Editor’s note: Ron Sellers is president, Grey Matter Research, Phoenix.

I just received a question from a client: “What are your thoughts on whether conducting brand perceptions research is a good or bad idea at this time?”

No kids in school. No sports. No going to the dentist, church, the office… or pretty much anywhere for most of us. Life seems on hold at the moment due to COVID-19. Should market research be any different? Is it better to move ahead with studies, or postpone them?

We need to view this from three different angles:

  • Can you get responses to your studies? 
  • Can you get valid responses to your studies from valid respondents?
  • Can you get meaningful responses to your studies, in a way that will help you make decisions?

Can I get responses to my studies?

Obviously some methodologies are out the window at the moment – in-person focus groups and in-store intercepts just won’t be happening. But so much research is done at a distance anyway, from online qualitative to phone surveys and online panel research. Are people responding? 

Absolutely. With more people home (either working or furloughed), response rates are actually up. There’s really no problem getting respondents. Consider the following comments:

  • Online – Lance Hoffman from Opinion Access says, “Studies are finishing and people are coming in much more quickly. For instance, on a monthly tracker we run, we usually need until the very end of the month to complete because there are geographic quotas, some of which are small areas. In March, we completed with several days to spare in some of the smallest markets, which is unprecedented in the four years we've been running the study.” 
  • Phone – Joey Harmon from Harmon Research reports that phone response rates are higher now than he’s seen in a while. He cites one U.S. weekly tracking study they conduct which was getting response rates of 8-9% prior to the pandemic, but slowly rose to 14% for the last two weeks of March. That’s a 65% increase in responsiveness, which also decreases the possibility of response bias. Hoffman agrees, noting increases in live contact rates of over 200% on some landline on jobs, and 20-30% on cell phone jobs.
  • Qualitative recruiting – Sharon O’Connor from Dynamic Research notes that people are more willing to talk now than in the past. “With respondents at home they are a ‘captive audience.’ We have found that they are very eager to speak to anyone at this point. We even had to caution our recruiters to keep it brief, since some people want to chat about what they had for breakfast or what the dog was doing that day.”

Can I get valid responses from valid respondents?

Because phone is random probability sampling and response rates are holding steady or better during the crisis, respondent quality should be no different than it was four months ago. Same with qualitative recruiting – good recruiters are able to weed out poor quality respondents today just as they could before we even knew what an N95 mask was. But what about online panel?

Panel respondent quality was an issue even before the pandemic. Grey Matter Research is about to release the report Still More Dirty Little Secrets of Online Panels that details the many problems with panel respondent quality. It stands to reason that if panelists were blowing through as many surveys as they can for the incentives, cheating in order to qualify for studies, employing survey bots to rake in multiple incentive payments and/or failing to pay attention to questions before the pandemic, these behaviors could be even worse now that those small incentive payments are more important to people. 

Quality control in panel studies was crucial before COVID-19, but now it’s even more crucial. If you’re doing the right kind of quality control, things shouldn’t be any worse now than they were before the virus.

Can I get meaningful responses?

Here’s where things get tricky. My gut instinct after many years in the consumer insights industry is that the answer will really depend both on the nature of the questions and on the product/service category. 

For example, with so much financial uncertainty, anything measuring purchase intent could be significantly impacted. So could pricing studies, particularly for big-ticket items. Social questions such as intent to volunteer or donate to charity may show very different results. And of course asking about recent behaviors like online shopping, eating out or attending worship services will show major differences from “normal” data.

The impact could also be substantial in certain brand categories (bathroom tissue and airlines come to mind right away). Brand perceptions in other categories such as banking, vehicles and auto parts probably aren’t heavily impacted – for instance, people may be less likely to purchase a vehicle in the coming year, but I doubt brand awareness or perceptions suddenly changed for Audi, Citibank or AutoZone. Has the coronavirus radically changed what consumers are looking for in a 4K television? Brand awareness of New Balance or T-Mobile? Whether they listen to country music, are satisfied with their electric utility, think Frito-Lay is a good corporate citizen, or consider themselves Southern Baptist?

The other element to consider is the extent to which this crisis isn’t a quick blip on the radar, but a long-term issue or even a new normal. What if sheltering in place and social distancing continue into July or October? What if the lockdown is lifted and deaths start increasing? If we knew this was a three-month mess and life would get back to normal, I could argue that most research should be postponed. But COVID-19 may have a much longer impact. Even with all this, business is still going on. How long can you delay important plans and decisions? 

Not only that, but if people are more aware of a brand such as Purell or 3M today as a result of all the coronavirus news, will that increased awareness go away in a month or three, or will there be permanent changes to brand awareness and perceptions? No one knows.

Making better decisions 

The approach Grey Matter Research is taking is that American society has been through various crises or social upheavals before – the Vietnam War, gas lines, stagflation, Y2K, hanging chads, 9/11, the Great Recession, MAGA – and all of which impacted consumer sentiment and survey responses both then and since. As long as everyone involved in the research recognizes the study as a point-in-time measurement, and just what the point-in-time is, many studies are as relevant right now as they were four months ago, or as they will be four months from now. 

Any business thinking they can just postpone and get a more real measurement in a few months is likely fooling itself that things will soon return to the way they were. They probably won’t. At some point soon, business decisions will need to move forward, and if consumer insights aren’t being used to help, that will be a missed opportunity for making better decisions.