We are the Kalaiwalas

Some days ago I was looking for a regional language researcher to get some research done. I bumped across someone who had been in the trade for close to three decades. And when two qual researchers get together, conversations flow. So we got talking about the trade and how things have changed. I happened to ask her if she knows anyone who does good content analysis for the language in which she conducts her interviews. She was stumped by my question. 

“What do you mean content analysis, who does that these days”? I was stumped by her question back at me.  I told her, I do, don’t we all ? She said No ! For the scale and volume at which research gets commissioned to many agencies and more importantly - given the quick turn around time, who has the time for all this? It was clear through her explanation that neither anyone had the time to go through the rigour of content analysis nor did the people who commission research have the time to read such painfully detailed research reports if I may call them so. 

I was very intrigued. I asked her, “what is the newest, smartest, slickest way of capturing data from the qualitative research that has been done”? 

She said, the researchers within agencies simply called her and asked her for inputs on the key research objectives. She worked from memory and told them whatever she heard the consumers say and that would become the research report. 

That evening, I happened to talk to another friend (another research veteran) about this amusing conversation I had earlier. We exchanged notes on the interesting bits each of us had heard during our research engagements - while I filled her in nuggets of trade wisdom I heard from rice millers in Raichur, she filled me in on what people stock inside their oversized refrigerators these days and how no one uses Copper vessels any more and hence no one visits the Kalaiwalas (the artisans who coated the copper or brass vessels with a layer of tin - a practice that dates back to 1300 C.E.) anymore. 

Now that non-sticks, Tupperwares, Microwaves and the latest Dishwashers have infiltrated kitchens - the consumption and usage patterns have changed. People no longer use copper and brass vessels since neither the MW nor the DW would accommodate those. And with the disappearance of Copper, the Kalaiwalas or the Kalaigars have also disappeared from the main-streets of the markets. However there is still a small set of people who use metals like Copper and Brass in their kitchens. In fact amongst these vessels are making a comeback donning a new avatar. And for the people who value what these metals bring to the table, the Kalaiwalas still matter. But not for the Tupperware bandwagon.

That made me realise - we are the Kalaiwalas ! And we still matter to the set of clients who spend hours pouring over research reports that carefully capture every detail of people we interview. And they spend their time over such reports since the research is of a different nature - where the details matter. The research questions are seldom tactical. The audiences we interview are seldom consumers. It could be internal / external stakeholders considered critical by the client. With such an audience who are mostly experts in their field, each interview ends up being vastly different from the other and touches up so many aspects of the business that research reports are often pulled out for use several years after the research had been originally done. Many a time, the research ends up becoming a seminal work for the client and insights end up being used as info-bytes in several contexts. 

Hence one method is not better or worse than the other. It is that the two serve completely different purposes. This difference becomes such an important aspect of research design. As a research buyer if your need is met with a Tupperware, then perhaps you don’t need a Kallaiwala.