âWander the halls of any of today’s ever-multiplying corporate-innovation conferences, and you’ll find experts playing to packed houses, evangelizing the power of user-driven design, the importance of ethnographic research, and the value of an internal “innovation culture.” Corporate managers are eagerly soaking up this “right-brain religion,” hoping that an injection of creativity and customer input will help them stand out in markets crowded with interchangeable piffle.â?
Surely this is the very domain of marketing research? If clients really are wandering around in hope rather than expectation where does this leave our industry? Is it fit for purpose and if so for what purpose?
Market research is no longer a small decentralized profession. Through the last few years that market has seen an increasing consolidation within the research industry leading to larger players providing research solutions on a global platform.
With the development of global online panels, intellectual data can now be gathered for a very reasonable price. However, some believe that this âstandardisationâ of service offerings from the larger research players has led to standardized delivery of data and results that lacks creativity, insight and therefore resulting action. Tied in with increasing demands from clients who are looking for a consultancy offering that works with the client team to help implement change from research findings, what will the future market research industry look like?
In a recently written paper, Mike Cooke and Nick Buckley of GFKNOP, look at the changing face of market research and what this means for the market research industry. This can be viewed at www.b2bresearch.org.
