I was amused by Tamara Barber's Big Idea (spoiler alert: she announced the death of MR). I was even more amused by the conversation in the comments. It struck me that I was witnessing natural selection at work.You can still purchase music on vinyl, but in practical terms the format is dead. Surveys and focus groups will live long into the distant future, but they will be used MUCH MUCH MUCH more sparingly. Most of what we think of as MR today will be replaced by technology: a data feed and data visualization with a layer of smart viewer apps on top, to be used by client-side analysts.
(Not) sorry to say this folks, but those on the supplier side of MR are switchboard operators, unable to imagine any other way of connecting calls. A few will survive to fill niches and service the evaporating puddle of clients tied to the old school by inertia... most will have to adapt or find a different line of work.
The opportunity is immense. The Web contains mountains of data, too vast to describe, waiting for tools that can distill it into meaningful (i.e. actionable) insights and simple visualizations. Academics and traditional tech companies are already making good progress with extracting MR-like information from social and search data. There are still many dots to be connected; those who get into the game now have a chance to grab a piece of the pie. Those who invent the market insight technology of tomorrow will also have an opportunity to capitalize on their thought leadership through professional services (think IBM).
The irony is that we view technology as a subservient commodity, but the next wave of web technology will turn us into a commodity. Some will profit from the change, most will not.
To survive we need to become technology companies, yet what I hear over and over from the MR C-suite is "we are not a technology company." Keep thinking like that and soon you won't be a company, period.
10 comments:
Agree with everything bar "client-side analysts". While online data analysis tools are certainly much more amenable to greater client-side involvement than traditional MR, I think there's still a couple of spaces for (new, evolved, not necessarily market-research background) agencies to be of value:
1. Contextualisation. An agency analyst will work on a handful of brands, and they'll see lots of shit happen on a regular basis. The first time some social media calamity befalls Major Brand, people in-house will panic. People agency side can say, "Ah, I've seen something similar happen with Other Brand, and from that experience I've learnt this is what you should do about it."
1a. Also, companies are really interested in using online data to find out about how their competitors are doing too. An agency's more able to present a balanced picture of that than someone in-house with existing loyalties and relationships. Again, they've got a wider perspective.
2. Creating these tools is expensive. Only a handful of companies are big enough to justify building one of their own. Bought-in technologies, however, need customisation to fit industry and research-oriented needs. An agency with a couple of pharmaceutical clients, say, is better able to offer this service to a third pharma firm than that third firm is able to DIY.
@Jay
I agree. There will be opportunities for external consultants.
The tools won't be built in-house. They will be web based, easy to use, and ridiculously cheap subscription services (e.g. $49/mo). Think Survey Monkey, Basecamp or Mail Chimp.
I believe we'll see a few changes in the current "MR" industry:
1. It will broaden to include web analytics, business intelligence, social media agencies, etc. This is already happening. These firms won't consider themselves "MR", but will increasingly assume roles that MR used to fill. Current MR suppliers will try to morph into similar companies, but most will fail.
2. More and more tech suppliers will be introducing DIY solutions for internal client side use. Watch Gutcheck, Survey Analytics, Alterian, Clarabridge, txteagle & Communispace; these firms (and new ones like them) will increasingly be the major money-makers in the industry and will continue to pioneer new solutions that make FS research firms irrelevant.
3. The rise of the Strategic Insight Consultant and the Niche Methodology. Clients will still need bright and insightful professionals that will be a combination of anthropologist and strategic consultant. This is when the Big 5 consultancies may make a more direct MR play. At the same time we'll see specialty suppliers like the neuromarketing, biometrics, and more advanced statistical practitioners rise to the top. They won't be massive players, but they will thrive within their own areas of specialization.
I think this will take 5-10 years max, possibly faster as the forces of social media and mobile migration speed up the pace of consumer cultural change and the concomitant demand from clients to engage with and understand global markets using insight generation methods that offer real ROI across the organization.
I've been in the FS ad hoc MR business for 10 years and am working VERY hard to get out and create a new paradigm based on these trends.
Unfortunately for most, change is almost completely destructive and historically few seem to be able to transform. As a fun example I wrote about the ice making industry this past summer: http://www.tomhcanderson.com/2010/08/21/market-researchers-should-become-refrigerator-manufacturers/
Change today can come from absolutely anywhere, moves much faster and is far more destructive.
Good luck to all in building your DIY software ;)
@Leonard @Tom
Don't you think between the three of us we could come up with one helluva nice DIY tool?... and sell it too. ;)
Very interesting discussion... thanks.
I'd like to talk about something that seems to be largely ignored. Most of the arguments over the future of MR seem to focus solely on the relationship between large corporate brands and established MR conglomerates... a relationship that is growing colder with the REintroduction of in-house MR (most MR was done in-house by the big guys up until the 70s). But surely there is a whole other segment of the economy that is just beginning to discover and afford good ol' time surveys and qual. A lot of researchers who find themselves out of a job thanks to shiny new SM/MR apps should look to the long tail of local small businesses, associations, non-profs, and start-ups for a warm welcome.
Mr Heretic, if you read the comments below Tamara's article, you'll see that while no one completely disagrees to what she has said, a lot of them do not completely agree considering the point of 'Quality vs Quantity'. For the purpose of qualitative research technology is not fully effective yet. I am not an expert in MR - just am learning the basics now, but that aspect of the discussion makes me feel that for qualitative research technology won't come at hand for a long time, if not never.
@MR_Heretic
Don't disagree that kind of tool will emerge, but what they'll deliver will be a flood of data. They won't solve the problem of getting insight out of it, because that takes people.
The opportunity I'm seeing for agencies is in selling that insight, not the tools. This is a very difficult thing for a lot of market research to get its head around, accustomed as it is to selling surveys and focus groups - methods - rather than the results and the insights from those methods.
But clients will still buy insight, because they'll still be buying consulting. McKinsey doesn't sell tools it sells brains, and I don't see them falling out of favour in too much of a hurry.
I found the qual vs quan discussion in the comments to Tamara's article amusing.
From my experience when it comes to quantitative research market researchers as well as their customers prefer simple tables in favour of real statistics.
We had more than one frustrated statistician leave our company because of this.
In my opinion with statistics applied for real (e.g. factor analysis) quan beats qual any day.
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