By Tiffany McNeil

Today I saw a man lying on the street.  He had on nice shoes and decent clothes and appeared to be holding something (an inhaler?) to his mouth.  He didn’t look homeless; he looked sick.  When I got closer, I realized it was a cell phone, but still.

“Are you ok?
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Can I help you in some way?”
“I’m not sure.”
“OK, what’s wrong?”
“Well, for starters, I just broke up with my girlfriend.  She kicked me out of the house, and I don’t know where to go.”

Ugh.  Honestly – that’s what I thought.  Ugh.  I said polite things, ensured he was not in need of medical care, told him that unfortunately I don’t know if there are any shelters nearby, wished him well.  In parting he said, “Thank you – you’re the only person who’s stopped.  But yes, medically, I’m fine.”

I spent the next 15 minutes or so processing this.  I am in no way willing to sit and listen to this poor chap’s problems.  I’m nice, but I’m not that nice.  That said, I can’t help but think that he left me with half of the sentence.  “Medically, I’m fine, but no, I’m not ok.”  This poor guy would rather be ill than be sad.

What does any of this have to do with work?  Well, as it happens, just last week I was thinking about how dramatic an influence emotions have in the workplace.  We do all kinds of silly crazy things to manage for the emotions of our counterparts and superiors.  I don’t know about you, but there are moments in my work life when I am completely livid.  (How can I do my job well if people don’t tell me what’s going on?  How could that person make me move a meeting and then not bother to show up?  That kind of hyperbolic stuff.)  I usually settle myself down before anyone notices, but honestly, I see much more drama at my relatively drama-free workplace than I ever do at home.

So, the story is a bit of a tangent, but I guess it just helped clarify my thinking on this.  I think where I landed is that emotions are important at work.  Not important in the “this guy will be mad – make sure you’re prepared” kind of way.  Just generally important.  I’m not the first to say that life’s too short to not enjoy your job.  I also think, though, that life’s too short to not care about it.

Thinking back over the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve delivered a lot of bad news.  I have recommended abandoning projects that were 7 years in the making.  I have told the creators of television programs that their ideas just plain didn’t work.  I’m not alone – we do this a lot in the insights world.  I’m sure you know what I mean.  Those days are the kind of days that loom murkily ahead from the moment you get that “err. . . not going as well as hoped” email until that share-out meeting is over – and the time in between, for me at least, is ridden with clenched jaw days and anxiety dream nights (you know –  I’m late! I forgot something! Those dreams.)

During those times, I always tell myself that it’s just work – it’s just a project – you have data on your side – don’t worry. . . and all of that is completely true.  BUT, turns out it really matters.  I SHOULD dread it.  If I care about my job, if I’m passionate about my work and my teams, then this is truly upsetting stuff.  Also, in my experience, bad news in particular tends to elicit anxiety, defensiveness, and finger-pointing even among the most level-headed colleagues.  Guess what?  They care, too.

So, what’s my point?  I think it goes back to my soap box about authenticity (I wrote about that once before, and I like pretending I’m some sort of blog celebrity.  Work with me here).  Emotions matter.  ESPECIALLY at work, they matter.  I sometimes feel that we pretend they don’t.  Or at least that they shouldn’t.  And I’m not so sure.  Yes, the finger-pointing and defensiveness is counter-productive, but the fact is it comes from a place of genuine passion – of making decisions and taking risks and truly believing that what we’re doing makes sense and will achieve the desired outcome.  The only way around that is to stop caring, and my suspicion is that ambivalence only begets boredom and mediocrity.

A couple years ago, I found myself really hating my job.  As one does on occasion (for the record, I LOVE my job).  This continued for a few weeks. . . and I’m not sure when it clicked, but it did – it just clicked: I was sad.  I was sad because I had recommended we stop working on something.  I didn’t think we had the ability to make it work either technically or financially, and so we stopped working on it.  The team got rotated onto different projects, the momentum stopped, and the sense of common purpose?  Gone.

It’s depressing.  And it should be.  This empathy for our partners and colleagues and this passion for our projects – all this emotion is exactly what makes us good at this.  And the fact is if you’re not seriously disappointed by the bad news, you don’t get to be seriously elated by the good.

