Research 2.0, entering the discourse

Yesterday I sent an email to the MRS about Research 2.0, today I read an article by Laurent Flores on the same topic. People have been asking for a few months when will research respond to Web 2.0? Well it looks as though the answer is now!

Just as the research industry was getting to grips with the Internet (with some 20% of research in the UK now being conducted online) the Internet has changed. Web 2.0 is creating a whole new discourse which is replacing the static, top-down nature of Web 1.0 and promises to change power structures, business, and research in ways which dwarf recent changes.

Web 2.0, also known as the participatory web, is changing the traditional unidirectional model of media, of marketing, and of power, from monologues to dialogues. Customers are posting, reviewing, re-selling, discussing, sharing, and creating via Web 2.0.

The traditional research model is a top-down model based on command and control:
•    We contact respondents when we want to speak to them.
•    We ask them our questions, in our order, and force respondents to pick answers from the set we consider to be the correct set.
•    We rarely tell them why we are doing the research, we rarely tell them the results of the research, and we rarely tell them the business decisions that have been made following them expressing their views.
•    The statistics we use and many of the approaches we apply are more fitting of experiments with lab rats rather than with customers.

Research 2.0 is a response to the new and developing discussion that is Web 2.0. Within the existing framework of market research we need to give respondents more control over the questionnaire, including the ability to add breaks, remove questions, and make a wider range of suggestions. Agencies such as Virtual Surveys are already using approaches such as allowing respondents to initiate contact when they have something to say, or to come back after the end of a survey to add comments, to ask questions, or to make suggestions.

Beyond the current framework of market research we need to embrace moves such as threadless.com where people upload designs, vote on designs, and can buy the most popular T-shirts and Janet Jackson’s use of an image competition to find and use new material for her next album cover. Research 2.0 will encompass techniques that give customers the power to create products and will use an evolutionary process to ensure that the fittest survive and the redundant fade.