Editor's note: Joe Hopper is president of Versta Research, Evanston, Ill. This article appeared in the February 22, 2010, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.
In his book What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis claims that middlemen are doomed because the Internet has made information so easy, so accessible and so cheap. He argues that the Internet links buyers and sellers directly, and it allows buyers to get information and access to sellers instantaneously, rendering middlemen obsolete. Nowhere does Jarvis' cautionary tale loom larger than in market research.
Market researchers operate in the middle: between businesses who need information about their customers and the people (their customers and prospects) being interviewed about needs, attitudes and behaviors. There is explosive growth among new companies selling the tools of our trade (i.e., survey software, access to respondents through online panels, etc.) directly to the businesses who need and want it. If Jarvis is right, what is the future for market research and public opinion polling?
Add value
The answer, it seems, will depend on how and whether we add value beyond collecting and delivering data. If we focus on our business being research, we add a great deal of value, and while the tools of our trade may evolve, our essential work remains. Good researchers are experts in the entire process of how to formulate, collect and analyze information to increase understanding. We analyze problems; help clients ask the right questions to solve problems; recommend and implement methods of data collection to produce information that will answer the right questions; use interpretive and statistical tools to untangle and understand the data; and ultimately transform all of this into a story that clients can use.
The Internet is not displacing the importance of these efforts. On the contrary, new technologies will make the work faster, better and less expensive - further enhancing the value of what we do as researchers. We no longer have to spend 80 percent of our time tinkering with the tools of data collection. Now we can devote our time to bringing brainpower to market research, solving problems, answering questions and turning data into stories.
Need to rethink
Researchers who have built successful businesses around data collection and delivery by making lots of phone calls, sending out lots of surveys, scanning barcodes, collecting data, tallying it up and sending numbers and charts to clients will need to rethink how, whether and where they add value. And their challenge is not just to retool because online technology links consumers and businesses directly. No doubt Jarvis is right that this world of market research middlemen is at its end, and those in the middle must evolve.
The same is likely true in other areas of marketing that operate as mediators, and so we are urged and enabled to add value and insight. Without doing so we are not likely to survive. When it comes to market research, the goal is to deepen understanding of the world. The Internet puts a world of information at anyone's doorstep; smart research helps clients make sense of it.