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What are the top market research challenges in 2022?

We all know that conducting market research in today’s landscape is nothing short of challenging — from the need to deliver deeper and more meaningful insights faster to developing strategic, always-on research functions.

In many ways, the pandemic amplified existing challenges while creating new ones: the role of the market researcher has evolved from just the deliverer of insight to the supporter of strategy, while organizations are gradually moving towards end-to-end research platforms to support every area of the business.

These are, of course, early days, and many organizations are still finding their footing — but those that are aware of and combating these challenges are those leading the charge.

In this blog, we analyze some of the top market research challenges from our 2022 Market Research Trends report, and provide tips and tricks on how to overcome them.

Challenge 1: Addressing market uncertainty

For market researchers, acting during times of uncertainty is nothing new. After all, much of their expertise lies in analyzing large amounts of disparate data to uncover conclusions and highlight opportunities. And it’s through this data, specifically experience data, that researchers can chart a course forward.

However, in times like these (with the pandemic and shift to digital), there’s a tendency to pause or cancel projects and initiatives — perhaps to recoup lost investments, protect employees or ensure the business can continue to run.

That said, there’s a compelling argument for organizations to weather the storm — to continue pushing through and put more faith into their research activities to understand how business and customer mindsets have shifted. By investing more time and resources into market research, organizations can get ahead of the competition and start to deliver experiences fit for the new world of work.

And most organizations have responded positively. Through our research, we discovered that while market uncertainty is one of the top challenges for market researchers — the vast majority of respondents (67%) are investing more in specialized market research technology to get a grasp of the post-COVID-19 world. As important, 77% see these technologies as critical to their organization’s success.

There’s more — these organizations are also investing heavily in product, brand and customer experience technology to close gaps across their activities. It’s through these tools that they can improve brand recognition and sentiment, customer engagement and satisfaction, and ultimately deliver more valuable products.

The reality is that uncertain times are highly dynamic. Needs, priorities, concerns and perceptions change frequently. But the only way to be successful in an ever-changing landscape is to adapt and understand the new state of play.

Challenge 2: Improving data quality and insights

For almost a third of our report’s respondents (31%), the most helpful innovation for addressing their business’ challenges in 2022 would be an automated data quality solution. Indeed, gathering and processing data, especially with a series of disconnected, disparate tools and a growing list of digital channels — often leads to inconclusive or low-quality insights.

But as well as lacking the right tools, some organizations lack the expertise and resources required to properly utilize the assets at their disposal. According to our report, 20% of respondents cite a lack of skills and training as one of the reasons their market research is being held back. Another variable affecting data quality.

Similarly, data from Forrester Consulting’s report (The State of Evidence-Based Experience Design) — commissioned by Qualtrics — highlights that limited use (by almost half of the respondents) of analytics tools and siloed processes poses major challenges to data-driven experience design and adoption.

Typically, data quality issues arise from these problems:

Therefore, to get the most value from market research in these instances, organizations must do the following things:

1. Develop and implement a repeatable, scalable and robust data gathering and collection process.

As business outcomes are built around new market research, ensuring you have a solid strategy and approach to using the data is absolutely critical. This means embedding consistency at every phase of your research project, carefully evaluating the methods you (or your market research agencies) use and asking yourself: “is there a better way of doing this?”

And in most cases, there is. You may have disconnected processes and knowledge gaps, or your approach to market research is outdated. The idea here is that you build a best-in-class research culture that’s supported by the technology you choose to use. If your strategy and approach are riddled with problems, your data will suffer the same.

At every opportunity, try to identify ways of doing things better and more efficiently to support your overall market research goals, whether that’s automating specific elements or outsourcing the data collection so you can focus on analysis. What’s key is that the process is repeatable, scalable and robust.

2. Acquire a solution that empowers everyone, across the organization, to carry out and analyze research

We’ve spoken previously about the benefits of platformification for the market research industry, but it bears repeating here. Considering the challenges facing market research projects, including the need to glean higher quality insights faster — platformification offers a solution.

By consolidating data, and combining qualitative and quantitative capabilities and datasets in a single platform, platformification enables organizations to connect the dots at every stage to surface more holistic insights efficiently. This is also incredibly important as less than half of organizations (45%) use qualitative and quantitative data to uncover new experiences.

Analytically, platformification means organizations can use modern technology to capture data from multiple sources and deliver richer insights, faster. For the expert market researcher, it enables them to use advanced statistical analysis tools to elevate findings and get significantly more from the same amount of data.

Finally, with the right choice of platform, it becomes possible for anyone in the organization to carry out data collection and research projects — all without training. It’s the natural evolution of market research, an approach that gives everyone the capabilities they need.

3. Clearly define research methods, analysis and use the right tools

Relying on a platform that offers all types of research, quantitative, qualitative and more, vastly increases your data collection and analysis capabilities while giving you the flexibility you need to carry out specific projects.

Furthermore, using the right tools and technology means that you can make sense of certain types of data, such as structured and unstructured data. For example, the ability to capture and analyze open-text responses across multiple channels to determine customer sentiment and engagement.

4. Establish collaboration across the enterprise

A core part of developing and deploying successful market research projects is collaboration across the entire enterprise. Having a singular platform helps — in that everyone is effectively working from the same location — but it’s also important to get buy-in and clearly articulate the purpose of the research in advance.

It’s also worth setting up regular meetings or sessions with teams before, during and after any market research project to understand progress, highlight opportunities or issues, and then identify ways of improving upon the process.

This kind of collaboration fosters not just good relationships with departments (enabling market researchers to become trusted advisors and strategists, rather than just analysts), it also builds a culture where market research is put at the heart of all campaigns.

Challenge 3: Getting leaders to invest

Conducting market research today is perhaps one of the most important things an organization can do. With the right data sources, market researchers get better insights, leaders can push business decisions and product developers can come up with solutions to business problems.

The challenge is getting leaders to continually invest. According to our report, 21% highlight communicating ROI and business impact as one of their top market research challenges. The same percentage highlights competing internal priorities as another.

At some organizations, market research is a means to an end — done to support new product initiatives or marketing campaigns. But the real value is in ongoing market research supported by an embedded research function.

The first step to getting leaders to invest is to clearly demonstrate, regularly, the impact of market research on business outcomes. For example, by using role-based dashboards, you can provide stakeholders and executives with high-level summaries of how market research projects have contributed to business outcomes.

As for ongoing product development, let’s say you carry out some product research, using conjoint analysis, to identify which product features customers value most. You can then compile this information for product teams and executives to see before making the necessary changes. You could also carry out market research to identify the ideal product pricing point before going to market — or do that same research to work out how to alter your product prices in the current market.

What about ongoing improvements? Well, you can apply market research to products in situ and run focus groups and surveys to uncover new customer preferences. You could even use listening tools on digital platforms to capture customer feedback and reviews and use that information to create new products or add features to existing ones. Then, communicate the results of these changes to teams, executives and stakeholders with ease.

Of course, all of the above requires the right platform — one that can listen, understand and act on market research data to empower you and your teams to create better experiences.

Discover the market research trends of 2022

At the heart of business success is market research, but overcoming the problems and capitalizing on the trends requires a well-thought strategy.

In our second annual study into the state of market research globally, we delve deeper than ever before to uncover the market research challenges and opportunities for organizations in 2022.

From the changing role of the market researcher to what you should be prioritizing, discover everything you need to know.

Just download your free copy using the button below.

Learn more about the 2022 market research trends and challenges

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The Top 5 Marketing Challenges Expected Globally in 2024, And How to Overcome Them [Data + Expert Tips]

Published: November 28, 2023

2023 was a whirlwind.

For one, there were the enormous strides in AI that resulted in massive shifts across the marketing industry. (Many marketers compare AI innovations to the industrial revolution . No big deal or anything.)

Besides AI, there have been massive shifts in how content ranks on search engines due to Google's new EEAT search ranking factors .

Consumer buying behavior has changed drastically, as well, with an increasing number of consumers turning to social media to shop. In fact, Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X actually prefer finding products on social media over any other channel.

As we approach 2024, it's critical to pause for a moment and reflect on the biggest challenges marketers feel they faced this year.

Below, let's review the current global marketing issues impacting the industry, according to data from HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report (coming January 2024) and insights from marketing experts.

Or jump to whichever top challenge you're most curious about:

• Facilitating sales and marketing alignment
• Hiring top talent
• Knowing the social issues your audience cares about 
• Creating content that generates leads
• Gaining and keeping followers on social media

Top Challenges Marketers' Faced in 2023, Ranked — Plus, Expert Insights on How to Navigate Those Challenges in 2024

1. facilitating strong sales and marketing alignment.

Strong sales and marketing alignment is critical for any successful organization. And yet, it's undeniably challenging to facilitate strong communication to help these two teams work better together.

Which is why a whopping one-third (35%) of marketers say a lack of effective communication between sales and marketing is their top challenge.

Why It's a Challenge

Many sales and marketing teams work in silos at larger organizations. Bridging the gap between the two teams — particularly when those teams have different priorities and are unclear of their shared goals — can be difficult, especially when neither team feels motivated to do so.

Additionally, the two teams might implement separate data and analytics processes, making it hard to share data consistently and retrieve insights that help both sales and marketing determine what's working and what isn’t.

But alignment is critical to your business' success in 2024. Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing teams see 27% faster profit growth , and 36% higher customer retention .

What You Can Do

To explore how you can foster stronger sales and marketing alignment, I spoke with Monica Elgemark , Chief Marketing Officer at Oneflow .

She told me, “To address this challenge, it's imperative to define clear goals and objectives that both sales and marketing teams can rally behind. Clear goals and objectives that differentiate between awareness and revenue should be considered in order for both sales and marketing to understand the values different campaigns bring. It is a mutual dependency between these areas that needs respect.”

Beyond identifying shared goals, Elgemark emphasizes the importance of transparent communication between teams. Regular meetings and collaboration tools are helpful, but they're just that – tools. To truly facilitate alignment, your team needs to implement and continuously nourish a collaborative culture.

Data plays a key role, as well. As Elgemark puts it, “Sharing data and analytics represents an essential facet of this alignment process. Implementing a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system, accessible to both teams, allows for the exchange of invaluable customer data. This data not only informs marketing strategies but also empowers sales teams to better comprehend and engage with leads.”

Finally, Elgemark encourages marketers to seek out feedback from the sales team. Ask your sales team about the quality and readiness of your leads, which will ultimately help you hone in on the marketing activities that drive the most revenue for the business.

2. Hiring Top Talent

The strength of your marketing team starts and ends with the talent you employ.

While it's one of the most important components of a strong marketing team, it’s also one of the most challenging aspects.

In fact, when it comes to hiring, 35% of marketers report finding candidates with the right skillset is their top challenge.

2023 saw some major challenges when it came to hiring. For one, there was higher demand for skilled workers, which led to higher wages and benefits for workers and increased competition among employers to attract top talent.

Additionally, many employees have shifted their priorities and now seek out companies with strong work-life balance and company culture. Many also prefer the option for remote or hybrid work. If your organization doesn't offer these benefits, you’ll likely find it harder to attract top talent.

These challenges will continue to infiltrate hiring and retention in 2024.

HubSpot's Senior Recruiter Kaleigh Hoffman told me a strong partnership between the hiring managers and talent acquisition team is critical for attracting top talent iA 2024.

She says, "A recruiter’s best email or InMail message is never as flattering as direct outreach from a hiring manager, so if you are willing to write a personalized note — it really goes a long way. During a time when AI is making it easier and faster to write anything, personalized outreach can make the difference in someone responding or not. If you are writing to a 'rockstar' candidate, keep in mind that they want to know why you are reaching out to them, so be sure to include why you are interested in their profile, specifically."

Hoffman adds that specific job profiles with clearly defined attributes will help set your job descriptions apart from others in the market, which might skew more general. 

It's important to remember that recruiting is similar to selling. So, as Hoffman puts it, "If you are speaking with a strong candidate, specifically asking them what they are excited about or looking for in their next role can help you close them in later conversations. Reminding candidates of their motivators in final conversations — whether it’s benefits, flexibility, or something else — can really help seal the deal." 

