The Future Place Blog

Are surveys a thing of the past?

Yesterday I had the pleasure of brainstorming the future of market research with 15 senior thought-leaders from the UK and several important ideas and observations emerged (some of which will be the subject of future posts). But the most striking overall finding was that the future of market research is something very different from its past.

In the past market research was largely identified (from both within and outside the industry) as being based on spending time with people asking questions, talking to them, or following them around. The core of this business was surveys, focus groups, depth interviews, and more recently online discussions and communities. A popular view about market research is that about 80% of industry is quant and about 15% is qual (in terms of revenue).

However, looking at the data from ESOMAR, MRS, and Inside Research this picture does not accurately reflect the industry today. Something like 50% of current market research spend (as described by ESOMAR’s lists, the MRS league tables, and Inside Research’s figures) does not relate to spending time with people, it includes store audits, loyalty card data, media monitoring, the processing of health data etc. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this is that Dunnhumby is number 3 in the UK league tables of market research companies, and in ESOMAR’s global league table the top 15 contains several companies whose core business has little to do with surveys, focus groups, ethnography, depth-interviews, and community discussions etc.

Once consequence of this split is that it is probably fairer to say that the traditional part of market research is something like 15% qual and 35% quant - creating the 50% that is traditional, i.e. that qual (including most of the activity in MROCs) is about 40% as big as quant, not the under 20% that it is usually reported as.

So, the common image of market research today, i.e. one that is  dominated by researchers dealing with people through direct interactions, appears to be wrong. Remote and automated monitoring of large data sets is a major part of what market research today is.

What about the future?

When the conversation concentrated on the next five years it was clear that traditional research concepts, such as surveys and focus groups are going to play an ever decreasing role in market research, even in the context of mobile surveys and community discussions. The key changes are going to be in the integration of data sources. Although this area, which is likely to involve CRM, Voice of the Consumer, loyalty card data, people monitoring, geolocation, social media listening, transactional data, and third-party databases is going to be contested by a wide variety of types of  organisations, the people in the room felt that our special angle is adding two elements to the mix a) understanding people (something which we felt the large ‘data focused’ companies were quite weak at) and b) focusing on the ‘why?’ question.

The changes, in what market research is, have some pretty wide implications in terms of the skills we need, who our competitors might be, who our clients might be (they increasingly are not the insight managers), and what the rules of our industry should be, and they will be explored in subsequent posts on this blog.

But, I will leave my comments here with one prediction. At the moment something like 50% of market research relates to surveys, focus groups, communities, discussions, polls, and other traditional forms of market research. In five years this will be under 25%.

What do you think?

 

What is the next ‘big thing’ in market research?

Next week I am running a workshop for a UK managing directors and senior decision makers within the UK research industry focused on “Where next for market research?”.

As part of the preparation for that session I have created a list of research approaches that ‘might’ be one of the major techniques of the next few years. I have my own views about which are more likely to be the main ones, but the list I have gathered so far is:

1. Behavioural economics
2. Biometrics (non-neuro, e.g. eye tracking)
3. Community panels
4. CRM related research
5. Database/loyalty card data integration
6. Discourse analysis
7. DIY research
8. Genetic algorithms, e.g. Affinnova’s concept testing
9. Mobiles for short quant
10. Mobiles for standard quant
11. MROCs
12. Netnography
13. Network analysis
14. Neuromarketing/ neuroresearch
15. Predictive markets
16. Research through gaming
17. Researching social media ROI
18. Secondary research
19. Semiotics
20. Smartphone qual/ethnography
21. Smartphone standard quant
22. Social media monitoring
23. Tablet based research
24. Text analytics
25. Video (webcam) groups
26. Virtual world simulators
27. VOC (Voice of the customer) work
28. WE-Research

Do you have any additions to the list?

Which do you think are most likely to be the next big thing?

 

Where next for market research?

Clearly market research is undergoing a period of disruptive change, with all of the following being of interest:

• Social media research
• Neuroscience
• Behavioural economics
• Mobile research
• Network analysis
• Gamification of research
• DIY research

Decision makers in research can’t be expected to be on top of all of these (and other) changes, so which ones should they prioritise, and how should they evaluate their choices?

In an attempt to help decision makers navigate this session I am going to be running an Executive Briefing in London on July 6^th. You can find out more about it on the NewMR website, but places are limited so you will need to move fast. At the Executive Briefing we will explore the changes that are happening and use a challenge framework to help understand the potential impact of these and other changes.

