Is Qual Research gaining in Stature?
I've attended 3 European market research conferences in Q1 2018 - Qual360 in Berlin, IIEX Europe 2018 in Amsterdam, and the GOR online conference last week in Cologne.
All very different in focus, they were all well attended, with IIEX by far the largest (over 600 attendees) ; clientside folk were there in numbers, over 30% I believe at the IIEX.
But I came away - biased, no doubt - feeling that despite all the fascinating tech innovations, despite AI, automation, DIY, agility et al....humble, non-scalable qual is a on a roll. Despite the fact that it accounts for a mere 15% of total research spend worldwide according to the latest Esomar Global Report 2017.
Evidence for this as follows:
At the IIEX there were two whole tracks dedicated to qual, one hosted by the QRCA, the other by the AQR.
The Qual360 event was attended by over 100 people, with plenty of case studies linking qual research to business impact
Lots of clientside researchers talking about the role of qual in a strategic business context.
Qual toolboxes appear eminently tech-informed, with MROCs now almost standard, and VR/AI attracting high interest, with majors such as Ericsson sharing their VR learnings for qual. Exciting stuff.
Is this the start of a new role for qual, with higher managerial reach and more influence - the beginnings of a potentially powerful new narrative? Now where's my primer on Gramsci? Alexa!!!
Wishful thinking maybe - qual budgets and businesses are often relatively small, and there remains a sense that we are overly modest, and don't like being pragmatic about using business jargon that would be appropriate/mandatory in a management consultancy context.
But still - I move on in putting my case for a boosted role for qual... to further evidence witnessed in the programme of the upcoming bi-annual worldwide QRCA/AQR conference in May/ Valencia.
Entitled "Stay Curious", it touches on societal issues that are central to the way people live their everyday lives. It's very contemporary, highly relevant. Some of the topics covered:
- identity politics and qualitative discourse
- brands and culture, evolutionary psychology and the moral economy
- artificial intelligence, virtual reality and unplugging
You can check out the full programme line-up here - QRCA/AQR Worldwide Qual Conference 2018 - oh and full disclosure, I am co-chairing the programme committee, so biased. But still: very many of the talks tease my curiosity in a way that market research at its best can - in touch with today's shifting social currents, discourse and cultural trends.
And if part of becoming influential involves finding "hooks" or conceptual frameworks that make us sound ahead of the game, then maybe there's no harm in floating concepts like evolutionary psychology. Why not nudge those in the broader business community towards a subtle sense of their own knowledge-gaps - they might even find even Wikipedia-style answers more relevant than the intricacies of a more advanced quant method such as conjoint for example ;)
Final piece of evidence: in the latest GRIT report we read that that 35% of stated projects were qualitative! Contrast that with the behavioural measure of 2017 Global Report from Esomar, down at around 15% - a positive surely, maybe even a harbinger of behavioural change?
So here's to healthy qual futures - and let's hope that as we see more and more qual work making a strategic impact on client businesses, we all become a little better at capturing the associated value. A marketing dream, maybe, but still.
Curious, as ever, as to others' views.