Is your Market Research Business Critical?
How Business Critcal is how much of the Market Research you engage in?
It's an important question to address in an age where the value-add of MR and MR budgets is under increasing scrutiny - and one that perhaps doesn't get aired often enough in discusions, conferences and seminars that are often dominated by agency voices.
The supplier-driven focus on methodological innovation shifts the focus away from what is more critical, I would suggest, in MR: innovation in business impact.
Business impact through MR comes from addressing the "so what?" and "now what?" questions - more, I would suggest, than the "how".
If we get better at these parts of the Insights equation, we will likely be better placed to defend and grow our budgets. Here's my take.
1. Innovation is Critical Before and After Data Collection
Obsessing with methodology is potentially myopic and limits the discourse to the "specialist community" - nerds, if you like. Using an online community or mobile doesn't per se make research more powerful - sure, they allow you to do different things, but ultimately it's the way you interpret the data, derive insights that counts.
The critical skill sets are those needed at design (pre) and interpretation (post) stage - data collection is a relatively minor part of the total value equation. Spent enough time developing hypotheses about a given business problem? Considering how different data-points need to be pulled in to deliver a full picture? Time pressures often push these critical tasks aside.
2. Predictive Capabilities Require Courage and Knowledge.
MR is all about empiricism - describing as accurately as possible a phenomenom or situation, within given parameters of reliability and robustness. Fine. Once that part is done, however, there's a huge need to start making recommendations - to shift from descriptive to predictive mode, so that folk in Marketing understand what the calls to action are.
It's a difficult thing to manage - requiring rigour in methodology, but also the business understanding to make robust predictive recommendations. Agencies that genuinely manage both will likely generate enthusiasm - it's a tough space, one with plenty of room for true excellence.....
3. MR Innovation Needs to be Made Easier
I am far from denying the need to innovate in MR - but can see plenty of forces lined up against a high success rate:
insufficient differentiation
incremental innovations leading to lack of relevance
over-onerous adminstrative effort
poor marketing and sales efforts
Counter strategies could include: clear mapping of competitive landscape upfront, highlighting not just the new offerings' USPs but their business relevance; show how a new approach has already impacted - maybe in another industry or geography; offer to relieve the burden of switching, wherever feasible; engage professional sales and marketing teams.
If there was one overarching mandate to encourage the embracing of MR innovation for me it would be: make it simple and compelling.
Currently, those innovating at the bottom of the pyramid - the DIFY solution providers, panel providers even - seem to be following this approach, offering simple solutions at a fraction of the cost of a higher-end product.
It's an appealing approach - but focussed on the low-cost spectrum, and therefore one that also begs the question of whether these essentially imitative products will finance the R&D work necessary for exciting MR innovations of the future?
Returning to my original question about the business impact of MR: if, as I often hear, a major slice of MR work is essentially tactical, then it's cause for concern. Sooner or later the pressure to eliminate non-added value activities will remove or shrink this type of work - machines will probably execute it at a fraction of the cost.
For insights to flourish in future, there's a clear need to grab every opportunity, every piece of data or research, to add intelligence or understanding in a way that will genuinely move the business forward. Business-critical MR isn't really an option in future - it's a mandate for budget justification.
Curious, as ever, as to others' views