In your opinion what are the biggest disruptive changes that will impact market research over the next four years?

 

Could we be using QR-Codes in Market Research?

I have been awaiting the arrival of QR-codes in Europe for several years after hearing about how popular they were in Japan in a presentation at ESOMAR (in Lisbon). Having noticed that they seem to be popping up in an increasingly wide number of places and that free readers are available for most smartphones, I posted a message in QR-Code format in a number of places, including Twitter, Facebook, my blog, and NewMR.

The code is shown below, followed by the message embodied within it.

“Email your suggestion for how to use QR-Codes for Market Research to [email protected]. The best idea will win a copy of my book.”

Would I be deluged with answers? Or, would nobody contact me?

Well, a few people contacted me, probably about ten in total, but the clear winner was from Claire Banbury, who suggestions included using them with visitors to locations (e.g. tourist locations or events) in order to link to online surveys (amongst the things that can be embedded in a QR-Code is a URL, which in turn could be a survey) and possibly using them in mystery shopping.

I will be contacting Claire to send her a copy of my book.

Having conducted this exercise my feeling is that QR-Codes will make an impact and my suspicion is that it will take an innovative brand to really get behind QR-Codes and create a 'reason' for people to want to read the codes, probably to either win something or to compete in some sort of game.

Suggestions?

A Festival of NewMR

An exciting new type of event is being created, a Festival of NewMR, celebrating all of the new trends and changes in market research, and doing it an open source, collaborative way. 

The Festival of NewMR is an online, virtual event that will take place between 6-10 December. The model for the event is loosely based on the Edinburgh Festival, i.e. with a formal agenda and an alternative Fringe.

Although the programme is still being developed the key elements are beginning to emerge:

1. The Main Stage, a global webinar conference on 8 December, starting in New Zealand and finishing some 20 hours later on the West Coast of the US.
2. A Poster session and a Video competition, to entice in new faces including students.
3. A Twitter backchannel.
4. A Fringe, an assortment of activities created by third-parties to take place during the Festival Week.

One of the great things about the Festival of NewMR is that it is affordable. Most of the activities will be free, the premier event the Main Stage, will cost just $20 for a session (there are three sessions in total covering three wide time zones).

The programme for the Main Stage will be a mixture of invited speakers and speakers selected by the participants of the Festival. The call for synopses is open now.

To find out more about the Festival of NewMR, visit www.newmr.org

Would abandoning democracy save the planet?

A growing number of voices are calling for democracy to be put to one side for a while to allow the dangers of climate change to be tackled. One of the most prominent people putting forward this argument is Professor James Lovelock (the originator of the gaia theory).

A BBC Radio 4 was broadcast on this topic on Sunday (if you are quick you can listen to it on BBC’s iPlayer) with Justin Rowlatt looking into the claim that democracy is now expendable in the greater cause. In the show Mayer Hillman, Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute says “I think in the same way that I understand James Lovelock has suggested that, I fear I have to share his view on that. There’s no way that the public are going to willingly say ‘I will forego flying’. The fact is that we’ve got to live on such a low use of fossil fuels for our daily activities. Therefore it’s got to be required of them and if they don’t go along with it, then we are - I fear - heading for absolute disaster. We are on a trajectory towards rendering the planet steadily uninhabitable.”

Now, I completely accept the argument that we have to have a real reduction in carbon use in the world, which implies a massive reduction in the West (without accepting every number in every report). But I think those arguing for the suspension of democracy are dangerously wrong.

The people asking for democracy to be suspended are assuming that the people who would suspend democracy would be enlightened, tree-hugging, liberals. However, if we look at the people who have the guns, the tanks, the jets, and the power, we see they are amongst the most right wing and amongst the most sceptical of the science behind climate change.

If we removed democracy we would probably have an elite committed to enjoying the party for as long as they could, and the massive carbon impact of civil wars and insurrections.

One interesting side fact that is beginning to emerge from the debate about climate change is that right-wing politicians seem almost uniformly sceptical or hostile to the claims from the scientists. I do not have an easy answer for why that might be. There are plenty of very intelligent people on the right, why do they struggle to deal with an overwhelming scientific consensus?

ps I am not saying that all climate change sceptics are right-wing, just that most right-wing politicians are sceptics.

Do you want to learn more about social media & market research?

