The Trransform mation Trrack: Ma arket Res search in n the Nex xt Decad de By Nanc cy Pekala By 2021,, market rese earchers will become modern-day H Huck Finns, navigating u unanticipated d twists and turns in a river overflo owing with information. Changes s ranging from Google and Faceboo ok to consum mer listening and neuroscience have e created a continuous s and organic flow of kno owledge. To o get ahead o of that flow, market researchers will need d to focus on n value creation by help ing organiza ations create e their own proprieta ary rivers of information that t lead to better b decisiion-making. Recently y, Marketing Researcherrs spoke with h Ian Lewis, Director of Research h Impact Co onsulting for Cambiar, LL LC, to learn how currentt industry changes are impactin ng market re esearchers and a what’s a ahead in the next decade. Lewis will be e a keynote speaker at the t AMA’s R Research & S Strategy Summit September S 11-14 1 in Orla ando, FL wh here he will b be presenting on the topic, “M Market Resea arch in the Next N Decade:: The Future e, the Barrierrs, the Enablers s.” ng Research hers: We’ve e heard a lott about the n need for the market rese earch sectorr to Marketin transform m itself. From m your persp pective, wha at does that look like? Ian Lewiis: I see this s in two partts. The first involves the e external ch hanges which are things we have no choice abou ut. The seco ond involves those chang ges we have e a lot of cho oice about a and o game. So S when you u think aboutt all of the ch hanges that have taken requires that we up our place in the t last 10 years, y it’s dra amatic. Goo ogle hadn’t yyet obtained its IPO; Faccebook and LinkedIn didn’t exist. There were e no iPods, no iPads, an nd no YouTu ube. The pa ace of chang ge is increasin ng even more e. We need d to respond to that and, where we ccan, get ahead of that change and a take adv vantage of it. We also have a need d to up our game g as rese earchers. So ome of that has to do wiith how we d do our job. Some of tha at is to respo ond to what executive e m anagement is asking off research no ow which is really being a partner in driving business impacct and growth h, and we all know that growth is s critical to our future. Th he role of res search has tto change an nd we have to define ou ur job as driving g business impact. Thatt’s absolutely y crucial and d I don’t think that’s how w we’ve traditiona ally worked. We need d to become real consulttants to the business b an d act as bussiness partne ers who are driving ch hange. That’s a very diffferent focus for a lot of rresearchers who grew to o become be etter and bette er at managiing projects but rather disconnected d from the bu usiness and really driving change. It’s that 80% % of research h is focused on tactical, rearview mirror type ressearch. The o work has s to become e more strate egic and lesss tactical. focus of our 1
Our toolkit has expanded and continues to expand dramatically with things like consumer listening, MROCs, co-creation and neuroscience. We really have to leverage that. This gives us great opportunity. This accelerated rate of change requires researchers to be future focused to get ahead of things and not always be following behind. That gives us plenty to think about and work on. MR: During the AMA’s 2011 Research and Strategy Summit to be held September 11-14 in Orlando, FL you’ll be addressing the topic of market research in the next decade. Looking ahead to 2020, can you share how some of the changes that are occurring today will impact the market researcher’s job in the future? Lewis: Making the journey from being a researcher to a consultant is absolutely critical if we’re going to drive change. That’s a very different skillset than the traditional researcher skillset. Another huge change is what we refer to as “Transformation will require the river concept. This concept basically acknowledges that there is just so much some pretty strong, bold information out there that companies are leadership. It will take the right going to need to mine all that information which we call a river and build their own talent to make it happen.” proprietary rivers of information which will include the research survey but will also include consumer listening, blog mining, behavioral analysis of what’s going on in the Web and mobile and all sorts of other things. There’s going to be huge value and challenges in mining this river of information. These changes will drive a lot of new skills and they will present new opportunities. It will also drive a somewhat decreased focus on doing surveys. Today, whenever a marketing challenge comes up, a typical response is, “Let’s do a new survey.” If we look 10 years out in the leading edge companies, the response is going to be, “Let’s mine everything we have using a pretty sophisticated process we’ll have in place for doing that. Let’s mine that and then let’s determine if we actually need to do a survey.” If you do need a survey, it’s going to be much more focused than what you would do today. This is going to be a really fundamental change in how we work moving ahead. Another important change is globalization. By 2020, it’s predicted that China will catch up or overtake the European Union and the United States in GDP. The huge growth of China and the other BRIC countries will have a radical change in where US companies get their growth from, where the research gets done and what research companies need to do to get ahead of that. MR: What about that mainstay of market research—the survey? Are current trends leading to the end of the survey or will it merely be transformed over this next decade? Lewis: We’re not going to see the end of the survey. But some of the surveys will certainly be replaced by this fishing or mining of the river. Surveys will become shorter in length. They will occupy a smaller share of the pie and be more focused. Mobile will increase as a survey methodology although those surveys will be very, very short. A lot of surveys will be augmented with other information such as consumer listening. So it will change but it’s not going away. MR: How will these changes impact how market research departments are structured and the role they will play in organizations? What will this mean for today’s traditional research companies? 2
