What Is the Number One Issue Today the Market Research Industry Is Facing? Read on and See What these Experts Say!
I am sure most of the readers face challenges during the day and have to make decisions to move the business forward. Those decisions sometimes are based on:
- What is happening within your company
- What is happening with your clients
- Or perhaps what is going on within the industry.
Clearly our industry is facing tremendous challenges and issues. They range from:
- Global outsourcing
- Respondent cooperation
- Client turnover
The question is, “What is the number one issue?” Read on to see what these experts think:
For me, I would say my issue is getting people to take the time to complete surveys of any meaningful length. Years ago, online research was fabulous because people could take the surveys whenever they wanted, and compared to spending time on the phone with someone the time passed more quickly, they completed the surveys, everyone was happy. Now, increasingly more people are getting used to taking their information (surveys, entertainment, advertising, you name it…) in small “bits and bytes” and the time they are willing to devote to any one thing seems to be diminishing. 30-second commercials? Come on, tell me what I need to know in 15 seconds, or forget it. 15 minute surveys? I’ll give you 5 minutes, then I’m off to MySpace.
| Danielle Blugrind Director, Consumer & Brand Insights YUM Brands |
As the industry evolves we continue to make significant business decisions with smaller and/or less representative sample sizes. At some point the business issues become so strategic that the research simply has to be executed flawlessly. Encouraging our customers to take the time to complete a survey and try to maintain some level of decent cooperation rate is difficult.
| Pam Galley Director Of marketing Research Sabre |
Good business to business interviewers
| Owen Jenkins CEO Kadence Business Research |
Data quality and how much of the industry is unaware or unwilling to focus on its inadequacies.
| Robert Lederer Editor & Publisher RFL Communications, Inc. |
“Over my 18 years of Insights experience, I never have experienced problems with supplier reliability to the extent that I have experienced them over the past year. I have encountered myriad issues — from a lack of supplier responsiveness to unclean data files to survey technology weaknesses. I come from the supplier side, and so I am loyal to the industry! … but standards must be raised and met.”
| Regina Lewis, PhD VP, Consumer & Brand Insights Group Dunkin’ Brands, Inc. |
“Innovation.” In the way people service clients and how clients respond or gather information. There are not enough new resources to keep up with changing dynamics in how people communicate. If we don’t harness new things, our role is not going to be able to provide information.
| Roseanne Luth President Luth Research |
Over the past ten years, there has been a staggering decline in respondent cooperation. Without access to the public, our ability to collect data has become more and more difficult. That coupled with shorter deadlines and more stringent respondent qualifications, data collection has become a true challenge. It is imperative that we continue to work toward greater respondent cooperation through public awareness. The respondents out there need to know the value of our industry and that their opinion counts.
| Steve Schlesinger CEO Schlesinger Associates |
Respondent engagement – this requires evolving the way we communicate with respondents and making the research process more interesting and novel to the respondent.
| Craig Stevens Senior Vice President e-Rewards Market Research |
Lack of Innovation. One focus of my practice is bringing innovative new tools to my clients and helping them learn in new and different ways. You can’t imagine how hard this is. In this age of technology, many of the tools are decades old. Sure, we’ve applied them to the internet, but it’s the same small group of research methodologies. I think this industry will be dramatically disrupted by innovators who use the tools of technology to delve into consumers’ lives, preferences, etc. to reveal excited insight and inspire product and communications innovation as a result. I don’t have a preconceived notion of what this will look like, but I’m seeing some inkling on the fringes of the industry. Ultimately, the research will be richer. The insights will be deeper and creatively conceived. And, the resulting consumer products and communications will resonate more deeply than ever before. Hey, a girl’s gotta have a dream, right?
| Kelley Styring President InsightFarm |
For me – the answer is respondent cooperation. In order for research to be actionable, drive insight and make a difference to client companies, respondents HAVE TO BE INVOLVED! We need to have the respondent experience be a pleasant one that includes shorter surveys. Our industry needs to communicate how important research is to the world and how important respondent opinions are. Until our industry does that by working together, we will continue to have a respondent cooperation issue and the respondent pool will continue to diminish.
- Do you agree with these experts?
- What do you think?
