Colin Strong
You might think you don’t have any, or at least not many philosophical assumptions in the work that we do as market researchers. But we have. They are implicit in the way in which we approach, measure and report on the world but they are just so embedded that we are often simply not aware of them. I argue that it’s now critical that we, as market researchers, think more about the ontology of our profession, our philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality.
The reason for this is because the increasing availability of alternative data sources is questioning the traditional role of market research. Like it or not, the traditional role of our profession is to do with the gathering of ‘facts’ about human behaviour, which were historically in short supply. Of course this is a much more intellectually demanding task than I make it sound but ‘fact’ collection and reporting still forms the cornerstone of much of our quantitative and qualitative research repertoire across the industry.
But as our lives are increasingly ‘datafied’, it is fast being recognised that facts about our activities are often available from a wide variety of alternative data sources. Let’s call these sources ‘big data’, not because it is a particularly meaningful term but because we mostly understand the social, economic and business phenomenon that this represents.
So in terms of ontology, much market research has seen itself as somewhat ‘positivist’ in nature, that is assuming there is an objective reality that can be captured. And both market research and big data broadly have the same ontological starting point, they both claim to be able to capture this reality. But they have quite different epistemologies, assumptions about the best way to measure the world. Broadly speaking market research is based on talking to consumers, big data is based on the collection of consumers’ digital exhausts. Unsurprisingly for professions that are wedded to an positivist ontology that considers there is an underlying ‘truth’ that needs to be revealed, our navel gazing is often around epistemology rather than ontology. Not least because if the world is a place of facts to be revealed then there is little to be said about your philosophical view of the world.
The epistomological focus of the debate has meant that over the years both quantitative and qualitative market research tools have become better able to capture more detailed and intimate details of our lives. But this position of authority is now under question – first by big data which it is often claimed can capture the increasingly intimate aspects of our lives with much greater accuracy, breadth and depth than survey methods can ever hope to do so. But also by behavioural economics which has added to our woes by highlighting the limitations of human ability to effectively recall our actions and account for our behaviours.
But of course big data has its own challenges to their epistemological crown – the recently reported failure of Google to accurately predict flu trends may prove to be a turning point in the popular perceptions of big data as the primary means to measure our lives. Likewise there are increasingly questions about the not so minor matter of representativeness of much big data. The idea that we can easily replace carefully designed sample with an ‘N=All’ approach is starting to look a little naive.
But for all the challenges that big data currently faces, I believe it will inevitably get better at measuring behaviour more accurately. Wearable tech, the ‘Internet of Things’ and the general datafication of our offline ‘meatspace’ surely makes this inevitable. And not only that but it is increasingly clear that huge amounts of information about individuals ‘soft’, personal characteristics can be derived from these ‘hard’ behavioural data sets. It will be increasingly tough for brands to justify the relatively high spend on MR relative to the much lower costs of leveraging existing data assets. Given this, big data will inevitably win the positivist crown – where there are ‘facts’ to be uncovered we will look here first rather than to market research.
Whilst this may at first glance seem like bad news for market research, surely this debate is highlighting the need for industry to move its ontological focus away from the somewhat intellectually numbing positivist zone. Our profession needs to move into more of a post modernist perspective, where we consider the world as socially constructed, where we all create the meaning ourselves.
A post-modernist approach to market research involves a radical re-evaluation of our understanding of ‘the consumer’. Philosophy and psychology are increasingly questioning the positivist notion that consumers are a stable, coherent and predictable unit of known attitudes and behaviours. Yet the implicit ontology of many (although clearly not all) of our approaches implies exactly this despite the growing evidence that the notion of a stable ‘self’ is an illusion and that meaning and behaviour is socially constructed, more vulnerable to change than we had previously imagined.
This is not a positivist versus post-modern discussion. We don’t question the nature of the positivist reality when we are flying in a jet plane being held aloft by the laws of physics. Or when a doctor uses science to treat a broken leg. There is a place for a factual understanding of the world and of consumers. It’s just that this will increasingly be met by big data rather than market research. Meanwhile a post-modern ontology for market research will help us to better understand how we as humans generate meaning rather than uncovering further facts about us.
And let’s not get this too confused with our methods at this stage of the debate. This is not a manifesto for market research to abandon quantitative approaches and only focus on qualitative. Indeed, I believe that much of the latter is still driven by a positivist ontology – the ‘facts’ to be uncovered are merely more subtle. This is something more fundamental. Work still needs to be done to develop the epistemology to support this ontological shift. That’s not to say that there are pockets which do have this as a driving force but as far as I can see there is little discussion about this and little evidence that it is particularly well developed practice.
I am pretty sure there are few in our profession who would disagree that we are in need of a fundamental paradigm shift. It’s only at times when we are threatened do we recognise this need. Big Data is just that threat but in my mind this shows us the beginnings of our new possibilities.
Colin Strong heads up technology research at GfK in the UK. He is particularly interested in the way our lives are increasingly mediated by data – between consumers, brands and government. Colin is interested in exploring the opportunities this represents for a better understanding of human behaviour but also to examine the implications for brand strategy and social policy.