Hoffman adds that its important not to get too discouraged if a candidate decides not to pursue a role. Instead, look at rejection as an opportunity to ask that candidate if they have anyone else in their network they think could be a good fit for the role. 

As Hoffman puts it, "Recruiting is a long-term initiative. Nurturing the relationships you develop by checking in from time to time is a great way to build a pipeline of super-talented candidates for 2024 and beyond."

3. Knowing the Social Issues Your Audience Cares About

Consumers want brands to be socially responsible — in fact, 45% of people think that brands need to do more to advocate for social justice issues.

The brands that take a stance on social issues that matter to their audience will have an easier time connecting with their prospects and customers. People want to buy from brands that care about things that matter to them.

Consider Warby Parker. I've been purchasing sunglasses from Warby Parker for years. I won’t go anywhere else. Why? Because of their Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program, which donates one pair of glasses per pair bought and, to date, has distributed over 10 million glasses.

Roughly one-third (28%) of marketers say their biggest challenge is a lack of information on the social causes their target audience cares about (e.g. environmentalism, racial justice).

Simply put, it can be difficult to discern which social causes matter most to your target audience. This information is a little more nuanced than age, gender, or location.

Additionally, you want the cause to align with your brand values. Your audience might care deeply about climate change, but that cause might not have a natural connection with your brand personality. To authentically connect with your audience around social issues, it's critical that they make sense for your business, as well.

Like most marketing activities, the key to success here lies in market research. 

You'll want to conduct thorough research to better understand your customers on a deeper level – including what they value most. 

Surveys can be strong opportunities to explore these more nuanced conversations with your buyer persona and understand what matters to them. However, people aren't always going to feel comfortable sharing the social issues they care most about, since they are often very personal.

In these cases, leveraging social listening tools to glean insights into the social issues your audience discusses the most on social media could be a strong first step. 

HubSpot's Manager of Community Strategy & Operations Jenny Sowyrda told me, "My number one tip for understanding what your community values is to listen to your community. Your community is telling you what they care about through every interaction — from clicking links in an email to re-sharing a social post."

Sowyrda adds, "Additionally, you should actively listen by connecting with your community members directly. Start a list of members, both the loudest and the quietest folks in the room, and build trust with them through individual conversations focused on learning what they care about. By combining your understanding of your community members with your unique expertise, you can provide value and cater to their needs."

Once you've determined what your community values, you'll want to figure out which social issues overlap with your brand. Authenticity here is key, and so is action. For instance, perhaps you consider partnering with a non-profit that also supports that social issue to show you're willing to walk the walk. Again, ensuring the social issue makes sense for your brand to support is critical, as well.

Patagonia is a good example here. Their brand emphasizes the importance of environmental sustainability, and it works because a) the social issue is a good match for Patagonia's target audience (active, outdoors-y people), while also aligning well with their brand values; and b) they've invested in environmental and social responsibility programs to demonstrate a true, genuine desire to create change. 

4. Creating Content That Generates Leads

24% of marketers say their top challenge is creating content that generates leads . And yet, it's one of the most important functions of marketing: To ensure the content we create is high-quality, but also impacts the company’s bottom line.

In 2024, we'll see some major changes when it comes to marketers’ content creation strategies.

Creating lead-generating content has always been a challenge for marketers, but there are some particular reasons why it's especially difficult now.

In 2023, Google released its new EEAT search quality evaluator guidelines. Why is this significant? Because they added an “E” for experience — which means now, ensuring your content is written by someone with credible, first-hand experience on the topic is vital for increasing your website's value.

AI also greatly transformed how people consume content. Now, people don't have to Google “How can I go viral on TikTok?” — then can ask an AI chatbot. Which means many marketers likely saw major decreases in traffic on some of their more generalized topics in 2023.

AI and EEAT have greatly shifted how we, at HubSpot, create lead-generating content . We've been working to ensure the topics we cover are written by authors with first-hand experience.

We've leaned into personality-driven content, since personality is one thing AI doesn’t have.

And we've begun re-focusing our overarching strategy on more niche topics that pertain directly to our products and services, rather than covering too many broad topics — since a brand that is an expert on “everything” is likely actually an expert on, well … nothing.

To learn how you can create strong lead-generating content in 2024, I spoke to Zack Khan , the Co-Founder of Feathery and former marketing leader at Hightouch.

He told me, “The challenge and opportunity in 2024 is writing quality content with insights from subject matter experts. There is so much low quality content out there, increased by AI writing tools. The novel ideas and voice ('hot takes') that generate leads require a deep connection to the reader's problem that the content is hoping to solve.”

During Khan's eary days at Hightouch, he solved for this challenge by hiring "data evangelists". These were people in Slack communities who were already sharing their opinions on the latest data trends. Khan recognized the importance in arming himself with writers’ who could share personal insights, rather than simply summarizing the data.

He says, “The hardest part was hiring the right team of subject matter experts, and getting them excited to write content full-time. I expect this to be just as hard to find in 2024. But audiences are starving for unique, opinionated content in 2024 and the work to recruit a team of subject matter experts does pay off”.

Monica Elgemark believes another key strategy to generating leads in 2024 involves leveraging AI. As she puts it, “A creative and holistic approach is essential for generating traffic and leads. AI-powered personalization delves deeper than surface-level marketing. Using AI algorithms, marketers can predict and cater to individual prospect interests, and create personalized content that resonates profoundly with the target audience.”

Elgemark also encourages marketers to consider how they might incorporate more interactive content — like quizzes, assessments, or webinars — into their existing strategies to retain traffic and provide additional value.

Elgemark promises: "By delving into these strategies, marketers can confidently navigate the dynamic landscape, remain at the forefront of trends, engage effectively, and ultimately thrive in the ever-evolving realm of B2B marketing." 

5. Gaining and Keeping Followers on Social Media

Nowadays, your audience spends a large portion of their time on social media. And yet, social media is also more oversaturated than ever before.

Which leads us to our fifth challenge: Gaining – and keeping – followers on social media.

18% of marketers report it's a major challenge for them to gain and keep followers on social media.

This makes sense: Time is precious. Each social media user is going to be selective when it comes to which brands they follow. If they don't feel they’re getting consistent value from your social media content, they'll quickly unfollow to free up their feed for other users’ content.

Amrita Mathur , VP of Marketing at ClickUp , symphasizes with this challenge and recognizes the importance of audience-building in 2024 and beyond.

Her solution to social media is simple, and yet oftentimes underutilized: Leverage the power of your employees as influencers.

She told me, “While so far, I’ve mostly seen brands working with influencers and creators to further their message and cause, I can see company employees turning into these influencers.”

She continues, “Brands need to recognize that there is no tried-and-tested playbook that works every single time. In my opinion there is one single truth: the answer lies in having a point of view, and knowing how to illustrate that POV in a striking and memorable way. When you combine this and couple it with tactics for both first time and repeat engagement, you get magic. That repeat engagement is what will turn into buying behavior down the road (assuming product-market fit).”

As she points out, the word 'influencer’ can make some marketers believe their internal employees don't make the cut. But influencers can be big or small, niche or broad, and they can also be channel-specific (like Instagram alone) or not.

Mathur adds, “If you haven't already, start thinking about which employees to leverage, curate their unique voice, and get on with the building of your modern-day media strategy.”

Logan Lyles , Evangelism & Content Marketing Manager at Teamwork.com , agrees with Mathur that incorporating 'evangelists' — including executives, employees, customers, influencers, and partners — into your marketing activities allows you to surround existing audiences with content from people they already trust. 

He told me, "Our strategy has involved co-creating content with influential names in the community of our ICP (agencies & professional service firms), as we tap them to guest on our podcast and speak on our Agency Life webinar series.  We've even partnered with different evangelists to both create and distribute our pillar content pieces via social media."

Here's a quick example of that strategy in action on LinkedIn , where Pete Caputa provided a reaction to data points from Teamwork.com's State of Agency Operations Report and then posted the video Teamwork.com and Pete created together on his personal LinkedIn profile.  

Lyles told me Pete's personal post generated nearly 200 combined engagements & comments — well beyond the engagement metrics Teamwork.com typically sees on an average Company Page post.

Navigating Challenges in 2024 and Beyond 

Ultimately, there is no easy solution to these complex, nuanced challenges.

Hopefully, these expert insights can get your team inspired and motivated to test out new strategies in 2024, iterate on existing strategies, and explore the best opportunities for your unique brand to combat these challenges. 

Remember -- you're not in this alone! 

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in November 2012 and has been updated annually to include new, exclusive HubSpot data and expert insights. 

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Top Challenges Faced by Market Researchers and How to Solve Them

It’s been a challenging few years, to say the least. As we look ahead to the coming years, we wanted to uncover the biggest challenges currently facing market researchers. So we did what we do best: designed and conducted a study of 145 insights pros to learn more about the difficulties they’re facing – and then provide ways to address them. Here’s what we learned.

Watch the on-demand webinar here to see the full research report from our study.

Common difficulties

We all know that conducting research in today's landscape has been challenging. in many ways, the pandemic amplified the challenges we were already facing. top issues included:.

• Limited budget and staff
• Team is stretched too thin
• Hard to get both the numbers and stories needed to inform internal decision making
• Slow internal approval process for vendors
• Unrealistic timelines
• Changes in scope after starting a project  

Participants said the most problematic and common issues they faced included the need to:

• Conduct research faster to meet internal deadlines
• Offer simpler and less expensive ways to conduct iterative research
• Conduct quality research with limited resources
• Conduct more research with the same amount of resources

In other words, the top challenges revolved around the need to move faster while dealing with limited resources. These are the biggest challenges because insights pros are just that – pros – who want to do quality work. We all get that – we take pride in our work, and we know it takes more than an algorithm to come up with meaningful insights and recommendations for a team.

Key research study takeaways

We asked insights pros how they are dealing with these challenges today. their workarounds to time, budget and resource constraints are....

• Working more hours
• Using experience and qualitative insights to get to more actionable stories behind the data
• Seeking out new tools and partners to drive automation and efficiencies

How to address these challenges

In talking to leaders across the industry, we have seen firsthand that it is possible to get more from limited resources and budgets. it isn’t simply about working harder or faster, but about using technology to build flexibility into our methods so we can move faster while getting more targeted, relevant insights. i have two suggestions for any company that wants to take their insights to the next level., build research agility to deliver speed and efficiency. being able to do both qual iteration and quant validation is key. creating a build, test and learn cycle will speed up processes and deliver faster insights..

Use best practices to ensure quality. Here’s what we suggest:

• Find more targeted participants for your research: people who have demonstrated the specific behavior you want to talk to them about, or who have the knowledge you’re seeking in terms of user experience. Doing this will help ensure quality results and enable focused learning that ties to behavior.

• Use qual and quant together for better context in decision-making by the team. Making these two work together more seamlessly will allow you to create stories while still providing validation.
• Build on learning by re-engaging participants to ask follow-up questions. Newer qual + quant methods allow you to iterate on learning by inviting targeted participants to participate in qual follow-ups to drill deeper into the “whys” and improve as you build.
• Take a flexible approach, using automated research studies with customizable templates that don’t oversimplify for the sake of time/cost. The more you can tailor your questions, the higher likelihood that your team will get the results they need.

Four key ways insights technology can help you deliver

Timelines: Seek out insights technology providers that can offer highly targeted qual + quant recruiting within hours or days. They have automated study templates and reporting dashboards, so you can get instant reporting to drive faster decisions.

Quality: Look for tech solutions that can capture context and experiences rather than just attitudes. You also want the ability to recontact quantitative participants or have multiple touchpoints in your qualitative studies, so you can drill deeper into the whys and iterate on your learning.

Resources:  Seek out technology with reporting dashboards that include built-in sentiment and theme analysis in addition to charts and graphs. Also look for built-in comparisons, benchmarking and stat testing. When looking at your tech options, also consider on-demand services or assisted DIY capabilities. It’s a great alternative to full DIY, if you’re limited on time and need some help getting it all done. It’s also a doable, cost-effective alternative to working with full-service vendors.

Budgets: Working with a tech platform on a subscription basis can be a smart decision. Not only do you save more than traditional discounts with full-service vendors (sometimes 20% or more), but it can save your team time in dealing with bids and approvals on every project. And tech solutions that offer on-demand services can give you the benefits of full-service partners, without the cost.

