Implementing and Editing My Method

01/22/16

Last Saturday, I conducted my first round of blind consumption testing and successfully finished 21 participants (so almost half, considering that my final goal is 50) within a few hours, so I am feeling pretty good about my progress so far. In terms of what I learned, it was really only feasible to guide one or two participants through the test at a time, given the tedious process of making sure they are testing the right lip gloss at the right time (each participant has a specific random order they need to test them in for validity reasons) and filling out the section of their blind consumption ranking form that corresponds to the product they are currently sampling. Otherwise, the process went smoothly and was a lot more efficient than I originally thought (each participant only took 5-10 minutes to complete both the test and the exit survey).

As for the results I am finding, 6/21 participants clearly favored unnatural makeup in the blind consumption even though they claimed to prefer natural brands in the exit survey and their answers to the multiple choice questions demonstrated that they were influenced by the natural product movement. 10/21 participants (not including those 6) had rankings that did not match between the blind consumption test and the exit survey, but they were simply personal misconceptions about their own taste and were not necessarily related to a perceived preference for natural makeup over unnatural makeup. The final 5 participants had similar or identical rankings in their blind consumption test and exit survey, some preferring natural products in both, some preferring unnatural products in both, and some preferring drugstore/high end products in both. Overall, participants did not lean toward any one of the 4 products and each participant seemed to prefer different ones, although L'oreal (the unnatural drugstore brand) surprisingly was the most popular in terms of the blind consumption favorite. Thus, I seem to be concluding so far that consumers' emotional responses to brands definitely impact their decision-making, and the natural product movement is lending to some of these emotional responses, but it is by no means the only or primary societal influence present in the makeup market.

As far as getting more participants done, I plan to go into Skin Apeel Beauty Bar when Pam has a lot of appointments scheduled and ask walk-ins if they would be willing to participate in the study. I do not have a specific day picked out yet, but I plan to contact her Monday (I just got a job at Starbucks - super exciting! I am going in after school on Monday to fill out the final paperwork and come up with a training schedule for the next few weeks, so my hands are kind of tied until I figure out what days I am free). However, I am confident that I will be able to get 50 participants by mid-February.

This upcoming week, I will be focusing mainly on editing the written methods section of my research paper. I worked with the organization of the end of my lit review (since it previously included a justification of my blind consumption methodology and justifications for the makeup I am testing) and my methods, and I was able to cut down a lot of words (thank goodness!). After I finish smoothing over the new transitioning at the end of my lit review and the beginning of my methods, I will focus on the explanations and justifications for the vignette and Likert-scale questions in my exit survey.

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