Tom Anderson asked some of us to consider what the Top 5 Hot trends, and Not trends, for the future of Market Research are. You can see more at the Next Gen Market Research blog.
My thoughts, in no particular order:
Hot:
1. Insight Communities – as the technology gets cheaper and easier to use, it will become possible to have profitable micro-communities.
2. Online Qualitative – again, the tools are becoming more advanced and easier to use, allowing moderators to interact in a more f2f way.
3. Social Media data mining – with the increased ability to perform advanced text analytics this becomes more useful.
4. Science-based Qualitative techniques – the ability to measure verbal and non-verbal responses in less intrusive ways opens up the possibility of using techniques such as voice and facial recognition, physical responses, etc.
5. Hybrid techniques – increasing use of models such as Qual-Quant and Qual-Ethno to have multiple data sources to help inform clients’ decisions. Also incorporating multiple touch points, so using in-person with mobile follow-up, for example.
Not:
1. DIY Qualitative – maybe it’s wishful thinking, but once clients discover how difficult it is to do good Qual work, they will relegate this to a niche application
2. Telephone surveys – they will never go away, but it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to execute.
3. Net Promoter Score – Seriously…can you tell me that you can succeed by refining it down to a number? “42”
4. Random Samples – Everyone who will likely participate in Market Research is already enrolled in a panel (or 5), so searching for randomness is increasingly more difficult and less interesting.
5. Paper-based surveys – nobody does mail any more, and mobile technology is so easy it’s become the choice for intercept surveys.
We welcome all comments, positive or negative. The joy of Qualitative research is that there are no wrong answers, just answers!
Happy Pancake Day,
Steve and Megann
Reading all of these top 10 predictions posts and comparing them to mine is a great experience! The one thing about your post that stood out for me was the mention that ‘nobody does mail anymore’. I think this is definitely becoming the case, even in countries where there is little infrastructure in high-speed internet lines or phone lines because everyone is buying smartphones or cellphones. I’ll be interested to see if mail surveys do in fact die as a method over the next few years.
By: Sean Copeland on March 8, 2011
at 12:28 pm
Thanks for your comments, Sean. Yes, we think mail is disappearing. But how fast? Back in the 90′s, many companies were predicting the paperless office…and we’re not there yet!
By: panoptika on March 8, 2011
at 1:02 pm