Next steps to become more agile

So what should you do next if you want to be more agile? First, get leadership buy-in by demonstrating the potential benefits to your timelines and budgets. Next, start building agile skills in your team by experimenting with smaller research sprints. Find a technology partner that can help you – you need to feel comfortable with them and be able to collaborate. As you move forward, take time at the end of each agile study for a short retrospective. Look at your results: Did you get what you needed? Did you work too many hours? What went well? What was inefficient? How can you streamline going forward?

To learn more about agile methods and best practices , check out our new 3-part eBook series:  Ready, Aim, Fire: A Guide to Agile Insights for Consumer  Product Teams.

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Monika Rogers

Monika Rogers is the CEO and Co-founder of Digsite. She has more than 20 years of marketing, innovation and market research experience, including positions at General Mills, Pillsbury and the A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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10.2 Steps in the Marketing Research Process

Learning objective.

• Describe the basic steps in the marketing research process and the purpose of each step.

The basic steps used to conduct marketing research are shown in Figure 10.6 “Steps in the Marketing Research Process” . Next, we discuss each step.

Figure 10.6 Steps in the Marketing Research Process

Step 1: Define the Problem (or Opportunity)

There’s a saying in marketing research that a problem half defined is a problem half solved. Defining the “problem” of the research sounds simple, doesn’t it? Suppose your product is tutoring other students in a subject you’re a whiz at. You have been tutoring for a while, and people have begun to realize you’re darned good at it. Then, suddenly, your business drops off. Or it explodes, and you can’t cope with the number of students you’re being asked help. If the business has exploded, should you try to expand your services? Perhaps you should subcontract with some other “whiz” students. You would send them students to be tutored, and they would give you a cut of their pay for each student you referred to them.

Both of these scenarios would be a problem for you, wouldn’t they? They are problems insofar as they cause you headaches. But are they really the problem? Or are they the symptoms of something bigger? For example, maybe your business has dropped off because your school is experiencing financial trouble and has lowered the number of scholarships given to incoming freshmen. Consequently, there are fewer total students on campus who need your services. Conversely, if you’re swamped with people who want you to tutor them, perhaps your school awarded more scholarships than usual, so there are a greater number of students who need your services. Alternately, perhaps you ran an ad in your school’s college newspaper, and that led to the influx of students wanting you to tutor them.

Businesses are in the same boat you are as a tutor. They take a look at symptoms and try to drill down to the potential causes. If you approach a marketing research company with either scenario—either too much or too little business—the firm will seek more information from you such as the following:

• In what semester(s) did your tutoring revenues fall (or rise)?
• In what subject areas did your tutoring revenues fall (or rise)?
• In what sales channels did revenues fall (or rise): Were there fewer (or more) referrals from professors or other students? Did the ad you ran result in fewer (or more) referrals this month than in the past months?
• Among what demographic groups did your revenues fall (or rise)—women or men, people with certain majors, or first-year, second-, third-, or fourth-year students?

The key is to look at all potential causes so as to narrow the parameters of the study to the information you actually need to make a good decision about how to fix your business if revenues have dropped or whether or not to expand it if your revenues have exploded.

The next task for the researcher is to put into writing the research objective. The research objective is the goal(s) the research is supposed to accomplish. The marketing research objective for your tutoring business might read as follows:

To survey college professors who teach 100- and 200-level math courses to determine why the number of students referred for tutoring dropped in the second semester.

This is admittedly a simple example designed to help you understand the basic concept. If you take a marketing research course, you will learn that research objectives get a lot more complicated than this. The following is an example:

“To gather information from a sample representative of the U.S. population among those who are ‘very likely’ to purchase an automobile within the next 6 months, which assesses preferences (measured on a 1–5 scale ranging from ‘very likely to buy’ to ‘not likely at all to buy’) for the model diesel at three different price levels. Such data would serve as input into a forecasting model that would forecast unit sales, by geographic regions of the country, for each combination of the model’s different prices and fuel configurations (Burns & Bush, 2010).”

Now do you understand why defining the problem is complicated and half the battle? Many a marketing research effort is doomed from the start because the problem was improperly defined. Coke’s ill-fated decision to change the formula of Coca-Cola in 1985 is a case in point: Pepsi had been creeping up on Coke in terms of market share over the years as well as running a successful promotional campaign called the “Pepsi Challenge,” in which consumers were encouraged to do a blind taste test to see if they agreed that Pepsi was better. Coke spent four years researching “the problem.” Indeed, people seemed to like the taste of Pepsi better in blind taste tests. Thus, the formula for Coke was changed. But the outcry among the public was so great that the new formula didn’t last long—a matter of months—before the old formula was reinstated. Some marketing experts believe Coke incorrectly defined the problem as “How can we beat Pepsi in taste tests?” instead of “How can we gain market share against Pepsi?” (Burns & Bush, 2010)

New Coke Is It! 1985

(click to see video)

This video documents the Coca-Cola Company’s ill-fated launch of New Coke in 1985.

1985 Pepsi Commercial—“They Changed My Coke”

This video shows how Pepsi tried to capitalize on the blunder.

Step 2: Design the Research

The next step in the marketing research process is to do a research design. The research design is your “plan of attack.” It outlines what data you are going to gather and from whom, how and when you will collect the data, and how you will analyze it once it’s been obtained. Let’s look at the data you’re going to gather first.

There are two basic types of data you can gather. The first is primary data. Primary data is information you collect yourself, using hands-on tools such as interviews or surveys, specifically for the research project you’re conducting. Secondary data is data that has already been collected by someone else, or data you have already collected for another purpose. Collecting primary data is more time consuming, work intensive, and expensive than collecting secondary data. Consequently, you should always try to collect secondary data first to solve your research problem, if you can. A great deal of research on a wide variety of topics already exists. If this research contains the answer to your question, there is no need for you to replicate it. Why reinvent the wheel?

Sources of Secondary Data

Your company’s internal records are a source of secondary data. So are any data you collect as part of your marketing intelligence gathering efforts. You can also purchase syndicated research. Syndicated research is primary data that marketing research firms collect on a regular basis and sell to other companies. J.D. Power & Associates is a provider of syndicated research. The company conducts independent, unbiased surveys of customer satisfaction, product quality, and buyer behavior for various industries. The company is best known for its research in the automobile sector. One of the best-known sellers of syndicated research is the Nielsen Company, which produces the Nielsen ratings. The Nielsen ratings measure the size of television, radio, and newspaper audiences in various markets. You have probably read or heard about TV shows that get the highest (Nielsen) ratings. (Arbitron does the same thing for radio ratings.) Nielsen, along with its main competitor, Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), also sells businesses scanner-based research . Scanner-based research is information collected by scanners at checkout stands in stores. Each week Nielsen and IRI collect information on the millions of purchases made at stores. The companies then compile the information and sell it to firms in various industries that subscribe to their services. The Nielsen Company has also recently teamed up with Facebook to collect marketing research information. Via Facebook, users will see surveys in some of the spaces in which they used to see online ads (Rappeport, Gelles, 2009).

By contrast, MarketResearch.com is an example of a marketing research aggregator. A marketing research aggregator is a marketing research company that doesn’t conduct its own research and sell it. Instead, it buys research reports from other marketing research companies and then sells the reports in their entirety or in pieces to other firms. Check out MarketResearch.com’s Web site. As you will see there are a huge number of studies in every category imaginable that you can buy for relatively small amounts of money.

Figure 10.7

Market research aggregators buy research reports from other marketing research companies and then resell them in part or in whole to other companies so they don’t have to gather primary data.

Source: http://www.marketresearch.com .

Your local library is a good place to gather free secondary data. It has searchable databases as well as handbooks, dictionaries, and books, some of which you can access online. Government agencies also collect and report information on demographics, economic and employment data, health information, and balance-of-trade statistics, among a lot of other information. The U.S. Census Bureau collects census data every ten years to gather information about who lives where. Basic demographic information about sex, age, race, and types of housing in which people live in each U.S. state, metropolitan area, and rural area is gathered so that population shifts can be tracked for various purposes, including determining the number of legislators each state should have in the U.S. House of Representatives. For the U.S. government, this is primary data. For marketing managers it is an important source of secondary data.

The Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan also conducts periodic surveys and publishes information about trends in the United States. One research study the center continually conducts is called the “Changing Lives of American Families” ( http://www.isr.umich.edu/home/news/research-update/2007-01.pdf ). This is important research data for marketing managers monitoring consumer trends in the marketplace. The World Bank and the United Nations are two international organizations that collect a great deal of information. Their Web sites contain many free research studies and data related to global markets. Table 10.1 “Examples of Primary Data Sources versus Secondary Data Sources” shows some examples of primary versus secondary data sources.

Table 10.1 Examples of Primary Data Sources versus Secondary Data Sources

Gauging the Quality of Secondary Data

When you are gathering secondary information, it’s always good to be a little skeptical of it. Sometimes studies are commissioned to produce the result a client wants to hear—or wants the public to hear. For example, throughout the twentieth century, numerous studies found that smoking was good for people’s health. The problem was the studies were commissioned by the tobacco industry. Web research can also pose certain hazards. There are many biased sites that try to fool people that they are providing good data. Often the data is favorable to the products they are trying to sell. Beware of product reviews as well. Unscrupulous sellers sometimes get online and create bogus ratings for products. See below for questions you can ask to help gauge the credibility of secondary information.

Gauging the Credibility of Secondary Data: Questions to Ask

• Who gathered this information?
• For what purpose?
• What does the person or organization that gathered the information have to gain by doing so?
• Was the information gathered and reported in a systematic manner?
• Is the source of the information accepted as an authority by other experts in the field?
• Does the article provide objective evidence to support the position presented?

Types of Research Design

Now let’s look specifically at the types of research designs that are utilized. By understanding different types of research designs, a researcher can solve a client’s problems more quickly and efficiently without jumping through more hoops than necessary. Research designs fall into one of the following three categories:

• Exploratory research design
• Descriptive research design
• Causal research design (experiments)

An exploratory research design is useful when you are initially investigating a problem but you haven’t defined it well enough to do an in-depth study of it. Perhaps via your regular market intelligence, you have spotted what appears to be a new opportunity in the marketplace. You would then do exploratory research to investigate it further and “get your feet wet,” as the saying goes. Exploratory research is less structured than other types of research, and secondary data is often utilized.

One form of exploratory research is qualitative research. Qualitative research is any form of research that includes gathering data that is not quantitative, and often involves exploring questions such as why as much as what or how much . Different forms, such as depth interviews and focus group interviews, are common in marketing research.

The depth interview —engaging in detailed, one-on-one, question-and-answer sessions with potential buyers—is an exploratory research technique. However, unlike surveys, the people being interviewed aren’t asked a series of standard questions. Instead the interviewer is armed with some general topics and asks questions that are open ended, meaning that they allow the interviewee to elaborate. “How did you feel about the product after you purchased it?” is an example of a question that might be asked. A depth interview also allows a researcher to ask logical follow-up questions such as “Can you tell me what you mean when you say you felt uncomfortable using the service?” or “Can you give me some examples?” to help dig further and shed additional light on the research problem. Depth interviews can be conducted in person or over the phone. The interviewer either takes notes or records the interview.

Focus groups and case studies are often utilized for exploratory research as well. A focus group is a group of potential buyers who are brought together to discuss a marketing research topic with one another. A moderator is used to focus the discussion, the sessions are recorded, and the main points of consensus are later summarized by the market researcher. Textbook publishers often gather groups of professors at educational conferences to participate in focus groups. However, focus groups can also be conducted on the telephone, in online chat rooms, or both, using meeting software like WebEx. The basic steps of conducting a focus group are outlined below.

The Basic Steps of Conducting a Focus Group

• Establish the objectives of the focus group. What is its purpose?
• Identify the people who will participate in the focus group. What makes them qualified to participate? How many of them will you need and what they will be paid?
• Obtain contact information for the participants and send out invitations (usually e-mails are most efficient).
• Develop a list of questions.
• Choose a facilitator.
• Choose a location in which to hold the focus group and the method by which it will be recorded.
• Conduct the focus group. If the focus group is not conducted electronically, include name tags for the participants, pens and notepads, any materials the participants need to see, and refreshments. Record participants’ responses.
• Summarize the notes from the focus group and write a report for management.

