In any specialized industry, the publications and other media outlets that serve the members of that industry both drive and reflect the conversations that occur among its various constituencies. It’s no different in marketing research. At Quirk’s, we feel it’s our job to keep our ear to the ground or our finger in the wind (pick the anatomical metaphor that works best for you) to ensure readers are up-to-date on what’s happening and aware of what’s coming.
Truth be told, we’ve always fallen more on the "reflect" side than the "drive" side, as Quirk’s Founder Tom Quirk viewed the publication’s role, when he started it in 1986, as a vehicle for promoting the use and understanding of marketing research, in all its forms, rather than as a personal soapbox for advancing his own professional agenda.
Still, we certainly take an active role in framing and curating discussions that are important for the industry. And with that comes the acknowledgement that we may, through the articles we write and content we publish, at times prattle on about subjects longer than we perhaps should. So, to make sure we are meeting our readers’ needs, and to give others in the industry food for thought, we posed twin open-ends as part of our 2016 study. One asked for topics that readers are tired of hearing about and the other for topics they feel demand more attention and discussion.
Which topics could people use a break from? Big data topped the list – no surprise there, right? It was the most-cited topic, by a wide margin, distantly followed by mobile research, gamification, social media research, neuroscience and Millennials. A sampling of other overexposed subjects includes:
"Survey Monkey and its ease of use."
"New ‘hot’ research techniques which are a whole lot of sizzle and not much steak."
"I’m tired of vendors touting new and unproven research tools or methodologies. Just because something is new and cool doesn’t make it helpful with decision-making. It’s dangerous to bet your billion-dollar business on unproven things. I’m open to new things if they can be proven to be sound and valuable."
"Tired of hearing that the market research industry needs to innovate. What does this even mean anymore? Has anyone in the MR world done truly innovative work lately?"
"Earning a ‘seat at the table.’"
"Re-branding the insights industry."
"I’m tired of the topic: ‘Market research is out-of-touch, out-of-date and irrelevant.’"
"Telling a story with data. It’s just another way of saying be concise, to the point and interesting in the way you present research findings."
"NPS, Millennials vs. Baby Boomers (... don’t even know what happened to Gen X...swallowed up!?). Millennials in general!"
"‘The Customer Experience.’"
"Big data and predictive modeling are useless. Actual data source and the analytical tools (mathematical methodology and software used) used are of more interest, as well as live and recent robust examples of impact and success." What’s being overlooked? More than a few B2B researchers said they are tired of living in a B2C researchers’ world. There were multiple expressions of angst over declining response rates and what to do about them. A few NPS-haters chimed in, naturally. But in general, the comments on the topics deserving more attention truly ran the gamut. MR vendors, conference organizers and media outlets, take special note:
"More innovative but effective question formats (e.g., q’s need to be simpler on mobile but what are actually some good ideas where you can get a lot of learnings from a q but it’s still easy for consumers to answer?)."
"Text analytics – technology has advanced and makes this much easier. Would like to hear more about sentiment analysis using text analytics."
"It’s all good. I like to hear about it all. I don’t yet see how the facial coding and biometrics will help us, so I guess you can say I need to see more discussion about it. Behavioral econ may be a bit old for a ‘trending topic’ but I’m probably behind the curve and need to learn more about this."
"Innovative in-person research questions and studies. Does not have to be a brand-new methodology but perhaps different approach or way of asking."
"Data visualization and storytelling. Or at least vendors need to be aware of these topics."
"Passive measurement techniques, biometric and neuro methodologies."
"How to integrate research into agile development methods. The role of MR compared to VOC, data analytics, etc. Is statistical reliability relevant anymore?"
"Feedback about good and bad vendors for different industries and types of research. Is there a star-rating system that insights professionals can fill out about different vendors? Would love to know who I should go to for work in different industries/methodologies."
"How are new research methodologies being validated as accurate and effective? Is anyone doing postmortem work to understand if the research proved to be a good predictive tool?"
"Creative deliverables. Why are NO suppliers making more of an effort to produce deliverables that are aligned to current business needs? (OK that’s half-true. They say they do but in my experience, it is still a fight to get it done. Only one supplier I know of has done this successfully and it has not been for all types of deliverables.) Slide decks featuring a series of charts – NOT HELPFUL. I spend almost as much time cleaning up decks as I would have spent if I just created them myself from scratch. Digestible, clean, straightforward information – TOTALLY HELPFUL. Research partners need to allocate more resources to clean, elegant deliverables that provide absolute clarity to business stakeholders. Anyone want to start a new research company with me, called ‘Kick-A** Deliverables’?? I’m serious, call me."
"Journey-mapping, in particular how to incorporate the customers’ perspectives. How to get beyond talking about infrastructure and data management regarding big data and get to predictive and prescriptive analytics. Practical aspects of storytelling. (Have already heard about building a story arc.)"
"Managing research departments in an era of DIY research where others in the company do their own surveys incorrectly."
"The value of immersion, especially on the front end of innovation. Crowdsourcing information versus traditional research techniques, especially as it relates to tracking data such as IRI/Nielsen. Over-surveying – with the software today, anyone can write and deploy a survey so there’s a lot of bad research being conducted. I think it’s going to be the death of good surveys."
"How to *not* present a databook as a report."
"Stopping the use of NPS. It should not be used as a single metric, it’s a nightmare to model and tells you nothing about what you need to fix."
"How to make the most of the data you have. What is truly an ‘insight’ versus a ‘finding’ or simply validating something a client already knew. Go back to the old discussion: How can meaningful, relevant action be identified in the research being done? And why are MR partners so bad at this? Nearly 20 years in this industry and MR companies still struggle to deliver user-ready reports and deliverables. It seems clients are always stuck doing considerable ‘rework’ before they can use whatever the MR company gives them. Stop trying to innovate and get back to core basics: quality, true insights and truly helping clients address business issues."
"Behavioral economics – realizing that asking people things is dangerous in terms of actually predicting what they will do!"
"The further development of well-proven techniques that really connect with the subconscious of the consumers to even better understand what triggers an action and WHY. We need to bring back again more WHY techniques."
"Not sure. Sorry, not much help here. It’s the end of the day. I think I’m fried."
As Ron Burgundy would say: Thank you for your honesty.