Quirk's Blog

Why convergence will define marketing research in 2012

Posted on January 23, 2012 by April Turner

Editor’s note: April Turner is senior product marketing manager, custom market research, at San Francisco research firm MarketTools. This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared here under the title “Thoughts on market research for 2012.”

Every year ends with dozens of reflection/prediction pieces that look back on the past year and/or ahead to the next. While there are many possible themes for the market research world circa 2012, I’ll offer a single one instead: convergence.

Mathematically, convergence may signal the arrival of computational limits or even the irrelevance of sequence order. However, in market research “convergence” is more like what happened in the convergence of the telecommunications industry, where several services are available from the “same pipe.”

Here are some examples of areas in market research where we might see convergence in the year ahead:

• Mobile and shopper research will collide. A National Retail Federation poll recently found 41 percent of members were increasing investment in mobile retail and marketing. It’s crucial to continue to develop and test new mobile research programs to help us continue to progress.

• Mobile is no longer the “third screen.” Many households are moving to digital entertainment and away from traditional TV and the use of mobile streaming apps is on the rise. For brands, the ability to track advertising, image and sentiment will get more complex and the sheer volume of data will require creative new models to make sense of it. This is an area where research analysts can bring expertise to the conversation.

• Gamification of research will be extended to mobile devices. While there is still much investigation into the best implementations for game-based research, the movement to mobile devices will create pressure on game-like and game-based research. This will affect the validation of both gamification and mobile research.

• Economic issues in Europe will force brands to more closely manage pricing. The interconnected economies of North America and Europe create the need to have a global aspect for domestic price plans.

• Pricing and packaging will converge into a single study architecture. The trade-offs between changing or holding price points will drive new studies that collect attitudes on simultaneous changes to price, package size and quantities, all variables for pricing strategy.

• Social media drives statistical research and vice versa. Social media monitoring is being used to inform sentiment analysis across brands. However, the elements needed to make predictive assessments are still missing. Research analysts will increasingly experiment with adding social media metrics into time-tested models.

• Brands will begin using traditional methods to test and quantify social media trends. As the flexibility and speed of traditional studies increases, it’s harder to ignore the value of social media data in helping us better understand consumers. But what we need is the discipline of traditional MR methods to deliver predictive data necessary for business change. This will be especially useful in proving ROI for event sponsorships as well as understanding cause-marketing endeavors.

• The definition of actionable data will change to include visualization for the non-research stakeholders. Insights teams will partner with other organizations to deliver results to a wider audience. The need for storytelling calls for us to leverage research, business intelligence and analytics to create directive results that can be interpreted by a wide variety of audiences.

• Research analysts will increasingly utilize data from non-traditional sources to answer market problems, including customer databases, POS data and Web analytics. This may or may not be part of the “Big Data” evolution but multiple data sources will increasingly be found in study research.

• Traditional research methods will not die. Tried-and-true methods like surveys, ethnographies and the like will be combined in new ways, with yet-to-be-discovered methods to deliver actionable insights for business. There is no end to the opportunity for change.

2012 will be a transformative year for market research. We at MarketTools look forward to finding and developing new tools and partnerships in the months ahead. Happy new year!

Posted in Innovation in Market Research, Market Research Best Practices, Market Research Techniques, Research Industry Trends, State of the Research Industry, The Business of Research | 1 Comment

I think I hear the Starbucks truck

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Brad Weiss

Brad Weiss is research director, client and project services, at Cincinnati-based MarketVision Research.

It’s been interesting being on the opposite side of the spectrum over the last year, after moving from the client to the vendor side with MarketVision Research. I recall working with research suppliers and pushing for more of “the story” or the “so what,” hanging up from a conference call frustrated and disappointed because strong recommendations were missing from a vendor’s report. Usually, after multiple rounds of edits and having to invest significant time sifting through 100-plus-page PowerPoint decks and data tables, I was able to create the story I felt comfortable sharing with my business partners. This wasn’t always the case, but more times than not it was the reality that I worked in.

That frustration and disappointment is what fuels my motivation to add an element of differentiation to the social media insights deliverables for my current employer. We power our platform in part with Netbase, a company that pulls in social media conversations from over 95 million different sources. Given my years of experience on the client side, I try to put myself in their situation and in most cases the client researcher is trying to influence either marketing, agency or sales executives with fresh perspectives on how to build the business with a more consumer/shopper-centric approach.

