So, for example, Rubinson writes that:

“The ‘mental marketplace’ changes the rules of competition; your brand must vie for attention against functionally unrelated brands including celebrities and games like Farmville. For example, Whole Foods vies in the mental marketplace of “wellness” with Dannon, Kashi, Subway even WebMD.”

I am not aware of really good work in this area (it may already exist), but I can anticipate a service that tracks monthly mindshare in these mental marketplaces. This could be done by aggregating several thousand individuals in a representative online panel and asking them to enter their free associations with brands and companies (and possibly individuals and institutions) in a certain set of market spaces. The data could be coded and quantified and mapped using text analytics to show the strongest connections of one player to another.

For example, panelists could be asked to consider what companies, brands, personalities and institutions they associate with “health”, or “style” or “tropical vacations.”

This turns brand tracking on its head as research participants wouldn’t be rating brands, but they would be telling us what brands (“brands” in a wider sense) are filling specific “mental marketplaces” and how much that “brand” is filling this space.

This could be a boon for the creation of unlikely marketing partnerships among business that are related only by their location in the same mindshare space.

Taking Rubinson’s thinking a step further, a tool that reveals the players in a “mental marketplace” could lead to radically new joint marketing efforts and a dynamic feedback loop that only intensifies the non-hierarchical, “two way world” that Rubinson describes.

There was such a great response to his question (Are the kids alright?) that he revised and extended his remarks.

It is worth reading the comments.

I maintain that there is plenty of young talent in the industry, but that these talented folks in their 20s are in fields that are not (and may never be) associated with “market research”, even though these fields may ultimately replace what we call “market research” today. The next generation of market research may never think of themselves as “market researchers.”

This leads me to a much wider point.

If the industry were my client, I would advocate that they rename and rebrand. For a LOT more detail on this, see pages 7 and 8 of my white paper on the future of market research.

For those interested in prediction markets I strongly recommend David Rothschild’s article in this month’s Public Opinion Quarterly (AAPOR’s publication).

Although Rothschild’s article focuses on “comparing prediction markets, polls and their biases”, the implications of his article stretch well beyond the political world. In fact, from one vantage point, elections are just a useful space to study these markets since they happen at frequent and predictable intervals. But any future event with these similar parameters would do.

One critique of market research is that it is a snapshot of the present and is rooted in present attitudes and behaviors.

This is why I believe strategic foresight and market research will merge (or at least cross-pollinate) in the near future.

Prediction markets are just one example of an area in which this cross-pollination will occur.

BrainJuicer already appears to be experimenting with prediction markets.

But, the two that have most interested me are (a) consulting firms like BCG or McKinsey and (b) large digital platforms that could become uber-panel companies of the future. These two interest me because they occupy the two extremes of the industry: the data-driven strategy providers (high value, non-commoditized) and the data collectors (commoditized but VERY important).

I’ve written and talked about the former quite a bit, but not so much about the latter.

This is why Stan Sthanunathan’s thoughts (click here) on the matter have so intrigued me. I met Stan at TMRE, and he’s pleasure to talk with.

Stan, insights leader at Coca-Cola, poses two questions:

What if…

1. Facebook becomes an insights provider?
2. Google creates a MASSIVE insights panel company?

Thinking about each of these, and looking at the first possibility, it seems obvious to me that Facebook will become an insights provider of some kind. It also seems obvious to me that there will eventually be a privacy backlash of some kind. (As an aside, if Facebook entered the market research supplier market in a big way, it could complicate things dramatically for the MROC builders. In fact, if I were Facebook, I would buy the largest MROC builder. It is a natural fit.)

But what about Google as an uber-panel company? LinkedIn is already far down this path on the B2B side (click here). It doesnt seem to be much of a leap for Google to get heavily in the game.

What if Google entered the market?

1. It would enter in a BIG way.
2. It could offer online sample dramatically larger than the current providers.
3. It might mix in online behavioral data (triggering an eventual privacy backlash).
4. It could create easy-to-use, online, DIY survey tools. This would make surveys much more easy to execute, but would geometrically expand the volume of truly awful research.
5. Assuming this tool could manage the physical geographies of participants (setting geographic quotas), it could kill off phone polling quickly.
6. Tracking surveys could be conducted in realtime, continuously throughout an advertising or political campaign.

Someone at Google has to be thinking about this.

One of the people that will think about it will be the person with this job.

Food for thought.

A new Boston Consulting Group report supports this thesis.

You can read it all here.

But, I highly recommend the grids in the appendix on pages 27 and 28. Here BCG charts what it sees as the evolution of the MR function:

1. Traditional MR Function
2. Business Contribution Team
3. Strategic Insight Organization
4. Strategic Foresight Organization (see also page 12)

Unfortunately, BCG posits that “almost 90% of companies are in stages 1 and 2″.

In my opinion, this means that over time there will be a much stronger demand for data-driven foresight tools (like Delphi panels and futures markets – possibly loaded into MROCs) in the United States. And this demand won’t be limited to the government and large institutions, as it has in the past.

Why will we see this demand?

Because corporations will come to the conclusion that the only way to jump ahead of competitors (BCG refers to “leapfrogging”) is to (1) study the possible, probable and preferred futures, (2) build plans and future business lines around this futuring, and (3) contingency plan for wildcards – those low probability, high impact events that bring change quickly.

