Looking ahead ...

What can research agencies and clients expect in 2007? We ask 16 of the top international research leaders, to cast a glance over the year ahead


Stephan Thun, managing director Europe, Maritz Research on ROI
In 2007, we will continue to see above average growth rates for agencies that understand they need to be data based advisors or consultants, capable of helping clients to profitably grow their business. Everything we do needs to help our clients sell higher quantities of their products or services, allow them to charge more or help them to reduce costs. In essence, 'return on investment' will remain a hot topic. Industry focus needs to be on better understanding client-specific opportunities, while finding better and more cost-effective ways to collect and process data. At the same time, in a rapidly changing business environment with new markets and quickly changing consumer needs, we need to help our clients to react faster. The use of technology over and above online data collection and reporting will become even more important. Better use of consumer feedback – from surveys to web forums, text blogs and video blogs – will be an important topic at many conferences in 2007.


Norio Taori, president and CEO, Intage on privacy laws
In November 2006, the Privacy Information Protection Law – considered to be one of the world's strictest – was introduced in Japan, and impacted on the marketing research business. No longer do marketing research firms have access to the Basic Resident Register [which lists the age and gender of family members by household, and is used as a sampling frame], and we are already seeing a substantial reduction of door-to-door interviews as a result. In response to this privacy law, the use of online research will increase, accelerating the transformation of the research industry. At a time like this, all researchers should determine what things to change and what not to change in marketing research. It is time to constantly explore the new.


Scott Klein, president and CEO, Information Resources on shopper insights
2007 promises to be marked largely by an increased focus on reinventing shopper insights. Manufacturers and retailers will be looking to get underneath the reasons for – and components of – the many different types of shopping trips, and they will look beyond traditional demographics and lifestyle segmentation for sources of new growth. Marketers will also seek a total view of the consumer and their unique shopping behaviours, preferences and attitudes by integrating insights across multiple data sources, delivering a holistic view of their most promising customers. We expect to see increased investments in the capability to efficiently share insights across the enterprise, as well as stepped up investments in real-time tracking of new product introduction performance and retail execution.


John Short, chairman and CEO, Opinion Research Corporation on procurement
While procurement departments serve an important function in any corporation, they can create an impediment to realizing value in the customer service agency selection process. Recently, we've seen what we believe to be a positive trend with the management of the purchasing business unit becoming more involved in the selection process. We are strong supporters of this change and believe the trend must continue. Procurement-only driven decisions are not in the best interest of our industry or our clients.


Eric Salama, chairman and CEO, Kantar on a quiet revolution
Someone smart once said: "We over-estimate the impact of change in the short term and under-estimate its impact in the long term." And that's how I feel about our industry now. On the surface there is lots of talk but no massive changes. But beneath the surface there is a real desire from clients to spend less on data and get more usable insights; a real need to integrate survey research with client and other databases. They want to shift budgets to tackling in-store and channel issues; they need to understand word of mouth; and they are asking serious questions about response rates. All this is underpinned by consumers who are harder to segment, more connected with each other, and who are more able to separate the point of decision-making from the point of purchase. The biggest issue in 2007? How the industry engages with people, quantitatively and qualitatively, and gets feedback and responses which clients find useful, credible and cost effective.


Steve Goodall, president, JD Power and Associates on what business leaders want
We will continue to see a dramatic shift in power to the consumer, as broadband-enabled access to huge information resources becomes ubiquitous. Companies in almost every industry will have a heightened focus on the accurate, timely voice-of-the-customer information as a matter of basic competitiveness. In this greatly expanded and complex research universe, the attraction of simple one-question, rigidly-defined scale methodologies will fade as it becomes clear that they don't convey the depth of understanding that business leaders need to carve out competitive advantage. Nuanced, actionable insights will be the gold standard for both information providers and users.


Steven Schmidt, president and CEO, ACNielsen on consumer-centered marketing
The key trend for 2007 and beyond for clients will be finding sustainable growth via an even stronger focus on consumer-centered marketing. Clients have wrung out most of what they can from the cost side, and are now looking intently at long-term growth to build their brands and businesses. The winners will be those who best understand their consumers and then act accordingly. The trend then for research providers is to enable this consumer-centered marketing transformation. Winners will deeply understand the client's business and then offer the right mix of people, technology and services that provide relevant information and advice at the fingertips of the right people at the right time.


Susan Whiting, president and CEO, Nielsen Media Research on the changing media landscape
If 2006 is remembered as the tipping point in the media's response to digital convergence, 2007 will be the year when each segment of the industry must prove it has a viable digital strategy. To do so, they will have to answer two pressing questions: How much more will consumers drive change? And in what direction will they propel it? To date, consumers have seized advances in technology and run with them in heretofore unimaginable ways. And there is no sign they are letting up. So content producers, distributors and advertisers must constantly devise new schemes to reach their audiences at every possible touch point. As consumers continue to embrace digital technologies – and the industry seeks to engage them across multiple platforms – it's crucial that companies have the most accurate information and insights to understand their markets …their audiences … and the myriad forces that are reshaping them.


