Editor's note: Matt Warta is CEO of Denver research company GutCheck. He can be reached at matt@gutcheckit.com. This article appeared in the June 11, 2012, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.    

 

We are living in the age of real time. Most information is easily and instantly accessible even to the average consumer via a computer or wireless device. Access to real-time data has enabled myriad valuable services that tens or even hundreds of millions of people use every day. Prime examples are Google, Facebook, Twitter and even lesser-known but emerging applications such as Pulse, IntoNow and TripIt. What is most noteworthy, however, is how each of these could potentially create significant industry change - and how other incumbent providers in those industries will adapt.
 
If we take a look back to the early 1980s, we can see how real-time information disrupted and changed an entire market: the world of financial services. A little company then called Innovative Marketing Systems merged with 20 other related companies to change the way people accessed and processed information.
 
That company is now called Bloomberg.
 
Back then, anyone on the buying or selling side of the business relied on printed reports; news services and articles; and trading-floor data streams. A team of people was required to piece it all together and make sense of it. This was both costly and time-consuming and it meant decision makers received latent information.
 
Michael Bloomberg saw a way to cut out the wasted time and costs spent to assemble and decipher information into a simple view that a decision maker could access in real time. Not only did Bloomberg's vision fuel 20 percent year-over-year growth for the financial services data industry but it forever changed the thinking of users: Bloomberg subscribers now expect that they can make decisions in real time, while saving their own time and money along the way.

   

A similar situation

 

Like the story of financial services, the market research industry some 30 years later is in a similar situation. More information than ever is available but practitioners are struggling to quickly access insights and keep up with the fast pace of making business decisions.   

   

There are signs, however, that a shift to a real-time environment is in the works.
 
The seeds of this shift can be seen in the quantitative space over the last decade. As respondents became increasingly accessible via e-mail, the use of online survey technology blossomed from next to nothing in 2000 to over 50 percent today. At the same time, more traditional methods such as paper surveys have faded.
 
Interestingly, online technology in qualitative market research has not made a material dent in terms of percentage of studies completed. Why? For one, respondent accessibility in the qualitative world is still a major issue. The cost of recruiting a subject and the amount of time required to obtain that respondent for online qualitative sessions rival those of traditional, offline approaches like focus groups. This means no breakthrough yet on the ability to make real-time decisions.   

 

Why should you care?

 

So why should you care? After all, qualitative work is still getting done every day, the same way it has been completed over the last several decades. It continues to grow (a $5+ billion industry as of 20101) and is growing at a slightly higher rate than the research market in general.
 
One reason that people should care is that more and more clients are demanding it. Like Bloomberg's subscribers, today's clients expect that qualitative research (and research as a whole) should move faster to keep up with decisions. And like just like Bloomberg, who saw an opportunity in financial services, we see in online qualitative research an industry that will evolve as people begin to appreciate the opportunity of real-time insights in a way that they may not yet today.
 
To be clear, we don't predict that bringing qualitative research into a real-time environment will replace traditional methods. Instead, it has the potential to create new ways of gathering information - making it possible to deliver light-speed insights to marketing and business team members. It has the opportunity to make research more important in an organization; allows the organization as a whole to save time and money along the way; and makes the researcher look like a hero for doing what was impossible before.
 
At GutCheck, we have seen numerous examples of clients deploying real-time qualitative techniques to add value in their organizations. The following are just a few examples.

 

Product optimization  

 

Product teams are coming under increasing pressure to launch - or alternatively, kill - products faster. Traditional research models are being squeezed when development- and launch-cycle times need to be cut in half. One specific client example was a major toothpaste manufacturer needing to reduce that time from almost two years traditionally to 10 months.
 
From a research perspective, the challenge was how to move fast without sacrificing quality. The interesting thing for us to watch is how real-time qualitative research was used to iterate on the fly throughout the entire product development cycle. Customer feedback was in the hands of concept designers in a matter of hours. Then the designers could make changes and researchers could take those changes and field another round of feedback.
 
The change in the research approach helped reduce cycle times from weeks to days. This is a perfect example of technology keeping up with a business trend and elevating the importance of research.  

 

Social media listening

 

Many marketers now rely on social media listening to gain real-time, high-level insights. Because these insights are wrapped in brevity, this approach often begets more questions and traditional qualitative tools can't keep pace with the fire hose of information coming from social media.
 
Real-time qualitative research can help provide context to these high-level insights and in close proximity to when the original insight was derived. In a similar fashion, qualitative trackers can now be an accessible addition (in terms of both time and money) to routine quantitative trackers. 

Expanding research usage

 

Again, if we look back to the Bloomberg example, we see that Bloomberg and the other providers in financial services data expanded the industry by 20 percent per year through the innovation of real-time information. This is not to be overlooked.
 
In comparison, we occasionally hear comments about the role of research diminishing in a new age of real-time information. We feel those people don't appreciate the opportunities that change will bring to the research industry as a whole.
 
So why are we so bullish on changes in technology helping grow the market?
 
1. Missed opportunities 

 

We hear clients (on corporate insights teams and agencies) that have to say no to projects because there isn't time to get things done. With real-time methods, their nos can turn into yeses. That equates to more revenue on the agency side and more projects on the corporate side.

 

2. Increased relevancy of research 

 

When marketing organizations understand that they can (and should) check in with customer audiences before launching that next Web site, print ad, package design, etc., research will be needed more than ever. We expect this to elevate research to greater importance within organizations and make agencies that can deliver real-time research more desirable.

 

Initial seeds of innovation 

 

Our view of the world comes from a purely qualitative perspective. In that space, just in the last year of working with real-time technology and engaging with clients, we are heartened by the initial seeds of innovation taking root. We feel that product optimization and social media listening represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to possibilities for real-time research in the qualitative world.  

 

We envision a world, not different from financial services, where business leaders and decision makers throughout marketing and insights teams will have real-time technology and information at their beck and call to shape decision-making, as well as real-time access to respondents at any time.  

 

Footnotes

 

1 ESOMAR Global Market Research 2011 Industry Report