MarketTools Blog

The Market Research Event (TMRE 2011) is always one of the most exciting market research industry events of the year – and from our experience in the MarketTools booth, as well as talking to attendees in the sessions, the three days were incredibly yet enthusiastically busy.

The Keynotes, especially Anne Mulcahy’s kickoff “Leading Through Transformation” and Sheena Iyengar’s “The Art of Choosing”, provided a terrific opportunity to re-think our roles as researchers.

Anne’s “Transformation” theme was embodied by several sessions that focused on ways to communicate research results more deeply into the organization.  Overall, the role of the market researcher is changing:  from proving that data is statistically relevant, non-biased and methodologically sound to converting the data into a story, with insights and recommendations suitable for the boardroom.  This trend is gaining speed, yet is far from complete.  The circle of end users for market research continues to move beyond R&D to creative agencies, brand managers, and line-of-business managers. 

Two sessions made the point that data visualization is a key component to communicating research results at the boardroom level.  Both Jason Anderson from Blizzard Entertainment and Ruben Alcaraz from Meijer illustrated ways the industry can transform a sea of data into highly visual insights.  Walking back to the exhibit space after these sessions, I took part in a lively discussion about the construction of research deliverables, and why the 15-page executive summary needs to be extinct.  As the only supplier in the conversation, I heard that as an industry, we must start delivering recommendations and advice backed by data, de-emphasizing data as the major component of the deliverable.  This is a tremendous opportunity for researchers on both the client and vendor sides to expand their talents and make research results more relevant for all.

While developing deep insights and converting data into stories are some of the most interesting and rewarding parts of MR, today’s research teams have to deliver these additional findings with fewer resources.  Christine Stasiw-Lazarchuk of Ford shared that, as the automaker recast itself, the company’s marketing research group had to reduce headcount by 70% while budget was reduced 40%.  This makes it more difficult, yet more imperative to make market research results relevant to and consumable by a broader audience. 

Reflecting on “The Art of Choosing”, keynoter Sheena Iyengar offered an example showing that when shoppers were presented with a reduced set of selections for jam, the result was a higher purchase rate.  That brought to mind some of the research we have completed with customers.  We often need to balance our customers’ desire to present respondents with matrix questions that have 20+ prompts for 10+ attributes with a real need to scale back the choice set so that the respondent can give thoughtful responses.  The complexity of the social media landscape also suggests that social media research results could be impacted by too many choices as well.

The idea that a smaller selection results in a greater response rate could easily be a supporting argument for the value of mobile activities.  Mobile marketing tends to be very direct and immediate, with limited choices.  Mobile research tends to be the same –targeted and punchy.  Perhaps the streamlined choices we see in mobile research can offer a model that would provide the entire MR industry with increased – or better – responses. 

TMRE delivered so many excellent sessions, and everyone who visited us at the MarketTools booth was energized by the topics and the discussions about how to implement new ideas.  Some of the most enthusiastic conversations blended our new mobile research and online communities offerings with research tactics gleaned from the sessions.  The market research community is filled with creative individuals, and I can’t wait to see these changes implemented in our future projects.