I’ve been exposed to social media analysis examples while working on both the client and the supplier side and – not surprisingly – haven’t been overly impressed by what I’ve seen. I’ve also attended conferences where the general client consensus is that researchers are “struggling to see the value” in the social media data analysis they’ve received to date from their suppliers. In nearly every case suppliers have missed the mark on delivering “a story” or the “so what” and my fear is that it’s doing an injustice for the capability across the industry.

Listening in to how people are talking about brands, products, services and current events, etc., can offer rich insights. The goal we strive for is to actually make sense of what they are saying. In some cases it might be centered on various themes we’re seeing in the social media conversation. Or it can be as simple as leveraging a sound bite from a conversation as a source for inspiration for a new idea.

Take Starbucks, for example, a brand I am consistently listening in on, out of my own natural curiosity. I discovered a sound bite sourced from Twitter and it offers a glimpse of what a consumer wishes the future looked like: “If there are ice cream trucks in the summer, why can’t we have Starbucks trucks in the winter?”

Now that is a novel idea, and one that really hit home for me personally. I work in a suburban office park, a few miles away from the nearest Starbucks; it’s inconvenient for me to take a 3-o’clock break to hop in the car to get my grande skinny vanilla latte fix. But fast-forward a year from now. I can imagine myself chatting with colleagues and saying, “I think I hear the Starbucks truck.” You’d most likely find many of us there in line, especially on a cold winter day.

Admittedly, those kinds of idea-sparking nuggets aren’t always easy to find in the rubble of social media output. But when you do come across one, it drives home the value of expending the effort in the first place.

I have to thank Kim Dedeker, former P&G global consumer insights leader, for inspiring me to harness the power of active listening to drive bigger, better, more relevant ideas. I recall a quote she shared during a consumer insights symposium: “The 20th century was the era of the shouting brand. The 21st century will be the era of the listening brand.”

There is so much power in listening to social media chatter, making sense of it and telling the client a story in an easily digestible manner, with the “so what” called out in the form of ideas that they can go off and execute against. That’s a recipe for successful research, no matter which side of the equation you’re on.

Posted in Consumer Research, Market Research Best Practices, Social Media and Marketing Research, State of the Research Industry, The Business of Research | Comment

Researchers, don’t explain your profession – share your identity

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Jim Karrh

Editor’s note: Jim Karrh is director of MarketSearch, a Little Rock, Ark., research firm.

What is your identity as a marketing researcher?

I’ve been engaged in research – and going to cocktail parties – for years, but after reading this article in the Quirk’s e-newsletter, I was surprised by most of the responses marketing researchers offered when asked “What do you do for a living?” They ranged from serious to flippant to outright denial. That’s disappointing; we should all be proud of the work we do. Marketing research is also inherently more interesting than are most other jobs, so you should be well-equipped for any mojito-fueled question that comes your way.

Perhaps I can help. Marketing researcher is one of the professional hats I wear (and with pride). Another is that of a consultant in sales enablement – more precisely, creating conversational tools that help B2B sales teams be more effective.

Here’s the thing: This “short story” (or “elevator pitch” or “positioning statement”) deal gives most professionals a lot of trouble. They tend to err in one of several ways. For some the story sounds rehearsed, as if spat back from a company Web site, brochure or mission statement. Others have a story that sounds like grand-jury testimony – the company name, their title, maybe the number of years they’ve been grinding away, yet without any sense of what they actually do or why. A few others (like several of the researchers quoted in the article) might be flippant, cute or evasive about their jobs – and unintentionally convey a lack of seriousness or security.

So from the front lines of top-company sales messaging practice and coming from a fellow marketing researcher, here is some informed advice about what you should say (or at least how you should consider saying it) when confronted with the question of what you do for a living.

Think of your entire “short story” in five pieces, each of which might be 15-20 seconds in length. The pieces are inherently sequential, so ideally you are interesting enough for your audience to continue to ask follow-up questions. Here is the structure, along with starting-point examples:

• Your identity. “We provide the truth about consumers to companies who can handle it.”

• What you do. “In some ways, we are like a diagnostic lab that provides doctors with expert third-party analyses. But instead of doing tests on fluid or tissue samples, we are finding some bits of insight from consumers that our client companies can use to decide what and how to sell.”

