Today, major technologies and economic shifts are changing the Market Research and Consumer Insights industries.

With information everywhere, Market Researchers are increasingly being asked to provide insights and strategic analysis.  New skills are needed.  New services and deliverables are required.

What are some major trends in the Market Research Industry?

  • New digital methods
    • Agile sprints
    • Online Communities
    • Ethnography  — extreme personas
    • Non-Customer Research
  • Focus on Insights
    • Storytelling
    • In-home Ethnographic interviews
    • Uncovering deep associations
    • Data Visualization
  • Customer Centricity
    • Design Thinking
  • Actionability of findings
    • Making clients part of the process. 
    • Can implement dashboards.  
  • Create White Papers & Infographics
  • Global economy and competitors in low cost emerging markets
  • Technology focus
    • Cheap bandwidth, mobile computing and online storage create new tools – Moore’s Law
    • AI Tools and Machine Learning

How do new technologies like Big Data, AI, Machine Learning, and Software help to improve market research process?

  • Pros
    • Research services become better, cheaper, and faster
    • Potentially better and more accurate analytics
  • But there are challenges
    • New technologies such as text recognition have gaps
      • For example, if a respondent doesn’t put enough text, the AI tool won’t work on an Online Focus Group
    • While there is so much interest in AI in MR, there have not been game-changing, wide-spread industry adoption of it. 
    • Still many barriers exist to adoption.

 

What type of talent is the Market Research industry looking for?

 

  • Tech talent and managers who can operate the technology
  • Skilled moderators 
  • Data Scientists
  • Data Analytics Professionals
  • Researchers who are more strategy consultants and branding experts
  • Managers who see the big picture and connect the dots (not departmental)