What Should We the Market Research Industry Do
Transcription
What Should We the Market Research Industry Do
Australian Market & Social Research Society | Volume 32 | Number 4 | May 2015 10 FRESH PERSPECTIVES 12 A CHANGE IS COMING 14 The power of cultural insight and how to apply it to marketing. Why we’re gonna see some real change in Australia’s business landscape. UNLEASHING RESEARCH CREATIVITY Adeline Ong makes the case for fostering a culture of creativity. 16 WHAT SHOULD WE DO NEXT? Commentary from Liane Ringham. ISSN: 1839-4256 AMSRS YEARS CULTURE AND DIVERSITY T H E M E AT Y S E C T I O N : I N V I T E D C O M WHAT SHOULD WE DO NEXT? Nick Davies is the investigative journalist who alerted the world From my point of view there are three important challenges to the voluminous and persistent hacking cover-up which that we as qualified practicing market researchers in the eventually brought down the ‘News of the World’. Himself a commercial sector need to collectively act upon in the next tenacious investigator, he describes the best investigative two or so years. These also represent potential opportunities journalists as those people who have immense imagination as as well as risks. well as the capacity for ‘stomach churning’ anxiety – important The need to: when getting the evidence right. 1. More rapidly align with the reinvention of marketing which This is exactly how I would describe the characteristics of the best market researchers I’ve known and these are the qualities that will hold us in good stead in coming years. My invited topic is ‘what we should do next?’ Frankly this is a somewhat daunting task to sit down with a blank sheet of paper, will inevitably involve meshing with customer analytics 2. Meet the step change in expectations about speed of project delivery 3.Change perceptions of ‘market research’ and collectively elevate its reputation or, rebrand. even after several months of reflecting on this topic and reading. a community of practice) are now an even more diverse group 1. ALIGNING WITH OPPORTUNITIES ARISING FROM THE REINVENTION OF MARKETING of professionals and talents than ever before. A key factor influencing our profession is the redirection of Part of the issue is that we collectively (ie market research as Just like an evergreen budgets towards technology (away from marketing), and the tree, parts of our tree movement of power towards the CTO/CIO. We are in the midst continue to grow, other of a struggle as to who controls the customer revenue sources, parts are in decline or and marketing may be losing. Many people think that the new changing colour and CMO will be a technologist as well as a marketer though in a new parts are growing. new form – perhaps with a new title as well. Currently, our There is no doubt fortunes in commercial market research are predominantly that we are thriving as tied to the CMO, and we need to evolve as he/she does, or a profession overall. embrace the needs and orientations of the new customer lead We must be a hot role. This means the challenge is for us to re-skill to deliver to profession and that’s why Google wants to be a part of it too, launching Google Surveys in 2012. this new brief. Long heralded as a trend, mass personalisation is becoming More surveys are being done than ever before. Market a reality at last. Technology is enabling personalised offers as research surveys have never been cheaper (though not well as products based on demonstrated behaviours, and this necessarily better). There are more questions than there are will increasingly become the norm of marketing. As well as answers despite the mass of data we are swimming in. Everyone behavioural retargeting, real-time customer analytics-driven recognises they need more insight. Next Best Action/Offer solutions promise real sales impact in And the other good news is that surveys continue to show mature and declining markets. This is mainly impacting services the C-suite considers customer research and customer insight like ICT and banking. For example, the Royal Bank of Scotland one of their very top priorities. is reported as delivering personalised annual summaries of a 16 Research News May 2015 COMINVIT ME ED NTA RY M E N TA R Y F R O M I N D U S T R Y F I G U R E S customer’s product holdings with up to 20 Next-Best-Action recommendations tailored to the individual. Over four billion Articulating our role or roles in Big Data may, for example, involve articulating the three levels of engagement: personalised real-time offers and actions are presented annually to online customers using business-defined rules to support the bank’s customer interaction strategies. With a segment of one, the mass personalisation trend ostensibly makes the market segmentation study obsolete. In fact, all aggregate forms of knowledge may seem, for a while at least, unattractive as people get excited about the new opportunities in ‘immediate’ sales through mass customisation. As others have said, the appeal of technology solutions to drive customer revenue/sales and lower costs will continue and inevitably escalate, because technology promises to reduce costs and deliver new sales opportunities. Market research professionals who are adapting to these technological changes with new solutions will continue to thrive. In commercial research, we will inevitably be forced to confront the competitive attraction of investments that lead to clear short term sales impacts including the perceived value of customer analytics. Subject to our professional code, which currently precludes the integration of personal-level research data into client datasets, it can be an opportunity to reinvent market research in a way that meshes with customer analytics, creating new approaches that tangibly drive commercial value for clients. One such example might be the use of training samples to develop customer based business rules (responding to trends in the immediate environment) which