C.S. Lewis apparently said “The pain I feel now is the happiness I felt before.  That’s the deal.”

Indeed.

By Jeffrey Henning & Tamara Barber of Affinnova

Of the 1,432 unique links shared on the Twitter #MRX community in the past two weeks, here are the 10 most retweeted.

1. GRIT Sneak Peek: The Industry Names the Top 10 Most Innovative Market Research Firms of 2011 – Which market research firms are perceived as most innovative by researchers? The GRIT (GreenBook Research Industry Trends) study identifies the same Top 10 as last year: BrainJuicer, Ipsos, Vision Critical, Kantar, Nielsen, GfK, Synovate, Itracks, 20/20 Research and Milward Brown. Congratulations to each of these firms!
2. The Top Ten Market Research Articles of 2011 – Kathryn Korostoff of Research Rockstar links to and sums up her personal favorite articles from last year. Her five criteria for inclusion provide some great guidance to anyone writing about research.
3. New book! The Listen Lady: A novel and social media research guide baked into one – Annie Petit – excuse me, F. Annie Petit, Ph.D. – of Conversition has a new book coming out called The Listen Lady. Some early reviews are in.
4. Market Research – With a pithy cartoon and a blog post, Tom Fishburne, the Marketoonist, takes on the problem with using conventional techniques for new product development.
5. The top 100 UK agencies – and how they stack up – Research shares the data behind this great infographic on the UK MR industry.
6. 22 Tips for Proper Survey Design – Annette Franz Gleneicki offers a succinct summary of 21 great tips for writing questionnaires.
7. Social Media Research: Keeping it Real – Cathy Harrison of CMB pushes back against the suggestion that SMR will replace traditional MR.
8. Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers have created a number of models demonstrating that when 10% of the population believes “an unshakable belief” a tipping point is reached, prompting majority adoption of their idea. See their paper “Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities”.
9. The Nerd with the Dragon Tattoo – Dana Stanley of Research Access tells us what researchers can learn from that girl with the dragon tattoo (star of story, screen and Sweden).
10. What CES Reveals about the Future of Market Research – Greg Heist of Gongos Research has a popular GreenBook blog post on a trend revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show: “It points to a ‘ubiquity of connectedness’ – that is, a future in which consumers are ‘connected’ not only via their smart devices, but their televisions, home appliances, and of course, their vehicles.” Will this connectedness offer researchers more opportunities to get feedback from consumers?

We also have a “ubiquity of connectedness” in market research, thanks to Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs. If you’re not using Twitter yet, jump in at #MRX.

Editor’s Note: A big thanks to Jeffrey, Tamara, and the Affinnova team for bringing us this great summary every two weeks! 

by Beth Rounds and Lock Collins, Cambiar Partners

Over the past year, the Cambiar partners have been writing, presenting and blogging about The Winds of Change within the MR industry.  Leading companies across the value chain are listening, evaluating business models and setting strategy for the future.  In addition, new entrants, many from outside our industry, are adding to the mix as well as challenging the status quo.  With all the change happening, executives are also realizing that their talent needs are changing.  Joan Lewis, Global Consumer and Market Knowledge Officer, P&G, said in the recent ESOMAR Global Market Research Report, “the element of research that will have to change faster is the profile of people – people who can show integrated thinking, courage and leadership, with less emphasis on back-room analysis or sales. …what we need are more talented people who can build the industry.”  We agree! Where in the past the individual project was king, now the relationship dominates. Corporations expect their business partners to know the business, bringing a holistic array of information to bear on the issue at hand.

All this is good, but are MR executives really embracing this “New Talent for A New Age”concept?  I asked Lock Collins, Cambiar’s Human Resources Practice Leader to weigh in on the topic.

Beth: In the area of human resources and talent, what do MR executives want these days?

Lock:  Clearly clients are looking for  those unique individuals with grounding in market research combined with the ability to understand and discuss marketing with senior management the key business issues that they face.  In our industry, that’s a rare combination. Of course, they need to have a track record of success and must be passionate about the industry.

