From shifting budgets to new research goals, marketing researchers throughout the industry are working to find the right tools to take on 2017’s projects.
In the last few issues of Quirk’s Marketing Research Review’s Before You Go series, “10 minutes with a corporate researcher” – a Q&A-style conversation between Quirk’s and client-side market researchers –we asked several of your peers to share details on the methodologies they hoped to focus on in 2017. These responses, along with those from a two additional client-side researchers I reached out to last month, provide us with a quick glimpse of the methods researchers are turning to and why.
As companies – and consumers – evolve
Being a full month into 2017, I feel it is safe to say that the push to evolve is still very much alive in the marketing research industry. Cindy Dumlao of Wrigley may have said it best in a 2016 interview with Quirk’s, “Keeping up-to-date with trends, technology, new behaviors, new locations and how consumers are interacting with our products is always fascinating. We’re constantly evolving and our tools need to evolve as well.”
Several of the researchers I spoke to regarding their plans for 2017 are turning to new methodologies (new to the industry or just to the individual’s team) along with new ways of thinking about marketing research:
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which we can use emotional response interviewing or techniques that allow us to gauge an emotional response to our Ads tools so we can get accurate readings on what is helpful and where we can work to alleviate frustration in the process. This has been in the works for a long time and I think the technology is at a more reliable place now.” Tara Franz, Facebook
“One of my more exciting new approaches recently was a project where we mined Web conversations among consumers and professionals of all types. These conversations were sourced from across thousands of online communities, from the very large and well-known home improvement communities like Houzz and GardenWeb to specific online boards such as PaintTalk. Conversations are recorded in a natural, unprompted and typically anonymous way, which helps minimize the biases introduced by surveys and focus groups. It allows you to dig invisibly into people’s experiences and unmet needs without affecting the results. You are more or less a traditional ethnographer but in a digital world. By using algorithms steeped in linguistic content analysis of the conversations we are able to more clearly distill insights that traditional approaches had only hinted at.” Larry L. Musetti, Benjamin Moore & Co.
“We are planning to spend more time and effort on neuroscience in 2017. We have been using hybrid methodologies for ad tests, such as combining EEG and eye-tracking for the last two years. This year we’ll try adding facial coding to this package. We have already conducted three neuro ad-tests in the last two weeks. We are adding more bullets to our neuroscience learnings package each week. Implementing implicit reaction time tests for brand image attribute tracking is another idea we have in mind.” Sili Hacihanefioglu, Turkcell
Tried and true
And while many marketing researchers are focusing on new techniques, others like Kerry Sette of Voya Financial and Andy Whittaker of WeddingWire remind us that many client-side researchers are still turning to the tried-and-true, incorporating new techniques on a case-by-case basis:
“When it comes to trying new methodologies, I always want to know the benefits over other tried-and-true methods, especially if there is an additional cost involved. That being said, we have been incorporating more and more non-conscious techniques within both our qualitative and quantitative research. … I’m also always looking for new, innovative ways to use older methods, like utilizing Bayesian network modeling in helping to determine the prioritization of messaging in advertising.” Kerry Sette, Voya Financial
“First, more mobile data collection. As consumers are spending more time on smartphone and tablet devices, we want to be there gathering more data. Additionally, I think there is going to be a return to some focus on traditional qual methods. While the rise of big data has created many opportunities to gather micro-behavior online, qual is still extremely effective in understanding the ‘why’ behind key actions.” Andy Whittaker, WeddingWire
If you’d like to learn more about the state of the industry from the client side, watch for new Q&As in each issue of Quirk’s.