http://bit.ly/gFm0W8

I’m looking forward to discussing these topics, but especially privacy, at the Technology Driven Market Research Event.

I’m particularly looking forward to Saatchi & Saatchi’s presentation on the evolution of wellness and Coca-Cola’s presentation on “how macroforces are reshaping relationships, roles and the very idea of ‘consumer.’”

With all this thinking about macro-trends one excellent source for futurecasting is the Institute for the Future, based here in California (Palo Alto). the Institute recently published their futures map (2010 map of the decade). I highly recommend taking a look at it here. The map charts four alternative futures – (1) One step ahead of disaster, (2) Sustainability, (3) collapse, (4) transformation. It analyzses these four scenarios across several dimensions. The most interesting to me is the “water ecology” dimension.

Water is the next oil. Some of the more interesting water-driven outcomes in these futures are “water footprinting” and other conservation efforts. If the Institute is right, then beverage marketers, hydrated CPG companies, appliance manufacturers, lawn and garden companies, detergent companies and many others will be impacted. The convergence of many trends here (scarcity + ecological sensitivity among GenY + the LOHAS psychographic) could drive some significant change in how marketers and marketing researchers think about products with water in them.

It’s good to see more emphasis at TMRE on culture and trends. I suspect this emphasis will grow as MR becomes even more forward leaning and futures oriented.

This creates in us a sense of urgency and we want to point out how these futures are already happening (in a small way) today.

In this regard, Leonard Murphy at the GreenBook Market Research Blog does us all a favor with his piece titled:

The Future Is… Now

Here Murphy outlines how many of the things Ian Lewis (research in 2020) and I are thinking about as future trends already can be found in small efforts, experiments, and new tech ventures today. For example, I believe that “serious gaming” will become a serious research tool, and Murphy points out how BrainJuicer is already experimenting with serious games for MR — today.

The challenge that we all have in thinking about the futures is that while we see the weak and strong signals for a future today, we are often at the lowest phase of the S curve looking up. As many have pointed out, the S curve appears to be a dominant pattern in all kinds of physical phenomena, including changed states and this applies especially so to technology adoption. At the beginning, adoption is slow and increases at an almost arithmetic rate, then it hits a critical mass and the adoption of that technology increases at a lightning pace. Once adoption hits near ubiquity, it levels off. Our challenge today is that in analyzing the futures of market research, we are looking at weak and strong signals for the future in the very early stages of the S curve. We expect change to come quickly, but the futures may keep us waiting longer than we would like.

Murphy does us all a favor in identifying the weak and strong signals today that will lead to change tomorrow. His piece gives us concrete examples of how the things we are talking about are not as far-fetched as they sound, and he helps us better understand where we are on the S curve.

1. Shared bicycle services or short term home-apartment rental sites or freecycling
2. The viral spread of marketing messages via social media
3. The idea of social currency based on reputation (eg “Whuffie”)

They have something in common.

They all are aspects of “collaborative consumption.”

The idea, espoused in Rachel Botsman’s new book (What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption), is a shift from our current consumption patterns where assets are owned individually and used infrequently to assets that are shared via repetitive lease or fractional ownership and used heavily.

One insight here is that (a) this shift is far more efficient than the existing paradigm and (2) it could only be fostered in a heavily networked, peer to peer world.

Those subscribing to the idea that this shift is occurring foresee a transition from credit to reputation (social currency), advertising to community and individual ownership to shared access.

I think this shift is happening and will intensify over time.

If this is the case, there are several implications for the insights field:

1. Reputation-based business models using some form of social currency will make every consumer a prosumer, one that cares as much about an actor’s market behavior and purpose as their pricing and product. This is why I have become so interested in consumer boycotting and “buycotting” (selecting a product to support the seller’s values) practices. If the collaborative consumption shift occurs, we can anticipate networks of consumers buying and sharing products matching their values. This leads to point #2.

2. As researchers and marketing strategists we may want to design products that our core collaborative consumers can share and want to share. Some marketers might encourage this sharing. Others may want to find ways to avoid this sharing via personalization, for example.

3. Sharing-renting may become an avenue to purchasing later.

4. If consumers begin forming collaborative consumption networks, why not just crowdsource the product in the first place?

5. And finally, there are some categories that are far more susceptible to this type of consumption than others. For example, personal care products are not likely to be shared. Only products that (a) have high rates of infrequent use and (b) are easily accessed will fit the bill. In this case, possible candidates are: bikes and other personal transport, 2nd homes, lawn mowers and other yard tools, some kitchen appliances, churches and movie theaters, books, and even luggage (for infrequent travelers).

As they say, perhaps the future just isn’t what it used to be.

We can think about the futures (plural, because there is no one future) in terms of constants, cycles, trends and novelties.

These novelties are either (a) unanticipated events or (b) low likelihood, high impact events sometimes called “wild cards.”

I think Goldfarb is right in thinking that the next 10-30 years are full of novelty and wildcards.

But, if she’s right, then this means that straightline projections of past events and consumer behavior into the future could be very, very wrong. And, if this is the case, then market research as practiced is in very deep trouble.

The attendees rightly view this issue as a tension and not as a zero sum game or false dichotomy.

But, it is an interesting challenge.

The fear in some quarters of MR is that a stronger strategic profile and a more committed POV will undermine our credibility (zero sum game paradigm) by challenging our objectivity.