Also, it seems that we’re moving away from the traditional “hunter-farmer” models with companies structuring around account managers that “have it all”.  Desirable candidates can listen to a client’s problem, develop solutions, oversee the project team and provide insights.  These people are truly the “renaissance men/women” of the market research industry.  Add on top of this, individuals will need to have a POV on the New MR world and be story tellers.  This is a tall order for most!

Beth: Are clients starting to hire specialists or mostly generalists?

Lock: Right now, I think MR firms are still looking for generalists, especially at the account management level.  We’ve had discussions with firms regarding their interest in hiring researchers outside traditional marketing and business channels.  For example, some companies have hired graphic designers to support their reporting and presentations, and others are experimenting with hiring individuals that understand story telling — journalists for example.  I can see this trend picking up steam in the next couple of years as the new modalities gain acceptance.

Beth: No company can afford a wrong hire.  What recommendations do you have for improving a company’s success rates?

Lock: Managers have to be serious about interviewing and selection.  All too often hiring is treated way too casually.  There are a number of best practices in this area that I’d be happy to share at a later point, but in my experience great managers are looking for candidates who possess those intangible behaviors that will lead to success in the position.   We’re doing more to help our clients focus on the desired behaviors and characteristics, as well as a strong organizational fit vs. the traditional list of research methodologies and knowledge of the end-client’s industry.

Beth: On the flip side – it still seems like a competitive employment market.  Do you see any trends in what employees or prospects want from an employer?

Lock: Our sense is that individuals with 0- 5 years of experience may be operating in a traditional employment environment, not much different than twenty years ago.  At the more senior levels, where our practice is focused, candidates are consistently looking for a few things:

• Autonomy and the ability to develop solutions in an unconventional way – not the way “we’ve always done it”.  With this autonomy comes a blurring of work and personal life, with individuals wanting to working on their own schedule in their own location.  Some of our clients prefer to have employees engaged in the day-to-day activities of an office.  We’re finding that more and more of our clients, however, are expressing the flexibility for senior level employees to be located anywhere.
• Among our candidates, we are also noticing the desire to walk away from the large established research suppliers. Many more are now attracted to entrepreneurial opportunities in which they can “build something”.
• Finally, senior candidates are not looking for a job.  They are interested in moving a vision forward and financially sharing in the results.

Beth: What is the role of recruiters like Cambiar’s Talent Practice in impacting strategy?

Lock: As part of any corporate strategy, executives look to the major trends that are affecting clients and research companies alike. The MR industry is poised for great change and we are starting to see how those macro trends play in to the types of talent that we will require in the future.  As we all know, a successful business strategy can’t stop at a new and improved sales and marketing plan. To borrow a concept from Jim Collins of Good to Great fame, having the right talent  in the right seats on the right bus is critical to the success of any organization.

By Edward Appleton

I just finished reading a great blog post by The Service Witch – http://bit.ly/wTcpOI – on the topic of questionnaire design.

The blog contrasts traditional survey design -  long, repetitive, irritating – with a short mobile survey texted to shoppers making a purchase at a given retail outlet. Negative responses are fed immediately to local operational staff who then get back to customers on whatever issue they have.

The Service Witch touches on an important point – “What’s In It For Respondents?”. This is less of an issue for the shorter mobile survey quoted, but certainly more of a challenge for the longer traditional questionnaire.  It’s a question that we Researchers (continue to) ignore at our peril.

My question is related but different one – who’s really responsible for poor questionnaire design?

Clients – or Agencies? Maybe both?

Do we enter into some kind of Faustian pact whereby Agencies over-promise (for example) on questionnaire length to make us Clients happy – and Clients are lulled into a sense of “it’s OK if the Agency says so”?

Here’s my take:

1. Agencies need to highlight the risks of surveys that are too long more clearly. In my experience, this doesn’t happen enough. Critiquing a brief diplomatically is an important supplier-side skill – if the objectives are overly onerous within a defined framework, then Agencies need to get this across, pushing to establish priorities.

2. Clients need to be aware that there is a danger respondents will give lip-service particularly in terms of online quant. survey engagement. Critically, we won’t be able to quantify this effect (I’ll call it “Disengagement Bias”) once the “Survey Complete” button is pressed.

