Note: The following post was live blogged during the 2013 MRIA Annual Conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario. This post has had minimal edits and as such may contain some typographical errors.
Speaker: Dhan Kashyap – Director Consumer Research and Competitive Intelligence, Humana
Question: There is bound to be a gap between buyer and seller in any industry as each want to maximize value. But is there more of a gap in research than adjacent disciplines?
Straw poll of audience revealed that attendees feel that the research industry is closer to their customers than selection of CPGs (P&G, Coca Cola, Unilver), closer than GE and IBM, and consulting companies like BCG and McKinsey.
Client side market research function
- pressure both on industry and client side as to what is expected
- believes that pressure on client side has increased, especially since right-sizing in 2008, even though in recessionary times there is a greater demand for information
- every now and then a new source of info (social media ex.) open up
Issues
- Reduced headcount, expected to do more with less staff.
- DIY research growth – have made collection of data easier and cheaper, gives notion that we can get more insights with a cheaper budget. Sometimes people outside the research functions commission a Survey Monkey survey, because of perception that market research needlessly slow and expensive. Problem: is universe done properly, is questionnaire written properly. Then research function brought in at the end to endorse studies, put in a spot.
- Social media data: notion that there is social media data that can be harvested and move forward with it. Opinion: appropriate that we use a structured way to be able to use it properly. Unless there is an appropriate way to analyze it properly there is a danger of providing internal stakeholders information that steers them in the wrong direction. Otherwise they may just provide wordclouds and say “this is what’s happening”. Need to bring more science to this to stakeholders to provide better insight. Question: how do you make sure the right decisions are made with this data?
- Big Data Analytics and Behavioural Analytics: Big Data is establishing itself as a new source of reliable insights; Behavioural Analytics has become a newer function that is being endorsed by leading academics. Puzzling, because to the best of his knowledge look at input and output, and don’t really look at why things are happening. Unless we look at this we haven’t satisfied the insight function.
- Other Consultants who pitch work at senior management, such as management consulting firms, boutique brand shops. Offer a much bigger engagement in which research is included. This takes the research function away from researchers or they take the research that has been done and repackage it, and get the ears of Senior Management.
- Bloggers/Authors/Gurus who have impact on research. Had been told in what instance to bypass research and use knowledge internally, build bridges and then test by crowdsourcing. Nate Silver is one of the more interesting examples of this, by taking all of the main polls and interpreted them into electoral college votes. Missed opportunity by research industry.
Observations on Agency side:
- Client pressure to deliver more for less. If this becomes the standard it has impact on agency margins it can lead to less investment on talent or solution based research products. This can result in lower amounts of differentiation.
- Impact on agency margins
- Models investment in solutions focused products
- Low differentiation
- Talent development
- Experience calibrated to needs of client.
General observations:
- When price becomes the primary measure of choice, then what is the nature of relationship? More project based, more transactional.
- Question becomes how much has the industry innovated, and is it meaningful from the client side – i.e.. are they willing to pay more?
- Innovation tend to be more based on efficiency and foundational issues right. Reaching cellphone users, having more reliable panel samples. “Efficiency based innovation”
Agency-side innovations
- Online shelf-set fly through — bring any environment such as retail to the respondent online
- Online eye-tracking
- Online or digital ethnography
- Neuro-response to stimulus
- Facial coding
- Genetic algorithms — including crowd-sourcing
Each one of these changes pushes the envelope, but are disparate. Unless players make a move and bring all of these together techniques will rule the roost.
Even on qualitative side the amount of innovation, methodologies, techniques that have been around for 15 or 20 years have not really changed. Are there ways to bring innovation into qualitative.
Perception of value by clients is missing, clients wonder:
- why is research expensive
- and slow
- isn’t it as easy as creating questions, obtaining results and creating charts?
The art of connecting
- if we are not able to work through what is the real question, we are likely to come up with sub-optimal research
- therefore agencies and clients have to have a meaningful conversation to determine what is the underlying business issue
THoughts:
- ask contextual questions
- pay attention to details
- artfully decipher “true” business question
- bring the value-add to the forefront
- align and articulate the benefit to the client and make it more meaningful
An idea: ability to engage comes from 3 dimensions
- efficiency
- providing solution based results
- communication: how do we make sure that adjacent disciplines are not brought in just to re-present research
Providing solutions
a) pause, think, and frame the question — need to do a better job of starting the project
Pause and think: curious as to why Nate Silver could take public domain info and extract more meaning than industry people. Focus on the metrics that matter.
Communication: outbound — how do we ensure that we are able to deliver the information in the way that sticks, that senior management can understand without having a third-party explain.
b) provide solution-focused research products
