Editor’s note: Editor’s note: David Day is president and CEO of global research company Lightspeed GMI, London.
With the continued rise of online and mobile research, the lines between market research
and marketing are blurring. Consumer surveys are becoming part of the communications and marketing process. As tech providers enter the market place with online survey tools and brands dip into big data, is there a danger that traditional market research could be side-lined if it fails to adapt to the new status quo?
My view is that in this time of rapid change, market research companies need to decide who they are and what they stand for.
It’s never been easier for brands to survey consumers and then send them targeted media. Many media owners provide an opportunity for brands to gather their own research, passive or otherwise. Online survey software companies offer low cost options to companies who have never conducted traditional market research. So it’s no wonder that some brands now see surveys as an increasingly important part of the communication process, key to their image and marketing. The distance between the points where research is taken and where the consumer is marketed to is getting shorter. Research has of course always supported advertising but the new technology is closing that gap.
Some brands are moving from using traditional market research programs to relying increasingly on good enough information from a snapshot of social media or off-the-shelf surveys to inform their marketing decisions. While additional data sources are undoubtedly valuable and should be embraced, it needs to be remembered that they are usually skewed to existing or past customers or customers of a particular channel and unlikely to give a complete picture of the market.
Then there are the self-styled market research companies who are, to all intents and purposes, marketing companies. They follow up their research with targeted marketing. This could be damaging to the market research industry, deterring people from engaging in legitimate market research in the future.
Such trends could have enormous implications for the market research industry and the future health of market research itself. We need to remember that more than ever that consumers call the shots, engaging with brands on multiple devices in ways completely impossible only a few years ago. If the market research industry does not rise to meet the new challenges of online and mobile, if it does not adapt its approach, then poorer substitutes will fill the gap and everybody will lose.
So how do we keep up and stay relevant?
Improve mobile research
We must never forget the fundamental objective of market research – to identify consumers’ needs, find out how consumers feel about a product or service in that context and decide how best to market those new products and services to them.
We should take advantage of the huge amount of information now available from every step of the consumer journey, filtering it, analyzing it and using it to inform intelligent and targeted market research that’s sensitive to the needs of consumers.
Even today, too many researchers want to exclude mobile respondents from surveys as if they are different when in actuality including them is more representative of today’s consumers. Mobile is not just the future. In the developed world well over half of the economically active population owns a smartphone, with half of Internet access taking place on mobile. In the next few years the number of people taking surveys on smartphones and other portable devices will rise. Market researchers need to ensure that all surveys work on the full range of screen sizes available. It is the respondent that chooses the method of completing a survey, so designing it to be easy and fun to complete – as well mobile optimized – is moving from a nice to have to being a critical research ingredient. We need to ensure the experience of giving feedback is as fast, painless and rewarding for consumers as possible, as we compete for their attention online.
We need to remember respondents are just like us! They have little time and lots to do. So the goal is to make surveys short, engaging and fun without asking redundant questions.
Use social media
Conducting market research on social media has to be approached with care. The new social media site Ello offers a free service with the ability to pay for features that users might want and promises that the site will never make money by selling ads or user data. The fact that people are signing up to such sites shows they have serious concerns about privacy. As researchers we must be at the vanguard: aware of and sensitive to people’s privacy issues and up to date with privacy laws, which very considerably around the world.
So what does the future hold for market research? As brands become more responsive to consumers in real time, is traditional market research in danger of being side-lined?
I don’t believe so. As vast quantities of rich and detailed information is collected, brands will turn to the expertise of market research companies to help them to make sense of it, to filter it and to follow up with the right questions in order to provide high quality, actionable insights. We could even find ourselves occupying a more central role, pitching research that will engage consumers, working more closely with the CEOs and marketing directors of companies.
As long as we can adapt to engage with consumers online and mobile, the market research industry should be more relevant than ever.