3. Measuring disengagement rates is a useful way of highlighting survey problems – but it’s not probably not enough to judge overall whether a questionnaire is good or bad. Whether you’re client-side or Agency side: be honest with yourself – when you click-through the pre-live version, see how long your interest level remains high, and how often and when you struggle to give a meaningful answer.

4. Keeping questions very focussed, easy to understand and answer is extremely useful. How often have you written a question where the honest answer would be: “Don’t know”?

5. Relying on grids is dangerous – as has been stated often elsewhere. Alas: there seem to be still plenty of grids out there.

6. Agencies that overpromise at a pitch phase in terms of what’s realistic in interview length may win short-term, but a savvy Client will value honest feedback, and that includes being able to disagree.

7. Surveys should be as engaging/ fun as we can make them without introducing additional unquantifiable bias – meaning it’s probably worth seeing what degree of (dare I say it) Gamification can be included – even it’s just by looking at including emoticons, using Flash (to name just a couple)….. and seeing what the extra cost is over html.

Finally, I believe that if we share more involving forms of MR Surveys with Marketing folk, show them how MR tools are moving on, becoming more intuitive, they might well become more engaged too.

If we really wish to pull the Voice of the Customer  into the Corporation in a way that gets greater attention, we’re going to need to get better at engaging a whole range of stakeholders, throwing off our dusty data-drenched masks and bringing things to life.

Curious, as ever, as to others’ views.

The GRIT Team is hard at work analyzing the results of the most recent GreenBook Research Industry Trends study, and you know what that means: time for a few sneak peeks at some of the more interesting results! We have lots to report on methodology usage, emerging technique adoption, drivers of both vendor and method selection, industry perception of change, annual billings, and much more. Considering the level of interest in one of our areas of exploration (companies perceived to be innovative) I thought I’d whet your appetite for the full report by divulging the 2011 list of  the Top 10 Market Research Firms Perceived to be Innovative.

Beginning in 2010 we decided to start tracking which firms were perceived as most innovative within the global market research industry. Last year we came up with a list of the Top 50 Market Research Firms Perceived to be Innovative to much fanfare by the industry. That list was compiled by a simple open-ended unaided awareness question: which MR firms do you consider to be most innovative? Because we realized this was a little light in terms of methodological rigor, this year we decided to go a little deeper and refine our method.  Here is what we did:

1. Using an unaided awareness verbatim question, we asked respondent to list the three companies they considered to be most innovative.
2. We then asked them to rank those firms from most to least innovative.
3. Finally we asked another verbatim in reference to their number 1 ranked firm on why they considered it to be most innovative.

Using the aggregate of the 1-3 ranking question we developed a list of 84 companies that received multiple mentions. From that list we have narrowed it down to the Top 50 for additional analysis. We’re looking at differences between Client vs. Supplier respondents, tenure in the industry, geographic location, preferred methods of gaining information about the industry, sample source, and of course the coded responses for why they are considered innovative. We’re looking at these data in multiple ways in order to glean insight on the drivers of perception around what makes a firm innovative with the hypothesis that these firms will help drive the repositioning of the industry in years to come and are growing despite the numerous challenges to the industry as a whole right now. Despite what some might think, it is NOT a popularity contest; we truly want to understand how MR firms are capitalizing on the idea of “innovation” to grow their businesses, and we believe that this list, developed by our peers within the industry, is a true measure of  how successfully these companies are leveraging this brand attribute.

As I said, we’re in the thick of analysis right now and this isn’t meant to be a report ready summary. I have simply pulled a snapshot from the banners that show the Top 10 and the breaks by Client/Supplier and tenure. I also added their previous ranking information and indicated the change from 2010. More analysis will be in the report, due to be published in February.

So, without further ado, I give you the GRIT Top 10 Innovative Firms!

Congratulation to these industry leading firms, especially BrainJuicer for maintaining their #1 Position and to Vision Critical, iTracks, 20/20, and Millward Brown for remaining in the top 10 list. These firms really drove the conversation across multiple channels in 2011 and their branding continues to pay dividends for them in the minds of the industry.

