The Band Plays on....but is the Ship heading in the right Direction?
One question that pops up repeatedly in MR conferences and online forums is: where is the MR industry heading?
Many of us experience how digital is changing, often improving our daily lives - professionally it's labelled "disruption", we sense shifting sands and wonder: how should we position ourselves, skill-up for what consultants like to call ominously the end-game.
Two events of the past few weeks prompted me to wonder if they might be harbingers of an MR future, for better or for worse, and how we should react. My take:
1. The merger of SSI and Research Now - Insights Activation the Future?
The recently announced merger creates not just a new, powerful joint entity - the strategic intent detailled in their PR release is fascinating.
The aim seems to be treat their respective panels/panelists as assets to be exploited differently. The 11 million "deeply-profiled" consumers and professionals that Research Now has access to are presented as a platform for marketing, or what they refer to as "data-driven consumer engagement" and "audience activation".
Insights? There is talk of automation and DIY possibilities.
You can read the release here: https://www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/9969464-research-now-and-ssi-announce-merger-agreement
Brainjuicer took a similar step a year or so ago when they re-branded, introducing the System 1 Agency solution (https://www.system1agency.com/) and the eminently confident claim "profitable growth guaranteed". Research is the platform for appropriately feeling and fluent, famous advertising solutions.
Brainjuicer/System 1 is only one company, panel companies are only one part of the value chain, so jumping to broader conclusions is perhaps premature, but still, jump I shall ;)
Centrally: research as a stand-alone has limited value.
Its value comes from the actions it leads to. And if one and the same company offers both, then fine - joining the dots has eminent value.
Sounds fine? Well, this effective blurring of boundaries between MR and marketing raises many issues; I'll throw in an obvious one: can Research Functions seriously give an objective POV if they are commercially linked to the operational solution, e.g. the digital campaign?
On a more mundate level, and returning to one of the SSI/Research Now promises: how powerful will these new digital solutions be based on AI/ automated insights?
Technology providers have a tendency to oversimplify and overpromise. My Instagram timeline is peppered with completely irrelevant ads......
Which brings me on to my second topic - losing focus on basic but absolutely essential MR skills.
2. Blinded by the science of Automation/ AI...can we still write Questionnaires?
This question sounds old-school - questionnaire writing, design? Woah, we're into automation, AI, predictive stuff.....Sure. But if you can't write a question, shape a sentence effectively it doesn't matter how predictively sexy google text is.
I was a participant in three quant surveys over the past 4 weeks - the experience was (once again) boring, repetitive, and with zero incentive for me the participant. That's not how the modern world works.
One questionnaire - online - had multiple mistakes in it, grammar errors, routing gone wrong, it was embarrassing. The Max Diff exercise was irritatingly repetitive. Ranking exercises were artificial, many of the aspects I was meant to rank I had no clear understanding of - but without delivering a ranking, I couldn't progress.
The other two were intrusive, asking me for precise details on eg address of place of work, where exactly I had entered the airport, I broke off both. Insisting that research has an operational impact is fine - but the research design needs to consider the issue of trust.
Contrast these two "MR experiences" to the world of say Amazon - easy, 1-click, reliable, useful - and the MR quant survey experience looks off the pace. Aren't we meant to be experts in consumer centricity??
There's also the danger of negative WOM. Imagine the participant was a mulitplier, an influencer - a journalist, a business owner, someone in tech, or from the financing industry: what impression do they get about Market Research?
Finally, how valid are the results that such surveys deliver? Percentage signs plus robust sample sizes don't mean much if the questionnare is lousy.
Our basic skills are key to us maintaining respect as an industry during times where the image of MR is challenged. Statistics, sampling, questionnaire writing, piloting a q're before going live are not just legacy skills - however much the industry is rushing to a focus on impact, ROI, efficiency.
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That's all the evidence to submit for now, and, resting my case, suggest two hypotheses, one provocative, the other more hopeful:
i) Market research futures will be increasingly about outputs, not just insights. To be good insight-activation partners, we need to become marketing savvy.
ii) Good market research will shine through, be it qual or quant - but we neglect the basics at our peril.
Whatever the future holds, it looks like it's going to be pretty different. Anticipating that change means skilling up for a different future. Wherever the ship is heading, the band is going to be playing a very different tune ;)
Curious, as ever, as to others' views.