A case study looks at how another company solved the problem that’s being researched. Sometimes multiple cases, or companies, are used in a study. Case studies nonetheless have a mixed reputation. Some researchers believe it’s hard to generalize, or apply, the results of a case study to other companies. Nonetheless, collecting information about companies that encountered the same problems your firm is facing can give you a certain amount of insight about what direction you should take. In fact, one way to begin a research project is to carefully study a successful product or service.

Two other types of qualitative data used for exploratory research are ethnographies and projective techniques. In an ethnography , researchers interview, observe, and often videotape people while they work, live, shop, and play. The Walt Disney Company has recently begun using ethnographers to uncover the likes and dislikes of boys aged six to fourteen, a financially attractive market segment for Disney, but one in which the company has been losing market share. The ethnographers visit the homes of boys, observe the things they have in their rooms to get a sense of their hobbies, and accompany them and their mothers when they shop to see where they go, what the boys are interested in, and what they ultimately buy. (The children get seventy-five dollars out of the deal, incidentally.) (Barnes, 2009)

Projective techniques are used to reveal information research respondents might not reveal by being asked directly. Asking a person to complete sentences such as the following is one technique:

People who buy Coach handbags __________.

(Will he or she reply with “are cool,” “are affluent,” or “are pretentious,” for example?)

KFC’s grilled chicken is ______.

Or the person might be asked to finish a story that presents a certain scenario. Word associations are also used to discern people’s underlying attitudes toward goods and services. Using a word-association technique, a market researcher asks a person to say or write the first word that comes to his or her mind in response to another word. If the initial word is “fast food,” what word does the person associate it with or respond with? Is it “McDonald’s”? If many people reply that way, and you’re conducting research for Burger King, that could indicate Burger King has a problem. However, if the research is being conducted for Wendy’s, which recently began running an advertising campaign to the effect that Wendy’s offerings are “better than fast food,” it could indicate that the campaign is working.

Completing cartoons is yet another type of projective technique. It’s similar to finishing a sentence or story, only with the pictures. People are asked to look at a cartoon such as the one shown in Figure 10.8 “Example of a Cartoon-Completion Projective Technique” . One of the characters in the picture will have made a statement, and the person is asked to fill in the empty cartoon “bubble” with how they think the second character will respond.

Figure 10.8 Example of a Cartoon-Completion Projective Technique

In some cases, your research might end with exploratory research. Perhaps you have discovered your organization lacks the resources needed to produce the product. In other cases, you might decide you need more in-depth, quantitative research such as descriptive research or causal research, which are discussed next. Most marketing research professionals advise using both types of research, if it’s feasible. On the one hand, the qualitative-type research used in exploratory research is often considered too “lightweight.” Remember earlier in the chapter when we discussed telephone answering machines and the hit TV sitcom Seinfeld ? Both product ideas were initially rejected by focus groups. On the other hand, relying solely on quantitative information often results in market research that lacks ideas.

The Stone Wheel—What One Focus Group Said

Watch the video to see a funny spoof on the usefulness—or lack of usefulness—of focus groups.

Descriptive Research

Anything that can be observed and counted falls into the category of descriptive research design. A study using a descriptive research design involves gathering hard numbers, often via surveys, to describe or measure a phenomenon so as to answer the questions of who , what , where , when , and how . “On a scale of 1–5, how satisfied were you with your service?” is a question that illustrates the information a descriptive research design is supposed to capture.

Physiological measurements also fall into the category of descriptive design. Physiological measurements measure people’s involuntary physical responses to marketing stimuli, such as an advertisement. Elsewhere, we explained that researchers have gone so far as to scan the brains of consumers to see what they really think about products versus what they say about them. Eye tracking is another cutting-edge type of physiological measurement. It involves recording the movements of a person’s eyes when they look at some sort of stimulus, such as a banner ad or a Web page. The Walt Disney Company has a research facility in Austin, Texas, that it uses to take physical measurements of viewers when they see Disney programs and advertisements. The facility measures three types of responses: people’s heart rates, skin changes, and eye movements (eye tracking) (Spangler, 2009).

Figure 10.9

A woman shows off her headgear for an eye-tracking study. The gear’s not exactly a fashion statement but . . .

lawrencegs – Google Glass – CC BY 2.0.

A strictly descriptive research design instrument—a survey, for example—can tell you how satisfied your customers are. It can’t, however, tell you why. Nor can an eye-tracking study tell you why people’s eyes tend to dwell on certain types of banner ads—only that they do. To answer “why” questions an exploratory research design or causal research design is needed (Wagner, 2007).

Causal Research

Causal research design examines cause-and-effect relationships. Using a causal research design allows researchers to answer “what if” types of questions. In other words, if a firm changes X (say, a product’s price, design, placement, or advertising), what will happen to Y (say, sales or customer loyalty)? To conduct causal research, the researcher designs an experiment that “controls,” or holds constant, all of a product’s marketing elements except one (or using advanced techniques of research, a few elements can be studied at the same time). The one variable is changed, and the effect is then measured. Sometimes the experiments are conducted in a laboratory using a simulated setting designed to replicate the conditions buyers would experience. Or the experiments may be conducted in a virtual computer setting.

You might think setting up an experiment in a virtual world such as the online game Second Life would be a viable way to conduct controlled marketing research. Some companies have tried to use Second Life for this purpose, but the results have been somewhat mixed as to whether or not it is a good medium for marketing research. The German marketing research firm Komjuniti was one of the first “real-world” companies to set up an “island” in Second Life upon which it could conduct marketing research. However, with so many other attractive fantasy islands in which to play, the company found it difficult to get Second Life residents, or players, to voluntarily visit the island and stay long enough so meaningful research could be conducted. (Plus, the “residents,” or players, in Second Life have been known to protest corporations invading their world. When the German firm Komjuniti created an island in Second Life to conduct marketing research, the residents showed up waving signs and threatening to boycott the island.) (Wagner, 2007)

Why is being able to control the setting so important? Let’s say you are an American flag manufacturer and you are working with Walmart to conduct an experiment to see where in its stores American flags should be placed so as to increase their sales. Then the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occur. In the days afterward, sales skyrocketed—people bought flags no matter where they were displayed. Obviously, the terrorist attacks in the United States would have skewed the experiment’s data.

An experiment conducted in a natural setting such as a store is referred to as a field experiment . Companies sometimes do field experiments either because it is more convenient or because they want to see if buyers will behave the same way in the “real world” as in a laboratory or on a computer. The place the experiment is conducted or the demographic group of people the experiment is administered to is considered the test market . Before a large company rolls out a product to the entire marketplace, it will often place the offering in a test market to see how well it will be received. For example, to compete with MillerCoors’ sixty-four-calorie beer MGD 64, Anheuser-Busch recently began testing its Select 55 beer in certain cities around the country (McWilliams, 2009).

Figure 10.10

Select 55 beer: Coming soon to a test market near you? (If you’re on a diet, you have to hope so!)

Martine – Le champagne – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Many companies use experiments to test all of their marketing communications. For example, the online discount retailer O.co (formerly called Overstock.com) carefully tests all of its marketing offers and tracks the results of each one. One study the company conducted combined twenty-six different variables related to offers e-mailed to several thousand customers. The study resulted in a decision to send a group of e-mails to different segments. The company then tracked the results of the sales generated to see if they were in line with the earlier experiment it had conducted that led it to make the offer.

Step 3: Design the Data-Collection Forms

If the behavior of buyers is being formally observed, and a number of different researchers are conducting observations, the data obviously need to be recorded on a standardized data-collection form that’s either paper or electronic. Otherwise, the data collected will not be comparable. The items on the form could include a shopper’s sex; his or her approximate age; whether the person seemed hurried, moderately hurried, or unhurried; and whether or not he or she read the label on products, used coupons, and so forth.

The same is true when it comes to surveying people with questionnaires. Surveying people is one of the most commonly used techniques to collect quantitative data. Surveys are popular because they can be easily administered to large numbers of people fairly quickly. However, to produce the best results, the questionnaire for the survey needs to be carefully designed.

Questionnaire Design

Most questionnaires follow a similar format: They begin with an introduction describing what the study is for, followed by instructions for completing the questionnaire and, if necessary, returning it to the market researcher. The first few questions that appear on the questionnaire are usually basic, warm-up type of questions the respondent can readily answer, such as the respondent’s age, level of education, place of residence, and so forth. The warm-up questions are then followed by a logical progression of more detailed, in-depth questions that get to the heart of the question being researched. Lastly, the questionnaire wraps up with a statement that thanks the respondent for participating in the survey and information and explains when and how they will be paid for participating. To see some examples of questionnaires and how they are laid out, click on the following link: http://cas.uah.edu/wrenb/mkt343/Project/Sample%20Questionnaires.htm .

How the questions themselves are worded is extremely important. It’s human nature for respondents to want to provide the “correct” answers to the person administering the survey, so as to seem agreeable. Therefore, there is always a hazard that people will try to tell you what you want to hear on a survey. Consequently, care needs to be taken that the survey questions are written in an unbiased, neutral way. In other words, they shouldn’t lead a person taking the questionnaire to answer a question one way or another by virtue of the way you have worded it. The following is an example of a leading question.

Don’t you agree that teachers should be paid more ?

The questions also need to be clear and unambiguous. Consider the following question:

Which brand of toothpaste do you use ?

The question sounds clear enough, but is it really? What if the respondent recently switched brands? What if she uses Crest at home, but while away from home or traveling, she uses Colgate’s Wisp portable toothpaste-and-brush product? How will the respondent answer the question? Rewording the question as follows so it’s more specific will help make the question clearer:

Which brand of toothpaste have you used at home in the past six months? If you have used more than one brand, please list each of them 1 .

Sensitive questions have to be asked carefully. For example, asking a respondent, “Do you consider yourself a light, moderate, or heavy drinker?” can be tricky. Few people want to admit to being heavy drinkers. You can “soften” the question by including a range of answers, as the following example shows:

How many alcoholic beverages do you consume in a week ?

• __0–5 alcoholic beverages
• __5–10 alcoholic beverages
• __10–15 alcoholic beverages

Many people don’t like to answer questions about their income levels. Asking them to specify income ranges rather than divulge their actual incomes can help.

Other research question “don’ts” include using jargon and acronyms that could confuse people. “How often do you IM?” is an example. Also, don’t muddy the waters by asking two questions in the same question, something researchers refer to as a double-barreled question . “Do you think parents should spend more time with their children and/or their teachers?” is an example of a double-barreled question.

Open-ended questions , or questions that ask respondents to elaborate, can be included. However, they are harder to tabulate than closed-ended questions , or questions that limit a respondent’s answers. Multiple-choice and yes-and-no questions are examples of closed-ended questions.

Testing the Questionnaire

You have probably heard the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.” If the questions are bad, the information gathered will be bad, too. One way to make sure you don’t end up with garbage is to test the questionnaire before sending it out to find out if there are any problems with it. Is there enough space for people to elaborate on open-ended questions? Is the font readable? To test the questionnaire, marketing research professionals first administer it to a number of respondents face to face. This gives the respondents the chance to ask the researcher about questions or instructions that are unclear or don’t make sense to them. The researcher then administers the questionnaire to a small subset of respondents in the actual way the survey is going to be disseminated, whether it’s delivered via phone, in person, by mail, or online.

Getting people to participate and complete questionnaires can be difficult. If the questionnaire is too long or hard to read, many people won’t complete it. So, by all means, eliminate any questions that aren’t necessary. Of course, including some sort of monetary incentive for completing the survey can increase the number of completed questionnaires a market researcher will receive.

Step 4: Specify the Sample

Once you have created your questionnaire or other marketing study, how do you figure out who should participate in it? Obviously, you can’t survey or observe all potential buyers in the marketplace. Instead, you must choose a sample. A sample is a subset of potential buyers that are representative of your entire target market, or population being studied. Sometimes market researchers refer to the population as the universe to reflect the fact that it includes the entire target market, whether it consists of a million people, a hundred thousand, a few hundred, or a dozen. “All unmarried people over the age of eighteen who purchased Dirt Devil steam cleaners in the United States during 2011” is an example of a population that has been defined.