Of course, BrainJuicer remains the master of this art; at every turn they make innovation the underlying theme of their brand message and continue to drive awareness of of both new approaches and, more importantly, new thinking within the industry. They were ranked number #1 almost twice as often as Ipsos making them the clear owners of the “market research innovation” message.

Those firms that moved up the ranking (Ipsos, GfK & Nielsen) certainly deserve praise as well. Based on a quick review of press releases and news articles about these firms in 2011 they maintained a steady flow of announcements about their own innovation efforts (particularly around mobile and social media) and obviously those efforts are paying off in how the industry perceives them.

Last year Kantar did not rank at all while TNS was #2; they are effectively the same company so I have combined them for purposes of our analysis. I believe the brand identity of TNS is being subsumed into the larger Kantar brand and this is indicated within our own data: this year TNS was not mentioned at all. Although Millward Brown is also owned by Kantar, I think that brand remains relatively independent and specialized within the market, so we have let it stand. Of course I would expect to see a similar phenomenon occur in 2012 in regards to Ipsos and Synovate, but since the merger of those firms did not occur until late in the year and we had many respondents list them separately we chose to also leave them as discrete companies.

Considering that there were no new entrants into the Top 10, I believe the decline in rankings of Kantar/TNS specifically means that this brand is having a challenge with leading the conversation within the industry on the topic of innovation. Since I have had many conversations with multiple members within the Kantar team about their innovation efforts and know that they are taking the challenge of embracing the future very seriously, my advice to them is to focus on this topic in 2012 and showcase examples of how they are changing the status quo at every opportunity.

The full list will be published in the GRIT report. I’ll give you this hint: within the 20-50 firms there are many new entrants and the ranking changes are much more dynamic.

Finally, a little bit about our sample for those who may think there is some bias here. Two of the Top 50 firms were sponsors of GRIT, but I would challenge anyone to explain why these industry leaders had not earned their spots in the ranking, especially considering that neither were sponsors last year but both appeared on the list in 2010, and neither contributed much sample to the study. I also maintain that even if they had been, I have faith in my peers in the industry that they would not let any logos giving our sponsors the credit they deserve influence their thinking. That said, this is a convenience sample although we have gone to great lengths to cast as wide a net as possible though various partnerships with industry leading organizations. In total our sample frame consisted of almost 60,000 research professionals, which is probably pretty close to a census of the industry. Each partner sent invites to their various constituencies via a mix of direct emails, social media dissemination, public announcements on website destinations, and general word of mouth.

Is it a random probability sample? Of course it isn’t, and personally I have not utilized that type of sample model in a B2B study in over a decade. Are the base sizes for some sub segments small and therefore should only be considered directional? Yes, absolutely. However, in total our sample was robust enough to certainly allow for a high degree of confidence in our analysis. To help beef that up even more we agreed to use partials who had completed 90% of the study to augment our analysis.

Here is how the sample provisioning played out:

We’ll continue to look for partners in the future to broaden our reach and get as close to a representative sample as possible. In the meantime, as in all things, I hope you’ll challenge the findings against your own experience and use them as intended; as a barometer of issues impacting the industry and a potential road map for the future evolution of market research.

Thanks to all who participated and to our sponsors!

By Andrew Needham

Technology is changing faster than consumers. Consumers are changing faster than organizations. Therefore, organizations need to change faster if they are to keep up. Many are finding this difficult to achieve.

A recent IBM Global CEO Study that covers 1,130 CEOs across 45 countries and 32 industries showed that organizations not only felt bombarded by change but many are struggling to deal with it. 8 out of 10 CEOs saw significant change ahead and yet the gap between the expected level of change and the ability to manage it had almost tripled since the previous study in 2006.

There are many different manifestations of this change (too many to cover here) from faster product life cycles and globalization (the shift of budgets to emerging markets), to changing demographics and the challenge of aging populations on Western economies. But one of the biggest is the impact of the social web on everything we do. EMarketer predicts that the tipping point will happen in 2012 when 60% of all marketing budgets will become social. Linked to this is the arrival of Big Data. In 2010 the human race created 800 exabytes of information. To put this into context between the dawn of civilization and 2003 we only created 5 exabytes; now we’re creating that amount every two days. By 2020 that figure is predicted to sit at 53 zettabytes (53 trillion gigabytes) – an increase of 50 times. As Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist said “We used to be data poor, now the problem is data obesity”.

