Research Down! Now Let's Finish This Paper...

02/11/17

Thursday, February 9th, I officially collected all 50 participants I needed for my blind consumption test and entered in the results into my Google Sheet - woohoo! Other than that, I have been working on improving and seriously cutting down on my lit review and methods (after improvements, those two sections were up to around 3850 words 0.0 - but I have cut down to around 3400 and foresee myself getting a few hundred more out by tomorrow). I also wrote my abstract, which I have put at the top of my blog (the white paragraph) to help people new to my research understand what I was aiming to find and the results of my research.

Speaking of the results, let's look at what I ultimately found...

After I finished plotting each participant's natural product movement influence score with her mismatch score (measuring how different her blind consumption lip gloss brand preferences were from her self-identified brand preferences), I used excel to find the equation of the line of best fit and the R-squared value for the linear regression. The R-squared value turned out to be 0.01639, indicating that there is not even close to a linear relationship between participants' natural product movement influence and mismatch scores. The lack of relationship is also supported by the seemingly nonexistent trend visually represented by the scatter. Thus, I concluded that the natural product movement is by no means a sole or primary influence in forming consumer opinions and influencing consumer decision making in the makeup market, as participants more often than not had high mismatch scores (6 or 8) regardless of their natural product movement influence scores. Therefore, as indicated by the high mismatch scores across the board, the results suggest that makeup consumers make decisions predominantly based on their emotional perceptions of certain brands, as opposed to actual sensed quality differences between makeup products, but these emotional perceptions are by no means solely related to the natural product movement and are likely due to many other factors.

You are probably wondering which of the 4 lip gloss brands actually scored the highest or was the favorite among participants in the blind consumption test. Honestly, the rankings were all over the place and there was no one brand that clearly seemed to be ranked higher than the others. In order to analyze the rankings as a whole, I went through each participant's rankings in the blind consumption test for each brand. If the brand was ranked the participant's favorite, I gave the brand a +3; if the brand was the second favorite, a +2; and if the third favorite, a +1). After going through all the participants and brands, (*key drumroll*), I found that L'oreal (the UNNATURAL DRUGSTORE brand) won out with a score of 105, with bareMinerals (the natural high-end brand) in second place at 90, Burt's Bees (the natural drugstore brand) in third at 70, and MAC (the high-end unnatural brand) finishing last with a score of 64. Thus, it also cannot be concluded that natural makeup is inherently higher quality than unnatural makeup, as L'oreal was the overall favorite. Also interesting, high end makeup is not inherently higher quality than drugstore makeup, as L'oreal won over bareMinerals and MAC came in last place. 

Going forward this week, I am actually going to start writing my results section, which will include all of the above findings and also specifically analyze the participants with the very high and very low natural product influence scores. Interestingly enough, some of the participants with the highest natural product influence scores of 15-20 actually said that they preferred to purchase the unnatural makeup brands over the natural ones in their self-identified brand preferences. Thus, while participants may claim that they subscribe the natural product movement, they may not actually associate each brand with whether or not it uses natural or unnatural ingredients. I will delve more into this next week once I have looked more closely at a few specific examples. 

Anyways, thanks for reading through my blog this week! Let me know if you have any questions or advice. I hope you are all also enjoying your own research and time out of school. :)

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A Taste of Freedom

02/05/2017

We are officially out of school (unbelievable how time flies, right?)! The past few days, I have been enjoying getting more people to participate in my lip gloss blind consumption test and training for my new job at Starbucks. In case you haven't been following my research until this point, welcome to my blog! The goal of my research is to figure out more about consumer decisions between natural and unnatural makeup brands, specifically whether consumers choose between products primarily based off of differences they actually feel while consuming them or based off of societal influences pushing them to consume a certain type of product (e.g. health movements pushing consumers to purchase products made with all natural ingredients, as opposed to products containing unnatural ingredients).

Yesterday, I went to Skin Apeel Beauty Bar (a makeup store on Avenue of the Fountains in Fountain Hills) again and asked clients and customers if they wanted to participate in my lip gloss blind consumption test as they came through the store. I ended up getting 13 people, and now I have 34 of the 50 participants I need. I am going back again this upcoming Thursday, and there should be a lot of traffic going through the store that day, so I am confident that I will have all (or nearly all) my participants tested by the end of the week.