Obviously, the population has to be defined correctly. Otherwise, you will be studying the wrong group of people. Not defining the population correctly can result in flawed research, or sampling error. A sampling error is any type of marketing research mistake that results because a sample was utilized. One criticism of Internet surveys is that the people who take these surveys don’t really represent the overall population. On average, Internet survey takers tend to be more educated and tech savvy. Consequently, if they solely constitute your population, even if you screen them for certain criteria, the data you collect could end up being skewed.

The next step is to put together the sampling frame , which is the list from which the sample is drawn. The sampling frame can be put together using a directory, customer list, or membership roster (Wrenn et. al., 2007). Keep in mind that the sampling frame won’t perfectly match the population. Some people will be included on the list who shouldn’t be. Other people who should be included will be inadvertently omitted. It’s no different than if you were to conduct a survey of, say, 25 percent of your friends, using friends’ names you have in your cell phone. Most of your friends’ names are likely to be programmed into your phone, but not all of them. As a result, a certain degree of sampling error always occurs.

There are two main categories of samples in terms of how they are drawn: probability samples and nonprobability samples. A probability sample is one in which each would-be participant has a known and equal chance of being selected. The chance is known because the total number of people in the sampling frame is known. For example, if every other person from the sampling frame were chosen, each person would have a 50 percent chance of being selected.

A nonprobability sample is any type of sample that’s not drawn in a systematic way. So the chances of each would-be participant being selected can’t be known. A convenience sample is one type of nonprobability sample. It is a sample a researcher draws because it’s readily available and convenient to do so. Surveying people on the street as they pass by is an example of a convenience sample. The question is, are these people representative of the target market?

For example, suppose a grocery store needed to quickly conduct some research on shoppers to get ready for an upcoming promotion. Now suppose that the researcher assigned to the project showed up between the hours of 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. on a weekday and surveyed as many shoppers as possible. The problem is that the shoppers wouldn’t be representative of the store’s entire target market. What about commuters who stop at the store before and after work? Their views wouldn’t be represented. Neither would people who work the night shift or shop at odd hours. As a result, there would be a lot of room for sampling error in this study. For this reason, studies that use nonprobability samples aren’t considered as accurate as studies that use probability samples. Nonprobability samples are more often used in exploratory research.

Lastly, the size of the sample has an effect on the amount of sampling error. Larger samples generally produce more accurate results. The larger your sample is, the more data you will have, which will give you a more complete picture of what you’re studying. However, the more people surveyed or studied, the more costly the research becomes.

Statistics can be used to determine a sample’s optimal size. If you take a marketing research or statistics class, you will learn more about how to determine the optimal size.

Of course, if you hire a marketing research company, much of this work will be taken care of for you. Many marketing research companies, like ResearchNow, maintain panels of prescreened people they draw upon for samples. In addition, the marketing research firm will be responsible for collecting the data or contracting with a company that specializes in data collection. Data collection is discussed next.

Step 5: Collect the Data

As we have explained, primary marketing research data can be gathered in a number of ways. Surveys, taking physical measurements, and observing people are just three of the ways we discussed. If you’re observing customers as part of gathering the data, keep in mind that if shoppers are aware of the fact, it can have an effect on their behavior. For example, if a customer shopping for feminine hygiene products in a supermarket aisle realizes she is being watched, she could become embarrassed and leave the aisle, which would adversely affect your data. To get around problems such as these, some companies set up cameras or two-way mirrors to observe customers. Organizations also hire mystery shoppers to work around the problem. A mystery shopper is someone who is paid to shop at a firm’s establishment or one of its competitors to observe the level of service, cleanliness of the facility, and so forth, and report his or her findings to the firm.

Make Extra Money as a Mystery Shopper

Watch the YouTube video to get an idea of how mystery shopping works.

Survey data can be collected in many different ways and combinations of ways. The following are the basic methods used:

• Face-to-face (can be computer aided)
• Telephone (can be computer aided or completely automated)
• Mail and hand delivery
• E-mail and the Web

A face-to-face survey is, of course, administered by a person. The surveys are conducted in public places such as in shopping malls, on the street, or in people’s homes if they have agreed to it. In years past, it was common for researchers in the United States to knock on people’s doors to gather survey data. However, randomly collected door-to-door interviews are less common today, partly because people are afraid of crime and are reluctant to give information to strangers (McDaniel & Gates, 1998).

Nonetheless, “beating the streets” is still a legitimate way questionnaire data is collected. When the U.S. Census Bureau collects data on the nation’s population, it hand delivers questionnaires to rural households that do not have street-name and house-number addresses. And Census Bureau workers personally survey the homeless to collect information about their numbers. Face-to-face surveys are also commonly used in third world countries to collect information from people who cannot read or lack phones and computers.

A plus of face-to-face surveys is that they allow researchers to ask lengthier, more complex questions because the people being surveyed can see and read the questionnaires. The same is true when a computer is utilized. For example, the researcher might ask the respondent to look at a list of ten retail stores and rank the stores from best to worst. The same question wouldn’t work so well over the telephone because the person couldn’t see the list. The question would have to be rewritten. Another drawback with telephone surveys is that even though federal and state “do not call” laws generally don’t prohibit companies from gathering survey information over the phone, people often screen such calls using answering machines and caller ID.

Probably the biggest drawback of both surveys conducted face-to-face and administered over the phone by a person is that they are labor intensive and therefore costly. Mailing out questionnaires is costly, too, and the response rates can be rather low. Think about why that might be so: if you receive a questionnaire in the mail, it is easy to throw it in the trash; it’s harder to tell a market researcher who approaches you on the street that you don’t want to be interviewed.

By contrast, gathering survey data collected by a computer, either over the telephone or on the Internet, can be very cost-effective and in some cases free. SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang are two Web sites that will allow you to create online questionnaires, e-mail them to up to one hundred people for free, and view the responses in real time as they come in. For larger surveys, you have to pay a subscription price of a few hundred dollars. But that still can be extremely cost-effective. The two Web sites also have a host of other features such as online-survey templates you can use to create your questionnaire, a way to set up automatic reminders sent to people who haven’t yet completed their surveys, and tools you can use to create graphics to put in your final research report. To see how easy it is to put together a survey in SurveyMonkey, click on the following link: http://help.surveymonkey.com/app/tutorials/detail/a_id/423 .

Like a face-to-face survey, an Internet survey can enable you to show buyers different visuals such as ads, pictures, and videos of products and their packaging. Web surveys are also fast, which is a major plus. Whereas face-to-face and mailed surveys often take weeks to collect, you can conduct a Web survey in a matter of days or even hours. And, of course, because the information is electronically gathered it can be automatically tabulated. You can also potentially reach a broader geographic group than you could if you had to personally interview people. The Zoomerang Web site allows you to create surveys in forty different languages.

Another plus for Web and computer surveys (and electronic phone surveys) is that there is less room for human error because the surveys are administered electronically. For instance, there’s no risk that the interviewer will ask a question wrong or use a tone of voice that could mislead the respondents. Respondents are also likely to feel more comfortable inputting the information into a computer if a question is sensitive than they would divulging the information to another person face-to-face or over the phone. Given all of these advantages, it’s not surprising that the Internet is quickly becoming the top way to collect primary data. However, like mail surveys, surveys sent to people over the Internet are easy to ignore.

Lastly, before the data collection process begins, the surveyors and observers need to be trained to look for the same things, ask questions the same way, and so forth. If they are using rankings or rating scales, they need to be “on the same page,” so to speak, as to what constitutes a high ranking or a low ranking. As an analogy, you have probably had some teachers grade your college papers harder than others. The goal of training is to avoid a wide disparity between how different observers and interviewers record the data.

Figure 10.11

Training people so they know what constitutes different ratings when they are collecting data will improve the quality of the information gathered in a marketing research study.

Ricardo Rodriquez – Satisfaction survey – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

For example, if an observation form asks the observers to describe whether a shopper’s behavior is hurried, moderately hurried, or unhurried, they should be given an idea of what defines each rating. Does it depend on how much time the person spends in the store or in the individual aisles? How fast they walk? In other words, the criteria and ratings need to be spelled out.

Collecting International Marketing Research Data

Gathering marketing research data in foreign countries poses special challenges. However, that doesn’t stop firms from doing so. Marketing research companies are located all across the globe, in fact. Eight of the ten largest marketing research companies in the world are headquartered in the United States. However, five of these eight firms earn more of their revenues abroad than they do in the United States. There’s a reason for this: many U.S. markets were saturated, or tapped out, long ago in terms of the amount that they can grow. Coke is an example. As you learned earlier in the book, most of the Coca-Cola Company’s revenues are earned in markets abroad. To be sure, the United States is still a huge market when it comes to the revenues marketing research firms generate by conducting research in the country: in terms of their spending, American consumers fuel the world’s economic engine. Still, emerging countries with growing middle classes, such as China, India, and Brazil, are hot new markets companies want to tap.

What kind of challenges do firms face when trying to conduct marketing research abroad? As we explained, face-to-face surveys are commonly used in third world countries to collect information from people who cannot read or lack phones and computers. However, face-to-face surveys are also common in Europe, despite the fact that phones and computers are readily available. In-home surveys are also common in parts of Europe. By contrast, in some countries, including many Asian countries, it’s considered taboo or rude to try to gather information from strangers either face-to-face or over the phone. In many Muslim countries, women are forbidden to talk to strangers.

And how do you figure out whom to research in foreign countries? That in itself is a problem. In the United States, researchers often ask if they can talk to the heads of households to conduct marketing research. But in countries in which domestic servants or employees are common, the heads of households aren’t necessarily the principal shoppers; their domestic employees are (Malhotra).

Translating surveys is also an issue. Have you ever watched the TV comedians Jay Leno and David Letterman make fun of the English translations found on ethnic menus and products? Research tools such as surveys can suffer from the same problem. Hiring someone who is bilingual to translate a survey into another language can be a disaster if the person isn’t a native speaker of the language to which the survey is being translated.

One way companies try to deal with translation problems is by using back translation. When back translation is used, a native speaker translates the survey into the foreign language and then translates it back again to the original language to determine if there were gaps in meaning—that is, if anything was lost in translation. And it’s not just the language that’s an issue. If the research involves any visual images, they, too, could be a point of confusion. Certain colors, shapes, and symbols can have negative connotations in other countries. For example, the color white represents purity in many Western cultures, but in China, it is the color of death and mourning (Zouhali-Worrall, 2008). Also, look back at the cartoon-completion exercise in Figure 10.8 “Example of a Cartoon-Completion Projective Technique” . What would women in Muslim countries who aren’t allowed to converse with male sellers think of it? Chances are, the cartoon wouldn’t provide you with the information you’re seeking if Muslim women in some countries were asked to complete it.

One way marketing research companies are dealing with the complexities of global research is by merging with or acquiring marketing research companies abroad. The Nielsen Company is the largest marketing research company in the world. The firm operates in more than a hundred countries and employs more than forty thousand people. Many of its expansions have been the result of acquisitions and mergers.

Step 6: Analyze the Data

Step 6 involves analyzing the data to ensure it’s as accurate as possible. If the research is collected by hand using a pen and pencil, it’s entered into a computer. Or respondents might have already entered the information directly into a computer. For example, when Toyota goes to an event such as a car show, the automaker’s marketing personnel ask would-be buyers to complete questionnaires directly on computers. Companies are also beginning to experiment with software that can be used to collect data using mobile phones.

Once all the data is collected, the researchers begin the data cleaning , which is the process of removing data that have accidentally been duplicated (entered twice into the computer) or correcting data that have obviously been recorded wrong. A program such as Microsoft Excel or a statistical program such as Predictive Analytics Software (PASW, which was formerly known as SPSS) is then used to tabulate, or calculate, the basic results of the research, such as the total number of participants and how collectively they answered various questions. The programs can also be used to calculate averages, such as the average age of respondents, their average satisfaction, and so forth. The same can done for percentages, and other values you learned about, or will learn about, in a statistics course, such as the standard deviation, mean, and median for each question.