This presents us with a number of new challenges that I have set out below as hardening client needs. I have concentrated on just a few with some suggestions on what research companies need to do to make sure they’re in a position to meet them.

1. Moving from Big Data to Big Insight

Making sense of all the data out there and simplifying it so that we can derive valuable meaning and insight will be one of 2012′s client mantras. Social listening will give way to social media insight. Having researchers in your team that are also technologists e.g. digital anthropologists that can help to analyze real time social data will become a required skill. Being able to augment different data sets from the virtual and real worlds so that we can help to create one closer view of our customer will depend on our ability to mix different on-line and offline methodologies in a coherent and credible way.

2. Quality without speed is not enough

One of the greatest demands from clients is how to deliver fresh, robust and relevant insight more quickly and cost effectively than we have ever done (or needed to do) before. Qualitative research companies need to lead in the use of technology so that we can become quicker, faster and more responsive in the ways in which we gather insight about our clients’ consumers. We also need to develop research and planning tools that are less generic and more focused on the CMI client needs of today and tomorrow.  This does not mean replacing human analysis – to the contrary the role of the researcher has become even more important than before because of the need to find real quality from the huge quantities of data that is out there. It must also mean we can do better than relying on tools such as the TGI Index.

3. Logic needs to give way to more magic

We are going to see more emphasis on qualitative research as a robust exploratory tool to understand better consumers’ emotional drivers as well as to help improve the quality and shaping of social ideas and social content before things go too far and way before the quantitative testing stage. Too much blind reliance on testing things to death has seen some of the “magic” and “creativity” in marketing lose out to the “logic”. Creating magic today means creating social brand stories that are contagious and can be propagated effortlessly by key consumer cohorts. Co-creating with these consumers, involving them much earlier in the marketing process, leveraging their content and creativity as part of the marketing process will have an increasingly important role to play here. If what goes in is rubbish then testing what comes out will be rubbish. The Coca-Cola Company is leading the way and I am sure other FMCG clients will follow.

4. Creating content excellence

There is a new marketing ecosystem where content is more important than channel, where audience passions/interests are becoming more important than demographics and where the media model has changed – placing more emphasis on created and earned media as opposed to bought and owned. Understanding which “big ideas” have enough social currency  (it’s not what consumers are doing with your brand but what they are doing with each other that counts) and can work effectively across all platforms will attract much more focus. Understanding the different consumer cohorts within a brand audience and their influence will also be key to understanding what content areas will have the most impact when it comes to propagating ideas. Researchers need to come up with a new model here: one based on rational, emotional and social metrics that is continuous and adaptive.

5. New measurement models

With the increasing socialization of brands and the importance “connected” brands are placing on new metrics such as social brand value and influence (see below), helping clients to understand, validate and measure what ideas work best in the earned and created media space as well as why it works will be increasingly important. Finding ways of proving that the more customers of a brand are interconnected the more they are willing to pay for the product and the more loyal they will be is vital. Working out a more real time model for measuring which big ideas have the best potential for success; are the most likely to be propagated and can work across all media is another area that needs close attention.

By Jeffrey Henning & Tamara Barber

Many researchers writing for the press and the blogosphere these past few weeks drew their inspiration from Janus, the two-faced god who looks to the future and the past (and whose name is enshrined in January).  Here are the Top 10 most retweeted stories of the past two weeks by the #MRX community.

