PRIMARY EXPERTISE

PRODUCT OFFERINGS

Graphical facilitation, generating visual illustrations during Qualitative Research phase.

What inspired us to launch SWBR?

In general, the research community pays little attention to the inherent weaknesses of questionnaires. Social scientists have known for years that questionnaires (self-reports) are considered to be a blunt instrument when attempting to describe and predict behaviors, particularly when used in high-stake situations. Seminal research papers from LaPiere and Wicker have shown, based on observation and experiment, that what people say is often not consistent with their actual behaviors.

The Research Opportunity

With the accelerating adoption of digital devices and services within Consumer Healthcare, we saw a research opportunity: SWBR could collaborate with product launch teams to create more meaningful insights.

SWBR uses our proprietary programs to extract digital data that represent actual behaviors in natural settings and combine it with other relevant data to build more accurate consumer portraits; that is, not exclusively based on questionnaires. Don’t get us wrong; questionnaires do generate value and will continue to have a research role, even if it’s somewhat diminished.

Basic demographic and psychographic data is probably best collected with questionnaires. In addition, whenever possible, SWBR uses digital records to assist in the description and prediction of consumer behaviors because these digital responses are more enduring. Moreover, for more accurate segmentation and targeting, digital data can be consolidated and structured with other data-sets to depict homogeneous groupings of consumers.

Overcoming barriers is often not a simple task. Using digital data extraction techniques and combining these data using our proprietary programs, Switching Barriers will help your organization identify, research, define, and implement transformational strategies. 

Ronnie Ruddock

Ronnie has over 25 years of diverse professional experience in the Healthcare B2B and B2C sectors, having led technical and customer support functions at national, regional, and global levels. More recently, Ronnie was the WW Information Technology lead for a $1B healthcare business. Ronnie has deep expertise in digital technologies, online human behaviors, and Consumer Research methods. He has an MBA and MSc in Business & Management Research from Henley Business School (Oxfordshire). Ronnie is also currently pursuing a doctorate in Applied Statistics and Marketing at Rotman School of Business (Toronto) and Henley Business School.

Tobias M. Braxmeier

Tobias has devoted two decades to R&D and the Life Sciences industry. He built and developed two biotech start-ups, focusing on R&D and IP strategy, new product development, marketing and business development in North America, Europe, and Asia. Tobias presently advises new ventures and investors on all aspects of innovation management, and he is launching his own company builder in 2015. Tobias is named inventor in 14 patents or patent applications and holds a PhD (University of Karlsruhe, Germany) and an MBA (Henley Business School, UK).

Our Principles

Switching Barriers is a social research consultancy practice. We are keen to become a successful and trusted research partner for the business community. Our primary intent is to use consumer research to help our clients solve commercial problems. 

Today, social researchers work across multiple disciplines, such as Psychology, Healthcare, and Behavioral Economics. More recent digital innovations add complexity, particularly relating to ensuring privacy and information security for both subjects and clients.

This complex landscape confronts researchers with differing ethical approaches and conventions that influence research structure and methods.

We comply with the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to ensure confidentiality and security of all healthcare-related information. We are also guided by both the UK’s Social Research Association Guidelines and the American Sociological Association Code of Ethics, which help us to make appropriate research decisions. In many respects, all researchers are treading new ground, particularly within digital research domains. Our primary approach to managing these inherent privacy risks is to embed ethical reviews within our project execution processes.

• We shape our research on the principles that support research guidelines and regulations;
• Where significant implicit or explicit choices (associated with principles) must be made, we seek guidance from experts in the field;
• SWBR protects subjects from undue harm that may arise due to their participation in research projects. The subjects’ participation is voluntary;
• SWBR balances its relationship with its clients to ensure the highest standards of research ethics are maintained at all times;
• Privileged information supplied by clients and subjects, or obtained during research, is always kept confidential;
• SWBR will not collect, store, or use Personal Identifiable Information;
• SWBR maintains thoughtful, dedicated, professional integrity at all times.