Advertising Age pondered this issue on September 24, 2007, and it is worth a read. The author, Jack Neff, does an exceptional job of spelling out the isues at hand.

Key quote:

“It’s a weird dissonance some believe is at the heart of marketing’s malaise. Marketers need good research more than ever but either can’t get it, can’t understand it or cant accept it. Market research, in other words, has never been so important. Yet market researchers are as unimportant as ever — at least within their own organizations.”

There are many reasons, but here are a few:

1. Delivering a metric ton of data without (a) the elevator speech on what it means and (b) simple charts that can be easily forwarded, places the industry in a non-strategic, data collection role.
2. The academic training of many market researchers leads to tedious deliverables unsuited to the rapid pace of the business world.
3. With compressed schedules and numerous multi-tasking devices, many organizations simply don’t devote the kind of time that they should to deep thinnking about their business and customers. It is difficult to have a deep, wide ranging discussion of the consumer mindset when the audience is too time stretched to engage.
4. Commoditization. Because the industry has allowed itself to be seen as a provider of data instead of data-based strategy, buyers (and especially procurement departments) have taken to viewing market insights as an undifferentiated commodity.
5. It is far easier (and involves much less organizational politics) for research professionals to act as the impartial measuring stick than to engage strategically based on the data. But, the path of least resistance has put the industry in a cul-de-sac of sorts.

Historically, the industry has been tasked with execution of research that delivers data, but it has generally been shut out of the strategic role that it deserves. For example, market research is typically tasked with understanding the consumer mindset, testing consumer awareness and interest in a product, testing tactical marketing executions and reporting back into the decision chain. This tactical project focus, along with several other factors including the name “market research”, has placed insights into a corporate cul-de-sac and added to the commoditization trend.

Unfortunately, market research’s role does not span the breadth of the institusional decision chain. Instead, market research plays a limited role somewhere in the middle, after basic assumptions have been established, after key initial deicisons have been made, and generally before a final strategic directions has been chosen.

Instead of accepting this limited role, market researchers must work to expand their role with their clients and within the companies that employ them.

How?

One key is to examine and test the unstated initial assumptions made at the beginning of the decision chain. All too often the market research professional is brought in to test a series of tactical options based on questionable assumptions.

Market researchers are experts in formulating questions to analyze a topic. they focus this skill externally on target audiences. But, in order to gain a stronger footing within the corporate decision chain, they should also leverage their questioning skills internally by creating a process that examines the often unstated assumptions upon which their research is commissioned.