Selling through the looking glass

Clare Garner ventures down into a Soho basement to investigate the latest trend in market research

How helpful it was in terms of product development strategy is open to question, but the teenage girl who stood up in the middle of a session and squeezed her zit in the one-way mirror certainly felt at home.

She was one of the "punters" who had volunteered as a human guinea pig in a viewing lab. Along with seven other acne-afflicted 12 and 13-year- olds, her every move and remark was watched by 17 pairs of eyes from behind the smoked glass.

Once upon a time, market research meant someone going into people's homes to ask them about their groceries. Now, more and more UK companies - be they banks, airlines, charities or supermarkets - are hiring professional viewing facilities as a way of accessing grassroots opinion. In the past five years, the number of viewing labs across the country has shot up to between 60 and 70.

One of the largest "goldfish bowls" in Europe is owned by New Solutions, a Soho-based strategic marketing consultancy which works on anything from kitchen cleaner to airline launches. Vernons, Anderson Consultancy and South African Breweries have signed up to New Solutions this year. Long- standing clients include London Underground, British Gas, SmithKline Beecham, Royal Mail Barclays Bank and Sainsbury's.

Staff at New Solutions are a far cry from the lone figures who stand on windy street corners with clipboards. They are trendily-dressed "moderators" and "concept visualisers", whose tools of the trade include smoked mirrors, hidden microphones and video cameras.

On one side of the 4x15 ft mirror is a low-ceilinged, igloo-shaped room, dimly lit with dark blue walls. This seats up to 17 people from the production side, financial side, advertising agency, design agency. Market researchers help the group to "solutionise", while "Rolf Harris types" (concept visualisers) are ready to sketch up ideas. On the other side - the respondents' room - it is comparatively homely, with a circle of eight arm chairs and wine on the table.

Rachel Ormond, an independent researcher, says the lab work, which costs pounds 500 for two hours, is client-driven. "The clients like them because they don't have to travel around the country and they can chat, eat and drink," she said. "Ideally, as market researchers, we would prefer not to be in such an artificial environment, but it's something we must accept. A lot depends on the moderator whose responsibility it is to put the recruits at ease."

Alex Authers, research director at New Solutions, is often a moderator or "animator" as he prefers to be called. He is well aware of the need to relax his volunteers. "All they know is they're going to a seedy basement in Soho," he said. "It's quite a daunting prospect being listened to, videoed, watched, and confronted by a wall of mirrors."

So, first they are taken into the kitchen, a welcoming room with yellow walls and a large wooden table, where they are offered a cup of tea, a beer or a glass of wine. After a while, Mr Authers appears on the scene. "I tell them in advance that there are a couple of my colleagues watching and that we're making a video tape so we don't have to take so many notes. I reassure them that they aren't going to end up on something like the Jeremy Beadle programme."

Mr Authers adopts different personae depending on the group. "If I'm talking to little old ladies I might try to ingratiate myself to them. If I'm doing something about household goods, it might be easier to position myself as a complete oaf, despite thinking of myself as a man of the Nineties."

Once in the lab, the group is shown materials which stimulate discussion. Sometimes their views are challenged. All the time, their verbal and non- verbal responses - whether they are using their hands, leaning forward and so on - are monitored.

Volunteers are recruited on the streets according to demographics, behaviour and "psychographics" (personality). They earn pounds 20 to pounds 25 a session, unless doctors are required - they command between pounds 50 and pounds 70.

With luck the group bonds quickly. A few beers can help, but not too many "otherwise they start flirting and you don't get out of them what you want". One moderator described volunteering as "money for old rope". "You get paid, you get booze, you get retired couples who make friends and spend their incentive money on going out to dinner afterwards."

Sometimes the sessions are followed up with "vice workshops" which, Mr Authers was quick to point out, stands for "viewed, interactive, consumer experience", when the clients go round and meet the volunteers. Whether or not they meet face to face, it is, says Mr Authers "so powerful just hearing it from the horse's mouth".

"For example, a major high street grocery retailer decided to have 17 members of their board in here watching consumers spouting on about what is so wonderful about their major competitor. That was the first time some of them realised why they were beginning to be eclipsed by the competitor."

It was, he said, "quite a cathartic process". "Instead of being in internal meetings in their ivory tower where they can always post-rationalise why their department wasn't performing as it might be, here they were actually confronted with consumers telling them exactly why they weren't succeeding."

Laura Marks, chairman of the Association of Qualitative Research Practitioners, believes that viewing labs are "good for clients who are very out of touch with their customers". Their main drawback is that clients often jump to conclusions after one session. "Clients come along to groups with their own agenda, because inevitably they have their own perspective on what they're expecting to hear, and only take out what they want to get. The skill of a qualitative researcher is not only in conducting the group but taking away the information, analysing, listening to it all and coming to some kind of intelligent conclusion from the totality.

Other critics claim that the labs are too artificial an environment to yield valid results, but Neil Franklin, market research manager at Sainsbury's, believes the opposite is true. "It is less disruptive than taking say 10 people into someone's home and also allows for discussion without disturbing the discussion group. We find it very beneficial."