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?

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.

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.

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.

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.