1. Words to live by in 2012 – Research magazine asked 10 industry luminaries for a single word that sums up “their hopes and expectations for the year ahead”.
2. 2012 Research Predictions (The NGMR Twiteratti) – Tom H.C. Anderson crowdsourced over 50 predictions for the coming year, with the first 20 listed here.
3. The eyes have it – Crawford Hollingworth tackles the observer effect and how even the expectation of being observed changes behavior in this Research article.
4. What’s the difference between Consumer Insights and Market Research? – Edward Appleton teases out some of the differences between describing our industry as “market(ing) research” vs. “consumer insights” in Europe and the U.S.
5. 2012 (1): New Years’ On A Rational Planet – Tom Ewing has some big thoughts on Big Data.
6. 2012 Market Research Crystal Ball – Dana Stanley addresses Tom Anderson’s call for predictions with five quite specific predictions in this post.
7. What Your Brand Needs To Know About The “Social Media Caucus” – Tom Webster looks at the difficulty of predicting the Iowa caucus results from social media chatter about the candidates and relates it to corporate insights from social media.
8. The 10 Most Interesting Social Media Studies of 2011 – Briana Kerensky for OhMyGov! sums up last year’s best social-media research initiatives.
9. The Year of Text Analytics – Tom Anderson follows up his roundups of other people’s predictions with his own, looking at text analytics in 2012.
10. Is Amazon on the verge of offering analytics? – James Verrinder of Research wonders if Amazon is about to provide data analytics services to businesses.

Alright, time to stop looking backward! Let’s see what else 2012 brings.

By Ron Sellers

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.”  Kenneth Olsen, President and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

I’ve recently spent some time reading predictions about the future of the market research industry (probably because at year-end, they proliferate).  These predictions are quite varied.  Some are upbeat.  Some are dire.  Some are radical.  Many are contradictory.  Just a few I’ve noticed recently:

• The market research industry is dying due to DIY research.
• Traditional focus groups are dying because of the advent of online qualitative and immersive research.
• Online access panels will soon be dead because of the commoditization of the industry.
• Mobile MR will essentially replace other forms of fieldwork because “everyone” has a smart phone or tablet device.
• RDD phone interviewing will soon be dead because of a variety of reasons (declining response rates, landline-only households, etc.).
• Social media monitoring is essentially going to replace primary market research.
• Neuropsychology, eye-tracking, “big data” analytics, gamification, behavior economics, text analytics, and (fill in the blank) will each/all replace traditional market research.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”  Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, 1899

Note that these predictions were generally coming from people who were talking about the very near term, not five or ten years from now.  If you are a purveyor or supporter of such things as social media monitoring or text analytics, predictions such as these probably have you salivating.  If you’re a traditional phone field center, focus group moderator, or online panel provider, it may be best to tell your family to hide all sharp objects – your livelihood is essentially over, and sooner rather than later.  Change, or find yourself living under a bridge by this time next year.

Funny thing about predictions, though:  they’re often wrong.  Looking back, they’re often laughably wrong.

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.  The device is inherently of no value to us.”  Western Union internal memo, 1876

I remember back in the mid-90s when I was working at Bank One, and a major consulting firm predicted that half of all bank branches would close in the next five years due to the advent of online banking and telephone banking.  Five years later, there were more bank branches than ever.  Soon after, I heard again how brick-and-mortar branches were unneeded, antiquated relics because of mobile banking.  Today, Bank of America alone still has 5,800 branches nationwide, and Chase Bank planned to increase their openings of new branches from 120 per year to 200 in 2011, and “probably more than that in subsequent years.”  As Chase noted, “While use of the Internet and ATMs has skyrocketed, branch traffic essentially has remained steady.”  Basically, instead of replacing one contact point with another, bank customers often just expanded their repertoire to fit their needs of the moment – no matter what the experts predicted.

“Man will never reach the moon, regardless of all future scientific advances.” Radio pioneer Lee De Forest, 1957

I’ve heard steadfast predictions for over a decade now that traditional, in-person focus groups would soon be dead because of all the new qualitative techniques.  I still moderate plenty of those good old fashioned focus groups, and the Greenbook directory shows 42 focus group facilities in the Chicago metro area alone.  Just a few years ago I was repeatedly told that anyone who didn’t Tweet would quickly be left behind…yet here we are in 2012 with only about one out of every ten Americans using Twitter (according to Pew Research Center).  Maybe that’s why, at the risk of being labeled a Luddite, I tend to take some of the predictions of the immediate demise of more traditional methods with a grain of salt – just because one new approach is born doesn’t always mean an existing approach has to die.