The information generated by the programs can be used to draw conclusions, such as what all customers might like or not like about an offering based on what the sample group liked or did not like. The information can also be used to spot differences among groups of people. For example, the research might show that people in one area of the country like the product better than people in another area. Trends to predict what might happen in the future can also be spotted.

If there are any open-ended questions respondents have elaborated upon—for example, “Explain why you like the current brand you use better than any other brand”—the answers to each are pasted together, one on top of another, so researchers can compare and summarize the information. As we have explained, qualitative information such as this can give you a fuller picture of the results of the research.

Part of analyzing the data is to see if it seems sound. Does the way in which the research was conducted seem sound? Was the sample size large enough? Are the conclusions that become apparent from it reasonable?

The two most commonly used criteria used to test the soundness of a study are (1) validity and (2) reliability. A study is valid if it actually tested what it was designed to test. For example, did the experiment you ran in Second Life test what it was designed to test? Did it reflect what could really happen in the real world? If not, the research isn’t valid. If you were to repeat the study, and get the same results (or nearly the same results), the research is said to be reliable . If you get a drastically different result if you repeat the study, it’s not reliable. The data collected, or at least some it, can also be compared to, or reconciled with, similar data from other sources either gathered by your firm or by another organization to see if the information seems on target.

Stage 7: Write the Research Report and Present Its Findings

If you end up becoming a marketing professional and conducting a research study after you graduate, hopefully you will do a great job putting the study together. You will have defined the problem correctly, chosen the right sample, collected the data accurately, analyzed it, and your findings will be sound. At that point, you will be required to write the research report and perhaps present it to an audience of decision makers. You will do so via a written report and, in some cases, a slide or PowerPoint presentation based on your written report.

The six basic elements of a research report are as follows.

• Title Page . The title page explains what the report is about, when it was conducted and by whom, and who requested it.
• Table of Contents . The table of contents outlines the major parts of the report, as well as any graphs and charts, and the page numbers on which they can be found.
• Executive Summary . The executive summary summarizes all the details in the report in a very quick way. Many people who receive the report—both executives and nonexecutives—won’t have time to read the entire report. Instead, they will rely on the executive summary to quickly get an idea of the study’s results and what to do about those results.

Methodology and Limitations . The methodology section of the report explains the technical details of how the research was designed and conducted. The section explains, for example, how the data was collected and by whom, the size of the sample, how it was chosen, and whom or what it consisted of (e.g., the number of women versus men or children versus adults). It also includes information about the statistical techniques used to analyze the data.

Every study has errors—sampling errors, interviewer errors, and so forth. The methodology section should explain these details, so decision makers can consider their overall impact. The margin of error is the overall tendency of the study to be off kilter—that is, how far it could have gone wrong in either direction. Remember how newscasters present the presidential polls before an election? They always say, “This candidate is ahead 48 to 44 percent, plus or minus 2 percent.” That “plus or minus” is the margin of error. The larger the margin of error is, the less likely the results of the study are accurate. The margin of error needs to be included in the methodology section.

• Findings . The findings section is a longer, fleshed-out version of the executive summary that goes into more detail about the statistics uncovered by the research that bolster the study’s findings. If you have related research or secondary data on hand that back up the findings, it can be included to help show the study did what it was designed to do.
• Recommendations . The recommendations section should outline the course of action you think should be taken based on the findings of the research and the purpose of the project. For example, if you conducted a global market research study to identify new locations for stores, make a recommendation for the locations (Mersdorf, 2009).

As we have said, these are the basic sections of a marketing research report. However, additional sections can be added as needed. For example, you might need to add a section on the competition and each firm’s market share. If you’re trying to decide on different supply chain options, you will need to include a section on that topic.

As you write the research report, keep your audience in mind. Don’t use technical jargon decision makers and other people reading the report won’t understand. If technical terms must be used, explain them. Also, proofread the document to ferret out any grammatical errors and typos, and ask a couple of other people to proofread behind you to catch any mistakes you might have missed. If your research report is riddled with errors, its credibility will be undermined, even if the findings and recommendations you make are extremely accurate.

Many research reports are presented via PowerPoint. If you’re asked to create a slideshow presentation from the report, don’t try to include every detail in the report on the slides. The information will be too long and tedious for people attending the presentation to read through. And if they do go to the trouble of reading all the information, they probably won’t be listening to the speaker who is making the presentation.

Instead of including all the information from the study in the slides, boil each section of the report down to key points and add some “talking points” only the presenter will see. After or during the presentation, you can give the attendees the longer, paper version of the report so they can read the details at a convenient time, if they choose to.

Key Takeaway

Step 1 in the marketing research process is to define the problem. Businesses take a look at what they believe are symptoms and try to drill down to the potential causes so as to precisely define the problem. The next task for the researcher is to put into writing the research objective, or goal, the research is supposed to accomplish. Step 2 in the process is to design the research. The research design is the “plan of attack.” It outlines what data you are going to gather, from whom, how, and when, and how you’re going to analyze it once it has been obtained. Step 3 is to design the data-collection forms, which need to be standardized so the information gathered on each is comparable. Surveys are a popular way to gather data because they can be easily administered to large numbers of people fairly quickly. However, to produce the best results, survey questionnaires need to be carefully designed and pretested before they are used. Step 4 is drawing the sample, or a subset of potential buyers who are representative of your entire target market. If the sample is not correctly selected, the research will be flawed. Step 5 is to actually collect the data, whether it’s collected by a person face-to-face, over the phone, or with the help of computers or the Internet. The data-collection process is often different in foreign countries. Step 6 is to analyze the data collected for any obvious errors, tabulate the data, and then draw conclusions from it based on the results. The last step in the process, Step 7, is writing the research report and presenting the findings to decision makers.

Review Questions

• Explain why it’s important to carefully define the problem or opportunity a marketing research study is designed to investigate.
• Describe the different types of problems that can occur when marketing research professionals develop questions for surveys.
• How does a probability sample differ from a nonprobability sample?
• What makes a marketing research study valid? What makes a marketing research study reliable?
• What sections should be included in a marketing research report? What is each section designed to do?

1 “Questionnaire Design,” QuickMBA , http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/research/qdesign (accessed December 14, 2009).

Barnes, B., “Disney Expert Uses Science to Draw Boy Viewers,” New York Times , April 15, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/arts/television/14boys.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 (accessed December 14, 2009).

Burns A. and Ronald Bush, Marketing Research , 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010), 85.

Malhotra, N., Marketing Research: An Applied Approach , 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall), 764.

McDaniel, C. D. and Roger H. Gates, Marketing Research Essentials , 2nd ed. (Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing, 1998), 61.

McWilliams, J., “A-B Puts Super-Low-Calorie Beer in Ring with Miller,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch , August 16, 2009, http://www.stltoday.com/business/next-matchup-light-weights-a-b-puts-super-low-calorie/article_47511bfe-18ca-5979-bdb9-0526c97d4edf.html (accessed April 13, 2012).

Mersdorf, S., “How to Organize Your Next Survey Report,” Cvent , August 24, 2009, http://survey.cvent.com/blog/cvent-survey/0/0/how-to-organize-your-next-survey-report (accessed December 14, 2009).

Rappeport A. and David Gelles, “Facebook to Form Alliance with Nielsen,” Financial Times , September 23, 2009, 16.

Spangler, T., “Disney Lab Tracks Feelings,” Multichannel News 30, no. 30 (August 3, 2009): 26.

Wagner, J., “Marketing in Second Life Doesn’t Work…Here Is Why!” GigaOM , April 4, 2007, http://gigaom.com/2007/04/04/3-reasons-why-marketing-in-second-life-doesnt-work (accessed December 14, 2009).

Wrenn, B., Robert E. Stevens, and David L. Loudon, Marketing Research: Text and Cases , 2nd ed. (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2007), 180.

Zouhali-Worrall, M., “Found in Translation: Avoiding Multilingual Gaffes,” CNNMoney.com , July 14, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/07/smallbusiness/language_translation.fsb/index.htm (accessed December 14, 2009).

Principles of Marketing Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Emerging trends in marketing research: What’s ahead for the insights industry

Kelvin Claveria

Marketing, Reach3 Insights

In the third wave of online marketing research, the biggest emerging trends are mobile-first, immersive and human.

At its core, marketing research is about understanding customer behaviors, habits and routines, and getting foresight on what’s next. 2020 reiterated the importance of agile, ongoing insights as businesses needed to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting changes in the consumer landscape. With 2020 finally behind us, what key emerging trends in marketing research can we expect to see in 2021?

1.   Driving agility by merging quant and qual in one seamless experience

To help drive growth in 2021, marketing research teams need to understand not just what customers are doing—but also why. Keeping up with the overwhelming pace of change brought by the pandemic requires looking beyond market research trends and utilizing innovations in the insight-gathering process.

“In 2020, I witnessed first-hand a surge of eagerness and attention surrounding consumer and shopper feedback across many industries as everyone wanted to understand the impact of the pandemic on their categories,” said Jon Dore, SVP & Founding Partner at Reach3 Insights. “With this renewed reliance and focus on insights heading into 2021, I predict the insights industry will step up its game by having the inspiration and courage to move away from outdated methodologies and deliverables in favor of more modern solutions.”

There will rarely be business questions which can be completely answered by only quant or qual alone.

To be more agile, companies need to use inn ovative market research techniques  that capture both quant and qual in one experience.

“There will rarely be business questions which can be completely answered by only one or the other mode of research,” Jon explains. “Luckily for marketing research, conversational-based technologies and approaches are perfectly suited for gathering robust quant and rich qual insights in a single research touchpoint. In 2021, conversational insights will become a mainstay terminology in the world of market research.”

2.   Accelerated adoption of mobile-first approaches

In 2020, the business world had to respond to fundamental changes to how most people work and live. Research leaders may be pulling for a return to a new normal . Still, Matt Kleinschmit, our CEO & Founder at Reach3 Insights says, “I’m quite confident the trends of 2020 will not abate anytime soon.”

To keep up with changes, companies will accelerate their adoption of mobile-first technologies and research techniques in 2021, Matt predicts.  

A driving factor to this acceleration is the need to engage people virtually. “Since COVID-19, mobile research techniques served as a lifeline for many companies to real-time quant, qual and video-based consumer insights at scale,” Matt explains. “As the world contemplates the post-pandemic world, it’ll be even more imperative for them to engage consumers in-the-moment using remote-yet-immersive approaches—something mobile techniques naturally excel at.”

Many clients are under pressure to show that the technologies and techniques they’re using are maximizing the representativeness, accuracy and richness of insights.

Another big driver pushing the industry towards mobile research is the polling industry’s big miss in predicting the 2020 US presidential elections. As a result, “many clients are under pressure to show the technologies and techniques they’re using are maximizing the representativeness, accuracy and richness of insights,” said Matt. This pressure will encourage more researchers to challenge the status quo and test mobile-first approaches.  

Getting deeper, richer insights is particularly critical at this point. Marketing Week notes there's a growing disconnect between how customers behave and how some marketers believe they do. That gap only increased within the last year.

Art Schofield, CEO of Giffgaff said in an interview with Marketing Week:

"This year should be about discovery. Marketers have a great advantage. They can provide an insight-led vision of the future, but they can also describe how we’re going to get there. If you can do that, you’re valued because you’re solving problems for a business. But to deliver this Venn diagram of customer and company value, they need to invest in research tools, new and old. It’s the only way out of the bubble."

3.   A focus on bringing new voices to the research process and getting to the "other 99%"

Representation is becoming more important to more consumers, with many people intentionally moving away from companies that don’t value diversity. A survey by Adobe found 40% of Hispanic respondents have walked away from a brand for not representing them in advertising.

Diversity and proper representation will be a key market research issue in 2021. The major business reason behind this: companies need insights that reflect the attitudes and behaviors of the increasingly diverse consumer groups they’re targeting. More than ever, companies need to reach under-represented groups and bring their voices into the boardroom. Instead of relying on access panels and email databases alone, our industry needs to explore the use of next-gen recruitment tactics to reach and continuously engage the 99% of consumers who don’t take part in traditional research.

Thankfully, mobile market research methods are well suited to reach and engage many of these groups.