are then rapidly applied to customer sales intervention in different parts of the database. Alternatively these trends may inevitably force Level 1: We bring our superior understanding of human behaviour as social scientists, behavioural economists etc, and training, to correctly formulate the right questions and analysis strategies: To fill the many gaps in Big Data, eg. the role of price and reputation in customer churn. Other events not able to be captured such as ads seen, websites visited, word of mouth. The unseen behaviours, eg. Purchase of complementary products, competitor products. Level 2: We join the dots armed with the most advanced algorithms Combining the different data sources: surveys, customer data, social media. Revealing patterns and drivers of key outcome. Modelling financial impacts, dialing up different actions and under different business scenarios. Level 3: We deliver Big Data Insight Bringing our superior understanding of human and customer behaviour, as for example, social scientists, economists, anthropologists, neuroscientists etc. Constructing the insight – seeing the patterns in the different responses and data sources. Building the stories which highlight the strategic implications. Providing guidance on how to act upon the findings. a further re-evaluation of our code of practice. Big Data is a topic at every conference, and many like myself see an important aspect of the future for market research These actions provide a variety of valued roles for people in providing the “why” of human behaviour and motivations. in our profession and for those with customer analytics skills Market research can complete the gaps, and construct the sets as well. insight, human stories and trends that can go undiscovered within masses of data. In order to make our upstream value (Level 3) explicit, we need to formulate more processes and procedures around the Currently, it is not sufficiently clear what our competitive discipline of Big Data Insight, and take the lead in this area, so advantage will be in this space. In particular, what can we that end clients will understand that there is something of value deliver beyond what customer analytics, management over and above what a management consultant, a marketer, consultants, media strategists and internal business analysts business analyst or customer analytics person can deliver. When can offer? Unless we can articulate this and tool up for it, it businesses think, for example, “Big Data Insight” it is vital they is unlikely that traditional market research’s dream of being a look to our skill set and professional expertise. significant part of the movement to Big Data will be anything more than an aspiration. As a first step we need to clearly articulate the proposition of how market research meshes with customer analytics. In my view our competitive differentiation ultimately lies in the area of human behaviour with aspects of what we deliver representing important specialist areas or functions supporting this endeavour. Research News May 2015 17 T H E M E AT Y S E C T I O N : I N V I T E D C O M There is a small but viable window of opportunity to firmly understanding. Despite the patience applied to some slow position customer analytics as a method within our tool kit, projects, I believe that slow projects will have to hasten along with survey research, the focus group, eye tracking, very significantly, at reduced overall cost. ethnography etc. The opportunity is to take the high ground but time is running out! A reality is that worldwide corporate spend data shows Thus, we all have to redefine “slow” in the world of today, and realise that the pace of change in markets and business means that findings can quickly date, and opportunities dry up. customer analytics is overtaking traditional market research. The IT industry, as it gathers power within the organisation, However, it seems important to note that much of this is likely is again fundamentally changing business expectations of time to be directed towards generating sales revenue, not genuine to deliver with its focus on Agile project management, user research, customer feedback and the necessary big picture research and adoption of Design Thinking. All of these other understanding for coherent strategy. areas create new expectations, particularly reduced project Despite the inevitable focus of companies on short term sales, the big picture perspective is nevertheless extremely turnaround. We collectively need to evolve our thinking to take in these newer influences. important and will be compelling. As a profession, we must Ultimately, end users will want deep and fast. Increasingly drive demand for this perspective by building profile among the technological solutions, using solutions like artificial intelligence C-Suite with compelling stories and genuine insights - delivered and decision rules, will be able to deliver this to some degree. through their learning and influence environments of business Human analysis and interpretation will however, continue to be schools, journals, periodicals and the likes of the Australian of value for the foreseeable future, and other solutions outside Financial Review. the realm of technology will facilitate its delivered quicker and smarter. 