Imagine Projects specialises in business and community research. Our business and community research surveys deliver the answers you need to help you do things better. Effective business and community research is not just about asking questions. It’s about asking the right, unbiased questions to really get the information you need. We ensure that the questions we create work that little bit harder and delve that little bit deeper to bring your organisation real, actionable results.

Business Research

The Imagine business research service is tailored to the type of research required for starting or running any kind of business. Our service is focused on two areas. New or existing organisations.

New Organisations

Starting a new enterprise requires research to understand:

  • Is there a market for the business idea?
  • The potential target customers
  • The customer demand
  • The competition that offers similar products or services

Existing Organisations

The research methods we adopt are relevant to the size of the organisation and the type of information needed. For example, a business commissions research so that its products and services are relevant to their current customers’ needs.

  • To gather information that could make the company more profitable.
  • Research is often conducted to discover your customers’ feelings and experiences when using your products or service.

The methods we use to gauge your customers satisfaction may be questionnaires, interviews or focus groups. Researching public data can provide businesses with relevant local statistics.

Research used for advertising purposes is common because marketing budgets are usually tight and must be spent carefully to increase sales and brand recognition.

Community Research

The primary aim of our community research is to help charities and community groups to serve the needs of its community (through identifying any short falls in provision). Our community research services are usually delivered with the support of as many local services providers as possible.

The general aims of our community research services are usually:

  • To deepen the understanding of a local area
  • To ensure that the research identifies real needs
  • To create a sense of local ownership and  participation and avoid duplication of provision
  • To give local people a say in the future of their community
  • To explore potential new areas of service

The research can also help the research commissioner to deliver their mission whilst they engage with the community through the project. Our research services are scoped to be as comprehensive as possible, identifying all relevant information and ensuring that the research questions asked are appropriate to the community.

Accurate, Honest and Ultimately Revealing

We approach data collection with plenty of common sense, and a lot of ‘imagination’. However complicated or unusual a project, we’ll use our flexible, creative and proven resources to find you a solution that works. Our questionnaires are clear, simple and designed to be both interviewer and respondent friendly, and most are pilot-tested to ensure quality of results. Our aim is to bring our customers accurate, honest and relevant data, due to our excellent analytical and interpretative skills – in a format your organisation can use.

Methodology

Face to Face

Some things need to be said face to face. Not just said but explained and maybe even demonstrated. Face to face interviewing, whether it’s on the street, in someone’s home, or in a hall, is an exceptionally accurate and reliable means of gathering experiential, detailed data.  Field teams are equipped to gather data and transmit it back to head office quickly and accurately.   We handle everything for you, from questionnaire design, sampling etc. through to final results

In-Street

Our in-street face to face service is ideal for short (less than 10 minute) interviews. We are experienced at achieving specific quota requirements for your target audience/market. This is a highly cost-effective method of gathering information.

In-Home

Our in-home service is appropriate for longer interviews (up to 40 minutes) and can incorporate more complex questions. It can also target accurately by geography or across a wider area.

Hall Testing

The hall testing methodology is suitable for complex tasks and questioning. The method often includes multiple tasks and a semi-qualitative approach. We can undertake on-street recruitment for halls by experienced fieldworkers achieving specific quota requirements for your target audience or market.

Telephone

Telephone research is quick, efficient and revealing. We adopt computer assisted telephone interviewing. Our team is well trained and our interview technique highly tuned to the interviewee’s attention span. Interviews are engaging and kept succinct, as a result the answers we get tend to be well considered and truthful.

Self-Completion

Gives people time to think as often a questionnaire is less daunting when the respondent has time to mull things over in the comfort of their own home, or office. Just like any other type of survey Imagine Research Services manage the process from the design of the questionnaire, how it looks (remembering it’s got to ‘sell itself’), respondent motivations, questionnaire delivery, including the response mechanic to final data collation, analysis and reporting.

Pedestrian Counts

Pedestrian counts give an accurate picture of what’s happening ‘on the street’. To ensure accuracy we only use experienced fieldworkers. Our service is flexible and counts can be conducted stand-alone or in association with interviewing for a visitor survey. Either static or rotating sampling points can be tailored to budget and requirements.

Pedestrian counts are used to

  • Understand pedestrian traffic flow patterns
  • Compare pedestrian volume throughout the day and across days of the week
  • Use as a measure of ‘busyness’ to increase accuracy of visitor surveys by weighting

Focus Groups

Focus groups are small groups of people who discuss topics guided by our experienced moderator/s where the group provides insight on attitudes and / or behavior through the depth and detail of the discussion. We recruit participants that are in the client’s relevant target market be it customers or non-customers. The moderator guides the group through the planned discussion that probes attitudes about the client’s products or services. The discussion is loosely structured; the moderator encourages a flow of ideas in which group interaction aids the quality and depth of information proffered.

Focus groups are frequently used because they can explore ideas and concepts through a group’s dynamics and can elicit ideas that would not become apparent through quantitative techniques and are therefore often used in the early stages of a community survey or product/service development. Recently we have found that where appropriate including a co-design element to a focus group where participants are encouraged to develop solutions or ideas themselves has proved very successful in short-cutting the amount of time needed to bring a product or service to market.

The focus groups we hold are in a convenient location for the participants, in a room that aims to create an atmosphere that puts the respondent at ease and encourages open and honest communication. The proceedings are some times audio recorded and representatives from our client often observe the discussion. Sometimes if appropriate the participants are rewarded for their time.

We have a team of experienced moderators who have facilitated a wide range of focus groups on behalf of consumer product and service providers. This experience ensures the level of depth and insight required nowadays. We achieve this by encouraging all participants through a process of direct questioning, free association as well as interpretation of facial expressions, body language, and group dynamics.

We are skilled at reporting focus groups that meets clients’ needs. This includes providing an overview of the findings as well as more detailed interpretation either as part of wider ranging project incorporating other quantitative methods or as a stand alone study.