each topic. As participants respond, the moderator may individually probe answers to retrieve the maximum thoughts and information from each respondent. As respondents come in and we see and assess the information, this methodology allows us to formulate additional related questions, or probes, that dig deeper into the stream of thoughts and ideas that are surfacing from the initial topic presented.

In this way the time-extended methodology gives respondents to think about the topic over several days. This incubation process is valuable and one unique to the time-extended design.

Traditional focus groups, and online focus groups, are time limited and do not offer this important advantage.

Here are other advantages to this method...

Time flexibility: participants enter and respond to questions and participate in the discussion at times during the day that are convenient to them




Participation and the quality of response does not depend on how fast someone can type.




Allows easy flowing modifications to the original moderation plan responding to the content raised by participants. New issues and questions seamlessly formulated and priorities reset.




Unlimited display of exhibits and graphics, again, which can be modified according to what we are hearing in the early sessions.




The problem of dominant participants who influence the views of other participants is eliminated.