If the first step toward solving a problem truly is admitting there is a problem then the research industry took a giant leap a few months ago.

At a conference on the topic of declining respondent cooperation at Chicago ’s venerable Drake Hotel in late September, researchers from client companies, vendor firms and industry organizations gathered to exchange viewpoints on the problem and determine how to fight its effects.

Bob Lederer, founder and president of RFL Communications Inc. - publisher of the Research Business Report and its associated newsletters - and his staff organized the two-day event along with the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research (CMOR) and conference coordinator IIR.

The highlight was a morning-long panel discussion, moderated by Lederer, among over 30 industry representatives, including client-siders, providers and research association heads. Some of the companies/organizations represented included McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, CBS, Visa, IBM and General Motors; ACNielsen, Arbitron, NPD Group, IRI and GfK; the Council of American Survey Research Organizations, the Marketing Research Association, CMOR and the Advertising Research Foundation.

While there were differing assessments from the panelists on the scope of the problem, all were in agreement about its causes: Caller ID and other call-screening technology; the increase in cell phone-only households; lengthy, boring surveys; harried consumers tired of being bombarded by media 24/7, etc.

Some on the client side, especially those using a lot of online research or those who conduct highly focused research in specialized markets, said they really weren’t too concerned about response rates. Others said they used a mix of methods to get to the right respondents, so they weren’t that concerned about respondent cooperation overall.

Many panelists spoke of a kind of don’t ask/don’t tell situation, in which they suspected clients were too busy to think about the effects of declining cooperation and vendors were too afraid to broach the topic for fear of raising data quality issues and possibly losing business as a result. Arbitron’s Owen Charlebois called on vendors to simply be professional, likening the research firms to doctors, who are duty-bound to do the best job for their patients. If there are data quality issues related to cooperation rates, vendors shouldn’t wait for the clients to discover problems before dealing with them.

None of the above

In an era of declining response rates, vendors commented on the increasing difficulty of meeting clients’ calls for “better, faster, cheaper” research when those demands may result in research that meets none of the above criteria. Declining cooperation rates can compromise data quality and necessitate leaving studies in the field longer due to the difficulty in completing interviews, which brings associated cost increases. Research firms are somewhat insulated on the last point, as they can simply pass costs related to declining cooperation on to clients. But that can only go so far, and if data quality suffers, then the issue becomes much more serious. Kim Dedeker, vice president, global consumer and market knowledge at Procter & Gamble, said she knows that client-side companies put pressure on research suppliers to lower cost and increase speed but she never thought that those aims would come at the expense of data quality.

Image problem

One discussion thread focused on the industry’s image - or lack thereof - positing that cooperation rates might improve if the public knew more about what marketing research is, how it functions as a way for consumers to make their needs and preferences heard by business, and how, though it may have the word marketing in it, it is not the same as telemarketing.

To that end, there was talk of a wide-ranging ad campaign - a la the “Got milk?” ads - to help brand marketing research and make the public aware of its value and their role in the process. But such a program would take money, lots of money, and conference panelists who have served on industry organizations recalled in detail the extreme difficulty of raising even nominal sums to fund past industry efforts such as the Your Opinion Counts campaign.

In other random observations:

  • Bob Groves, director of the center for survey research at the University of Michigan , said response rates are poor indicators of data quality. The industry should really focus on the mechanisms that secure cooperation, he argued.
  • John Zogby, president/CEO of Zogby International, said the industry has spent too much time fighting those who are trying to find new ways to reach people.
  • Simon Chadwick, a partner in research firm Cambiar, bemoaned the state of survey quality, calling it “dire” and citing the value of efforts such as the EXPLOR awards, which are often given to companies that have tried to make research more engaging.
  • Larry Mock, formerly with P&G and now president, strategic development and go-to-market at StrataMark Dynamic Solutions, said that client-side companies have an opportunity to use the attention they pay to listening to consumers as a marketing/branding opportunity. He also said that everyone in the industry, whether vendor or client, needs to sit in the respondent’s seat to experience the research process from their perspective.
  • Tracy Hampton, senior vice president research services at Visa, said it’s critical for the industry to consider how respondents want to be contacted and take that into consideration. But that raises the question of how to marry different methods and still get comparable data. Indeed, as Michelle Salazar, vice president, global brand and business research at McDonald’s, said, new methods/technologies may be helpful in engaging consumers but they pose a problem for companies that have longstanding tracking studies. A switch to a new approach not only takes time but also may make years of historical data less valuable once continuity is lost.

Group effort

All involved - the organizers, the speakers and the attendees who fired pointed questions at those on the dais - deserve thanks for bringing the conversation out into the open. It’s good that every industry faction was represented because it will take a group effort to find solutions to cooperation-related problems.

While some of the factors affecting response rates are out of the industry’s control, not all of them are, and I think the industry should certainly take charge in the areas that it does control, namely by rigorously imposing limits on survey length (and being honest with consumers about completion times - don’t tell them a survey should take them 15 minutes when you know it’s likely double that), working hard to make participating in research as fun and interesting as possible, repeatedly thanking respondents for their time, and seizing every opportunity to communicate research’s valuable role in giving consumers a direct influence on the products and services they use.

Take ownership

In the past, the task of handling these types of thorny issues understandably fell squarely on the shoulders of the industry associations. But one of the main takeaways of the Chicago conference was a wide agreement that the process of dealing with the problem must be a joint effort of client-side researchers and research vendors - a gratifying outcome. I was happy to see the client and vendor camps take ownership, as I think the associations are sometimes leaned upon too heavily when it comes to solving the industry’s woes.

I realize the association ranks are made up of those very same research clients and vendors but my hunch is that a client/vendor-led effort might have more impact or capture more awareness than one that’s solely association-driven. I think there is a sizable portion of the research-using marketing community who feel that associations only deal with arcane topics and therefore may tune out what the industry bodies have to say. But if, for example, a marketing or consumer insights exec from Well-Respected Large Company X started talking about respondent cooperation in a public forum, those people might be more inclined to listen.

Further, it only makes sense for the practitioners to take the lead. For they are the ones hiring the vendors and writing and commissioning the surveys that respondents choose to complete or not complete. They need to be aware of (and be made aware of) the issues surrounding respondent cooperation and work with their vendors and their peers (and their industry’s associations) to find solutions to cooperation-related problems before it’s too late.