I have also inputted all my results into a Google Sheet I created. For each participant (assigned a number), it includes her blind consumption scores for each product, the 4 products listed from most favorite to least favorite (based on these blind consumption test scores), the 4 products listed from most favorite to least favorite (based on the exit survey, which asked participants to order the 4 lip gloss brands from "most favorite brand" to "least favorite brand"), a mismatch score (which indicates how "off" or different the blind consumption order of favorites differs from favorite brands list), and a natural product movement influence score (based off of the multiple choice questions in the exit survey meant to gauge how strongly the participant feels about consuming natural cosmetic products over products that contain unnatural ingredients).

Thus far, I am finding that almost all participants have similar mismatch scores regardless of how influenced they are by the natural product movement. I created a graph in excel plotting each participant's mismatch score (a number 0-8, with 8 indicating the most amount of difference between the blind consumption test and the participant's indicated preferences) with their natural product movement influence score (a number -20 to 20, with -20 being highly uninfluenced and 20 being highly influenced). My hypothesis was that participants highly influenced by the natural product movement would have more mismatches than those who had little influence. If this were correct, the graph would look more linear with a positive slope, indicating that the number of mismatches increased as the influence by the natural product movement increased. However, so far, it seems that the number of mismatches is relatively unrelated to natural product movement influence, as shown by the lack of trend in the scatter.

So, there you have my progress so far. Moving on to how I feel about being off on my own now with less guidance from Ms. Haag -- it would be a lie to say that I am completely confident in how I am analyzing my results and how I will write my results section. I am hoping that is one thing we can start to discuss in our meeting tomorrow so that I can have more direction on what will be most useful to include. Right now, the pitfalls I am most concerned with is unclearly presenting my data (for example, I have an uneasy feeling about that graph being hard to follow/interpret) and including too much/too little information for the sake of answering my question (e.g. should I add up/average all the participant blind consumption rankings for each lip gloss and include which one is most liked to determine which product was actually deemed the "highest quality"?).

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Leaving the Nest (Part 1)

01/27/2017

With less than one week of school left, it is just starting to set in that I won't be attending school on a regular basis for 6-7 months. While I am definitely excited to leave, start my new Starbucks job, and preparing for college (big decisions ahead in these next few months!), I am also a little nervous about completing the rest of my research and writing the results and discussion sections with the only support being a weekly meeting with Ms. Haag.

In terms of the progress I have made in the past week, I have created a much nicer flow from my lit review to my methods section and cut down a lot of words. I have also integrated a lot more justifications supporting my blind consumption test scale and exit survey questions (vignette - thank you, Kristiana, for sharing your sources - and Likert scale-style). Overall, I am feeling a lot more confident about the lit review and methods section, and I think a little bit of editing, adding, and reorganizing truly went a long way.

I have scheduled another date - Saturday, February 4th from 10-2pm - for going in to Skin Apeel Beauty Bar and testing participants. While this is the only OFFICIAL date I have locked down, I also plan on going into Skin Apeel the following week during the times when I am not working and trying to get as many walk-ins as possible to participate in the test.

Additionally, in terms of statistically analyzing data, I met with Mr. Peacher and we came up with some good ideas. Before, I had two main problems - determining the "number of mismatches" (how "off" participant product rankings were between their blind consumption test and the exit survey) and determining how related these misconceptions were to the natural product movement's influence on participants.

Before, I was determining the number of mismatches simply by looking at the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place slots and counting how many were "off" between the two ranking lists. Thus, it was only a number 0-4, and it did not take into account how far each product moved on the ranking list (for example, if someone ranked the 1st place product in her blind consumption test 2nd on the exit survey, it would be less of a misconception than if she had ranked it 4th on her exit survey, and my previous way of counting mismatches didn't take this into account). Mr. Peacher suggested that I add how far off the rankings were from each other to get the "mismatching" number. For example, if a participant's rankings for the blind consumption test were product 1, product 2, product 3, product 4, and for the exit survey was product 4, product 2, product 1, product 3, their mismatching score would be 3 (for the number of places product 4 moved) + 2 (number of places product 1 moved) + 1 (number of places product 3 moved) = 6.

To determine how correlated these mismatching values are with the natural product influence on participants, I will create a linear regression between participants' mismatching scores and the added number (-20 to 20) from the exit survey questions. Thus, I will be able to determine how related the participant product misconceptions were to their preference (or lack thereof) for natural products. If there is a strong correlation, then it is likely the natural product movement is a major reason consumers have misconceptions about their favorite makeup brands. However, if there is a weak correlation, then misconceptions are likely due to other/additional causes.

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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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Refining the Method

01/13/2017

With 14 days of school left (how did that happen?!), we have been working on refining our methods sections and preparing to dive into research.

I am actually beginning to conduct my consumer tests tomorrow, and (fingers crossed that I am not proven wrong) I feel confident that I have a solid procedure for administering my blind consumption test and exit survey and sufficient understanding of the validity precautions I need to carry out.