• How you do it. “We typically ask questions in some particular way – through surveys, interviews or focus groups. We also have colleagues trained to just observe people and listen. As you might suspect, these days we are also using social media to learn.”

• What makes you valuable. “We’re almost always able to tell clients something important that they didn’t know already. Clients use the insights we provide to do many things – create advertising, design packaging, provide better service or even decide whether to go ahead with a new product idea.”

• An example success story (or even just a funny, relevant story from your experience).

Try this structure, choose your own language and examples and practice until it flows naturally. And be proud that you’re a researcher.

Posted in Consumer Research, Market Research Humor, Research Industry Trends, The Business of Research | Comment

What was the biggest decision that research influenced for you this year?

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Brett Hagins

Editor’s note: Brett Hagins is senior partner of Research Innovation and ROI, a Plano, Texas non-profit organization.

While I was discussing demonstrating return-on-investment from research with a vice president of research for a large retailer, he suggested including a question as part of an annual assessment of the research department:

What was the biggest decision that research influenced for you this year?

It is common to assess satisfaction with project work and to do some kind of assessment of the relationship between research and key stakeholders. However, the kind of question posed above begins to document the impact of research on the business.

If stakeholders are not able to articulate a decision influenced by research, then it suggests that all of the charts, graphs, slides and surveys may not be accomplishing their ultimate purpose.

This is an initial step to begin the process of demonstrating ROI from research. Companies that have not developed this process have a much more difficult time defending their budgets and preserving their staff.

Posted in Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, State of the Research Industry, The Business of Research | 2 Comments

Creative consumers are a good thing, really

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Bryan Urbick

Editor’s note: Bryan Urbick is founder and chairman of Consumer Knowledge Centre, a London research firm.

I can still hear the voices, trying to persuade us against our idea.

In the mid-1990s when we first decided to progress with some new research methods we had developed, tested and refined, we had a few pushbacks. Stated simply, the methods involved working with consumers in the same way that teams develop new ideas – brainstorming, creative techniques to help people think out-of-the-box and utilization of various stimuli to help drive the creative process.

Of course the process was designed to ensure engagement and facilitated in a way that maintained focus on the project objectives. The crux of the objections and negative comments were based on the belief that consumers are not creative.

Our position then, as it is now, is that no one is creative when not in an environment conducive to creativity. The opposite is also true – anyone can be creative when the context is right.

Interestingly, the creative process was (and still is) a research tool we use to uncover opportunity areas. By evaluating new consumer ideas based on the prevalent themes, a picture of unmet needs emerges – and even if the consumer-created ideas are not pursued, the unmet needs can be clearly defined, with ways to address them clearly plotted out. The fact that by doing this style of research we were able to help facilitate consumers creating usable ideas was merely a by-product of the process.

Now, of course, consumer creativity is not a groundbreaking thought. Consumers, who were once deemed the last people a company would turn to for innovative ideas, are now often at the center of it all. Boundaries have blurred, hierarchies are flattening and at times it appears that everyone can be consumers, researchers, innovators and producers – all rolled into one.

I notice this much more these days when conducting qualitative research projects, from the more traditional focus groups to many of our non-traditional methods. It seems as if consumer respondents feel more ownership and genuinely try to help companies develop new ideas to solve their problems.

It wasn’t that long ago (1909 to be precise) that American farmers were lobbying car manufacturers for an automobile with detachable backseats. It took about 10 more years for Detroit to come up with the pickup truck. One can imagine what the car makers’ response might have been: “These farmers … what would they know?”

“How shortsighted! How narrow-minded!” you might say. And yet this attitude from the early 1900s is not that dissimilar from those naysayers just 15 years ago who felt the need to tell us that “consumers aren’t creative” when we presented our research methods.

Why is this? I believe it is primarily driven by two factors: 1) there is a desire that those hired to create new ideas maintain their worth; and 2) they haven’t seen the context in which a typical group of consumers can actually create anything of interest.

I am thankful, though, that more and more marketers and manufacturers leap with joy when new and obviously very necessary design innovation is suggested by consumers – and many take note and pursue those ideas. Open innovation schemes are becoming more prevalent and ideas are accepted from many sources, including consumers.

It’s about time that we acknowledge that consumers can be creative and allow ourselves to tap into the rich resource of consumer experience to innovate our products and services.

