Once a quarter I talk to new employees as part of our company orientation process. I tell them that this is an exciting time to be in MR and a key part of that excitement is the explosion of new methodologies that we have seen over about the last three or four years. I tell them that it's too soon to sort out the winners from the losers but it's our job to stay abreast of all them and figure out which of them might work for our clients.
I was reminded of this as I read through the just-released GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report. It pretty much confirmed what I already knew: while these new methods are getting a lot of air time they are not yet attracting significant research spend. While respondents seem to agree that the eventual winners will be social media analytics, mobile surveys and online communities very few of them are actually using these methods now or planning to do so in the near term. The key paragraph is on page 7 of the exec summary:
Despite the more aggressive adoption of social media, mobile apps, and online communities, less than 10% of buyers or suppliers predict they will use these methods in the near future. The use of serious gaming, biometrics, neuromarketing, crowdsourcing, virtual environments, eye tracking visualization analytics, mobile qualitative, or mobile ethnography are, for now, being used at very low levels.
Granted, this is a convenience sample heavily weighted toward small companies (a little less than half under $1M in revenues and another quarter in the $1M-$5M range) and maybe we shouldn't over interpret the findings. But it's consistent with what I hear from people who make it their business to track this sort of thing.
None of which is to say that we should push innovation down in the priority stack. But when you look at how quickly online panels took off and compare the growth in spend there to what we are seeing with social media analytics, mobile and MROCs you have to wonder whether any of these new methods will take off any time soon. I'm not sure that's a healthy sign for our industry.
Comments
One response to “Is the revolution on hold?”
Hi Reg, online panels took quite a while to take off, especially outside North America. In Europe it was probably 8 years from introduction to dominant method – and I am not sure that any new change needs to be as big as the move to online quant to count as a revolution?
In terms of changes that I think are revolutions:
1) The shift to passive data collection – the latest ESOMAR and similar suggests that 50% of revenues currently come from loyalty cards, store audits, automated monitor, analytics etc
2) MROCs have changed the face of online qual and have caused more people to use qual for more purposes – but a revolution in qual is not a revolution in the whole industry
3) I think social media analysis is a revolution, but most of the companies providing it and many of the people buying it are not classed as market research – so it does not appear to be as strong in the MR league tables.
The innovation that I am betting my career on is community panels – we’ll know in two years if I am right. Why do I think they will be so big, because they can deliver quant faster and cheaper – and that’s all many buyers seem to care about (they can be better, they can deliver qual, they can deliver longitudinal analysis – but faster/cheaper quant will be why most people buy them).