The folks at the Marketing Research Association assembled a dandy program last month in Boston for the organization’s annual conference. Attendance was up (way up!), most of the sessions I attended were SRO, and the general mood was one of optimism. Even a potentially gloomy program on the future of mall research provided some rays of sunshine.

In her fast-paced general session opener, Regina Lewis, director of brand and consumer insight at Allied Domecq, spoke on the critical role that marketing research played in helping Allied Domecq’s Dunkin’ Donuts unit roll out its line of lattés and cappuccinos.

To do battle against the Starbucks of the world, Dunkin’ Donuts sought to create and market a line of fancy coffee drinks at not-so-fancy prices. The firm’s success with customer involvement in the product development process has led to an interest in engaging customers to create new and improved feedback loops, Lewis said, with the goal of making customers “your advocates, your ear to the ground.”

Bernard Brenner, director of North America research and insights at Nokia, delivered a candid and similarly substantive look at how a well-known company is learning to change from being technology-focused to being consumer-focused. With cell phones now viewed as a commodity, Nokia has seen its share price slip. To drive future growth in such an environment and earn customer loyalty, the company is trying to become more benefit-driven rather than feature-driven.

On the research front, Brenner said the firm is moving more and more to the qualitative side of things. Whereas in 2000, 70 projects were conducted using quantitative methods, in 2004 70 qualitative projects are on tap. Even the nature of that qualitative is changing, from a reliance on focus groups to a preference for in-depth interviews. And with consumers seemingly growing accustomed to being interviewed, Brenner said Nokia is choosing observational and ethnographic studies to be able to watch what people do rather than what they say they do.

Brenner offered comments on what clients like Nokia want from their research providers (or should I say “partners”?):

  • They don’t want generalists. Suppliers must have some core competencies and must strive to understand the client’s business.
  • “Research drives technology, technology does not drive research.” In other words, make sure your flashy research product or methodology has some guts beneath its fancy sheen.
  • Size means nothing. Some of Nokia’s best relationships are with smaller research firms.
  • Nokia hires people, not companies. Brenner said they have followed a favorite moderator to three different firms.

These and other sentiments were echoed in a later session led by Harris Interactive’s Merrill Dubrow (who may want to ditch the research biz and tackle stand-up comedy) on client needs. Participants agreed that research providers need to include a solution along with any problems they identify through the research. It’s not enough to tell the client something is wrong; you have to tell them how to fix it.

RIP ROI?

During the obligatory “state of the industry” session (which rose above the norm thanks to a well-spoken line-up of panelists including Bob Lederer of RFL Communications and Simon Chadwick of Cambiar Consulting) Allstate’s Pablo Azar delivered a sentiment on return-on-investment (ROI) that I hope becomes more widely held: ROI doesn’t need to come from the marketing research itself but from the programs that marketing research supports. Too many folks, whether they be researchers or those who OK the purchase of research, are focused on finding ways to demonstrate the revenues generated by research, and I frankly think that’s the wrong way to look at it. A successful research project will likely not contribute directly to a company’s bottom line. But if the insights from that project lead to the launch of a successful new product, for example, then research’s contributions deserve to be recognized. That’s where the proof of ROI can be found.

This notion also came up during the presentation from the Marketing Science Institute’s Paul Root and Judy Melanson of Chadwick Martin Bailey. They talked about the results of focus groups with research directors and CEOs of client companies on the topic of measuring the value of research.

The consensus was that research needs to demonstrate a return but not necessarily a return on investment. That can take the form, the focus group respondents said, of making money on a new product or of saving money by “helping to kill bad ideas.” And the executives agreed that research ROI is difficult to measure anyway since, once the research is done, so many other decisions are made and departments are involved as a project progresses.

New life for old methods

During the state of the industry panel, Azar also had some interesting comments on Allstate’s use of phone research. In response to moderator Jon Last’s question on whether telephone research is dying, Azar said Allstate is looking carefully at how consumers have said they want to interact with the company. Filing an insurance claim, for example, is a private matter which customers prefer doing over the phone as opposed to online. So Allstate would likely conduct a survey on the claims process over the phone rather than online. The insurer still gets good results from its phone research, Azar said, and has actually seen a bit of a decline in responses to its Web-based studies.

Like phone research, mall research is another seemingly ailing facet of the industry. But owners of mall facilities and their clients aren’t ready to give up just yet. During an afternoon discussion, panelists offered tips to help facilities stay competitive. For example, rather than spending time responding to charges that mall research doesn’t stack up against online research, facility owners should focus on mall research’s strengths: it’s an inexpensive way to conduct face-to-face research among a broad cross-section of people (especially kids), and there are many clients who still prefer face-to-face for their studies; malls are great for product use tests, especially involving items requiring refrigeration; and as more facilities add high-speed Internet access, they become ideally equipped for concept testing. There may even be a new customer base for mall research: panelist Tammie Frost-Norton of Gantz Wiley Research said she has seen an occasional preference for mall research from international firms doing research in the U.S. because it more closely mirrors the door-to-door and other in-person methods used more readily overseas.

Beware the next wave?

James McQuivey of Forrester Research closed out the conference with a fascinating if chilling talk on the role of technology in the future of research. He cited Arbitron’s Portable People Meter as a prime example of what he called “next wave” technologies: basically passive methods of tracking the products we buy, media we consume, etc. Others include global positioning system (GPS) and radio frequency identification (RFID).

He sketched a vision of a not-too-distant future in which these types of technologies could be married to allow a kind of always-on monitoring of our consumption habits. He wasn’t advocating such a system; rather, his goal was to make the audience aware of what’s out there and what might be coming next so we can start forming answers to crucial questions. Such as, how much information do companies really need about their customers? Where is the line between monitoring and controlling?

McQuivey played a memorable clip from the film Minority Report in which Tom Cruise’s character, his identity established by ocular scanners, is bombarded by personalized holographic ads as he enters various stores. We’re not quite at that point, but with all of us happily toting cell phones and other microchip-bearing electronic devices, we’re not that far from it.

McQuivey didn’t have copies of his presentation to hand out to attendees but he made a point of telling us it was available online at www.forrester.com/mra. Appropriately enough, however, if you want to view it, you’ll have to complete a detailed registration form.