I look forward to hearing your comments.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 am
In the pursuit of “faster, cheaper, better” in our research world, the emphasis has been on “faster” and “cheaper” and neglecting the “better”. A lot of poor research has been the result. We need to focus on the “better” so we can have survey results that we can trust.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am
From reading all of the MR publications, i think the big two are quality of on-line panels, and respondent cooperation.
Look at the front page of the Pharma Market Research Report - it’s a huge article on ways to authenticate panelists.
Look at all that CMOR is doing to make strides in respondent cooperation.
Wait, Maybe the two are related!!! Do you think respondents would be more likely to participate if the respondent felt that the surveys they were completing were valid and worthwhile to the marketplace? Maybe if results from surveys showed a direct effect to the marketplace more consumers would be willing to participate because it validated that their opinion truly did matter?
Just a thought.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:23 am
I concur that data quality and respondent cooperation are critical issues..but there is one other element that goes beyond process, that I don’t feel has been addressed yet. We continue to fail (not all…and probably not most of the people who participate in this blog) in the profession, to step out of our comfort zones and define ourselves not so much by our adherence and obsession to the research process, but rather in how we use that process to drive change an innovation in the business of our clients. We are closest to the data and the perspective of the audiences that we collect that data from, yet so often we either fall back on statistical dissertation or just leave the data for others to really interpret and act upon.
I’ve said for years, that as the walls continue to go down and we are over-run by data from sources that are not traditional researchers (think of user generated content, and web site aggregators), those MR resources that will thrive and gain the proverbial seat at the table, will be those bold enough to use their abilities to derive and deliver actionable insights in objective and constructive ways that consultants and internal management can not. This takes courage and a redefinition of what we are as a profession.
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Many - not all - of the answers above point somewhere else. Respondent cooperation, vendors with poor work quality, clients not wanting to learn about innovation are some of the stated problems facing our industry. Perhaps an important question is why can’t we inspire better cooperation, quality, or response to innovation? How has our own thinking, processes, and outputs evolved to stay current with how the world thinks and acts? Yes, we’ve moved from mail to phone to web, but are we simply asking the same questions, the same way, on a new “piece of paper?” Are we providing new insight and new energy? Are we taking our own medicine to better define unmet needs and changing respondent habits? (In other words, I agree with Jon Last!)
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:17 pm
I agree with Jon Last and Jeremy Bromberg that we need to be providing new energy and insight to the C-Suite in order to keep the non-traditional researchers at bay. Everyone has a war story about a VP of Marketing conducting their own focus groups at their brother-law’s office or someone in engineering conducting a “makeshift” web survey. Unfortunately, these practices, in some corporate settings, are encouraged rather than frowned on. For every Regina Lewis, Danielle Blugrind, Gail Malone or Tracy Hampton, whose corporate leaders understand and prize superb marketing research, there are far too many of their colleagues who are constantly fighting for “their seat at the table”, their budgets and the existence of their team and/or department.
It is 2007 and I am amazed that marketing research still does not contribute any key metric to the measurement of corporate performance. The seven leading measurements (stock price, P/E ratio, return on assets, debt ratio, return on equity, gross margin and gross revenue per employee) are all generated by accounting, HR and finance. For years, there has been talk about creating a brand or company equity measurement (generated by the marketing research department) to add to the seven existing metrics. Until we strive and press for an innovation like this, marketing research on the corporate side will be divided into two camps; those who embrace and value marketing research and those who reluctantly do it because they have been told they have to. Once the marketing research function is valued as much as HR, finance and accounting (funny, one never hears those department’s VPs complaining about getting “their seat at the table”), the issues of respondent cooperation and data quality will quickly be resolved.
