When undertaking any marketing research project, the first step the market researcher needs to take is to determine exactly how the project will be carried out. Questions such as: “Will this be a phone survey or a computer survey?”, “How many respondents will be surveyed?”, and “How long will the survey be in field?” are crucial to answer before starting the research project. It is often at this point that researchers can get a bit overwhelmed; successfully organizing a research project requires the fitting together of many components. Mind Maps can provide an easy and workable way to organize a research project. By clearly “mapping out” the research project, from beginning to end, using visuals, key words and pictures, the intuitive process of finding out what the consumer thinks can naturally emerge.
An Example of Mind Mapping a Research Project
Consider, as an example, a market researcher who has been hired by her client to find out how well his fast food product rates among fast food consumers. The researcher wants to organize how the study will proceed using a Mind Map. He/She begins by listing the main research objective of the study in the center of the Mind Map, which, in this case, is to find out how fast food consumers rate Product X. Next, he or she lists the main points he or she will undertake in the study, such as “recruit panel”, and “field survey”. These steps are attached to the central objective via “branches” that flow from the objective. Here, the researcher may want to insert any pictures, colors or visuals she chooses to make the Mind Map more intuitive. For example, she may insert a graphic depicting people next to the step “recruit panel”, to represent the people in the panel.
After listing the main steps of the project, the researcher outlines the components of each step, and attaches these components to the steps via “child branches”. Thus, he or she attaches, “contact panel recruitment firm”, to the step regarding recruiting the panel. Again, he/she may use a visual, such as the logo of the recruitment firm he/she ordinarily uses, to enhance the listed components. She then continues attaching components to each main step she has listed, as well as lists, via more “child branches”, any sub-components of the components. When he/she has finished, the researcher has a Mind Map outlining the complete research project, from start to finish, along with each step that will be taken, and the aspects that comprise these steps. Moreover, since he/she has used colors, visuals and other images to construct the Mind Map, he/she now has all of the information he/she needs to begin the project distilled down into an easily comprehensible layout. The attached Mind Map diagram represents the example research project layout described above.
Beginning the Research Project
With the all-important, and arguably most challenging, step of organizing the research project out of the way, the researcher is now free to begin the work of conducting the study. As shown in the attached Mind Map diagram, all of the steps he/she needs to conduct the study are clearly laid out. Contrast this method of organizing a research project with the method of simply taking notes on a piece of paper. Absent the visual imagery and spatial layout of the Mind Map, the second method would likely be more tedious to comprehend, and thus, work with. The researcher now has the advantage of conducting the study using information that is easily organized and intuitively processed. The research project is ready to commence.