Visualizing rural financial market research in Northern Vietnam through pictures

Abstract

One of the many tasks of financial market research is to develop client-oriented financial products. In order to ensure that the financial products reflect the necessities and preferences of the clients, profound participation of the target group throughout the whole research process is important. The use of pictures reduces problems of understanding and makes communication more interesting since everybody is now an insider in the discussion and can thus contribute his or her opinion. The use of pictures in research enhances participation and the research findings will be more target-group oriented. The extent to which the expense associated with using pictures in research ? which is not to be underestimated ? justifies the gains in terms of the information and data collected is rarely assessed. This article is addressed to researchers who investigate in similar situations and will offer them a basis of experience that they can take advantage of. The authors assume that information about the usefulness of the different techniques applied might be most interesting for other researchers. They conclude that the use of pictures in financial market research revealed some interesting results, albeit sometimes at quite a high cost. Nevertheless, the impact of supportive pictures on the quality of new knowledge is difficult to assess, since we have no way of answering the question of whether it would have been possible to obtain the same information without the suppor of pictures.