How are digital research companies preparing themselves – and their customers – for the future?
Over the last decades, the behavior of companies of market research has given us good clues about the competitive dynamics of this industry and can help us to foresee some future bases of their competitiveness. Among relevant trends, we can enumerate the following:
- continuous flow configuration – formerly sporadic and occasional research efforts are now being made with greater frequency and consistency;
- autonomization of the interactions – research companies' clients have taken increasing control over the processes of obtaining, processing and interpreting data about their own clients;
- thematic deepening – the bases for the examination of beliefs, purposes, values and motivations become more solid, with greater detail of the subjects and richness of interpretation;
- increased precision and qualitative distinction in segmentation – advanced techniques for obtaining and processing data has made it possible to delimit in a more defined way and based on clear characteristics, different groups of customers;
- complexity of analysis techniques – more powerful instruments for obtaining, processing and analyzing data enable the application of concepts and techniques;
- improvement of the arrangement as a differential – new communication habits and network behavior make it possible to change the way of accessing and interacting with customers.
Shaped by the degree of advancement of instruments and techniques, the task of discovering customer motivations and preferences at one time experienced a phase marked by batch surveys, made for meet specific needs (launching a product, testing acceptance of improvements, evaluating effectiveness of a campaign, measure receptivity to a promotional approach) but they had limited power to meet real needs of their client companies — producers of goods and services.
Attempts to reduce dissatisfaction with clustering experiences led agents to seek better ways to characterize groups and their consumption habits, but the occasional character of the interactions with customers, as well as the recurrent recreation of practices and terminology, reduced the continuity of results and even the ease of applying the findings, as they reduced the degree of topicality of research efforts.
The efforts took the form of recurrent novelties with new concepts and new nomenclature of customer groups appearing. Qualitatively useful groupings were created to differentiate the treatment to be given to clients, but the results were not always steady, and changes in grouping criteria reduced consistency between each research effort and those that preceded it.
Later, the advent of the internet and advances in the IT area have made it possible to employ better and cheaper means of capturing information and processing large amounts of data. Known statistical techniques could be used more frequently and for different scales of samples, so that the work of monitoring markets could take on a new face.
?Today, frequent interactions with customers are easier and cheaper. They can complement each other, enabling advances in customer learning. It is possible to give a consistent direction to a sequence of efforts. Some innovations become viable and less expensive and so does redirecting market practices — in order to make innovations possible and less expensive, change market practices, modify products, promote position adjustments, or even improve dissemination, distribution, brand image and promotion efforts.
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For research and data analysis companies, these conditions have made it possible to become more involved with clients' strategy and intensify participation in the decision-making process. Likewise, they have enabled those companies to assume the role of facilitators, that is, to operate as agents able of supplying clients with means they require to interpret, obtain or process data according to their needs – and these needs vary from client to client. client.
In addition, the ease of obtaining, processing and interpreting data on networks has contributed to research companies anticipating the future needs of their customers. These elements (providing support instruments according to specific needs and anticipating the assistance that will be needed) should help to distinguish successful companies in the sector from others.
As for the future, the movements that we can see now in the competitive landscape lead to even more continuous monitoring, that is, more frequent and consistent interactions in flow, helping in the decision-making process; they also lead to a greater intensity of interaction between producers of goods and services and their own customers, with greater closeness and feedback speed.
For continuous interactions to take place, permanent bases of respondents will have to be built, organized and consolidated along with the demands for information. The organization of groups of respondents derived from previous relationship efforts will contribute to making each new consultation less difficult; and – if the client of a research company so choose – the client will be able to conduct a significant part of the data collection process, using tools that the research companies will offer or use together.
Digital research companies will have the role of guiding the process, avoiding deviations in the cumulative process of knowing values and preferences of their clients' customers; of creating and strengthening networks with incentives for participation (i. e., the provision of information about interests and needs); specializing in advanced methods of data collection, processing and interpretation; and creating mechanisms for obtaining data that the research companies' own clients can use on their own supported by the research companies.
In summary, one of the paths that digital research companies have followed is to strengthen their future competitive position by providing conditions for the client to interact better with his own clients. Being aware of the importance of having a broad and functional base of respondents, they will take care of building and strengthening the links that support it. Instead of placing themselves as specialists with exclusive knowledge that are able to make decisions on behalf of the client, they will create means for the client to be able to conduct part of the interaction process whenever they want.
The main function of these research companies will be to provide support. The future will help to distinguish between good supporters, bad supporters and those agents who were not even able to understand their role in the competitive process.
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José Luís Neves is a corporate?FP&A professional. Business administration specialist and economist, he has a master's degree in Business Management. With more than 20 years of experience as finance manager and controller, he has been leading finance and controllership processes in several companies. He lives in S?o Paulo, SP, Brazil.
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