2. THE NEED TO STEP CHANGE OUR SPEED OF DELIVERY re-evaluating in the context of deep and fast solutions. Would we accept stock market information that was weeks Participatory Action Research is a research-led reflective and or even days old? In the not too distant future, the current collaborative process of progressive problem solving. Another market research project management process and timeframe approach now shared with technology (see Agile, above), it uses will seem quaint. a spiral of steps, each concentric loop of planning, action and Methods such as Participatory Action Research are worth With business information increasingly available in real- fact finding going deeper, becoming more definitive. With a time, it is becoming an anachronism to wait for two, three, and smaller allocation of research budget to each cycle, and cycling sometimes 13 weeks or more for a project to be completed. in tighter intervals, the outcome can be very deep and fast It is now common to distinguish between research that is within one to two weeks. ‘fast’, and that which is ‘slow’. Fast research is an establishing and thriving field. Already, a range of real-time customer feedback systems are emerging within our professional practice. These potentially give market researchers a greater role in driving customer revenue and profitability through real-time customer feedback, enriched by internal data analytics. Software systems now enable real-time, omni-channel feedback to alert companies to customer needs customer base. Real-time experience tracking gives minute to 3. CHANGE PERCEPTIONS OF ‘MARKET RESEARCH’ minute feedback on what is being seen, heard and done with We started life as the science and smarts behind the golden age your messages, products and service, along with customer of advertising and PR. More recently, ‘market research’ has been feelings and thoughts, recent events and consequent actions. under attack at a global level. In part, the attack has been from Of course, slow research continues to have its value. those seizing the opportunity to have some of our attractive pie. and opportunities, as well as building dynamic depictions of the Clients continue to be prepared to wait for the gestation of Every third or fourth edition of leading journals like the important, highly strategic projects that will open up pathways Harvard Business Review is likely to contain someone talking to vigorous future growth through existing products positioned about something that is well within the sphere of market to new occasions, new markets or new products from deeper research, such as ethnographic research and, comparing 18 Research News May 2015 COMINVIT ME ED NTA RY M E N TA R Y F R O M I N D U S T R Y F I G U R E S what they are doing to the so-called shortcomings of market human behaviour mandates - or as Hugh Mackay said in the research. Go to a digital marketing conference or read one of first article in this series, our role as social scientists applied to the popular marketing books on behavioural economics and marketing and the customer. you are likely to get the message that: ‘Market research can’t tell you that… but we can...’. All this means that there are many opportunities to reinvent market research. This is only limited by the In my opinion, part of this attack is because ‘market research’ imaginative capacity of our profession, and the degree to has inadvertently become synonymous with two methodologies which we live in a healthy state of commercial anxiety. – the survey and the focus group – and their strengths and The final question is what happens if we don’t adapt to our weaknesses, as well as a widely divergent practice of these new commercial environment. I think it is pretty clear. There techniques. are some real risks. This attack is also a fundamental misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what we do in ‘market research’. This needs to be corrected with concerted action. Language has power and gives value and currency. These issues that we have discussed are not impacting our profession alone but are pervasive in advertising, marketing and indeed management consulting which also face disruption and disintermediation. ‘Omni-channel marketing’ is an example of how another profession is tackling their challenges and opportunities. Commercial pressures on ad agencies and brand consultancies forced the realisation that they needed to move beyond mass media towards one-to-one channels, and the opportunity presented by managing the cross-channel continuity of branded experience. Is it time we, as a group, reinvigorated and repositioned market research, perhaps as representing a sub-set of activities within another professional activity? What is that activity? Already, and for some years, the internal functions of many organisations have been rebranded from “market research manager” to “consumer insights manager”, and so have many researcher practitioners like myself. Is this a message for the Liane Ringham The author is a practitioner and Fellow of the Australian Market and Social Research Society and former national president of AMSRS. During her presidency she helped to introduce QPMR. She is currently CEO of the INSIDE STORY, a successful boutique consultancy formerly known as Sutherland Smith. She combines qualitative and quantitative skill sets and has a multi-disciplinary background covering psychology, anthropology and marketing. Her specialty is the customer acquisition and retention in the service and government sectors. She has helped commercialise cutting edge research-based technology solutions such as the MarketMindTM Market Tracking system. whole of the profession? We need to be a clear category, to have a clear label, to capture a meaning that is compelling, contemporary and valued. We must collectively write the articles, the books, engage and be an integral part of academia. One company can’t do it, a few individuals can’t, and it must be tackled collectively and globally. My wish is to see market research elevated in premier journals, such as the Harvard Business Review, the business case for market research presented in the likes of The Australian Financial Review, moving it beyond the confines of the traditional survey research and focus groups. Most important is to be recognised worldwide for its capacity for commercial and positive social impact. I would like to see market research deservedly take ownership of customer analytics, ethnography and many of the other data collection methods rightly in our tool kits. After all these are all part of our data, research and Research News May 2015 19