Is Market Research facing extinction? If we are to believe the tone of this month’s Research magazine article – World of Temptation – then the death knoll has well and truly been sounded by the online entrepreneurs behind the likes of Survey Monkey, Google Ad Planner, and Vizu, which offer online data collection tools free of charge.
It’s true that these new online platforms are changing the landscape of data collection – possibly forever – and certainly offer an alluringly cheap alternative to traditional market research during the recession. Plus the article rightly raises the concern that these online tools can only be offered free as they ignore the reassuring checks and balances built into traditional research, such as correct survey sampling, questionnaire and research design.
But increasingly it is becoming difficult to bemoan the use of these alternatives as we as an industry are moving into an era of imperfect data. It is time to realise that gone are the days of the Gold Standard market research project – too often the industry must accept trade-offs between budgetary constraints and ever shortening timetables against the need for robust results.
This does not necessarily mean, however, that we are on an inevitable decline into extinction, outmoded against free online services. Rather, perhaps, these new upstarts are offering just the right change agent for Market Research to evolve. If, as appears to be the case, we are increasingly unable to compete effectively then we must adapt; offering something better. And this, we most certainly can do.
As this blog has already suggested, we must become more effective at going beyond the data, of truly offering added value. What clients, free online tools and services lack, is an understanding of how to put research together, how to assimilate survey data with qualitative evidence and existing information to create a clear, accurate picture of the market and the consumer. This, at the end of the day, is what the client truly wants from data. Not the numbers, but advice on the way forward for the business.
We, as an industry, must become proficient at conducting research as an investigative journey, supported by conceptual frameworks, rather than remaining a dinosaur of the data dump, periodically offering up survey tables at the foot of the client’s door adrift from their business objectives – a dearer, more protracted substitute for the temptations of online.
This, surely, will be the real challenge for the industry: upskilling newcomers to research on how to piece together disparate pieces of imperfect data to create an holistic understanding and, most importantly, know how to deliver this with impact, framing the choices for the client going forward. This, you’ll agree, is a world apart from the survey monkey.
Patrick Young
Tags: corporate storytelling, DVL Smith Ltd, google ad planner, invesigative journey, Market Research, Patrick Young, Research magazine, Seven Frame thinking, Survey Monkey