Obituary: Mary Goodyear

Mary Goodyear was one of the leading practitioners of qualitative market research from the early days in 1965 when she and her husband, John, set up Market Behaviour Ltd (MBL) until it was ultimately sold as part of a much larger group in 1997 with offices in the Middle East, India and southeast Asia and a long list of blue-chip clients.

For Mary, the success of MBL was proof that well conducted market research could make a huge contribution to marketing and so to business as a whole.

In the early days of qualitative research, many were sceptical that there was much to be gained from listening to the perspective of the consumer. It didn’t help that there were far fewer women in business either and some of the suits were uneasy in the presence of an intelligent woman not afraid to speak her mind.

She had grown wary of ‘research gurus’ who could dazzle with their models (‘all mouth and no trousers’) or those who provided quick and slick commoditised approaches. She worried that these could lead companies to take the wrong direction. Research would take the blame and potentially devalue the industry.

This put her on a mission: to ‘put science into qualitative research’. It wasn’t just a relatively minor box ticking function but done properly could provide valuable input to the boardroom.

In practice this meant there was no alternative to what was a laborious, intense and demanding approach which she had first learnt under the aegis of Bill Schlackman. Her mantra was ‘to ask the right questions to the right people in the right way’. No problem if the ‘right place’ was in the markets of Lagos, the back of a pub in Wolverhampton or in a kitchen in Leeds –  whichever was the optimum way to put the moderator as close as possible to the consumer.

If her executives were going out to interview, they had to be properly trained and equipped. In her 30 years, countless researchers passed through the same process so that they could learn the essentials of good interviewing, mastering when and how to ask the question, managing the dynamics and working with a questionnaire to develop the desired rapport and self-awareness.

There were no shortcuts; no-one escaped the process. None of her executives could interview on their own till she approved. No matter that this meant at least a year of supervision, guidance, critical listening and reviewing of every part of the job. It was fair but unsparing.

All transcripts were carefully coded on grids on great sheets of paper that sprawled across the office. Clear distinctions had to be made between the consumers’ words and responses and any tentative hypotheses.

She read voraciously and widely to keep up to date with the latest thinking in marketing, communication and the social sciences, always on the lookout for relevant frameworks to apply. And she worked really hard, spending long hours at her desk before calling it a day. Many evenings, if she wasn’t out interviewing, she would spend with clients or colleagues. She had a great sense of fun and a quick, irreverent wit that endeared her to many.

At her core, the reason she kept going with such determination and application, was that she loved the work and never tired of it – ideally the bigger the problem, the more canvas to work on, the greater opportunity to put research at the cornerstone of the client’s business.

As her clients’ businesses grew beyond the UK they wanted her to follow them and so from the 70s onwards she found herself working across the world. While Mary could and did go anywhere, she had a strong attachment to sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. Often there were little if any local market research services, let alone qualitative research, so she had to find and oversee all recruitment herself, training up local moderators where needed.

Phone connections were often non-existent and there wasn’t much in the way of home comforts, but she was absolutely taken by the people and the culture. It also meant she could do her work undisturbed by the day to day demands of the office. 

For Mary, it was all too interesting: the local medicines and drinks with extraordinary promises of health benefits, the way traditional African customs had adapted and spread across the diaspora, how time was marked by different ethnic groups, the significance of hair styles and the music…

The challenges provided good training for her and her researchers. Assumptions that they had grown up with in England had to be put to one side. The culture clashes were plentiful and unexpected, sometimes alarming and often funny.

When the business was sold, Mary took stock. The money was a fair reflection of the effort she and John had put in but really it was not that important to her. She had written a number of award-winning papers that had stood the test of time, delivered many training courses and sat on countless committees. She had been the first female president of Esomar. All that counted but most importantly she saw that qualitative research had become a solid, well-established industry.

Before going to spend her retirement in Guernsey there was the small question of what to do with the two company cars. John would take his much-loved Porsche with MBL plates, but she would miss the old Vauxhall. Behind the wheel no one had ever paid her any attention, she could arrive discretely at her interviewer’s house, with her guide and recorder and knock on the door smiling. ‘Hi, I’m Mary, can I come in? I have some questions to ask. It won’t take long. It will be fun!’

Mary Goodyear was born on 12th March 1943 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. She attended Brockenhurst Grammar School and then studied psychology at University College London from 1961. In 1965 she co-founded Market Behaviour Limited (MBL) with her partner John Goodyear. The MBL Group was sold to NFO in 1997 and she retired to Guernsey in 2000.

She died on 25^th September 2024 aged 81.

Mary Goodyear’s oral history interview with the Research Network can be listened to on the Archive of Market and Social Research (AMSR) website.