In my analysis of plausible market research futures, one that I come back to frequently is what I call the “epidemiology future.”
By this I mean the application of memetics to marketing campaigns utilizing research and testing techniques.
Memetics is the application of the viral analogy to the world of ideas. The idea is the virus [...]

Reading Joel Rubinson’s excellent post over at his ARF blog, recalls some futuring I’ve been doing around the likely evolution of the industry.
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 [...]

Will 50% of the work being done at market research firms today become “unnecessary” in three years?
Marshall Toplansky, President of WiseWindow, explores this question and scans the horizon of market research in a new MRA Alert article. For those MRA members, I highly recommend reading Toplansky’s article titled “Measuring the Future of Market Research.”
Reading [...]

Recently Alastair Gordon has asked “who’ll own MR in 2020?”
By this Gordon means to ask which players will dominate the market research industry.
His thesis is that the answer changes based on the year, but that one probable future is the rise, and ultimate dominance of the sub-contracting firms upon which full-service shops often depend. [...]

Ian Lewis has an exceptionally good piece in March’s Research World.
Ideally, it should be read in tandem with his January Quirk’s piece titled “Ten keys to increasing the impact of research” and with his comments on this website.
Although I highly recommend that you read (and re-read) Ian’s piece in Research World and draw [...]

Is what we currently think of as the market research industry building the future of its business, or is innovation more likely to come from outside the traditional players?
I’m inclined to believe that major innovation will not come from the large players and will come mostly from outside what we think of today as “the [...]

Tom Ewing has an update to his thinking regarding Millennials in MR.
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 [...]

I have believed since the late 1990s that there will eventually be a merger of market research with the more future-oriented “strategic foresight”. In fact, you can read my thinking about this here. (See pages 8 and 16.)
A new Boston Consulting Group report supports this thesis.
You can read it all here.
But, I highly [...]

With declining respondent participation rates the entire industry (well, at least some of it) has been thinking about how we lighten the respondent burden.
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 [...]

Hat tip to Market Research Deathwatch for highlighting a new type of MROC – lockerz.
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 [...]