What are my classmates writing about?

I found Roberta Soares’s blog post, “To observe is to dress…or is it?” very interesting. Roberta writes, “It is obvious that consumers must observe in order to make purchases, but what isn't often noticed is how the designers and corporate workers must observe also.” When purchasing a new dress or even when strolling through the mall you never think about what the designers and corporate workers are observing. Observation in the fashion industry is essential to the fashion designers and corporate workers to gain inspiration when predicting what the new trends will be. As Roberta explains consumers are highly influenced by what they see in the media. If a celebrity wears nothing but pink they you will suddenly see tons of pink in every department store. Roberta writes, “Samuels also expresses how important it is to be noticed in the fashion industry so that your work can be observed by others and then brought to the consumers.” Fashion designers want their clothes to be constantly observed so that more people decide to make the purchase. Roberta does a wonderful job of explaining how observation is the key to success in the fashion design industry and the corporate industry.

I would now like to switch gears and talk about qualitative research that is happening right on our campus. Meagan McLoughlin writes about how the QU Women’s soccer team was taking part in Qualitative Observation and didn’t even know it in her latest blog post, “Qualitative Research on the QUWS team.” This just goes to show you that you could be taking part in research and not even have a clue. Meagan writes, “One of our assistant coaches works at Yale and he conducts many different methods of research whether it is surveying us to see how healthy we eat and if that effects our play, or observing how many times in a game a specific player wins a head ball or their passing rate throughout the game.” The Women’s soccer team here at QU also participates in observation where they watch all 90 minutes of their games, allowing them to see what they can improve on next time. As you can see qualitative research is extremely useful to our everyday lives and I can almost guarantee that is it taking place on our campus multiple times a day.

Keep up the great work everyone, can't wait to read more! :)

Participant Observation In an online virtual world?

Qualitative research is a method of research that emphasizes the participants perceptions and attitudes in a natural setting. Overall, qualitative research is used to gain insight into people's attitudes, behaviors, value systems, concerns, motivations, aspirations, cultures or lifestyles.
Qualitative research can be taken place everywhere including in the entertainment industry.
MTV uses participant observation to undertake an ethnographic exploration of brands in an online virtual world. Players create avatars and live in an online virtual world.
Studies show that by 2011 80% of active Internet users will partake in the online virtual world. Viacom’s MTV has invested $1.3 billion in virtual games by 2010.
One popular MTV game is Virtual Hills/Laguna Beach. 70% of the shows fans went online after the show and participated in these games. While players may think the game is all for fun, it really is intended as a marketing platform to enhance the sales of the advertised brands. The marketer was extremely smart when thinking this one up. Most people will go on to play the game without even realizing that they are being exposed to advertisements.
The researcher used participant observation by becoming an Avatar in the game. He choose his avatars clothing and skin tone like every other player. He began to explore the virtual world then began to explore the other players. His job is to market brands to the players and communicate with them. The research observed and answered his research questions and concluded that the social interactions among the players in the game along with how they interact with advertisements for social benefits can be mimicked in the real world.
Participant observation is used frequently to observe the online world. Don’t be fooled next time you decide to participate in an online virtual reality world.

Let's Hear from my Public Relations Research Classmates!!!!

“If you are refreshing your page to see new updates and statuses, or even searching for a particular person to see what they are up to, you are conducting unobtrusive research” said Laura Valenti in her last blog post, You Heard it Right Out of the Horse’s Mouth! In Laura’s Blog Post 5, she writes about unobtrusive research in the social media world. I found the above quote to be extremely enticing because everyone is conducting unobtrusive research many times a day and aren’t even realizing it! Laura first points out that you must conduct research from a credible source. This is something that should be stressed over and over! There is so much information that we can conduct research on but if we believe what is published from a non credible source then our research will not be accurate. Before beginning research remember to always look for reputability and credibility. Laura explains that unobtrusive research is beneficial in obtaining an honest answer about a certain topic, but from a celebrity you can never tell if what you are receiving is honesty or all lies because they have to watch most everything that they say. Yes, unobtrusive research is useful in researching celebs but in my opinion maybe not the most trustworthy approach!

Now let’s take a look at Post #5, written by Sam Roman who has participated in unobtrusive research at her own job! Sam explains that she worked for a well known retail store this summer and that her store had a unique policy. Not to confront someone even if they were seen shoplifting because if they were wrongly accused a lawsuit might occur along with more work for the PR department. Sam writes, “In recent year, unobtrusive research has done a lot in prohibiting shoplifters. Store employees are trained to looks for suspicious people - not to judge on what they look like or wearing, but on their behavior. If they fail to make eye contact, barely look at any of the items for sale but take huge piles of clothing anyway, neglect to grab the proper sizes or constantly refuse help, they are showing blatant signs of possible shoplifting. The knowledge of all of these behavioral tactics was a direct result of the performance of unobtrusive research in retail stores.” Unobtrusive research seems to come into hand when it comes to shoplifting! Unobtrusive research is cost efficient and allows us to gather results immediately. Now every time I go into a store or refresh my Facebook page I will be reminded that unobtrusive research is being conducted!

Blog Post 5

The focus of this blog post is centered on technology in the entertainment industry and how we can use unobtrusive research methods to study this correlation. Unobtrusive research allows researchers to study things from afar without influencing the process. This type of research method is beneficial because respondents are unaware that they are research subjects, thus are unaffected by potential biases.
Everywhere you go you here a beep, a ring, or a bbm sounding. I am curious what this new obsession is with blackberry’s? I conducted unobtrusive research and have noticed how obsessed and may I say unhealthily obsessed people are with their blackberry’s or with the Apple iPads. What will be next? Just by logging into Facebook I see posts from friends asking other friends for their new pin to their blackberry. Every day I have seen updates from my friends on Facebook from their blackberry’s. I even took a peek onto some of my friend’s pages and under their interests you can find bbming. I find this to be a little much. Maybe I am just a little jealous because I haven’t yet conformed to the world of bbm, but from my unobtrusive research I have found that people are constantly in front of their blackberry’s. It is crazy how a simple device or social networking site can control our lives.
Today technology is invading the entertainment world. The main focus of two new movie releases is technology. David Fincher’s The Social Network, is about the controversial founding of Facebook. It brought in 23 million dollars in the first weekend in October. From unobtrusive research on Facebook statuses I found that many people seemed to enjoy the movie and the fact that it is starring Justin Timberlake didn’t hurt.
The Joneses, is a movie about a fake “perfect” family whose job is to market off their brands and products to others in their suburban neighborhood. They guilt trip others into purchasing the latest trends and technologies so that they can increase sales. What they really are doing is hurting others by making them feel terrible that they cannot afford everything that “The Joneses” own. At the end of the movie their next door neighbor kills himself because he bought everything in order to keep up with “The Joneses” to please his wife and unfortunately lost his house because of this. He couldn’t handle the pressure of his wife being disappointed in him and thus committed suicide. I can’t help but to think, what if this happened or has happened in the real world? How can we let technology control us or affect us in this matter?
From unobtrusive research I can see that technology is invading our lives and the world of the entertainment industry and is not stopping anytime soon. Technology is extremely important to everyone and is one of the best inventions ever created. However, all I ask is that you stop and think about technology and whether it is controlling your life more than is necessary.