The MRS is hosting a training course at its London office on June 8th. Ray Poynter will be leading the day and there will be slots by James Turner of FreshMinds and Matt Gough of Virtual Surveys.

The agenda for the day is:

  9:00 -  9:30     Registration

  9:30 -  9:45     Introduction (RP)

  9:45 - 10:25     Overview of Social Media (RP)

 10:25 - 11:10     Netnography & the Discourse of the Web (RP)

 11:10 - 11:30     Coffee

 11:30 - 12:30     Blog and Buzz Monitoring (JT)

 12:30 -  1:30     Lunch    

  1:30 -  2:30     Online Research Communities (MROCs) (MG)

  2:30 -  2:55     Community Panels (RP)

  2:50 -  3:20     From ME-Research to WE-Research (RP)

  3:20 -  3:40     Coffee

  3:40 -  4:20     Social Media as a Sample Source (RP)

  4:20 -  4:45     Busy Exec’s Guide to Social Media (RP)

  4:45 -  5:00     Concluding Remarks (RP)

Notes: RP=Ray Poynter (The Future Place); MG=Matt Gough (Virtual Surveys); JT= James Turner (FreshMinds)

If you want to book one of the remaining places go to the MRS website.

If you can’t attend this event, or if you want something more tailored, Ray Poynter and The Future Place offer in-house courses, from £1850 per day day. Send Ray an email to ray if you want to find out more.

Or, you soon be able to buy Ray Poynter’s new book, a Handbook of Online and Social Media Research, which is being published by Wiley and which can be pre-ordered from Amazon.

What happens if the ash stays over Europe for a year?

One of the standard parts of futurism is to conduct mind experiments to explore scenarios. At the moment there are no air flights over most of Northern Europe, because of volcanic ash. The ash is being caused by a eruptions in Iceland, at the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano.

According to the news services it seems the most likely event is that it will clear up over the next few days and things will get back to normal, but with a massive, further, hit to the profits of airlines.

But what if it does not clear up? The last time this volcano erupted was 1821, and that time it lasted for a year. 

So, perhaps we should consider 3 scenarios:

It clears up in a few days and does not return. This would simply make it like a bad weather incident, or a strike. It would have few long term implications.

It clears up, but returns for a few days at a time for a year or two. This would start to chip away at Europe’s standing in the world. Businesses, conferences, organisations would probably change the balance of how much they were focusing on Europe, in favour of other locations. Tourism could be hit very hard, both in-bound and out-bound.

The problem lasts a year (or more). This could result in the business, academic, and social isolation of Europe. Companies would ‘temporarily’ move headquarters to other locations, conferences would be held elsewhere, tourism would shift from planes to trains, with major consequences. It is likely that there would be rush to develop technology, looking for remote meetings, distance teaching, and for modifications to planes to make them able to fly through the cloud. This scenario would be very bad for Europe; it would be a major acceleration in its slide into irrelevance.

How big will e-books be, how quickly?

The Economist has an interesting article about the growth in e-publishing, with views and comments on Amazon’s Kindle and the threats and opportunities offered by Apple’s iPad.

The Economist quotes two predictions about the future scale of e-books, PriceWaterhouseCoopers things e-books will be about 6% of the North American market by 2013 (compared with 1.5% in 2009). By contrast a spokesperson from publisher Simon and Schuster thought the USA figure might be 25%.

This got me thinking, what do I think is likely to happen, and how quickly do I think that it is going to happen.

I think my gut feel is that I would go with the lower figure in the short term, i.e. about 6% in 2013, in markets such as the US. I think this for several reasons. At the moment the book format has several advantages

1. Great battery length.
2. When reading in a risky situation (e.g. bath, train, in rucksack one is only risking the cost of the book, not the reader). 
3. Does not look odd or daft.
4. Great for impulse buys (might require reading glasses for some of us, but not the reader).

In the longer term (4 to 8 years) I expect to see three changes:

1. Growth in the number of people listening to audio books.
2. Growth in people comfortable reading e-books, perhaps more on their iPhone than their iPads, in the way Japanese commuters read keitai shousetsu (mobile phone novels).
3. New formats of books, much shorter, or sold one chapter at a time (perhaps similar to the way Charles Dickens initially published his books weekly or monthly and later compiled them into books).

Net, I expect people to spend people to spend fewer hours reading in 8 years than they do now, regardless of format.