How can research adapt and flourish in a digital future?

Liz McMahon, director, Kantar Media, looks at the future of market research in a digital age…

Just how relevant will market research companies become as we move ever more rapidly towards a digital future? Data can be supplied from digital sources more quickly, cost-effectively and flexibly than ever before. If digital platforms appear better placed to provide businesses with what they want, how can market research craft skills remain relevant and integral to generating insight in the digital age?

Do clients still need survey data?

Gone are the days when we needed to ask people what they bought, loyalty cards and e-commerce have moved the game on. These days we can track where consumers have been online, for how long, what they’ve bought and even which ads have been served to them. This data, coupled with shopper databases and loyalty schemes, means we now have a wealth of material at our fingertips.

At the same time, we can tap into what people are saying to each other online via the blogosphere. We can monitor real conversations about brands and issues happening in real time in a spontaneous, non-research’ environment. By looking at the top search terms we can see who or what the issues of the day might be for consumers.

Online enthusiasts would argue that the digital world changes the rules of engagement, not just for market research, but for all marketing activity… Increasingly, brand owners are working directly with consumers in new content and product co-creation. In advertising, the established annual planning cycles are moving to a more dynamic digital model. Creative not working? Change the execution.

In a recent debate, Kantar explored whether, with the proliferation of electronic behavioural data, there will be a place for survey market research companies in the future.

Researchers – an endangered species?

The growth in electronic data and the change to business models presents a clear potential threat to the role of the professional research and insight expert:

• Information is no longer a scarce resource that survey market research agencies collect and ‘own’ as experts. Digital campaigns effectively generate their own ROI via metrics such as click-through. The emergence of detailed IP-derived data brings alive the possibility of real one-to-one marketing. Faster product cycles and lower costs of entry lead to less and less pre-testing or R&D.
• Passive observation of behaviour and discussion, where feasible, is arguably a more truthful reflection of reality than respondent recall or claimed behaviour.
• Survey research is restricted to hundreds or thousands of respondents. We cannot hope to reach the scale of customer databases or online data capture encompassing many millions of consumers. In an age of mass ‘niche’ opportunities such scale is an important benefit to marketers.

The potential perils of behavioural data

But digital behavioural data do not yet offer the panacea they appear to promise. The primary drawbacks at present are:

• Limited representation. Even in the well advanced ‘Digital UK’, 40% of homes still do not have broadband*. The day when we can reach all of the population on an equal footing is many years hence. Meanwhile, issues such as cookie deletion mean that even the online population’s behaviour is not always measured reliably using current technology.

• Inability to provide a holistic understanding of consumers’ lifestyles. What are consumers doing when they’re not interacting with your brand? Some of the best innovations have been made on the basis of understanding what consumers are doing when they’re not in contact with you.
• Understanding the ‘why’? Whilst web analytics generate vast quantities of data on behaviours, it cannot completely answer why we behave in the way that we do. Yes, blogs can generate some insight, but can only ever tap into a small (perhaps extreme) subset of the population.

The Way Forward – complementary data sources

The availability of digital behavioural data is certainly a massive change and arguably the most significant in media research history. Inevitably, research companies must face the challenge and embrace the potential that digital presents. This goes far beyond the use of online surveys.

The ability to link survey research to clickstream data and web analytics can provide a much richer understanding of media audience behaviour, with the combined benefits of real behaviour and respondent interaction. In this context, data integration techniques pioneered by companies like Kantar Media are really coming to the fore.

Specialist survey research skills are just as relevant now as they were 70-odd years ago when the first market research companies came into existence. People’s lives are becoming more complex and behavioural data only provides part of the story. Organisations that can combine this with the ‘who’s and the ‘why’s are key to understanding audiences.

* The Communications Market 2008, Ofcom