Future Now
The IFTF Blog
The Future of Market Research
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet Joel Rubinson, the Chief Research Officer and resident thought leader at the Advertising Research Foundation, to discuss an initiative they are sponsoring that is looking at the future of market research.
While I have not specifically looked at the market research field, what struck me was how similar the challenges that are facing market research are to other areas of science and technology.
First, prevailing methodologies are being overturned almost overnight by innovations in economics, psychology and mathematics. Joel cited the way that behavioral economics is shattering many models of shopper behavior that have stood for decades. Shoppers aren't cold rationalists, or necessarily emotional impulse buyers, but rather decision-makers relying on a set of rather simple heuristics.
Second, market research is swimming in data, and its clear that a gap has opened between the computational ability to store and search that data, and the methodological capability to analyze it. The sensory revolution that is creating similar problems in the hard sciences, is clearly coming home to roost in market research - perhaps the first place in the social sciences where that's true. Sure the physicists are all drowning in the Grid Physics Network these days as the Large Hadron Collider kicks about 50 terabytes of experimental data each day, but the torrent of transactional data retailers have amassed is just as incomprehensible, if on a somewhat smaller magnitude.
It's refreshing to see ARF's intellectual leadership, as they try to help marketers bring their tools and methods into the 21st century. As Joel pointed out to me, one consequence of the changes afoot is that listening becomes a far more important activity. For decades, marketers have controlled the conversation with consumers through survey language and other structured research instruments. At IFTF, we've extensively used ethnographic methods to listen to everyday people, and generate the right questions to feed into more rigorous quantitative instruments. With consumers taking control of conversations about products, services and brands online, the successful market researcher will be the one that is attentive enough to formulate the right question for tomorrow's market, instead of forcing us to answer yesterday's questions.
ARF is holding a series of conferences that are looking at the future of market research The next installment of this conference series will take place at the ARF's Industry Leader Forum in San Francisco on January 27.