Posted in Brainstorming Research, Concept Research, Focus Groups, Qualitative Research, Uncategorized | Comment

Conflicting data in online surveys: the Rorschach test of market research

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Lev Mazin

Editor’s note: Lev Mazin is CEO and co-founder of research firm Ask Your Target Market.

If you’ve ever taken a Rorschach inkblot test, you know the quandary. You’re shown what is, undeniably, a spot on the paper, but your mind starts drawing conclusions about what it “really” looks like. If you show it to someone else, there’s a good chance they’ll see something different. Same “data,” different conclusions.

Well, sometimes that happens with data from online surveys, too. Two people can look at the same data and draw different conclusions. This is particularly likely to happen if some of the data appears to be contradictory. Two common examples:

• Preference-ownership conflict — You do a survey and the majority of respondents say that they prefer Brand X but responses to another question indicate that they’re actually more likely to own Brand Y.

• Price-point conflict — Respondents report that their price sensitivity when purchasing your product category is high but they later report purchasing items known to be expensive.

Our challenge as market researchers is to recognize that there are potentially conflicting data points and to seek out the story behind them. For us, it isn’t just a gut reaction to an inkblot; we need to dig deeper.

Solving preference-ownership conflict

In many cases — and some product categories are more subject to this than others — intent simply gets derailed. What I intend to do and what I actually do can be very different. Impulse, coupons, in-store promotions, recent word-of-mouth and social media buzz can all conspire to change planned consumer behavior. I might be planning to purchase a Samsung cell phone but at the last minute I’m swayed by a promotion offered by my preferred carrier. I had the intent but my behavior was very different.

In this case, a great strategy is to be as precise as possible. For example, if you’re looking for accurate brand-related behavior, you could ask the question in two ways.

Version A: What brand of cell phone do you prefer?

Version B: The last time you bought a cell phone, what brand did you buy?

In this example, Version B is obviously more accurate because it removes the generalization from the equation. By asking a precise question about actual behavior, you’re likely to get a much more objective view. Space permitting, asking both can be very illuminating; you may have a customer group that “aspires” to own Brand A but in reality ends up often owning Brand B.

Another strategy for collecting accurate-as-possible purchase behavior is to focus on near-term time frames. Consider the following options:

Version A: How likely are you to purchase a new laptop in the next 12 months?

Version B: How likely are you to purchase a new laptop in the next three months?

Asking Version A will be more risky; it is just too long a time frame for people to predict a future purchase. If you want accurate information on planned behaviors, three-month or short time frames will get the most accurate information.

Solving price-point conflict

People can have a hard time accurately reporting their selection criteria, especially pricing-related criteria. After all, in a survey, people tend to report price is important to them because they don’t want to be telling retailers or manufacturers, “Hey, charge me what you want. I’ll pay it!” In some categories, people also simply have a hard time self-reporting their price sensitivity; they may perceive themselves as price-sensitive but not behave that way consistently (or vice versa).

How can we address this in an online survey? Understand that there is a gap and collect both the self-perception information and the actual behavioral data. For example, continuing with the laptop example, certainly include questions on selection criteria, including price. But also ask questions to assess actual price-sensitivity, which may be reflected by: brands they buy; specifications of current laptop (if they have one); and how much research they do before they buy (real bargain-hunters tend to do a lot of price comparisons before they buy).

All of the above can be good proxies for price-sensitivity.

Context and precision

You always have the possibility of conflicts in your research data. By adding some good contextual questions and being precise in your questioning, you will be able to get to the real story behind those discrepancies and collect more objective data in the process. Be careful studying those inkblots, though; sometimes your first conclusion is not the real story.

Posted in Interviewing, Marketing Best Practices, Online Surveys and Research, Quantitative Research | Comment

Social misgivings: a critique of social media research

Posted on August 9, 2011 by James A. Rohde

Editor’s note: James A. Rohde is consultant and founder of James A. Rohde Consulting, a Pittsburgh research firm.

Most industries deal with trends and research is no different. In some extreme cases the word trend is unfitting when viewed through 20/20 hindsight. A little while back, online surveys were a trend and now they are pretty much the standard. Of course, not all trends are so lucky; lest we forget the ethnography hype between 2006 and 2009.

Now, just because new tools and trends get hyped up does not mean that they are not valuable. It’s simply that they become overused – and for the wrong types of information. Most end up looking for an excuse to use a methodology instead of honestly assessing it as the best way to understand the issue at hand. Usually this is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you know that that is what you’re doing.