“The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn’t time for it.” New York Times, 1939

There are many problems with predictions.  Some people who make them want to promote a particular method that they sell or to which they are partial.  Predictions generally must make a splash in order to get noticed; no one is going to be fascinated by an article about the future of research that says it’s going to be much like last year.  As humans, we’re programmed to pay particular attention to the new and shiny, making it look much more attractive than the tried and true.  Many of these new and shiny methods also have not yet fully displayed their faults and limitations; I expect in a few years to be hearing a lot more about the problems with mobile MR and text analytics, just like we’re hearing about the problems with online access panels today (wait – did I just make a prediction?).

One thing we should all know as researchers is that Aldous Huxley was right when he said, “The only completely consistent people are the dead.”  We can forecast advances in technology, but we can’t really forecast human reactions to those advances.  Maybe corporate researchers will invest in big data analytics only to discover they’re missing a hugely important piece:  the story of why.  Maybe they’ll spend heavily on social media monitoring, and two years from now something entirely new will be quickly replacing social media (when MySpace first became popular, who would have predicted something called Facebook would render it irrelevant?).  Or maybe researchers will take a step back and realize it’s still just a minority of American adults who are on a social network (again, Pew).

It’s also up to us as researchers to communicate and demonstrate the value of traditional research activities, rather than just continuing to rely on them because that’s what we’re most familiar with.  There are undoubtedly situations where social media monitoring is the answer to the client’s information need – but there are also undoubtedly situations where a good old fashioned survey is what will serve them best.  We need to discern the best approach, not the newest or the most comfortable.

“We don’t like their sound.  Groups of guitars are on the way out.”  Decca Records rejecting the Beatles, 1962

Should we ignore predictions about the research industry?  At our own peril.  The world is changing, including the world we work in.  But using predictions about market research should be very similar to using market research itself:  predictions should inform and guide your decisions, not make them for you.  They also must be applied to your individual company, industry, and setting.  We need to think, to grow, to prepare for the future.  What we don’t need is to panic and throw the baby out with the bathwater because a bunch of prognosticators have said the world as we know it is ending.  Maybe it is…but then again, maybe it isn’t.  Or maybe it is, but it will take a whole lot longer than just the next year.

It’s up to you to evaluate the evidence and make informed decisions for the future.  You know, like we’re supposed to do in research, whether we’re using shiny new gamification or a creaky old mail survey.

By Edward Appleton

I’ve just been reading the 120th prediction for 2012 – and blow me down, it caught my attention.

Kevin Lonnie of KL Communications (wonder how he came up with the company name said this in NGMR (http://linkd.in/zUk5E1)

“Corporate clients will turn to new faster alternatives that can provide them with 80% confidence in a fraction of the time.”

I’m in the middle of a Linked-In debate on whether we as researchers are neglecting our methodological rigor at our peril, and opening ourselves to attack from all angles – the good, the bad and the plain charlatan, all of whom have wares to sell.

The 80/ 20 mentality that Kevin touches on isn’t one that comes naturally to us Researchers. We have to go to the nth degree of detail if someone probes into the data – robust data is the bedrock of Insights.

Will this carry on? Here’s my take:

1. The folk who use our data – Marketing, Sales, General Managers – often work on an 80/20 basis. They need to make judgement calls, where not all the data is available. Complexity reduction is often a mantra – Behavioural Economics fans take note….;)

2. The pace of change is accelerating. By the time we have the “right” answer, the competition has moved, some distribution channels have shifted on their take on own labels, cost of goods has changed pricing perspectives…..And then we come with “the answer” – which took maybe 2 months.

3. Budgetary pressures will increase in a subdued economic environment. This will lead to Marketing exploring trade-offs more aggressively in the accuracy/ cost equation – as well as pushing for quicker stuff. DIY will continue.

4. The “how” will be increasingly elbowed aside by the “now what” in MR reporting. Without wishing to denigrate efforts to address engagement of response as an issue, Actionability for MR will become an increasing mandatory.

Budgets are invariably owned by Marketers and General Managers, ultimately. If we ignore their concerns – actionability, speed, cost, flexibility to name a few – we’re in danger of becoming methodologically obsessed, talking amongst ourselves, whilst the real game shifts elsewhere.

Curious, as ever, as to others’ views.