Context is everything

What may be appealing in one context may be totally unappealing in another.

A focus group or questionnaire is not a shopping centre or voting booth or car showroom. 

People don’t know how they will respond to something new when they encounter it in the real world. Depending on the contextual influences present at the time which affect the senses outside of conscious awareness, they may or may not find a product appealing.

When we throw in the myriad of unconscious influences that the research process itself creates, we can see how framing a question can produce dramatically different conclusions.

It invite the wrong frame of mind, and a set of responses that can’t be trusted.


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