Can we overcome that fear?

Marketers (most of the time and CYA studies notwithstaning) want our strategic recommendations based on insight.

Do we deliver this? The BCG research suggests not.

1. Only 35% of executives describe their in-house MR function as “best in class.” (see page 4)

2. Although corporations should strive to move their MR departments from “order takers” to a “source of competitive advantage”, “almost 90% of the companies…follow a more traditional approach to market research” (Translation: 90% are stuck in “order taker” mode.) (see page 4)

3. “On average, only 20 to 35 percent of a company’s market-research budget is devoted to strategic studies.” (see page 5)

It’s the word we use constantly, but have some trouble defining.

Market research is supposed to identify insights. Insight is one of our products and something we strive for.

But…

What is an insight?

Today at ARF’s Industry Leader Forum we hear that it’s the “a ha” moment, a “connecting of the dots”, it’s a deeper understanding of causation or motivation, etc..

Like a past Supreme Court Justice describing indecency, perhaps we just “know it when we see it.”

But is that good enough?

No.

The VRIO framework for an insight is one strong step forward. Another is Smith and Raspin’s taxonomy in Creating Market Insight.

At StrategyOne we’ve created our own definition and taxonomy based on these two foundational sources, but I think much more needs to be done.

Today at ARF Susan Whiting with Nielsen surfaced “privacy” as a core challenge to the industry. She’s right.

Given the recent stories regarding privacy and web “scraping”, I think we’re very close to the boiling point on this issue.

If doors are closed based on societal privacy concerns (eg some forms of listening), what new doors do we need to open?

Proprietary insights communities and prediction markets may be one set of answers that steps around some of these privacy concerns.

Citing Intel’s Andy Grove, Rubinson argued that market research is itself at a “strategic inflection point.” He’s obviously right and this is the reason for ARF’s research transformation initiative. As Rubinson noted, the research industry will either transform or become irrelevant.

As Rubinson pointed out, the traditional insight industry is not the only insights game in town. Insights can now be harnessed in realtime, social media listening, DIY tools and via a host of new entrants.

Two main takeaways from Rubinson’s opening remarks:

1. Rubinson toplined Kim Dedeker’s analogy of the future of research as a “river” or rushing stream of data that researchers will need to learn to fish and explore in realtime. Here Rubinson made the point that unlike the traditional research process, the river analogy means that the datastream predates the marketing question or hypothesis. In the future, projects will flow out of observations and questions arising from the datastream.

2. The shift from “so what?” to “now what?”. For years we’ve talked about answering the “so what” question, but a better question for research is “now what?”. Very good. In fact, I would argue that the question should be “what’s next?” I’m hearing a lot today about “foresight”, but it is a term being used in a general way. I think the insight industry needs to more fully explore the field of strategic foresight and the great work being done at the University of Houston, Institute for the Future, etc.

Rubinson takes a look at the evolution of the ad agency and applies this evolutionary footpath to MR with media buying the analog to the data collection side of the business and creative the analog to the full service, analytics side of the business. It’s worth a read.

In my thinking about the future of the MR agency, I have developed at least five (5) plausible futures (not mutually exclusive):

1. Army of Davids: In this scenario, the larger firms keep consolidating and attempting to buy their future by acquiring hot new companies, but the systemic change and “free agent nation” overwhelms them. The goliaths are killed off by the Davids. The carriagemakers can’t adjust to the age of the automobile, and they are overhwelmed by new entrants, new technologies, new approaches (social media listening, etc.) and agile specialty firms.

2. Whuffie-Driven Free Agency: A second and more extreme “Army of Davids” scenario, Whuffie-driven free agency develops when individual researchers band together under a kind of digital guild in which each is rated by his-her clients. The resulting client score, their Whuffie (hat tip to Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the MagicKingdom”) roughly determines an individual researcher’s compensation if and when they are chosen to do the work. Sound fantastical? Hardly. Consider: (a) eBay feedback profiles and (b) the mechanical turk. Now assume that a community of credentialed researchers (think PRC or similar) build an elance site on these principles. Insights rockstars, as opposed to large companies or even specialty firms, dominate the scene.

3. Convergence: Under the convergence scenario the MR industry is renamed, rebranded and redefined by a much larger collection of data-driven strategic consultants, including: management consulting, social media listening and analytics firms, predictive markets, game modelled consumer behavior research, foresight practices and IBM. Under this scenario, the first to combine all fields in an integrated way gains a significant advantage. The deepest pockets are the most favored here.

4. Incredible Shrinking MR: In this scenario the market research industry retains its current, distinctive, identity. It is not reinvented or transformed. Plenty of new innovations come along, but they’re not part of MR. MR labors on, like the dinosaurs after the first asteroid strike, oblivious of their doomed future.

5. DIY: Google, Facebook and future social media platforms enter the consumer research business by offering unimaginably massive panels of their users-members. With MR now a simple page on these social media sites, the era of DIY research is fully unleashed. Need a quick, global survey of fashion conscious, well-educated women? No problem. GoogleSurvey will collect data for you in 30 minutes after you have posted your (mandated) 5 questions or less survey. Need some collage-based qual done in 20 countries on a new tourist destination? No problem. 3 hours. Survey quality suffers, but the data is abundant. Insights? Well, those are a bit tougher to come by.