It is without really knowing where our latest research trend is going that I would like to direct your attention to research in social media. There could easily be some disagreement here but I would call this the most hyped research at the moment (another top contender would be neuroscience but not many can afford that yet).

The temptation of social media research comes in two dimensions that I can notice: 1) access to all kinds of current and potential customers, and 2) insight into needs/wants without having to ask questions.

First, let’s start with the benefits. I will concede that if access is the goal, social media is cheaper than popular research methods – maybe, depending on what it takes for your brand to get moving and generating some buzz. Let’s say you already have 100,000+ followers. A quick assessment of your followers could lead you to discover unknown archetype or geographical segments. That is a pretty big win and it comes at a much cheaper price than a study designed to find such a thing. Maybe.

Then there are the benefits that come from gaining pure insight without skewing any results by setting respondents up with a question. Once you have your followers, who are ideally interacting with your brand in some way, you can see who they are and what they are saying about you! This type of monitoring can lead to all kinds of insight like a brand buzz index (different than brand equity index) or possibly an alternate use for your product.

So how can something so good be considered hype? Well, besides the fact that all of this requires constant monitoring of your social media accounts, the insights stem from the coding of what is equivalent to a giant open-end question … but worse. The whole purpose of asking a question goes beyond just getting the answer to a specific issue you want to explore; you are setting the context so that the answer can be properly interpreted.

Say you run a sock business. You can launch one new cotton pattern this season and you have three to choose from. Social media gets used as research so that customers can react to the patterns and give their opinions. Sounds harmless and honestly it’s remarkably quick, cheap and easy.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that while customer reaction may have allowed you to pick which pattern you are going to run with this season, there is no context. People really seemed to love pattern No. 2 but most of the people who loved that pattern are the same ones who buy your more expensive wool socks, which does not have that pattern since it’s new. Now, maybe next year you’ll run that pattern in wool but for this round you have moved sales to a less-profitable item.

Though let’s be optimistic and say that even considering the lost sales in wool socks, the demand for the new pattern more than makes up for it. In fact, it has become so popular that you can’t keep them in stock, mainly because there was no way to predict the popularity from the comments reviewed. I’m not sure there is a match to the frustration of gaining a sale that you can’t cash in.

In the end, remember that context is important! I don’t want people to walk away believing that social media for research is completely useless. Of course it has its place in the research industry. I simply believe it is a much smaller place than it is getting credit for.

Posted in Social Media and Marketing Research | 1 Comment

Facebook and the F factor

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Bryan Urbick

Editor’s note: Bryan Urbick is founder and chairman of Consumer Knowledge Centre, a London research firm.

So much is being said about the influence of social media, particularly Facebook, and how it is the new marketing frontier. I can appreciate the interest in it – it is new, it is widely available and it is popular.

Importantly, though, we need to get down to the kernel of what social media is about – and here we will find the “F factor” – how friends, fans and followers impact what brands are about.

Following and being a fan are behaviors that have been done for decades. The idea of keeping up with people we are interested in is not new. Newspapers and magazines had the original, most popular remit, then radio, then TV and now social media (it makes me wonder, what’s next?).

What has become so powerful with new media is that it is initially popular and easy to follow so many more individuals and get the feeling that you are getting the more personal, inside scoop. The trouble, though, is how tiring it is to follow so many more people. The wear-out ultimately causes less usage.

There is a saturation point – and perhaps this can be stretched from more traditional media, though there is a limit to what people will follow, how much time they will spend and for how long they will be intense.

The voyeurism, though initially compelling, loses its luster. And when brands and products try to live in this world, it is difficult. How long can a brand sustain high levels of interest, when celebrities (who happen to be “real” people) can’t keep the interest sustained?

Friending is an even older behavior. Who doesn’t want a lot of friends? Though at first the answer may seem to be, obviously, everyone, the truth is somewhat different. Most of us do want good and close friends – but as with all relationships, friendships need to be nurtured and developed. The reality is that we have limited time to build and sustain genuine friendships – and it takes work! We can’t assume that posting pictures and offering updates (to the masses) will foster genuine friendship – real friendships require depth, a personal understanding of each other’s needs and the desire to continue the relationship.