“In 2021, the quest for capturing deeper, richer insights (at scale) that can drive better business outcomes will be through the most ubiquitous, personal technology on Earth: the mobile phone,” said Matt. “Leveraging conversational, mobile-first methods make it easier to bring unheard voices into the boardroom, providing fresh insight into the hearts and minds of audiences who are typically under-represented in the research process.”

One of those under-represented audiences is Generation Z—an outspoken group in 2020 . While this generation has been very active on networks such as Instagram and TikTok , many market research techniques still rely on email. Meaningfully engaging these young, mobile-first consumers requires re-imagining the research experience—not only where we engage with them, but also the tone and language we use.

At Reach3, we firmly believe we are now in the third wave of online marketing research. In this era, the biggest and most enduring trends are mobile-first, immersive, and most importantly human. The time to embrace conversational insights is now. 

If you’d like to learn more, check out our ebook, The Future of Insights is Conversational .

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Assessing and enhancing the impact potential of marketing articles

• Theory/Conceptual
• Open access
• Published: 02 December 2021
• Volume 11 , pages 407–415, ( 2021 )

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• Elina Jaakkola   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4654-7573 1 &
• Stephen L. Vargo 2  

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Although the impact of marketing is a recognized priority, current academic practices do not fully support this goal. A research manuscript’s likely influence is difficult to evaluate prior to publication, and audiences differ in their understandings of what “impact” means. This article develops a set of criteria for assessing and enhancing a publication’s impact potential. An article is argued to have greater influence if it changes many stakeholders’ understandings or behaviors on a relevant matter; and makes its message accessible by offering simple and clear findings and translating them into actionable implications. These drivers are operationalized as a checklist of criteria for authors, reviewers, and research supervisors who wish to evaluate and enhance a manuscript’s potential impact. This article invites scholars to further develop and promote these criteria and to participate in establishing impact evaluation as an institutionalized practice within marketing academia.

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Marketing’s theoretical and conceptual value proposition: opportunities to address marketing’s influence

Thomas Martin Key, Terry Clark, … Leyland Pitt

Contours of the marketing literature: Text, context, point-of-view, research horizons, interpretation, and influence in marketing

Terry Clark, Thomas Martin Key & Carol Azab

Special Session: Issues and Answers: Panel Discussion on Data Quality in Present-Day Marketing Research: An Abstract

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

For decades, there has been a lingering concern that the impact of marketing is declining, both as a discipline and in the board room (e.g., Clark et al., 2014 ; Lehmann et al., 2011 ; Reibstein et al., 2009 ). In academia, one might argue that “being impactful” has become a mantra: citations are counted for promotion applications; scholars’ reputation is increasingly affected by their h-index; external funding bodies tend to make decisions based on a research project’s expected business or societal impact; and business school accreditation boards and university ranking systems treat impact as a key standard (e.g., Birkinshaw et al., 2016 ). As a result, scholars engage in ongoing discussion of how marketing research might be made more relevant, important, and useful (e.g., Bolton, 2020 ; Kohli & Haenlein, 2021 ; MacInnis et al., 2020 ; Stremersch, 2021 ), so acknowledging that the future of marketing as a science will ultimately be defined by its impact.

At the same time, many scholars have noted that current academic practices fail to optimally support impactful research (e.g., Clark et al., 2014 ; Key et al., 2020 ; Reibstein et al., 2009 ). As the discipline of marketing grows and matures, standards continue to rise for publishing and tenure, prompting a methods focus as opposed to an impact focus (Houston, 2019 ). Researchers tend to remain stuck in disciplinary or philosophical silos which means that they continue to speak to narrow, predefined audiences (MacInnis et al., 2020 ). Many journal editors have called for research that breaks with existing institutions—for example, more conceptual work (e.g., Clark et al., 2014 ; MacInnis, 2011 ; Yadav, 2010 ); more relevant and important research topics (Kohli & Haenlein, 2021 ; Reibstein et al., 2009 ); and more boundary-challenging or interdisciplinary research (Moorman et al., 2018 , 2019 ; Yadav, 2018 ).

However, in a persisting disconnect between the ideal of impact and grassroots practice, both authors and reviewers continue to prioritize methodological rigor over impact potential. While authors often go to great lengths to explicate how their work adds to existing knowledge, the likely influence of their findings on various stakeholders is seldom comprehensively discussed. One possible reason for this is that the future impact of a given article is difficult to evaluate prior to publication. Meanwhile, there are well established quality guidelines for rigor, including validity, reliability and objectivity; and failure to articulate measures to ensure research trustworthiness often results in manuscript rejection. In the absence of any equivalent criteria, evaluating impact remains largely intuitive. This lack of concrete actionable tools for evaluating and articulating the potential impact of a research manuscript hinders its adoption as a guiding norm for academic marketing research.

In this article, we contend that the promotion of more impactful marketing research will depend on developing and institutionalizing a set of criteria for assessing and enhancing a study’s potential impact. Our aim here is to take a first step toward that goal. At present, authors can access advice on how to enhance particular impact-related aspects of a manuscript—for example, by crafting interesting and relevant research questions (e.g., Kohli & Haenlein, 2021 ; Lange & Pfarrer, 2017 ; Shugan, 2003 ) or developing theoretical contributions (e.g., MacInnis,  2011 ; Makadok et al., 2018 )—but there is as yet no comprehensive set of criteria for evaluating the diverse drivers of impact. While one can argue that prestigious journals will not accept an article that makes no significant contribution to the literature, many published articles have little impact, at least in terms of their citation count. In short, while an article’s contribution is undoubtedly one element of impact, the two are not identical.

To be useful, a set of impact criteria should operationalize and integrate the key factors that can be said to drive the influence of a study on various stakeholders, and be observable in a research publication such as a journal manuscript of an academic thesis. As well as highlighting the importance of impact, the articulation of such criteria would support the assessment and enhancement of a research manuscript’s potential impact and would ultimately facilitate the establishment of such measures as an institutionalized practice in marketing academia.

We start by reviewing existing viewpoints on impact in marketing research to define what this means as a goal for academic publication. Next, we identify drivers of impact potential that should inform the development of explicit criteria. We identified those drivers by analyzing research articles and editorials that focus on impact and relevance, as well as by reflecting on our own experiences as editors, reviewers, and authors for various journals. As the article’s main outcome, we specify an integrative set of criteria that can be used to evaluate and enhance the likely impact of articles submitted for publication.

Defining impact as a goal for academic publication

In operationalizing impact, one underlying challenge is the multifaceted nature of that concept and how interpretations of the term differ across users and audiences (Penfield et al., 2014 ). For that reason, scholarly impact must be more clearly defined in order to develop effective ways of inspiring and achieving it (Aguinis et al., 2014 ). Current scholarly and policy research reveal diverse perspectives on the nature of impact, ranging from a publication’s citation count to a research program’s societal benefits (see Aguinis et al., 2014 ; see also Table 1 ). Following Reale et al. ( 2018 , p. 298), we define research impact here as “ a change that research outcomes produce upon academic activities, the economy, and society at large.”

As outlined in Table 1 , marketing scholars typically address impact from three complementary perspectives. The first of these focuses on scientific impact in terms of the influence that particular publications, authors, journals, or streams have within marketing, or the influence of marketing research on other business sciences, typically measured by citations (Aguinis et al., 2014 ; Baumgartner & Pieters, 2003 ). The second approach focuses on business impact : how research informs marketing practice (e.g., Roberts et al., 2014 ) or how marketing contributes to firm performance and decision making (e.g., Krasnikov & Jayachandran, 2008 ). Finally, the third perspective focuses on the societal impact of marketing research: the effect of scholarly output on advancing wellbeing (e.g., Blocker et al., 2013 ) or the use of that knowledge for public or societal decision making (e.g., Davis & Ozanne, 2019 ). In that context, possible audiences for marketing research include educators, funding agencies, media, public policymakers, and regulators (Shugan,  2003 ).

As Table 1 illustrates, current perspectives on impact within the discipline of marketing address different domains of change, operationalizing impact as the diffusion and/or influence of academic output among stakeholders within these domains. Accordingly, an academic study’s impact is arguably greater when it engages a broader range of stakeholders and triggers more extensive change in their thinking or actions.

Drivers of impact

Scholars have discussed myriad factors that may affect research impact, not all of which can be assessed at the level of academic publication (Hauser, 2017 ; Sternberg & Gordeeva, 1996 ). These factors range from the promotion of published articles to academic practices pertaining to broader science policy, such as industry-academia collaboration (e.g., Hauser, 2017 ; Kohli & Haenlein, 2021 ; Lindgreen et al., 2020 ). As the goal of this article is to develop guidelines for assessing a paper’s impact potential, we confine our attention here to drivers that are observable within a manuscript. For that reason, some measures such as the dissemination of research findings through seminar presentations or social media (e.g., Lindgreen et al., 2020 ) or efforts to influence managerial and public policy decision making through marketing institutions and consultancy (Bolton, 2020 ) are beyond our scope here.

Based on our reading of the literature, our reflections on articles that have come to influence marketing thought over time, and our own experiences as editors, reviewers, and authors, we propose that there are two key drivers of impact (Fig.  1 ). The first of these is change potential , reflecting the common view of impact as the change that research induces in a range of stakeholders (Morton, 2015 ; Penfield et al., 2014 ; Reale et al., 2018 ; Stremersch, 2021 ). The second driver is accessibility : how effectively a publication communicates its message to the intended audience. Many scholars have noted that insightful ideas may go unnoticed if obscured by complicated communication (e.g., Stremersch et al., 2007 ; Houston, 2019 ; Warren et al.,  2021 ), and our own experiences of the review processes of various journals confirm this view.

Drivers of publication impact potential

According to the proposed framework, a publication’s impact potential will be high if it is likely to promote significant change in important stakeholders’ understanding or behavior and if a simple explanation is clearly translated into actionable implications to make the message accessible. These elements are discussed in more detail below.

Change potential

Many authors consider the research question to be the primary driver of impact (Houston, 2019 ; Stremersch, 2021 ), emphasizing that impactful research promotes change in matters that are relevant (e.g. Bolton, 2020 ; Kohli & Haenlein,  2021 ). Scholars have suggested alternative pathways for identifying relevant and important research topics. One approach is to address a topic that is likely to advance theory within a given research domain by solving a puzzle, paradox, or tension that hinders its development or by studying emerging phenomena that require substantial theoretical advances to understand them (Houston, 2019 ; Li et al., 2021 ; Smith, 2003 ; Yadav, 2018 ). Smith ( 2003 ) suggested that impactful research topics might for example initiate new domains of inquiry by introducing novel concepts, resolving inconsistent findings, or intervening in accepted causal models to posit new explanations. Others have argued that relevant research problems often relate to “big questions” such as climate change, which pose challenges for researchers because they tend to be broad and ill-structured, and lack clear criteria or algorithms for solving them (Key et al., 2020 ). Another frequently suggested approach is to identify significant problems faced by marketing stakeholders (Kohli & Haenlein, 2021 ; MacInnis et al., 2020 ; Moorman et al., 2019 ). For example, Zeithaml et al. ( 2020 ) suggested exploring marketing phenomena from the perspective of those most closely involved—firms, consumers, and managers—in order to focus on key issues for marketing practice by capturing relevant issues in real-world settings. Collaboration with practitioners and immersion in industry or related contexts can help researchers to pinpoint important problems that need to be solved (Bolton, 2020 ; Stremersch, 2021 ).

Another dimension of research impact is magnitude of change —that is, how radically the research might change current understanding or behavior (Kohli & Haenlein,  2021 ). According to Stremersch ( 2021 ), impactful research potentially causes someone to act or think differently—for example, by influencing stakeholder decision making, prompting the adoption of different methods, changing opinions or objectives, or promoting a new approach to problem solving (Morton, 2015 ; Shugan, 2003 ). Analyses indicate that impactful research articles often explain existing phenomena better than previous work (Sternberg & Gordeeva, 1996 ) or challenge the disciplinary status quo (Li et al., 2021 ). Tellis ( 2017 ) noted that arguments refuting current knowledge are especially impactful. In a similar vein, Smith ( 2003 ) contended that challenging taken-for-granted practices and assumptions makes a study interesting. More generally, challenging the premises on which a theory, domain, concept, or method relies can induce significant change—for example, by testing a research stream’s key assumptions or probing the external validity of what is considered true (e.g., Hauser, 2017 ; Makadok et al., 2018 ; Smith, 2003 ).

