“OPINION The better-
designed tools never
ask a direct question about the
subject being evaluated”
Too often, given
the ever-growing
demands on
budgets, many
companies are
tempted to scale
back their plans
for comprehensive
passenger research. These types of
plans are designed to inform future
product and service development
programmes, and by scaling them
back, that typically removes the future
exploration aspects and turns them into
validation activities for decisions already
made. This type of research can certainly
produce data that may allow for some
‘positive claims’ to be made, but I would
argue that those ‘findings’ will not be
sustainable over time.
Having a comprehensive research
strategy to inform product and service
development that includes multiple
methodologies is key to creating a
sustainable, long-term development
process. This strategy in turn will lead
to products and services that meet both
the articulated and unarticulated needs
of all stakeholders who will be interacting
with them.
Any comprehensive research strategy
should contain three key but very basic
elements. Firstly, deep qualitative
methodologies are methods designed to
uncover ideas and concepts that meet
the deeper unarticulated needs of
humans. Focus groups are a common
qualitative methodology, but typically
do not provide much in the way of
insights into our unarticulated needs.
By contrast, methods such as idealised
design provide a more insightful data
set. These deeper psychological findings
may then be used as a guide to generate
ideas for future products and services.
Next, quantitative research
methodologies are designed to
systematically test products and
services developed from the qualitative
process, to ensure that they are
improving the user experience. The
aviation community is quite familiar
with this type of research. Typically, the
process uses a set of questions that
allow respondents to select an answer
from a defined set of responses. The
most common set tends to be Likert
Scales, usually five or seven-point scales
that have ‘strongly disagree’ at one pole
and ‘strongly agree’ at the other.
Other rating scales that are quite
popular today use a 10-point version.
I urge caution here. Quantitative
research allows you to gather
a lot of data relatively quickly. My
observation, however, is that people
often treat the rating scale as a
ruler. This is just not the case.
I highly recommend using four-point
scales versus those with larger
spreads, as the data tends to be
a bit more robust and informative.
About Kent
Kent D. Craver is CEO of aviation consultancy, Craver &
Associates Consulting. He was regional director for cabin
experience and revenue analysis at Boeing from 2007-2019
and first gained his industry experience at Continental,
as manager of on-board product marketing and research.
Kent Craver
Thirdly, validation research is used
to validate products and services after
implementation to ensure they improve
the experience as planned. This is a
critical step toward ensuring you’re
getting the results from the implemented
product or service as expected.
The above methodologies should be
interspersed with an iterative set of
engagements with key stakeholders to
enable refinement and adjustment of
the product or service development
programme.
Regardless of methodologies used, I
highly recommend you take the time and
effort to design research questionnaire
tools. Direct questions rarely give you
any insights and can be a waste of time
and effort (for example, ‘would you
prefer more legroom in economy?’)
The better-designed tools never ask a
direct question about the subject being
evaluated. Make sure the research tools
you are using will yield information that
provides new insights.
I propose that it is better
to have absolutely no
passenger experience
research than to
execute a poorly
planned research
strategy – at least
you won’t be
wasting your
budget dollars on
useless data!
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