Alastair Gordon
Business Consultant to the Research Industry
Alastair's worked around the world in senior MR management, R&D and client servicing roles. A Managing Partner at Gordon & McCallum, he specialises in helping clients build superior MR services and to fast-track executive development.
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Blog Posts (8)
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The myth of market research's failure
The increasing number of posts, books, YouTube videos and articles – often by market researchers themselves – that imply “conventional market research” is a failure is making me angry. Any systemic “failure” of market research is a failure to apply brainpower and thinking time – not primarily a failure of techniques.
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‘Shopper insights’ and the value of holistic research
Shopper insights as a focus area is indicative of a pressing issue in research, where clients have become dissatisfied with “generalised” research reports and seek ever more specific and granular information. This makes research that promises to reveal a “moment of truth” or “nano-second of purchase” very attractive. But we should be aware that this involves an artificial deconstruction of a complex process.
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Butterflies don’t innovate: the real innovation challenge for market research
Far from being super conservative, most researchers are fascinated by “trends” and new ideas. But too often we mistake “trend-following” for “innovation”, flitting like butterflies from one new idea to another – never quite developing their potential or integrating the new techniques with old ones. It’s not “innovation” we lack, it’s “implementation”.
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Let's Not Get Irrational About Emotions
Loose definition and use of the concept of “emotion” in market research risks confusing marketers, and encouraging faddish and poorly thought out research practices. Emotional response is too often represented as somehow being necessarily “deeper”, “more important”, or “harder to uncover” than anything from the frontal cortex. This is simply untrue, and unfortunately leads to marketers often taking a simplistic approach to targeting consumers.
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Who'll own MR in 2020?
In recent times it seemed that MR was certain to be dominated either by big media groups or private equity investors. While such trends may continue, we’re guessing that we’ll see some other interesting trends in the control of marketing research. One will probably involve the growth and expansion of Asian market research companies. But this post addresses a more dramatic scenario: the likelihood that those who currently serve and partner with research agencies may come to dominate, ...
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Comments (5)
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Comment on: Butterflies don’t innovate: the real innovation challenge for market research
Thanks to all for the nice comments. Kathryn's reply raises a couple of points. Firstly, I think client ownership is only a partial blockage: agencies are possibly a little shy about going back to clients with reanalysis suggestions (and negotiating a decent fee for this!) and similarly with ideas for opening up less sensitive data for other research purposes (perhaps with the carrot of PR or revenue sharing). I've seen this work, although I agree it needs some thought and negotiation skill. Secondly, it is a good question why some of the major agencies don't experiment more with using bright analysts in smaller companies/consultancies (given the majors don't want to take on extra fixed costs, and their senior staff are often too tied up to undertake exploratory work) . I think it would be an experiment worth trying.
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Comment on: ‘Shopper insights’ and the value of holistic research
Avinava and Peter - thanks for the comments.On the book analogy, I do think the core challenge for MR people in the next few years is going to be about triangulating and synthesizing information into stories for clients. Simple "reportage" based on 1-2 questions is not going to cut it. Incidentally, that was one issue I had with "Consumer.ology", which had some very good points -- and that is that the anecdotal "failures" pointed out were often failures of design and analysis (i.e. lack of effort/training etc.), not really failures of method per se. It's perfectly possible in my view to construct stunning retail research getting both useful emotional and rational feedback with fairly conventional MR methods. It's not MR that's failing retail clients, but a failure of thought and design put into applying MR tools.
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Comment on: The myth of market research's failure
Thanks Annie. I agree, but I'd go a step further: it's also about how we (agencies or MR departments) deploy that "quality" -- it isn't an infinite resource -- and ensuring people understand what really contributes to "quality". Much time (and profit) in MR agencies we look at is wasted because there is no clear prioritization of either business or research objectives, and people waste their lives doing (sometimes in the name of "quality") lots of things that make little difference to the client or standards of accuracy etc.
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Comment on: The myth of market research's failure
Hi Michael - thanks. I agree it is hard to convince clients to give more time or pay more. BUT most MR units we review have at least half a dozen ways that they can free up "brainpower" - a lot of this is a wasted asset. And we are often remarkably bad at selling clients on the value of our time -- we still have a kind of CPI mentality to costing etc.
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Comment on: The myth of market research's failure
Hi, just looked at this, and am grateful for all the nice comments. It is time that we - as an industry - were more aggressive in defending our value. Hopefully 2011 is the year for that. But a couple of points: Nasir: I don't think there is a distinction between "research for research" and research for business. My partner (David McCallum) defines good research (from an agency perspective) in these terms: "We believe research is only successful if it is creatively designed, efficiently executed and exceeds client expectations while also providing a good financial return to the agency". No profit means no training, no bonuses and no investment in new methods. Not good for the industry or researchers! And to "anonymous" - I'd be glad to tell your bosses that - indeed some clients pay me to advise them on just such issues. But usually our reviews show that "time" is not just an issue for management - to free you up for cognition may require new research frameworks, introduction of new software and other reforms that require researchers to change their ways as well. Improving research is a bit of collaborative thing!
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