As London becomes more of an island, separate from the rest of England, it becomes of paramount importance to represent and include the opinions of the wider population. With train strikes and the cost of living making it difficult to access the capital, it becomes more distant and irrelevant to the 85% of the population who live outside. The Government it seems, talk endlessly about “levelling up” and even has a dedicated minister, but what does that mean and how is it being implemented? Brands need to make sure they are appealing to these core consumers who spend in the economy and make choices about who gets their spend, every day. It could be argued that the explosion of online focus groups means that a national representation can be easily included and this is true, but how does that underrepresented person in Stockport engage in these discussions without perhaps feeling they want to air their different opinion, feel shy or that they don’t actually belong in that session.
Using Viewing Facilities like Aspect in Stockport, South Manchester, means that you get valuable insight from fresh participants living in the wider community. Stockport is a great example of a Northern town with a diverse population. From blue-collar workers to mums on mat leave, all types of participants can be sourced. It is also only 6 miles from Manchester city centre so can host urban dwellers too. Also, it is on the fringe of the “Golden Triangle” of Cheshire. The “Golden Triangle” (sometimes called the footballer belt) refers to an affluent area of Cheshire towns and villages including Alderley Edge, Prestbury and Wilmslow. This allows access to an affluent market of participants who differ from their London counterparts.
Aspect will assist from beginning to end with venue, recruitment and hosting. For our attentive and friendly staff, nothing is too much trouble and you will be glad you made the trip. Besides its fabulous location, Aspect has also consistently been rated as one of the Best Viewing Facilities in the country. This year was no exception with Aspect winning ‘Best Viewing Facility, Technology and Innovation’ in the Market Research Society Operations Awards.
View Stockport on the 2021 census data from the ONS
We are thrilled to announce that Aspect won the MRS Operations Award for Best Viewing Facility – Technology and Innovation. This was in recognition of our recently launched Healthcare Suite which replicates a number of hospital settings so that medical professionals and researchers alike, can feel immersed in a familiar environment.
The suite is filled with familiar items, such as our functional hospital bed, life-sized mannequin/patient, saline drips and the other stainless steel furnishings you’d expect in a healthcare setting. The benefit of this is that it provides a real-world context for any healthcare research. Medical professionals don’t have to imagine or explain the tools they use, human factor studies on new devices are done with participants in the surroundings they would normally be in. The overall effect is that researchers can be certain they are gaining deeper, more authentic insights than in a traditional viewing facility setting, giving them greater confidence in their findings.
However, this award means more to us than just the additional service offering. For us, this award, is also recognition for the creation of the suite itself. Our Healthcare Suite was not something that could be bought off the shelf. Likewise it wasn’t designed or built by external contractors following a brief. Our Healthcare Suite was conceived by our team, designed by our team and built by those same people too. This award means as much to us for how it was created, as much as it does for all the wonderful feedback we receive on the finished product.
For more information on our Healthcare Suite please contact the team at enquiries@aspectviewingfacilities.com
By Gareth Dyson
The British Government has recently announced some important changes on the Covid precautions which will come into effect on Monday 19th of July. In line with this we wanted to let you know how these changes will apply to the way you can conduct research at Aspect.
As always the safety of everyone who attends research at Aspect is our primary concern. In addition to following the advice from the government we’re also in constant contact with the MRS to ensure that we can continue to deliver our services to you, in accordance with best practice principles to safeguard the welfare of all involved.
This document is available for download via this link.
It’s undeniable that Viewing Facilities have been substantially affected by the Pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns and restrictions on Face to Face research.
In response to this, Aspect, along with many of our peers in the Viewing Facility sector of market research joined forces in order to achieve a number of goals.
Primarily we worked together to ensure that we were sharing best practice principles across the network so that you would know that there would be parity in the procedures of any members of the group.
Similarly as a collective we also understood that we had more weight in advocating for our particular sector of the industry. This has proven to be to be exceptionally useful as we’ve received excellent support from the MRS, AQR and the VFA.
We are now launching our first official campaign to remind people of the importance of Face to Face research and integral role that viewing facilities play in that dynamic. Far from being bricks and mortar locations which serve as central hubs for travelling researchers; viewing facilities are places where ideas are tested, debates are had and through the collective thoughts of a room full of strangers, new and exciting insights are discovered.
Technology has clearly played an important role over the last 12 months with online platforms enabling research to continue and, in fact, gain access to participants who may have been previously discounted for their distance from viewing facilities. Whatever the case, technology will continue to be an invaluable tool for all those involved in research; what the VFAG is now advocating for is that we once again ‘make room for face to face’.
As life slowly begins to return to normal we thought that it was a good time to celebrate with one of our most popular promotions of recent years. Throughout the months of June and July, anyone who books in a project with Aspect, which subsequently goes ahead, will receive a £50 voucher from our team.
The voucher will be sent to the person who made the initial booking and the project can take place any time, so long as it is booked within the two months we’re running this campaign.
So if you have any research coming up, be sure to get in touch as you could soon be treating yourself or your loved ones to something special in one of the UK’s finest stores – and let’s face it, we could all use a treat after the past year.
