A study is a photograph of a moment. The interesting question, years later, is what the photograph was already showing — and where it was wrong. We go back into three decades of dated transcripts and check. Every piece states its method: what kind of study, how many people, when, and what the data cannot tell you. Clients, brands and participants are never identifiable.
They described the card as a security device before a status object. Eight years later, the transcripts read like a specification for what Brazilian payments became — and one thing they were sure of turned out to be wrong.
We ran focus groups about camcorders. The sentence that ended the category was said that night — as an aside, while talking about handbags.
Gym owners and trainers predicted the next decade of fitness in Brazil. They were right about the mechanism and wrong about who it would hurt.
The interviews found a cautious newcomer. The clustering, run later on the survey data, returned a 37% group that was the same person. Both methods agreed — and both missed what would become 90% of the market.
How weight-loss medication is rearranging Brazilian food rituals — and what people choose not to tell their families. Fieldwork not yet run.