At RW Connect we love a good prediction and we’re not the only ones. The American-based Research Business Report recently published its 15th Annual Predictions Issue, looking at this coming year. Bob Lederer has put together a comprehensive list of 2011 predictions from some of the top voices in market research and has been kind enough to let RW Connect share some of them with our readers. Agree or disagree – what are your thoughts? (Want to see more from this issue? Email your request for a copy to info@rflonline.com.)
Kristin Luck, President, Decipher, Inc. (Portland, OR, USA):
Last year, I predicted the continued evolution of DIY MR tools will change the industry catch phrase from “outsourcing” to “insourcing.” We saw a significant jump in use of these tool-sets by marketers in 2010. Use will only increase in 2011 as DIY survey platforms add functionality and improve usability. With 100% of Fortune 500 firms adopting DIY survey platforms to augment their research practice, agencies and full-service firms won’t be far behind. The ability to program multi-mode studies (especially mobile) in a one-stop environment (survey/sample/reporting) will be paramount. Mobile is the next research tech wave and will also boost MR quality (requiring researchers to limit questionnaire length and focus on respondent engagement). Mobile panels introduced a few years ago – and abandoned due to lack of industry use – will become the key to panel company success.
Finn Raben, Director General, ESOMAR (Amsterdam, The Netherlands):
Irrespective of the economic recovery, the quest for ‘value’ will continue to dominate the end-user perspective of MR. The industry will need to focus on three areas:
1. From a client-service perspective, knowing and understanding ‘when’ and ‘why’ to mix the new, and the traditional will become increasingly important.
2. From a corporate perspective, setting and understanding the legal and ethical boundaries associated with that mix will be a primary challenge.
3. From an industry perspective, ensuring that the new generation of MR entrants have the right (and much broader) skill set, to meet these evolving demands.
Reg Baker, President & COO, and Theo Downes-LeGuin, chief research officer, Market Strategies (Livonia, MI and Portland, OR, USA):
The coming year will see MR’s use of social media enter a crisis around user privacy. Brazen abuse (e.g., Nielsen’s scraping of PatientsLikeMe), increasingly aggressive attempts by social media platforms to monetise their investments through inappropriate use of PII, and public outcry over online tracking and ‘forever cookies’ will culminate in stronger privacy legislation and elevated ethical standards by industry associations. Social media research will become permission-based; the industry will once again face the daunting challenge of respondent cooperation. Industry reliance on many of the same approaches as online advertisers and marketers may lead to trouble in winning consumer trust.
Eileen Campbell, CEO, Millward Brown (New York, USA):
MR will continue to be about using information to solve business problems. But what will change fast is informing decision making with all forms of information, not just surveys. Some will come from much talked about ‘listening.’ It’s a small piece of the puzzle; the ‘listening agenda’ has been over-played. Listening gives only so much of the story. A real dialogue includes listening and asking, investigating and delving deeper. We are not (and won’t be) passive voyeurs and eavesdroppers. We need to be active participants in conversations. By bringing more sources to bear, investigating the issues more thoroughly and creating a deeper dialogue, we will get to the right answers, inform bold decisions and drive real business impact.
Joel Rubinson, President, Rubinson Partners (New York, USA): I expect research growth areas to be conversation mining, use shopper insights and anything that has to do with ROI assessment of digital advertising, services that integrate media consumption and purchase (or other) behavior, online community research and experimentation with mobile. This spending will come at the expense of traditional focus groups, phone research and the nice-to-know A&U/segmentation study with insights that do not directly connect to digital media buying.
Jeffrey Henning, Founder & VP-Strategy, Vovici (Rockland, MA, USA):
Smartphones and social networks have revolutionised online game play, encouraging audiences that do not typically play video games to join in. One genre made popular by this new audience is the ‘sandbox’ game. Players build cities, farms, zoos, kingdoms or other virtual entities in the open-ended style of playing in a sandbox. Many games have virtual economies; one gaming company, CCP Games, hired an economist to play ‘central banker’ in its in-game market. Online games will emerge as a valuable method of conducting discrete choice analysis and price sensitivity research.
Robert Philpott, CEO, Synovate (London, UK & Chicago, IL, USA):
My predictions for 2011 MR:
1) A significant increase in the percentage of international studies driven by global companies based in Asia. The African MR market will be much more attractive and competitive.
2) A challenging lack of growth in Europe. Other developed markets will be challenged by investment options and profitability. There will be more acquisitions, but valuations will be well below pre-global economic crash multiples. corresponding increase in acquisition interest around
3) The Global Big Four in the custom research sector will intensify their efforts to build sustainable relationships with the major global research buyers and continue to squeeze out all but the most unique of the smaller agencies. 4) An increase in the share of MR spend with software companies, and a those companies.
Tom Anderson, Founder & Managing Partner, Anderson Analytics, LLC (Stamford, CT, USA):
Suppliers are beginning to realise that they need to offer value in advice/consulting and/or creative execution. Customers want more and better DIY (survey software, data & text analytics and data visualisation) and partners that move them up the value chain. DIY is an opportunity–not a threat–so if you’re just offering data collection and simple analysis, expect to lose business to ad and PR agencies or management consulting firms. A full-service MR business must develop useful software to stay relevant and maintain margins–or risk commoditisation and eventual obsolescence.
Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP (London, UK): It’s all about impact of geography (growth of BRICs, Next 11 and CIVETS) and technology (impact of PC, mobile, video content, social networks, etc.) on the consumer insight business. Their impact on research is equal and continuously expanding.