Steve Morris, president and CEO, Arbitron on targeting and accountability
Ongoing consolidation among advertisers, agencies and the media will maintain pressure on margins. The constant proliferation of media vehicles and the blurring of internet and traditional media will require us to develop more sophisticated and software-driven measurement tools. But it's the demand for efficient targeting and accountability from the most sophisticated advertisers that will emerge as the industry's dominant trend. This will fuel a rapid evolution toward electronic measurement of all media. In turn, this will speed the emergence of single-source, multi-media ratings. Linking these ratings together with direct measures of product consumption will finally give advertisers the tools they demand to calculate ROI directly.


Gregory Novak, president and CEO, Harris Interactive on client/agency relationships
In 2007, we'll see the increasing separation of agencies into two groups: large, global, full-service research partners and smaller data-centric suppliers. Research buyers will weigh risk against value and move freely between the two. The great agencies will continue to invest, adapt, learn, innovate, migrate and generally do whatever it takes to meet their clients' changing business needs; whether that's building proprietary panels of hard-to-reach respondents, or building bricks and mortar offices throughout the Pacific Rim. The great clients will value and generously reward agencies who can provide them with enterprise-wide solutions, regardless of geography, technology or methodology.


Adrian Chedore, global CEO, Synovate on connecting with consumers
The lifestyle shift of consumers over the last few decades means they are harder to reach and understand. The future of research is more about psychological and physiological tools and techniques and less about reaching consumers through conventional methods. Connections with them will have to change. We will need to create new capabilities to get at consumer attitudes and behaviours, to mine the data that is publicly available on digital spaces and to make connections with people online. The implications of such a radical change on clients, business partners, the industry; what it would take to validate this new research; the impact of privacy laws and educating consumers; where this capability will come from – all of these are critical issues facing the market research industry.


Dave Sackman, president and CEO, Lieberman Research Worldwide on 'real' insight
Looking forward, I believe the marketing research industry will focus on actionability. Current business buzz swirls around companies being "customer-centric", and smart companies know that understanding their consumers is key to becoming such an organisation. Correspondingly, the research world has responded with buzz on discovering "insight" about those consumers. Insight is great, but really - so what? What really matters is the application of insight – the ways in which companies can turn that insight into business impact. Research should talk about actionability. Yet talk is not enough. Accordingly, client companies should seek research partners with business-oriented talent along with proven and demonstrable processes to deliver on both insight and actionability.


Michael Baumgardner, president and CEO, Burke on the bottom line
Two trends will continue to affect the marketing research community in 2007. First, client research departments will be increasingly challenged to show a positive ROI on research initiatives, requiring research providers to find ways to link these initiatives to bottom line financial and performance metrics through linkage research and analysis. Secondly, clients will continue to face accelerated product and service development cycles, jeopardizing research providers' ability to deliver quality actionable research. Research agencies will need to provide streamlined data collection and analysis and improved quality controls through innovative sample management processes to meet changing client requirements.


Takehiko Kimura, president and CEO, Video Research on the digital era
In Japan, most of the (approximately 120) TV stations will start broadcasting in digital this month. As we move into the digital era, I believe mass media – such as television – will maintain its influence. However, I have no doubt that the internet and mobile phones will increasingly play a bigger role in the lifestyle of individuals as personal media.


Magid Abraham, president and CEO, Comscore Networks on online advertising
As the online media industry strives to get a bigger share of offline advertising dollars, it faces two challenges. The first is to deliver on the promise of media accountability. This is an early promise of the internet that has not been fully delivered. Yet it is vital for its success in grabbing dollars from other media. We will see innovations in media effectiveness research and its rapid adoption by all key constituencies, publishers, agencies and advertisers. Secondly, similar to search and display advertising, the industry must find ways to run video ads that consumers would find non-intrusive, relevant and even desirable. Meeting this challenge holds the key to winning more brand advertising dollars in industries such as CPG.


Didier Truchot, co-president and CEO, Ipsos on respondents
Maintaining a direct link with the people that we interview is the new issue that market research organisations must face. Interviewees are less and less accessible: young people live in an increasingly mobile world, while older people can be difficult to reach due to security measures like unlisted telephone numbers and email spam guards, and often become jaded from being too frequently solicited by other agencies, such as telemarketers. Our profession must therefore develop new channels so we can maintain this contact with our respondents, while ensuring that we are interviewing the most appropriate people, using the best methods, and in a way that will make them more willing to answer our questions. In other words, we must come back to the basis of our profession – to ask the right questions of the right people – all while making the most of new technologies, and in turn improving them through our experience.


December | 2006