During the last 6 months, I have been honored to be a member of the Programme Committee for the 2016 edition of the ESOMAR Latin America Conference that was held in Bogota (Colombia), last 10th -12th April.
ESOMAR’s events are always a great opportunity to gauge the market research industry and better understand the main challenges it is facing. This Latin America gathering with 20 selected papers to be presented and more than 200 delegates attending was no exception.
It is well known that the market research industry has been at a crossroads for a while, an identity crisis. The digital world has driven two main forces that are tearing the market researcher’s toolbox apart:
- An explosion of consumer data: consumer data is “already there” so market research is no longer needed to collect it by doing surveys or using focus groups. With that amount of data available, clients want more than just "collecting data" from market research?companies, data alone has apparently become commoditized.
- Changing consumer mindset: market research surveys are no longer appealing to “make your voice heard”. Consumers have blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and an infinite number of websites to make suggestions, send feedback, or even complain more effectively. So market research response rates have dropped down, and collecting data through the traditional market research toolbox is harder than it ever was.
In Latin America, this deep transformation came overnight, in the period of no more than 4 years, - which made it even more difficult to assimilate and overcome.
Clearing crossroads.
Fortunately, it is clear for market research practitioners today that, even though they have to stretch their skill sets, there still is value in it. There is no need for researchers to become business consultants (although some of them have chosen this path), and yes, there still is a need to collect data and make sense of it. Now, we can understand Market Research (MR) as three interlocked layers where data is the core element:?
- Collect data: Certainly, there is an explosion of consumer data sources: from internal CRM systems to social media opinions, from cell phone GPS location to web navigation tracking, - you name it. However, there still is a need to collect and store all this data in a structured way that makes it accessible and manageable (this IT capability is a compulsory addition to the market researcher’s toolbox). Partnering with data owners, and most importantly, producing data that fills the gap between these data sources is pivotal for market researchers now. For instance, although you might keep track of GPS connections of all the devices in a particular region, you might need to know the demographic information of those devices (those people) in order to construct out-home advertising exposure. Usually, filling these gaps means gathering consumer-centric information, so the ability to engage with digital consumers and obtain this information directly from them is another important element to add to the MR toolbox (A "marketing skill", if you like).
It is clear for market research practitioners today that, even though they have to stretch their skill sets, there still is value in it.
- Make sense of data: Once you have access to several sources of data and it is clearly structured and tagged, you need to make sense of it. To do so, researchers need to merge, calibrate, weigh up, and triangulate between those data sources (as seen in the GPS example above) in order to better analyze it. Understanding data sources' capabilities and limitations - potential biases - is key. This is also where conceptual frameworks from a number of disciplines (neuroscience, behavioral economics, psychology, data science, etc.) come to the rescue: Is social desirability skewing social media data??How can response latency reveal what consumers really think? What kind of information can I obtain from recordings of people's faces while watching commercials? Interpretation or making data “understandable” is the next step. For the low-price end, packaged and automated do-it-yourself solutions also have a role to play in this layer.
- Make data actionable: The final output. At the end of the day, companies invest in market research to reduce risk in their decision-making. That “action” could be setting a budget for expansion into new markets based on trends of consumer behavior, implementing retention offers based on a model to predict churn from your subscriber's database, or deciding which logo for your rebranding effort. In any case, understanding the final outcome is the key to making data relevant across the layers, and properly planning your research. Savvy agencies partnering with in-company researchers is the best recipe to add the business context needed to make this final step happen.?Market Research won't have a seat in the decision-making table if this layer is not in place.
In conclusion, Market Research?might have been at a crossroads for a while but its future path is clear now. Moreover, although it certainly has to add some tools from other disciplines, the path it has to follow does not greatly differ. Nevertheless, as we saw during the ESOMAR LatAm Conference, there are more variables in the equation. To succeed market research must increase its pace, and gain velocity.?
Need for speed.
In all forms of human activities, there is a trade-off between speed and accuracy; accuracy means testing and control, at the expense of speed. For Market Research, reliability is the cornerstone, so the increasing speed is a particularly difficult challenge.?However, not a single presentation in Bogota undermined the importance of urgency in what market research does. On the contrary, the world turns faster than ever today and last month’s data is completely obsolete, so data must be fast or will not be relevant at all.?
As part of the 2016 Latin America Programme Committee, we had the responsibility, -and privilege-, to nominate one paper from the regional conference for the ESOMAR Excellence Award for Best Paper, -which carries a grand prize of € 4,000 and will be presented at ESOMAR's annual Congress held in New Orleans in September this year-.?
Last month’s data is completely obsolete, so data must be fast or will not be relevant at all.?
We unanimously selected an outstanding paper, “Coca-Cola Culture Club, Exploring Brand Execution in Point of Sale” by Gabriel Neira, from Dichter & Neira, and Jorge Fonseca, from Coca-Cola, which is an excellent example of what we were saying:
- Changing a traditional store audit supervision model based on a hand-operated follow-up to a technological (geo-referenced, with pictures) and transparent process that generates more reliable information. (Collect data)
- Processing data and generating KPI visualization reports accessible from any device with a web browser in real-time. Reports are tailored to the specific needs and responsibilities of each decision-maker. (Make sense of data).
- Creating tools to correlate execution KPIs with business variables in order to identify new opportunities and define winning strategies. (Make data actionable).
Collecting data in innovative ways, making sense of it with an expanded toolbox, and making sure data is actionable, at a very fast pace; that is the road that leads the market research?industry back to unlocking great value. Savvy market research?players that resolve the trade-off between reliability and speed will find their way back to strong growth.
Exciting days are coming.
