I received an email one morning late in February from Tom H.C. Anderson, founder of Anderson Analytics, asking if I would like to participate in a collaborative Next Gen Market Research (#NGMR) post all about market research industry predictions … and of course I agreed to participate! The main message in the email read, “What do YOU think are the 10 most important things to consider for the research industry going forward, said a bit differently, what 5 things will continue to be ‘Hot’ and what 5 things will not in regard to market research in the next few years?“
For your reading pleasure, and my amusement, here is my unique list of NGMR Top 5 Hot and Top 5 Not market research industry predictions …
To see the full list of bloggers who participated in this collaborative event on March 8, 2011 please visit the Next Gen Market Research blog post.
Top 5 HOT Market Research Predictions for the next few years:
- Advanced text analytics will become an everyday norm for researchers using open-end survey responses, social media data, and other online data from sources such as market research online communities or online focus groups.
- The blur between quantitative and qualitative research will continue to grow as river sampling and snowball sampling become more popular online and emerging businesses lose sight of “statistical representativeness”.
- Return on investment (ROI) analysis using integrated data sources will start to become a requirement when conducting market research as clients become more frustrated with poor returns on their marketing and operations initiatives.
- Statisticians, programmers, and other mathematically disciplined people will become the most sought after and highly paid employees in market research companies.
- America’s fortune 500 will be hit harder than ever before by the next recession, which will result in the increased need for market research companies to head-up successful business initiatives instead of just providing business insights or recommendations.
Top 5 NOT Market Research Predictions for the next few years:
- Standalone research methods, including social media monitoring, will no longer be used as standalone methods for studies by market research suppliers because multi-method data integration, including customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, will become the norm.
- Some of the most successful and publicly traded market research companies that focus on dated statistically representative methods will lose massive proportions of market share to new comers to the industry that focus on emerging technologies and building business in niche markets.
- The newly infamous market research games will not come to fruition in the extreme way people were hoping in 2011, but rather they will influence the way survey software is designed to encourage engaging next generation surveys.
- Neurological market research or “neuromarketing” will remain a niche research method due to it’s high costs and relatively complicated designs.
- The death of market research will never come, regardless of the dozens of articles and industry professionals that claim it has died.
If you have any questions about where my wild predictions came from then please message me on Twitter or leave a comment below and share what you think about my market research industry predictions!
Thanks again for reading Sean Copeland’s New Market Research!
* Are you interested in reading more about new market research, but you can’t find what you’re looking for on my blog? Take a look through my list of Top 25 Market Research Blogs of 2011 for some ideas of where else you can look for great information.
Thanks for participating Sean! Great minds think alike. The what’s Not Hot was definitely a little harder. I think of this a bit like crowd sourcing exercise. Will be very interesting to see the aggregate results. I’m watching twitter #NGMR and #5Hot5Not to see other posts coming in.
I’ll probably do a follow up analysis as I’m sure a few others will as well. Look forward to some interesting discussion on this later in the NGMR LinkedIn group.
What's 'neuromarketing'? Sounds like something I'd like to get involved in!
A very useful post. i agree on 4th point. It reminded me of Chris O'Hara's post on media agencies and his comment about hiring nerds (http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2025930/-agency-model). I feel that mainstream MR was slow to pick up on infographics and interactive models (maybe wordle was easier to start putting in presentations)
great post………I agree the death of market research is just plain wrong
It's quite an impressive research made out by an NGMR hot Vs not is they selected is also an good one..
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I have a question on neuromarketing practices. There are now emerging companies like Affectiva and Affective Interfaces that are trying to scale neuromarketing with information technology. I believe technologies they build are the way to bring neuromarketing from niche to mass. What do you think about the effectiveness of these?
Hi Young,
I'm actually not very familiar with neuromarketing, other than watching a few presentations and reading a few articles by other researchers. My main issue with the advancement of neuromarketing is that the tools required are difficult to get into the hands of the masses, unlike a survey. I definitely like the new sensors being developed, but until they are integrated into everyday devices I can't see this becoming a "mainstream" methodology.
Have you considered attending Ray Poynter's ‘Neuroscience, Biometrics and MR’ Event?http://newmr.org/page/neuroscience-1
A very helpful post. i agree on your 3rd point.but i have a question on neuromarketing practices. There are now emerging companies like Affectiva and Affective Interfaces that are trying to scale neuromarketing with information technology.