Though Facebook and other “friending” may be popular, the term “friend” should actually be “acquaintance” for the depth of the relationships. And though it may feel nice to have more “friends” than others, that popularity is childish, reminiscent of the “popular in school” syndrome that is not usually lasting.

And for brands and products, it is still quite abstract to be a friend – though arguably there is at least more real interaction with many brands and products than the superficial layer of friends on social networks.

Against this backdrop, what are we to make of Facebook’s apparently waning popularity? Recently, according to tgdaily.com, even though Facebook is the most widely-used Web site in the U.S., it has a lower satisfaction level than that of the Internal Revenue Service’s e-filing sites.

Further, according to the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, produced with ForeSee Results, Facebook scored 64 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale – putting it in the bottom five percent of all measured private-sector companies (in the same score range as the typically unpopular airlines and cable companies).

Here in the U.K., the British Broadcasting Corporation has reported as far back as 2008 that Facebook was showing signs of decline. While not occurring every quarter, the intermittent drops, albeit small, may be showing Facebook’s vulnerability.

The real question is not, “Will Facebook survive?” but rather, “How will Facebook evolve?” My crystal ball is a bit cloudy in this regard, but I do know that to thrive, it will need to evolve and remain relevant – and so will brands and products that want to hop on the social media bandwagon and benefit from it.

Posted in Brand and Image Research, Qualitative Research, Social Media and Marketing Research | 2 Comments

Change in the research industry? Bring it on.

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Michelle Finzel

Editor’s note: Michelle Finzel is vice president, full-service research, at Maryland Marketing Source Inc., a Randallstown, Md., research firm.

The market research industry is, and has been, changing. These changes have been a long time coming, too.

Are these changes exciting? Most definitely. Change prevents stagnation and encourages creativity. Change allows us to keep up with growing and expanding markets as individuals, as companies and as an industry. Change is practical – for example, we don’t do door-to-door surveys anymore, do we? No, because it became unsafe, unwelcome and unnecessary as people became accessible via various other means. Adapting to new information and communication trends helps keep market research relevant and even necessary to our clients.

Are these changes frightening? Well sure. Anything new and different can be a bit off-putting at first. And sometimes you make mistakes, too. For example, when I first began using social media on behalf of our company, I was actually trying to answer the question, “What’s happening?” with my tweets. I’ve since learned better, thanks to observation, experience and taking a few chances.

So until researchers have the opportunity to step out there and risk moderating their first online bulletin board (aka BBFG), risk recommending social media market research and risk pronouncing MROC in front of their clients (it’s pronounced em-rok, aka insights communities to some) such methodologies will remain scary, distant and “next-gen” instead of “now-gen” to many of us.

Are these changes the end-all-be-all of market research methodologies? No way. The eruption of new methods does not mean that our other ones just get covered over, buried and left for dead. On the contrary, not only do telephone interviews and in-person focus groups remain research methodology staples, they only stand to benefit from advances in technology and communication. After all, we used to dial telephones by hand and mark up pages of sample with penciled-in call dispositions, didn’t we? But when computers and software advanced we didn’t just stop what we were doing; we adapted and advanced as well. Enter our CATI system. We still do on-site intercept interviewing, but now we can use cool laptops and PDAs to transmit real-time data to our clients and save them data entry costs as well. And focus groups still take place in a brick-and-mortar facility but can do so while being broadcast via the Internet to people located all over the world.

So you see, change is exciting and not something to be feared. But it’s also not about exclusion and replacement; it’s about inclusion and advancement. It’s about refinement. And, ultimately, it’s about collecting the best data for clients and providing them information with which they can grow and advance and refine, too.

Posted in Data Collection/Field Services, Focus Groups, Market Research Techniques, Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, Research Industry Trends, The Business of Research | 3 Comments

One researcher says enough’s enough

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Ron Sellers

Editor’s note: Ron Sellers is founder of Phoenix-based Grey Matter Research LLC.

After nearly a quarter-century in the research business, I have finally come to two very important conclusions: 1) I can’t do it all; 2) That’s okay.

You see, I’m told daily by various e-mails, ads and social media posts that I’ve got to do more. I need to learn about mobile MR, eye-tracking, social media sampling and a host of other methodologies that are changing our industry. I need to have a fabulous Web page for my company. I have to do search-engine optimization or all those potential new clients will never have the chance to see our site in the first place. I need to blog more and read more industry blogs. I need to be more active on LinkedIn and build far beyond my paltry 250 contacts. I need to attend various industry conferences and sign up for Webinars. I need to be better at sales. I need to leverage social media, tweeting and Digging and Facebooking ‘til I drop, because that’s where the real action is.

