Participant Recruitment: How Do We Balance Market Representation with Cultural Validity

In the world of market research, a challenge we are increasingly facing is accurately representing diverse markets while simultaneously delivering geographically bound insights. What I mean by this is, when your target market is identified as a specific country, who within that market is allowed to contribute and who is not: the people that live there or the people that are from there?

This blog explores the difference between geographically bound insights and culturally influenced consumer personas, drawing on my experience as a South African living in London and a history of Expat living.

When deciding who to include in research sample, you must first unpack the purpose of your research. To ensure insights are applicable to the intended audience, you must know who your insights will serve.

Research that is bound to a geographic market must provide insights that reflect all respondents within that market, to ensure marketing is effective on all potential consumers of that market who will encounter it. This means that, if you are looking to understand London as a market, research must include all active consumers within that market. Therefore, research sample must be reflective of all demographics living in London, anyone who could be a consumer in that market.

On this occasion, my response as a South African living in England is a valid contribution to research insights. My attention is as valuable as everyone else in the London market, because I live, work and spend my money here. Tube advertisements are the perfect example: advertisements placed in tube stations and carriages will be seen by a huge variety of people because it is a high-traffic area. To ensure these advertisements are effective in this location, they must be engaging to all potential people who may encounter it, meaning everyone living in London. Therefore, marketing strategies targeting all potential consumers in a single market must be effective on anyone in that market, including me as a South African.

On the other hand, my voice as a South African living in London loses its gravitas when the research purpose is to understand the cultural make-up and attitudes of Londoners. Participants in a research study like this must come equipped with extensive understanding and cultural knowledge of what it means to be from London: lived experiences, absorbed knowledge and strong connections to the local community, history and culture of London. These elements will all inform their research responses. Insights obtained from this research will not be bound to a geographic market but rather provide a complete persona to the London diaspora because of how their cultural background informs their behaviours as consumers.

For example, I would feel useless to research with the purpose of understanding London culture. With only one year of experience, I would not classify myself as familiar enough with the nuances of London culture to accurately comment on it. Here, I would not be an ideal candidate for the research project, and my background would be a barrier to participation. However, I believe this is a valid exclusion: I admit to not feeling knowledgeable enough on the topic to positively contribute and I will experience no negative effects because of my exclusion. The results will not ignore my opinion but inform me from more experienced perspectives.

Differentiating the need to understand either a single market or a consumer persona will influence the approach to research methodology and sampling. At the core of this issue is ensuring you conclude research with the greatest reach to potential consumers within your marketing scope, meaning you experience greatest return to your investment in research. As a result, research intention, purpose and use must be explicitly communicated and understood to develop the most appropriate and effective sampling approach.

Effective sampling requires the experience, expert knowledge and connections to develop unique screening processes that build participant samples to reflect the research project. We can help you understand who you need to hear from by thoroughly understanding the objectives and intended purposes of research. This allows us to identify the individuals who will have the greatest impact on your market success and engage in direct conversation with them. This approach ensures insights are directly aligned to core target audiences, and strategic recommendations produce positive outcomes. 

What we are increasingly experiencing in research is, how do we navigate the nuances of globalisation and international communities when recruiting participants aligned to a single market.

While I do not think my 5-year stint in England and 1-year in London is enough to overcome the fact that I have never seen an Austin Powers film, my co-worker has lived in London for 20 years and has raised her children here. Despite being originally Turkish and raised in Australia, she feels completely confident in commenting on and contributing to the understanding on English culture for marketing research purposes.

This is where the distinct differentiations between geographically bound markets and persona-based consumers begin to overlap, and nationality no longer plays a quintessential role in cultural understanding, but rather lived experience can inform understanding. In these cases, lived experience and cultural self-identification become more reliable indicators of suitability than nationality alone.

We come across the ‘who do we talk to’ issue more frequently in qualitative methodology than in quantitative. As a task of finding the right voices, qualitative data offers insights a lived perspective, where emotion and experience are vital to strategy development. When this is not achieved, the resulting insights and strategy feel disconnected from observed reality. If this is to happen, insights become derailed and no longer answer research objectives, insights become useless and commercial momentum is lost.

On the other hand, quantitative methodologies take a broad sweep of the market, not focussing on first-hand accounts but rather how the numbers fall out overall. In this case, it’s not so important to zero-in on one single type of person, but rather a huge amount of people that engage with the research topic. Here, while it is important to talk to people with experience and knowledge, it is not important to prioritise cultural knowledge or societal understanding.

While quantitative data tells us how they operate and what they prefer, qualitative data draws on their backgrounds and experiences to inform opinion and behaviour. This differentiation comes down to a contrast of purpose: qualitative data tells us who a person is, while quantitative data tells us what a person does.   

In discussions as a research team, we have identified the following questions to be helpful in distinguishing whether a respondent would be adequately able to contribute to cultural understandings of any market.

In practice, these questions would be worded to more conversationally communicate with applicants, would be agreed upon with research partners and clients for the research purpose, and would be used in a matrix to establish suitable participants.

• How long have you lived in [country]?
• Do you speak the language used most prominently in [country]?
• How long have your children lived in [country]?
• Which ethnicity best describes you?
• What is your nationality?
• Do you feel at home in [country]?
• Do you feel connected to the culture of [country]?
• Do you primarily identify as living in / being from [country]?

This combination of abstract and factual questions builds a characterisation of each research applicant that allows us to establish whether they would have the appropriate cultural understanding, knowledge and experience for research insights.

Living in London, I experience an ‘I didn’t know that’ moment every single day. This usually happens when people bring up historic moments or pop-culture references. This lack of knowledge might set me apart from the in-the-know group who could comment on English culture at large, but it does not remove me from the consumer base active in the London market. Based on your research needs and required outcomes, speaking to the wrong audience can be detrimental to your strategic actions and future success.

Taking careful consideration of the screener requirements and curating an intentional sample by paying attention to participants’ lived-experiences and internalised attitudes, research has the potential to fully understand audiences and build substantial insights in diverse and globalised markets for strong and effective strategies. Clients who brief us with clear research objectives leave with a sample that's built to answer their actual question, not just a demographically convenient one. If you're designing research that needs to get this balance right, we'd love to talk.