Riding the winds of change

The winds of change are blowing, said Cambiar’s Simon Chadwick chairing the client/agency debate exploring the future of market research. But blowing where?

For clients like Federico Trovato, vice president of strategy, consumer and market intelligence for Philips, the company’s demand for truly valuable consumer insight is moving them away from surveys towards more observational methods.

“It’s the next frontier for market research,” Trovato said. “Asking questions is no longer providing the fundamental answers anymore.”

Nor does technical competence alone “cut it anymore”, he said. Only a few people from the Philips market research department have a traditional research background, meaning technical competence is delegated to agency partners.

The role of the in-house team, Trovato said, is to build knowledge from disparate sources and drive a consumer-focused culture throughout the business.

“We need agencies that are more able to integrate different data sources,” he said. “We need agencies to be more humble and to integrate with other agencies who have something different to bring.”

Jeffrey Hunter, General Mills’s director of iTech, consumer insight, is also looking for “something different”. He and the other client companies he comes into contact with all want the same thing.

“We’re all interested in competitive advantage and proprietary capabilities,” Hunter said. But there’s a problem. A lot of big companies source data from the same big suppliers.

“If my competitor has the same insights as me, we end up in competitive equilibrium,” he said.

There is a solution though. Big companies could start partnering with small agencies with unique technologies or approaches. These agencies could be offered financial support and investment to help them develop their approach, but in exchange they are limited in who they can work with.

“There’s a lot of merit in this type of model,” Hunter said.