Editor’s note: Bel Parnell-Berry is a market intelligence analyst with ESOMAR.
ESOMAR’s annual Global Market Research (GMR) report, now in its 27th edition, examines market development and performance trends and incorporates interviews with industry insiders and experts to zoom in on specific topics and issues impacting the marketing research industry.
One such issue is the role of the corporate researcher, which is evolving almost as fast as the industry itself. New companies are contributing data to the corporate arena but do not necessarily define themselves as researchers or are presenting and processing data in radically new ways. In the latter cases, some established and traditional companies, who believe research should be done in a certain way,1 view firms such as Sensum as muddying market research waters. As a result, traditional methods and skill sets are not always considered to match up to end-client expectations, leading to questions around the value of research and thus a reduced confidence in research’s ability to make valid and valued contributions.
This is a development, which has (primarily) become evident in the FMCG sector – traditionally the biggest buyer of research – and the one wherein speed of information and thus speed-to-market is generally accepted as the key competitive advantage. There is evermore pressure upon corporate researchers to provide quick, simple results to clients rather than reaching for more traditional methodological practices.
This particular factor in the evolution of corporate research’s role and value within the industry was elaborated on in a Quirk’s article by Jake Wolff (“The pressure for faster insights in MR”), where he commented that: “The application of technology in the market research industry, coupled with the need for speed and thirst for immediately-actionable insights, means that a large and growing group of MR clients are emerging that do not fit within the traditional MR model.”
There are instances where such research data is utilized to post-validate company performance rather than explore new opportunities or guide corporate decision-making. This reduced value perception of research has led to the corporate researcher position becoming a fragile one – and there are many recent examples of the research function being the first to suffer from layoffs and headcount reduction, when company performance falters. This is somewhat ironic, as one would assume research would be the very vehicle to help such companies in finding ways to reverse their faltering performance. But in this context, researchers do need to “sell” their value proposition in a much more efficient way.
Conservative approaches to the business, combined with the changing nature of the industry and added pressures to evolve quickly, are at the heart of what certain professionals consider to be a crisis in market research today.
As research becomes more global, as legislation becomes increasingly restrictive across jurisdictions and competitive advantage becomes more prized, and as technology continues to advance, the role of the corporate researcher will actually become more complex – but also significantly more important!
Technological advances do make data more available and allow for quicker, faster, DIY solutions to research but can a machine determine what is “right”? After all, two ways of asking the same question will produce vastly different results; will a salesperson know which one to ask the machine to use? As important and as valuable as big data is, it requires context and saliency to be meaningful; will a marketer understand which data sources are most relevant to the problem at hand?
Many would suggest “yes” and would support the (rather worrying) idea that market research is just a process to be automated, rendering researchers themselves obsolete. But if this were true, then surely we could automate entire accounting departments, as they are only adding numbers, right? In reality, we don’t see entire accounting departments being removed from operating businesses and we DO see a wide variety of new players contributing new methods that record and report consumer and citizen insights. These new players are discovered and introduced to their company by the corporate researcher, as part of their role is now to seek out the latest methods for generating true insight.
Interestingly, the last five GMR reports have shown that qualitative research has grown as fast as – if not faster than – the overall market, implying that even within an industry that asks for faster, cheaper, automated results, there is still room for complex, exploratory methods. Causality is NOT easy to understand!
It is striking that 11 percent of all market research spending goes to fund qualitative offline group discussions2 and while we should note that not all countries submit their method-split data to the GMR, the consistency of this average is very telling. Furthermore, qualitative research may not be the traditional route for many corporate researchers but it is a route nonetheless that could help them underline their unique importance to a business and remain relevant and compelling within the commercial arena in spite of the rise of the kind of automation that often better suits the tight deadlines of certain firms.
Regionally – while the research communities from emerging markets are literally changing the face, language and culture of corporate research – certain markets remain the bedrock of growth and innovation. The U.S. has been a pioneer of MR in many regards, from the consumerism boom of the 1950s to the huge, aforementioned technological transformations in research due to online developments. The U.S. was the biggest single market in the industry in the last GMR and regained the leading growth position from APAC (specifically China).
Will this year’s report consolidate that performance? Or will the U.S. growth – as new figures suggest – be slowing down? African and Latin-American regions continue to expand. These regions are becoming increasingly valuable for companies to sustain their growth ambitions and thus corporate researchers will be needed for their expertise in guiding an improved understanding of these markets and their consumers.
These regions have long been high on ESOMAR’s agenda, due to the increasing influence and role they will play in the global arena in the years to come as well as the wealth of diverse perspectives and insights they are sure to provide. Methodologies and analytical processes may differ in certain locations due to limitations on technology, however this only serves to continue to show how important human market research continues to be in a global context.3
Lastly, corporate researchers have an important role to play in fostering the next generation; everyone involved in research is calling out to young researchers to join the industry and provide new blood, as the 2014 GMR’s Big Opportunities chapter illustrated.4 The chapter showed individuals in their early-to-mid-20s who are enjoying exciting and meaningful careers and appealed to their peers to get in on the action. Recent surveys showcase the market research industry and the best of what it has to offer to students and young professionals.5
From a practical perspective, market research needs young minds to stay on top of the fast-paced technological changes that junior researchers have grown up alongside. We accept that the attraction of working with a brand-name company tends to be favored above working with an agency but the corporate researcher is an important evangelist to extol the benefits of following a research career. Our profession recognizes the necessity of pumping fresh energy into the business in order to maintain momentum, inspiration and relevance. The same could be said with regard to the way we actually approach projects within the industry as well as how we allow ourselves to be viewed externally.
Despite any negative perceptions however, our market research industry itself continues to grow – according to topline figures published in the GMR last year – reiterating that corporate researchers have a uniquely important role and that there is a confirmed place for their skills. As with all professions, however, we should be open to evolving in a way that meets the new demands and approaches being presented to us. We can and should also do more to seek out the sectors actively valuing our knowledge and tools. In this way, we can continue to show our worth and rejuvenate what we have to offer. We clearly we have so much more to give.
REFERENCES
1. ESOMAR (2014) Global Market Research: An ESOMAR Industry Report. Amsterdam: ESOMAR, page 58.
2. Ibid, pages 122-123.
3. Ibid, pages 41-43.
4. Ibid, pages 64-70.
5. www.wearefringefactory.com/fringe