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In Europe this weekend, 400 citizens will be invited to participate in a deliberative poll. This is a technique that has been around for more than 15 years which gives people the chance to voice their opinions about issues in a moderated debate.

People are organized in tables, each table has it’s own moderator and the large group follows a discussion guide. As the discussion progresses, comments and ideas and suggestions from each table are sent to the central stage and shared with a large group.

The European debate is a response to the fact that citizens rarely debate European issues with citizens from other countries and that European politicians want to go beyond traditional polls to hear the real issues.

What’s interesting is that this group of 400 citizens, selected randomly from all 27 EU member states will meet in the European Parliament and EESC buildings in Brussels and Europe’s politicians will be in attendance.

It’s interesting that deliberative polling has been used fairly frequently to understand political issues, but what about brands?

Could a brand face up to scrutiny and questioning from a large group of customers and prospects gathered in a room engaged in a deliberative discussion?

Given that brands today are so keen to embrace the consumer and bring them into the marketing process, from a research perspective deliberative polls what seem to be the way forward and something that would go beyond traditional qualitative and quantitative research.

Anyone brave enough to try?



Posted by Ed Cotton ...it actually wasn't meant rhetorically in a recent survey by the Pew Center in Washington.

The conclusion was that there is a 14% increase in the proportion of Americans who say environmental problems are indeed a major global problem (23% in 2002 to 37% in 2007).

U.S. concern is low when looking at other advanced industrial countries, especially since we're seen by 34 of 37 countries surveyed as “hurting the world’s environment the most,” but the level of increase is still comparable.

Since the environment has been such a hot topic recently, perhaps the 2002 numbers tell more of a story. For example, even though China’s concern only rose 1% since 2002, 69% of Chinese people were concerned about the environment that year. This was the highest proportion of concern of any country in 2002 except for South Korea (73%), and Chinese citizens were three times more concerned than Americans that year.

There is evidence that China's leaders are catching up to the concerns of its people, even if only as a result of outside forces, but environmental initiatives are continuously canceled out by colossal economic plans.

For instance, new vehicle-emissions regulations are in the works, but they cannot match the exceptional rate of growth in the number of cars (projected to surpass the U.S. at 130 million vehicles by 2020), due to a policy to promote the domestic car industry.

So when will the U.S. approach the higher echelons of concern, if ever?
Hopefully our 14% increase signifies something bigger: that the level of concern in a country won’t always have to correspond with its level of pollution.
 

Posted by katie facada