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Respondent cooperation is certainly the biggest issue because that’s the base on which we build our business. Till now, the industry has treated respondents as an inexhaustible natural resource and has priced it accordingly. I don’t have the numbers, but my guess is that respondent share (compensation for time and opinions) as a percent of total research $ is in the low single digits at best. We got away with that when total volume of surveys being conducted in the country as a whole was low and respondents led less harried lives. But in today’s world, we need to treat the respondents with the respect they deserve, including compensating them adequately for their contributions. Otherwise we will continue shrinking the respondent pool until our ability to conduct valid research is seriously jeopardized. And I think we’re fast approaching that precipice. I guess we just have to get to a stage where research buyers have no choice but to pay a fair compensation to respondents if they want a valid sample. The research will cost a lot more but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps it will eliminate some of the really bad and unnecessary surveys that people launch just because they can (ie, it is cheap and easy to do so). The physician survey market is a good model IMHO. When each respondent costs you several hundred dollars, the urge to do useless research fades away rather quickly.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I agree with a lot of the above - there is a lot of poor data collection going on out there, and online research has been at the forefront of this issue. The major problem I see is quality. Quality in terms of conducting studies using methodologies that make sense and using research practices to do so properly, rather than just going the “cheap” route.
The barriers to entry for online research are relatively low (if you don’t do it well). Anyone can claim they have a panel (which may consist of 10K email addresses that never respond) or broker other firm’s panels, especially the sub-par ones. Do the firms that actually do some of the brokering really know what they are doing or what type of bias they are introducing when they cobble together 4 different sample sources, just to say “yes”? What if the study has to be re-run next year, will you get the same sampling? People want to say “yes, we can do it” to their clients and they want it cheap. The brokers and sub-par panel companies who really don’t add value to the process or don’t understand research have helped to give online research a bad name. Choosing a vendor properly and not always just buying strictly on price will help to increase some of the quality issues the industry has been experiencing. Likewise, firms must be leery of any who says “yes” when 2 or more other reputable firms say it can’t be done. Why does this firm think it can be? Is there a valid reason, such as some special targeting no one else has or are they just saying “yes” to take the money off the table but won’t be able to deliver?
However, not all the quality issues are the fault of the panel companies. Those who design surveys, the full service research firms and end clients, also have some culpability. It was mentioned that studies are getting more complex and firms want more information within one survey. Long interviews and poor survey design – confusing, repetitive questions, long grids, etc- can all lead to a decrease in the quality of the data. Data integrity and lower cooperation rates aren’t always a result of poor management or sampling of a panel, but can be a result of the survey instrument itself.
Everyone says they want quality and are willing to pay for it, but when it comes down to it, a lot of firms will give the business to the people that say they can do the work for the lowest price, and some even turn a blind eye to questionable practices and poor quality, just to keep the client “happy”. How “happy” will the client be when they realize the information on which they based their business decision is completely invalid? If the major buyers of research do not understand the limitations and implications of conducting such long, arduous surveys, they must be educated by their vendors. The problem is many vendors don’t understand it themselves or are forced to say “yes” because if they don’t, someone else will. Unfortunately, for data collectors, many of them are in the same boat. Until there is significant push back from ALL parties in the research channel, much of this is probably not going to change- that is, until it blows up in all of our faces.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:42 am
I agree with the other comments. Our biggest problem is that we are not adapting well to a rapidly changing culture. For over 50 years our business has been based on the traditional telephone market. But that market is rapidly shifting to the Internet and mobile media. If anything, people today are even more willing than before to communicate, to give their opinions, online and on their cell phones. Much of ecommerce is based on this increased communication. But the MR industry has been slow to adapt, so our response rates are falling.
The MR profession is inherently conservative, and for good reason. Much like the medical profession, we have tried and true methods that we are reluctant to abandon. Many unprofessional alternatives are being offered by unprofessional companies outside the industry. A small business can get a survey for $20 a month - with no expertise at how to design a questionnaire or analyze the results. So surveys get a bad name.
We need to be more willing to try new methods, basing them on sound design principles and statistical theory. There are methods that have been used successfully in the social sciences that we may be able to adopt.
We also need to examine our pricing. There is a huge untapped market out there of small businesses who could not afford traditional phone research. We need to come up with professionally sound low cost research tools to meet small business budgets and to compete with the non-MR survey companies.
Can we put together a forum or task force to develop 21st Century methods and business practices?
I have an online method that has yielded a 70% response rate, that I also believe is based on sound statistical theory. Anyone want to talk?
June 11th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Creativity. Everyone is right in stating the problems. We are not creative enough in how we use technology, demand new technologies to better help us meet our needs and in how we engage respondents. We are slow to act and adapt in a time when change is speeding at and by our profession. We need to be open to new ways of doing things and new ways of using technology. Has anyone yet called to talk with Steve?