In fact, I believe that at some point in the future most corporations will have small wild card futuring teams responsible for (a) identifying potential wildcards and (b) building contingency plans around them with the focus on turning wildcard events into significant business-building opportunities.

For a taste of what I mean by wildcards, click here.

First, it’s simply interesting. The author has been building game theory based prediction markets for the US government and private industry clients for years, and his learnings in this field (especially, multi-player nation state relations modeling) are fascinating.

Interestingly, the author writes about something closely related to Admiral John Poindexter’s somewhat controversial Policy Analysis Market (PAM).

From a market research point of view, The Predictioneer’s Game is one look into the future. It’s no secret that Delphi Panels (first invented by RAND after WWII), are the historical beginning point for many futurist efforts. But, the simultaneous advent of hosted online communities and prediction markets means that at some point (probably very soon) market research will combine the two in a way that creates a step change in the field. And, this combination is ultimately going to look like much of what the author of The Predictioneer’s Game has been doing for the US government for many, many years.

How will it work? First, market researchers will create an online community that has the features (either in background, skills or purchase interest) that they desire. Then, this group will be given a series of questions. Each question will ask what the likely range of consumer/business/voter responses might be. Then, a prediction market or exchange will be created for this range of outcomes. Trading will commence. If the literature is correct, the outcome of this trading will likely mirror (or approximate) the outcome in the real world. Most interesting to me is that this process is now being tinkered with to design new products and product features.

In the world of public affairs, a common research approach is to poll a random sample of policy elites and use this data to understand how future scenarios might sort out. StrategyOne used this approach with its Beltway Barometer to better understand what might happen with the initial bailout bills in the fall of 2008. In fact, we found support for the first bailout slipping quickly and this is exactly what happened. But, a more powerful complement to this survey based approach will be the creation of exchange driven communities of policy elites or influencers. This may just be the next “killer app” in the public affairs space.

RPM

And the fact is that it isn’t really our choice anymore. With most populations migratng from landline to mobile, many surveys are going to get smaller and simpler (quickly!).

But, how about online research?

Welll, one thing I can guarantee will NOT be the future of mmarket research is the awful survey design Bad Research; No Biscuit identifies here:

http://researchrants.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/another-fine-matrix/

Ouch!

This entire discussion is reminiscent of an excellent presentation on online research formats given this fall in Las Vegas at TMRE. All kinds of new, interactive online formats are being tried in an attempt to make the survey process more interesting and less painful.

And speaking of pain, the Bad Research; No Biscuit highlight is what the folks at my firm (StrategyOne) refer to as a “deathgrid.” No normal human has the patience to fill out a “deathgrid” and no non-incarcerated individual should be forced to do it.

But, this entire episode raises a good question?

How do we make online surveys more engaging and “fun”?

One radical answer may come from the gaming world. What if surveys began to resemble games? What if a “survey” became more of a “simulation game” with respondents as “players”?

Play and the need for play is hardwired into humans. Filling out “deathgrids” is not. It may well be that some day we all have game programmers working for us.

MROC Variant 1 is what we think of as a traditional MROC built exclusively (usually by Communispace, Passenger, etc.) for a client with the members coming exclusively from the client’s current customer base (raving fans typically).

MROC Variant 2 is (will be) MROCs built around particular affinity groups and consumer types and accessed like an omnibus product by many different marketers. In this case the MROC or panel company will “rent” access to the group to many buyers.

MROC Variant 3 is (will be) like lockerz or expotv .

It will be a much larger type of MROC which we might label as something else entirely – possibly a OECLS (Open Ended Customer Listening Service) or a “megapanel.”

Several things will distinguish variant 3:

1. Size. These online communities could be huge.
2. Ownership. They may not be owned by traditional MR players.
3. Multiple Interests. They are likely to include members with many different interests.
4. Fun. They will be more fun than a traditional MROC and will force Variant 1 to build in games and other attractions.

Where does Variant 3 end up? One possible future is a global “cool” community operating by member invitation only that enables trendspotters to identify the most bleeding edge trends in fashion, entertainment and consumption in real time. Members would post videos of their newest purchases and offer dreamscapes on what they want to do with friends or family in the summer. Who knows, they might even discover the catchy tunes of LatinoArabia music.

Is it market research? Is it management consulting? Is it digital strategy? Is it strategic foresight?

The first, and probably greatest, area we can expect significant line blurring is between traditional market research and management consulting. Management consulting tends to gain its strength from industry experience, the gravitas of its strategic consultants, and the individual consultant’s ability to synthesize many data points into a compelling narrative (story telling). But, management consulting often lacks the kind of hard data that market research can provide. I expect management consultancies to purchase and or build internally the basic market research capacity that they need. I also expect market research to increasingly attempt to go “up market” into the consulting space.

The next likely scenario is a significant blurring between the digital strategy function and market research. This blurring will be driven by technology (online communities like MROCs, LinkedIn surveys, etc.) and social adoption of multiple digital tools and afinity communities. On one hand, this development may dramatically shorten the customer feedback loop. But, the danger is that the “research” conducted via these communities may not be terribly projectable.

Finally, strategic foresight (Futures Consulting) can be expected to leverage traditional opinion and market research in its analysis of trends and identification of possible futures, probable futures and preferred futures. In fact, market research should pay close attention to strategic foresight as this field focuses on an area in which market research is sometimes criticized – the difficulty of extrapolating “a snapshot in time” survey forward into the future.