Consumer Research In Flux?

The status-quo in research doesn’t work anymore. At least not well enough … consumer behavior is getting deeper, faster,  more complex, and is changing fast with a changing world around us all. On top of that, consumers can’t be “boxed in” anymore -they are largely turning into global citizens, with chameleon behaviors thriving more than ever.  Traditional research proves to be inaccurate on many levels. Proof of that is the massive say-do gap and inaccuracy in business forecasting.

On top of that, the marketing as a discipline is changing as well. It’s no longer about just mastering the 4Ps. The need for deep consumer behavioral understanding should be the start of many pieces of marketing innovation, communication, brand storytelling, and what not. And marketing science is challenging many of the old-fashioned “belief systems” in marketing, and forces us to look at data interpretation altogether.

Research is in flux and needs to reinvent itself.

I can see 4 root causes of this state of flux:

1) 95% of all traditional research is based on INTROSPECTION (subjective reporting of behavior, by the one who is being questionned: “do you have product xyz in your cupboard today” … “oh yeah”). The issue with that: a consumer doesn’t really know why he/she makes choices; and more than that, he often doesn’t even recall well what he has chosen! The consequence: unclarity & research focusing on “numbers” instead of “understanding”!

2)  Research quality depends on language… how articulated and educated a consumer (research respondent) is influences the information massively! That kind of “noise” is not being captured in methodologies and analysis.

3) Social media, and renewed “respect” for word-of-mouth coming with that is changing the game. What does research do with that? The marketing field is still toying with this and all the relationships between the different media are not ironed out yet… very confusing.

4) Research savvyness of consumers leads in many cases to them being too “appreciative” of innovation, marketing activities/programs, etc. A continuous 90 or 95% purchase acceptance or purchase intent on a variety of concepts doesn’t help decision making.

Here’s what we need from research, to lead to meaningful business insights:

• Objectivity
• Real consumer feedback through observation (as opposed to “declare”)
• Better understanding of cause&effect between perception and sales.
• An outcome that helps de-risk marketing activities through better/sharper decisions
• net: science

Time for new techniques and methodologies to come in and be embraces by the business world.

And maybe we need a revolution to take place in the insights/research world > like with “open innovation”, we might need to move to “open research” where all disciplines come together, in a truly integrated way.

Some examples of new measuring “techniques” (not to say that they all the solve for all problems):

• Psychographics and lifestyle researches
• Eye tracking
• EEG+FMRI
• Social media research (see an older post of mine on that subject)

Below are some interesting examples that show the issue and the role of new thinking …

Campbell’s Soup (a Wall Street Journal feature):

A view on the future of market research explained nicely in this video:

There is one big caveat to flag.

Consumers are difficult to graps. Behavior is complex. Neuro-networks in the brain will always be a black box. BUT… there are recurring tendancies and trends to be discovered. We just need to do our “homework” better!

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Thank you for reading this blog post. Please do comment and share your perspectives!

Tagged as: behavior, consumer, consumer insights, effectiveness, foresight, insight, marketing, methodology, neuroscience, oversight, research, strategy