Reinvention (and uncertainty) dominant themes as researchers look ahead

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Editor's note: Jackie Lorch is vice president, global knowledge management, SSI.  

When respondents to the Quirk’s Corporate Researcher Report survey were asked the question “What is the biggest change your company will make regarding marketing research over the next year?” we might have guessed that budget challenges, the need to do more with less and work faster or trying new techniques would be dominant themes. Instead, answer after answer to this question (which was asked as an open-end) speaks about internal reorganization, reinvention and redefinition of the role of research as the biggest change on the horizon.

It is almost as if all those other trends – the need to deliver research faster and more economically, to be more agile – are now resulting in organizational change on the ground to make the other changes possible.

Only 5 percent of people answering the question said they didn’t expect any change and a further 4 percent expected change but said they didn’t know what that change would be.

Of the remainder, nearly half (44 percent) mentioned some type of organizational change. When combining answers that talked about changing the type of research being done at their company or the type of products being offered, 85 percent of responses related to the overall theme of reinvention and redefinition.

Many people described how the way they work or the structure of their organizations is in flux. Often no longer working in traditional research teams, researchers may be working with multiple groups across multiple departments, functions, geographies and with teams outside their own company. While reorganization is on the horizon, there is little consensus about what it will look like. Some companies are outsourcing, others bringing projects in-house, some using fewer vendors, others looking to use vendors more often, some doing fewer studies, some more, some decentralizing to leverage regional knowledge, others centralizing for efficiency – and some looking for new tools to help them become more efficient within their new organizations.

Becoming less isolated

Many of the structural changes mentioned do have one common theme: they suggest that research teams are becoming less isolated and siloed within organizations. One researcher reported that their “market research department was restructured … to be part of the larger marketing communications organization. Within the department, we are also now structured very differently to better align to the business.”

It makes sense that departments are becoming integrated since there is a growing recognition that data sources themselves need to become integrated to increase the value delivered to clients. One said, “We plan to integrate [research] more into strategy development and business decision-making. The voice of consumers is important and their experience is what drives our business.” Others expected “more thorough integration of market research in company-wide decision-making” and “more rigor … driving action from research findings.” Another noted they were bringing intelligence-gathering from field-related organizations into the corporate MR group which delivers research to stakeholder groups (“business units, marketing, sr. leadership, etc.”). This grassroots marketing intelligence gathering will “inform business decisions, strategy, solutions, etc., together with formal research input and published info about our market.” Another noted that they expected to be “integrating internal data with research projects.”

When research data is integrated with CRM data and data from big data sources, it becomes an integral part of a broader stream of information available to inform decisions. As McKinsey put it in a 2014 article “Winning the research revolution – take two,” “Most companies separate the researchers responsible for gaining consumer insights from those charged with maintaining the customer behavioral database or developing insights from other big data sources. The best marketing organizations, however, integrate understandings from both.” Combining data from research studies with myriad streams of other data now available to humanize and more deeply connect with our customers is the new frontier for market research.

These are fundamental changes, so not surprisingly there is some fear expressed that the value of research may not be recognized in the new structure; research could be sidelined, its value misunderstood and unappreciated. One said, “I am concerned that the organization has devalued the expertise and experience our team brings because they do not understand it.” Another no-holds-barred comment mentions “the cheapening of qualitative research by untrained stooges.” Another sees “less emphasis on research techniques but far more emphasis on stakeholder and change management.” This last comment is a positive one but the danger is that management may not appreciate the foundations of research that allow researchers to deliver reliable data.

‘First hog to the trough’

Although budget constraints were only mentioned by 12 percent of researchers, at least some of the reorganization mentioned is clearly driven by the need to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Interestingly, elsewhere in this Quirk’s study we see that research budgets don’t appear to be under serious threat, with 33 percent having seen budget growth this year compared to last and 23 percent having seen a drop. One person expected “more budget controlled centrally,” others expected “research budget controlled by the Analytics team, not by the marketing director” or the company to move from a “first hog to the trough” approach to funding research to something more organized. Another reported a “complete elimination of a budget owned/managed by the research team and looking to client groups for funding.”

A fifth of those who are worried about budgets coupled their comments with having to do more research with less. Solutions to this dilemma included:

• “more in-house reporting and programming of surveys”
• instead of multiple suppliers, “have our India colleagues do the research from beginning to end”
• “extracting more insights from the custom work we have done previously and from secondary sources”
• enhancing staff skills by “training researchers in DIY data science techniques like Python and SQL.”

The right tools

In this environment of increased complexity and in some cases constrained resources, the search is on for the right tools to increase efficiency. Only 8 percent mentioned automation specifically but many researchers are focusing more on tasks which deliver most value, avoiding time wasted on details of project management and control. Researchers are looking for “more emphasis on data analysis tools and software,” “a new online survey tool,” “cutting-edge tools” and, in general, “more agile market research tools.”

When effective, easy-to-use tools for survey design, project management, DIY sampling, quality control and simple reporting handle many of the mundane details of a research project, researchers can focus on tasks where their experience and expertise have most value: the analysis, drawing out insights from the data, telling the story and making sure decision makers understand the implications of what the story means for the business.

Diverse and opinionated

The voices of the almost 500 researchers who answered this question are diverse and opinionated but some themes emerge. Researchers expect:

• more reorganization and redefinition of their role and value to the organization – and with it an environment of uncertainty;
• the search for efficiency and more valuable deliverables – and a diversity of solutions to make that happen;
• research being seen in the wider context of the insights, marketing and data landscape;
• a risk of research not being respected – and the need to explain and promote the unique skills researchers bring to the organization; and
• automation and the right tools to help us focus on our unique strengths and deliver more value.

Six years ago, Cambiar Consulting’s Simon Chadwick and Ian Lewis spoke on the “winds of change” in research, looking ahead to what the next five to 10 years would hold. “We are facing several winds of change that have huge impact on our profession – to borrow from Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive, market research is approaching a strategic inflection point,” they said.

We’re now in the middle of the future they envisioned and many of their predictions have come true, including more demands from the C-suite, the challenge of integrating new modalities, the coming river of information with thousands of tributaries and the growing role of DIY tools. Results from this Quirk’s study suggest that many organizations are still grappling with this change and the specific implications for them of research’s new role and expectations from the wider business.

The variations of approach we see in these responses are linked by the idea of reinvention. And finally, there are signs that all this experimentation and reinvention is bringing us where we want to be – at the point where business decisions are made. As one researcher put it, “I think there is a culture change in acceptance and execution of market research to drive decisions. It’s becoming a primary thought for the business.”