Lewis: If we look at client research departments, more and more of them will be headed by management consultants. We’re already starting to see that trend. The head of research and strategy at Starbucks came out of the Boston Consulting Group. The head of research at Novartis Pharmaceuticals came out of McKinsey. If the role is about driving business impact and working as consultant, that is ripe for either hiring top-level management consultants into the organization or existing researchers really have to up their skillset so they can take on that role. The reporting structure is largely going to be to a CMO “More and more client or Chief Strategy Officer or perhaps a Chief Knowledge Officer. But what does this mean for other research departments types of people other than leadership? There’s going will be headed by to be a huge need for specialists in research companies in all these new areas like neuroscience management and consumer listening. The other change is about a consultants.” term I refer to as “polymath”. Leonardo DaVinci is the ultimate polymath, someone who can have deep knowledge of many, many things and has huge bandwidth. Polymaths are going to be enormously in demand whether that’s on the supplier or client side. As to the role of traditional research companies, they are going to need to develop consulting capabilities. They’re going to need to really synthesize different types of information, not just provide individual studies. They’re really going to have to have integrated solutions that they offer to their clients. MR: As market researchers more actively become change agents for their organizations, how will that change the way in which they interact with the C-Suite? Lewis: To get to the C-suite, that illusive seat at the table, you’ll have to earn it. All these changes that are taking place are not going to suddenly result in you getting a seat at the table. You have to deserve it and you have to show that you can be a change agent to get a seat at the table. If you don’t step up and do that, a lot of client research functions could become very disintermediated and actually have a lower role in the organization than they have today. So the opportunity is there because there’s so much information out there and there will be an increasing need for information-based decisions. Researchers are very curious and they’re great at analysis so they could very much take on a leadership role but they’ve got to go for it for that to happen. MR: McKinsey recently reported that 70% of all transformation efforts fail. What does the industry need to do to ensure that a true research transformation initiative is lasting rather than one that reverts to old ways of working? How can these transformation efforts create and maintain the “Oh, Wow” factor in organizations? Lewis: Transformation is going to happen whether we want it or not. We didn’t ask for Google and Facebook to come about. We didn’t ask for the changing world economic landscape to happen and those are transformative for consumers, for marketers and for researchers. So the question becomes, “What do we do about it?” How do we seize all of the change that’s taking place as an opportunity to transform research in a way that it really expands the role and elevates the role? If we do that, it actually makes the term “market research” obsolete. We’ll have to invent something else to call it.
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Now what does it actually take for this to happen? The first thing is some pretty strong, bold leadership. It will take the right talent to make it happen. And it’s going to take the will of researchers to transform as well. Ultimately, as McKinsey also noted, transformation doesn’t happen unless people want to transform. MR: Transformation of this magnitude is not merely an organizational change, but a people change as well. What steps can organizations take today to begin to change their internal culture as it relates to market research? Lewis: The first step in this is really making sure your people understand what changes are taking place out there, what the future is likely to look like and what success in the future means. You need to get people on board with that vision of the future state. Without that, people are not going to transform. That’s the starting point. From there, you need to move on to leadership things you can do as a team to take advantage of these changes. When you do that, we’ll end up in a position where our jobs are better, more fun, more rewarding and maybe even pay better than they do today.
Nancy Pekala is the AMA’s Senior Director of Online Content and Editor of Marketing Researchers. Be sure to continue the research conversation in the Marketing Research Group in AMAConnect™, the AMA’s new online community. You can also follow the AMA on Twitter @marketing_power and our marketing research list @marketing_power/resrch.
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