Oh, and somewhere in all of this, I also need to get my client work done, run the business, go to the gym, raise a daughter, maintain a happy marriage, take care of my mother, stay in touch with old friends, be an informed voter and eat more fiber.

I think this all finally hit me when someone told me that the company Web site does not work properly on one of the many browsers that are available to Web surfers. My first reaction was, “Great, I have to figure out what’s wrong, consult with a technical guru and get this thing fixed now. How did I let that slip through the cracks? Maybe I should finally buy Dreamweaver and have a pro develop the skin. I need to start researching that this weekend.”

But then something happened. I was already sitting in a hotel room a couple blocks from the White House, speaking at a conference thousands of miles away from my family. I had made some good contacts at this conference and was planning how and when to follow up with them, given the fact that I was on the road the next week moderating in three different cities. Oh, and trying to get a quantitative report finalized for another client. And planning a publicity campaign for the company. And responding to a number of RFPs. And lamenting that I had fallen behind on reading my industry blog posts. And needing to respond to a couple of LinkedIn connection requests. And thinking of the stack of Quirk’s I just haven’t gotten to quite yet. And trying to figure out how to fit in the vehicle clinic if that project comes through, along with the branding research for the sports team, and …

I finally said, “Enough.” I’m tired of going to bed each night frustrated at how many things are still not done. I’ve had enough of feeling like I’ve failed somehow, because even though my business was profitable and my clients were quite satisfied, I could have done more. I no longer want to leave a conference lamenting that even though I made three new valuable contacts, I could have made four or five or 10 new contacts. I don’t want to feel like I’m being left behind because I’m not an expert in every new methodology that’s out there today (and may not be out there tomorrow).

No matter the size of the company you’re in and no matter whether you’re on the supplier side (like me) or the client side, you can always do more. And you can always put more pressure on yourself to do more and feel more like a slacker or even a failure if you don’t.

In this industry, you need to do a lot. But you also need to come to grips with the fact that you can’t do everything.

All of these activities have merit. I do need a great Web site, I learn a lot from Quirk’s and I do want to learn more about eye-tracking. I just can’t do it all today and I probably can’t do it all tomorrow, either. And I’ve had to learn that’s okay.

I have enough pressure from clients who delayed their decisions by two weeks and now want to accelerate the timeline, from vendors who need feedback right away and from a four-year-old who wants to know why daddy has to fly to Chicago this morning instead of playing Legos with her. I don’t need all the added pressure I put on myself to do more, learn more, connect more, accomplish more. I need to push myself to grow and learn and excel but I also need to establish limits or else nothing I do will ever be enough.

Why am I writing all this? Because I constantly see other people doing the same things I fell prey to: doing more and more and more – and all the time feeling worried or guilty that they’re not doing still more.

If this doesn’t describe you, then I congratulate you on having at least this part of the business figured out. And I apologize for wasting your time with my own complaints. But if what I’m writing here resonates with you, don’t wait until you’ve been in the business 25 years to figure out the two things I did. You can’t do everything. And that’s okay.

So all you folks who want to convince me that if I don’t sign up for your Webinar I’ll look clueless about the Next Great Thing all my clients are going to clamor for … well, for the moment I’ll just have to take that risk. To all of you bloggers trying to push me to increase my social media presence before all my business is stolen away by companies that are following your guidelines, you’ll just have to wait. I’ve got focus groups to moderate, a tracking study to build and too many contacts I haven’t personally spoken with in too long a time. Your ideas have merit, I’m sure. And I hope to get to them soon. But I’m not going to worry if it’s not today. I already put in my 12 hours – enough’s enough.

I’ll try to prioritize what’s most important and attack those things as soon as I can. As for the other stuff, hey, I’m only one person and I have a life. And if I don’t Digg my tweets to the point my Google is optimized (or whatever it is I’m supposed to do), I refuse to feel like a Yahoo!

Now please excuse me – daddy’s got some guilt-free Lego-playing to do.

Posted in Focus Groups, Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, Research Industry Trends, The Business of Research | 4 Comments