Why every online research community manager likes to work with moms: Part 2
This is Part 2 of the blog series ‘Mothers in online research communities: a universal experience’. Check out this blogpost for part number one: “Why every online research community manager likes to work with moms.” In the first part of this blog series, we outlined why we love to do research communities with moms: they are one of the most natural and spontaneous communities, very open and motivated, and contain lots of real emotions and stories. In this second part, we’d like to talk about how these projects have enabled us to build specific expertise regarding this target group. Even though the topics and objectives of the different ‘mom’-communities were very different, and cultural differences could of course be observed, moms from all over the world have many things in common.
The 7 core needs of moms… everywhere
Based on our mutual experience in all these local communities, we made a list of 7 elements of universal motherhood. These can be translated to the needs of a baby as well. Like Maslow’s pyramid, each upcoming step is based on (and therefore needs) the fundaments of the previous one – as a baby grows older, the first steps will become less of a critical focus for the mother. Have a look at the 7 core needs of moms:
How exactly does this knowledge make research richer?
It’s fantastic to see how helpful these elements are in the understanding of mother’s actions and perceptions throughout different product categories. This simple framework helps to communicate with and activate mothers as a target group.
From a research perspective, the model helps us structure the data during analysis & reporting, but also serves as a critical check during conversation guide design, kick-off meeting with our client and practical organization of communities with moms. For example, as it shows us that universally, routine is a mother’s best friend, we ask moms to plan some time for the community each day at the same time, when the baby is sleeping.
In the last part of this series, we’ll tell you why being a community manager of ‘moms’ communities is very similar to being a mom yourself. So stay tuned…