Editor’s note: Jake Wolff is managing director, The Americas, at market research firm Cint’s New York office.
One of my favorite parts of the insights world is the idea sharing culture we have created. Whether it be through blogs, LinkedIn, conferences – or conversation among colleagues, clients and competitors – there is a path to understanding what is front of mind for those we know and trust to be ahead of the curve. Right now a lot of the conversations I have been a part of center around efficiency. It’s a broad topic that touches the insights space and specifically the supply chain relationships in multiple ways. The good news is there are plenty of improvements to be made.
One key driver of inefficiency that I see being solved in the near future is incidence rate (IR)-based pricing. Whether it be engineers developing algorithms to connect project statistics to perceived value, project managers pulling levers in systems or even in the case of some transactions where a project stops with required PM and sales back and forth – too much time and effort go into a project ending with both sides feeling a fair correlation between IR and CPI was achieved. For what many of us make into a complex issue, the core of the inefficiency is simple: current supply methods struggle to match the right answer with the right question and someone needs to fit the bill of the extra work. The resulting issue has been a pricing pressure and change in buyer behavior toward current pricing models, when in reality this doesn’t hit the root of the problem.
So what needs to happen for an efficient supply chain to exist without the need for IR-based pricing? For now, I’d like to focus on two specific areas that should have massive benefits.
The first: changing the perception of what a viable respondent pool looks like. As platforms bring new technologies to a space previously dominated by expensive, inefficient sourcing methods, we will see the available respondent pool grow to essentially anyone who can get online. I firmly believe within 24 months we will see a tech platform with access to 100 million plus active global consumers. It will only multiply from there.
The second major swing is event-triggered targeting. Insight seekers will begin to take advantage of the new tools available to them: viable mobile solutions, beacons, cookies, social media, enhanced access to their customer base, etc. They will no longer need to sit in a room and come up with a cluster of profiling attributes that come together and give them what they think makes the proper audience. Instead they will use technology to track the digital journey of both customers and non-customers, grabbing real time insights at key points in the process. The data will be more relevant as researchers will be tapping into the right person in real time, and the pricing will have nothing to do with how statistically unique that person is compared to the general population.
When you combine these factors among others, it is viable to imagine technology eliminating the need to have varying supply costs. This would enable the entire supply chain to operate in a more efficient, transparent and fluid environment.