OPINION6 July 2015
Is there a research deficit?
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Whether strategy influences research or research influences strategy in an organisation can have a fundamental effect on the quality and impact of market research says PwC’s Alison Blair.
The market research industry contributes more than £3bn to the UK economy but what value does it provide to the organisations that use it?
A small part of the work we do at PwC, Research to Insight (r2i), looks at the use of research within organisations. This has shown us that there is a huge disparity across individual organisations between the best practice, where research is a valuable investment that drives action and supports change, and the worst, where research can be seen as simply a cost burden.
Based on our observations we have made some hypotheses about what distinguishes those who get value from research and those who are not exploiting its full potential.
Insight is now derived from more sources than market research; as well as sales data and consumer feedback we have the many forms of social media as a rich source of information. The danger is that these sources become competitive ...
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3 Comments
Edward Appleton
9 years ago
An interesting and important discussion - BCG examined the same issue a few years ago, suggesting 4 stages of maturityfor clientside CI orgs. Your piece refers to "observations" - how extensive were they? And did you measure at all - eg how many and what type of organisations are increasing their spend and FTE commitments to Insight departments? And where is it decreasing? Tracking that kind of measure to me is valuable - the true test of how CI is winning the perceptual battle of adding value or not.
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Alison Blair
9 years ago
Interesting you should ask about "observations" and "measurement" ... our initial discussion was based on anecdotal evidence from across the industry on a small scale and to be honest prompted us to investigate further and get some hard facts around our long considered view that businesses are not reaping what they sow in terms of insight ... however we have since conducted a pretty comprehensive piece of research looking at spend, value delivered and actions taken as a result, x-sector. Watch this space for more detailed survey findings to be shared soon.
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Mickael
9 years ago
Measuring ROI is indeed a difficult task for a function like research. The added value it brings, can redefine everything for a business, and redefine the very notion of value at the same time. I very much like the simple opposition of strategy driving research, or research driving strategy. Simple and relevant. Thanks for this viewpoint.
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