This past week here at Quirk’s we had a meeting with the firm that administers our 401(k) program. We all know the stock market roller coaster can be very stress-inducing and it is extremely difficult to separate our own emotions from the investments we make. When the stock market is rising, individual investors tend to get in too late, loading up just as the market has likely peaked and is heading for a fall. And when it’s declining, these same investors tend to pull out too late, hoping against hope that an upswing will allow them to salvage their losses. People are also prone to tossing reason out the door and buying shares in a firm even if its fundamentals and price relative to earnings are out of whack (remember the hype over Krispy Kreme?).
During the meeting, our financial advisor made a really good point that applies to market research as well: the entire reason to hire an outside advisory group is that they spend all their time and energy evaluating – dispassionately – the data, in this case the fundamentals of companies and stocks. Their decisions are made based on this information and not on emotion.
As marketers and researchers we can be biased for or against a product or service our company is developing without even realizing it. I’ve heard many stories of the ways that internal politics can dictate how a research project is conducted and how results are presented.
Avoiding the problems caused by departmental friction or other internal problems is one real advantage to hiring an outside research firm. Whether a project is conducted internally or externally, however, it never hurts to remember that the goal in research is not to let our emotions and biases get the best of us but to let the findings speak for themselves.