Check your assumptions at the door…

Sramana Mitra provides guest commentary over at Read/Write Web discussing the web sites used by the tween market. While not typically an area I get into, as the father of two girls in the pre-teen demo, I bring years of unwitting – and sometimes witless – field research to the topic. While Mitra offers an excellent overview of the space, the piece illustrates the need for both qualitative data and quantitative data when developing personas and marketing plans.

What I found most interesting in the piece was the eMarketer chart calling out “Select Online Activities.” It’s particularly illustrative of how market research doesn’t always tell you what you think it does. “Play online games” ties for the most common activity – claimed by 66% of respondents – with “Go to social network websites” way down at number 9 with 17% responding. Yet, the sites enjoyed by my kids – NeoPets (#2 among these sites, according to Alexa) and Club Penguin are their favorites – involve degrees of social networking into the gaming experience, either playing against others, competing for higher rankings, or engaging in trades of points for virtual merchandise, much like Linden Dollars in Second Life. Parents have the ability to limit how much access their kids have to chat and other social aspects within the sites themselves, but I know both my girls spend a fair bit of time at school discussing the shared experiences with their friends, too. The sites, intentionally or otherwise, define social networking as much as MySpace or LinkedIn – a longtime favorite here – do among older teens and business professionals. My kids generally choose the sites they’re most interested in based entirely upon what they can share with friends. If we recognize Web 2.0 for enabling a shared experience and similarly recognize that the web remains only one channel in an increasingly multi-channel consumer, then these sites generally represent “social networking” sites unto themselves. Clearly, Mitra can only go so deep in a short article, but the point remains.

The lesson for me is the need to check your assumptions; at the door, if need be. Companies leading the way make excellent assumptions because they spend tremendous time debating and refining those assumptions until they come up with ones that represent their audience best. How often do you question the assumptions you’re operating under? Is it time to check those assumptions again?