However, my first shot at writing the methodology section of my paper turned out pretty weak, mostly due to poor organization, lack of justification, and ineffective presentation of complicated information.

At the beginning of my methods section, instead of diving directly into what I did, I need to articulate my research question and explain how a blind consumption test paired with an exit survey best provides the information necessary to answer it. As of right now, the explanation for why the method works is just thrown in at the end of the paper, leaving the reader confused while sifting through the procedure.  

Next, I will explain why I chose lip gloss and the specific shades I did. Instead of addressing personal practical concerns for choosing lipgloss (i.e. the economical nature), I will cite why lipgloss is useful for my research (e.g. easy and quick for participants to apply, one shade works on many skin tones, its short-lasting nature (hence, its quality is not determined based on how long it lasts so much as its appearance and feel (shine, non-stickiness, etc.) meaning that participants can judge it in a short amount of time).

In explaining gathering my participants, I will point to why my sample was worthwhile for my research, for, as of right now, I mainly just focus on the sample's limitations.

My procedure needs a lot more justification, especially in terms of the exit survey and the value of using vignette and Likert scale questions to judge participant emotional responses to natural products. I also need to find a source that backs up shine, taste, texture, and color quality as key factors in assessing the quality of lip gloss so that I can justify using those categories to measure participant liking of the lip glosses in the blind consumption test. Also, when explaining the -2 to +2 scale for the questions, I should present the information in a set of tables, as opposed to using a long, drawn-out explanation within the body of the paper.

Overall, while I have a clear outlook for actually conducting my research and the method itself seems strong, I need to put a lot of work into justifying and explaining my work within the written methods section of my paper. Through some reorganization and using more sources, I think that I will be able to complete this task without too many issues.

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Plan of Action: Logistics of the Study and Analyzing the Data

12/12/2016

I have confirmed with Pam McCasland, an esthetician and owner of Skin Apeel Beauty Bar in Fountain Hills, that she can connect me with her clients as potential participants and that I can use Skin Apeel Beauty Bar as the location where I will conduct my study. In terms of figuring out specifically how to contact her clients and the available times to conduct the study, I will be meeting with her in early January. Ideally, I would like to conduct my study within the first or second week of February right after the second trimester ends, and I want to contact Pam's clientele with the consent form as soon as possible to ensure that I have enough participants secured.

If, for some reason, I do not get at least 50 participants from Pam's clientele, my mom also has a lot of contacts at CopperWynd Resort & Club who would be willing to participate in the study. Also worth noting, I am going to try my best to get participants of different ages, although many may end up being slightly older (~40-70), as that is the most common demographic in Fountain Hills and at these locations.  

As for how I will analyze the data I obtain from the blind consumption test and the exit survey, I will be comparing the responses of each participant between the two forms (participants will write their participant number on each form so that responses will remain anonymous but I will be able to pair each participant's blind consumption ranking sheet to her exit survey). While I am not 100% certain of the specific criteria for determining whether or not a participant bases her choice on emotional or sensory responses, the closer the rankings are between the blind consumption and exit survey forms, the more likely the participant's makeup choices are based on sensory, as opposed to just emotional, responses to the products. Likely, for each participant, I will add up the category-specific 1-9 rankings to create a final score for each lip gloss on the blind consumption form. Then, I will note the order in which the participant preferred each product by ordering the lip glosses from highest ranked to lowest ranked. I will repeat the process for the exit survey, and I will make note if the order changed or remained the same. Regarding the general questions I include at the end of my exit survey asking participants to indicate whether they prefer to buy natural or unnatural makeup, I will take note of whether each participant's response to those questions aligns with their highest ranked choices in the blind consumption test (i.e. I will check whether or not those who said they prefer natural makeup actually liked Burt's Bees or Bare Escentuals most in the blind consumption test). Finally, I will need to somehow qualitatively analyze participant commentary in each of the ranking sections on both the blind consumption test form and the exit survey to search for trends (i.e. if a lot of participants indicate that they would expect Bare Escentuals lip gloss to be shiniest because it is a mineral makeup, I should take note of that. Or, if on the exit survey, a participant comments that she buys natural makeup because it is healthier for the skin, I should take note of that as an emotional reason to buy the product, as opposed to a sensory one).

I feel like I have a clear general idea of what I need to do to analyze my results, but in terms of formulating a clear-cut method of analysis, especially for the quantitative rankings, I could definitely use some advice!

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Research Funding Proposal

12/05/2016

https://youtu.be/dolOgAAKLPI