Problematization beyond incremental gap-spotting is another widely recommended method of identifying and formulating research questions that can potentially induce major change within a given field (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011 ). In the present context, problematization means questioning the assumptions underpinning existing theory in some significant way to identify new and inspiring points of departure for theory development or paradigm shift (Sandberg & Alvesson, 2011 ). In practical terms, this means articulating a compelling complication in something assumed to be true in the field and arguing for the significance of that complication (Lange & Pfarrer, 2017 ). According to Sandberg and Alvesson ( 2011 ), research that merely identifies gaps in the existing literature relies on and even strengthens prevailing assumptions because that gap falls within the confines of existing theory. Research inspired by the existing academic literature in one’s silo is likely to perpetuate ignorance of emergent phenomena pertinent to marketplace stakeholders and academics in other disciplines (MacInnis et al., 2020 ; Yadav, 2018 ). Sandberg and Alvesson ( 2011 ) argued that gap-spotting studies are inherently limited by their aim of adding to the existing literature rather than challenging it; the smaller the addition, the smaller the change induced.

A third issue is breadth of change : the extent of the audience whose understanding or behavior might be affected by the research findings. According to Kohli and Haenlein ( 2021 ), an issue that affects a large number of stakeholders is arguably more important than one that affects only a few; in the present context, potential audiences include managers, public policy makers, consumers, academics, consultants, and societal groups. Smith ( 2003 , p. 319) refers to Zaltman’s suggestion that an interesting idea is one that, if true, would require a large number of people to substantially change their beliefs or behaviors. Bolton ( 2020 ) highlights that consideration of domain(s) and stakeholders that may participate in and benefit from a study is an important part of responsible and impactful research, and provides an elaborate checklist for identifying relevant stakeholders for marketing research.

Accessibility

As the second key driver of impact, accessibility refers to how a publication’s message is communicated. We focus here on three elements of accessibility: simplicity, clarity, and actionability (see Fig.  1 ). Many scholars have emphasized that simplicity is central to the impact of theoretical explanation. According to Tellis ( 2017 , p. 4), “A good theory is a simple explanation of a phenomenon. The best theory is the simplest explanation for a wide set of phenomena”; or as Einstein expressed it, “The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms” (cited in Barnett, 2005 ). The same basic idea is also captured by Occam’s Razor: that the best explanation for a given purpose is the simplest one—or more precisely, “entities [assumptions, foundations] should not be multiplied beyond necessity.”

Contrary to these well established principles, marketing models and frameworks and associated manuscripts tend toward increasing complexity, arguably for two reasons. First, there is a tendency to draw on multiple theoretical frameworks or models to address the research objective but to inadequately reconcile them—i.e., reduce them to a set of common concepts—resulting in unnecessarily complex “Frankenstein models” (Vargo & Koskela-Huotari, 2020 ). The second problem is perhaps an unintended consequence of increasingly sophisticated methodological approaches such as structural equation modeling, which allow, if not encourage modelers to incorporate an ever-increasing number of variables. In many cases, these are likely to be related issues.

Clarity is another important element of accessibility and impact. Several authors have noted that, over time, marketing articles have become increasingly complex and difficult to read because of how they use language (e.g., Brown et al., 2005 ; Key et al., 2020 ). In this regard, Warren et al. ( 2021 ) referred to the “curse of knowledge,” as researchers’ familiarity with their own field prompts them to adopt a more abstract, technical, and passive writing style that makes the message more difficult to understand. This in turn hampers impact because a text that obscures insights rather than illuminating them is likely to be ignored (Houston, 2019 ). In short, when the intended message is not understood, change will not occur.

One method for assessing clarity is quantitative assessment of relative sentence and word length, as in the Gunning ( 1952 ) Fog Index and the Flesch ( 1948 ) index of Reading Ease. Noting that the quality of writing improves with brevity, Tellis ( 2017 ) recommends shorter sentences, trimming of redundant phrases, and streamlining of arguments to produce articles that are short, forceful, and idea-packed. However, studies of the correlation between these variables and impact (measured as citation count) have produced mixed results. Warren et al. ( 2021 ) argued that this is because readability is not the same as clarity, which is more adequately captured as use of (1) concrete language, (2) concrete examples, (3) common words, and (4) active voice. They found these qualities to be associated with higher degrees of understanding and impact as measured by citation counts. In short, other things being equal, simpler is better.

Previous research indicates that an accessible writing style is especially important for engaging nonacademic audiences (Stremersch et al., 2007 ). Simple and powerful ideas, straightforward methods, and clear writing can heighten the subject matter’s appeal for relevant stakeholders such as academics in other fields, business practitioners, the media, policy makers, and the general public (MacInnis et al., 2020 ). The language used is also likely to affect uptake of the topic among popular writers (Gonsalves et al., 2021 ). Journalists, consultants, and other professional service providers typically play a brokering role between academia and practice, offering a valuable conduit for disseminating research findings (Roberts et al., 2014 ). However, unclear writing may discourage these important middlemen or may promote a “telephone game” effect, where journalists and consultants misinterpret the research and transmit misleading messages to a wider audience.

Another accessibility-enhancing element is the extent to which research findings are actionable . Researchers can optimize their study’s change potential by translating their findings into concrete guidance, action points, or tools for practitioners or other researchers. Identifying useful research implications to guide future studies can also enhance an article’s impact (Sternberg & Gordeeva, 1996 )—for example, by highlighting novel research questions implicit in the findings (MacInnis, 2011 ) and explaining how the findings could or should be used, and by whom.

Outlining managerial and societal implications is obviously another important means of increasing a study’s practical impact. In a journal article, a practical implications section offers space for translating conceptual findings into a practical format. In their analysis of most-cited business-to-business marketing articles, Baraldi et al. ( 2014 ) found that articles with a dedicated practical implications section offered more actionable implications than those distributing them throughout the article. In the latter case, implications were often abstract, non-normative, and too complicated or trivial, using language that was excessively scientific (Baraldi et al., 2014 ), again confirming the importance of switching language and presentation when addressing managers.

Key et al. ( 2020 , p. 164) argued that rather than creating “parallel journal universes (jargon-academic and translated-practitioner),” rigorous article writing should altogether avoid using impenetrable language that may alienate practitioners. However, scientific concepts are the means through which researchers arrive at findings that should in turn render implications for a wider audience beyond academia. Translation thus refers to more than language, requiring the researcher to explain why and how their study is relevant to a particular phenomenon or stakeholder group, what problems the study findings can solve, and how they might change how people think and behave (cf. Shugan,  2003 ).

Assessing and enhancing impact potential: Tentative criteria

Table 2 condenses the above drivers into a tentative set of criteria for assessing and enhancing a publication’s impact potential. While this list is not exhaustive, it serves as a point of departure for a more robust evaluation scheme similar to those used to evaluate the trustworthiness of empirical research.

These criteria relate to the identified drivers of enhanced impact for an academic publication. The key driver is change potential , referring to the relevance, magnitude, and breadth of change that the research is likely to trigger. Authors can use the checklist in Table 2 to guide their choice of research topic and to argue for the impact potential of their research. Similarly, reviewers can look for these indicators when evaluating a manuscript. As the interest value of any research is audience-relative (Shugan, 2003 ), an article should clearly identify its intended audience and the scholarly, business, or societal discussion to which it contributes. The article’s arguments and claims can then be evaluated in relation to existing knowledge within that discussion or domain. To signal high impact potential, a publication should establish convincingly the need for significant changes of practice for a wide audience. The evaluator has some discretion in assessing how these criteria are to be applied; in some cases, the research may be considered impactful when the topic is highly relevant for a small number of key stakeholders. On the other hand, influencing a higher number of stakeholders may not be considered impactful if the change potential relates to a matter of little relevance (cf. Kohli & Haenlein, 2021 ).

The proposed set of criteria also addresses a publication’s accessibility . We contend that even relevant research may fail to achieve sufficient impact if it does not communicate its message in a simple, clear, and actionable manner. Spelling out the study’s key findings and implications as simply as possible makes the takeaways more accessible for the reader. Authors can convey their key message using hip-pocket takeaways or power expressions. The former is a metaphor for ultimate parsimony; by capturing and condensing the essence of a theory or framework in a conceptual or graphical space that is sufficiently compact to be transported in a metaphorical “hip pocket,” authors make it easier for the reader to understand and adopt. Perhaps the ultimate hip pocket takeaway is “e = mc 2 ”; examples from marketing include models that capture the theoretical narrative of service-dominant logic in one simple figure (see Fig.  1 in Vargo & Lusch, 2016 ) or conceptualize the nomological network of market orientation (see Fig.  1 in Kohli & Jaworski, 1990 ).

“Power expressions” are sentences that crystallize the nature, impact, or relation between constructs, types, categories, or processes, as well as any key finding or argument, by catching the reader’s eye and making it easy to grasp the article’s main points. Many highly cited articles have achieved that status by virtue of one or two especially powerful, usable, and understandable expressions. For example, Brodie et al. ( 2011 ) presented five propositions to characterize customer engagement, one of which so powerfully captured the concept’s emergence and nature that it subsequently became the most frequently cited definition of engagement. However, power expressions should not be regarded as a cheap gimmick to attract citations; rather, they curate and capture a study’s main points in a condensed and simple form. Although authors are best placed to crystallize the essence of their research, this work is too often left to the reader.

Authors and reviewers should also pay attention to clarity, as incoherent storytelling, complex language, and academic jargon create noise that can drown out an article’s message, causing the reader to disengage. In addition to the criteria in Table 2 , authors can employ more detailed methods to test the clarity of their writing, such as the Writing Clarity Calculator developed by Warren et al. ( 2021 ) based on their study published in the Journal of Marketing (see also http://writingclaritycalculator.com/ ).

The set of criteria proposed here also highlights the importance of specifying the implications of a piece of research in an actionable manner. In many cases, the results of the study mark the highpoint of the article, while the implications are addressed in a perfunctory way, sometimes noting only that firms should pay attention to the studied issue. Similarly, research implications are often formulated only as a list of potential research topics, or confined to issues arising from the study’s limitations. This is a missed opportunity to achieve higher impact. The guidelines in Table 2 invite authors and reviewers to ask what new research the findings might inspire and how they might guide the use or development of methods, measures, literature, nomological networks, and research frameworks. As a further step, authors might try to envisage how their findings could be used by researchers beyond their disciplinary silo. Sufficiently abstracted and parsimonious findings could be accessible also for researchers who are unfamiliar with the domain’s concepts and jargon.

This article represents a first step toward developing a set of criteria for evaluating and enhancing a research publication’s impact potential. This endeavor is especially important for social science disciplines like marketing, where research impact is often indirect and difficult to prove (cf. Muhonen & Tellmann, 2021 ). Our central argument is that a publication will have high impact potential if it is likely to promote significant change in how important stakeholders understand or behave in relation to a relevant matter and if it offers simple and clear findings that can be translated into actionable implications, making its message accessible. By operationalizing these drivers as a set of criteria, we provide a concrete toolbox for assessing and enhancing a manuscript’s impact potential. At present, measures to enhance an article’s impact potential, or to evaluate it during the review process, tend to exist only as tacit knowledge. During the review process, the authors bear the burden of proof and must present compelling arguments in support of their manuscript’s potential to impact external audiences (Shugan,  2003 ). Equally, while journal reviewers may be able to judge a manuscript’s methodological or conceptual robustness, its future impact is often difficult to evaluate prior to publication. To that extent, the proposed criteria can be of value to authors, reviewers, and research supervisors.

Importantly, the present article does not downplay the importance of rigor but suggests the need for a balancing impact perspective. Sufficient rigor should be considered a hygiene factor for delivering trustworthy results, but not the main selling point of the article. As Yadav ( 2018 ) noted, knowledge development approaches in the marketing discipline have become increasingly scripted, constituting a straitjacket that may hamper impactful research. Authors should therefore explain why their chosen methodology is adequate for addressing the target problem and how impact would be undermined by a more rigid approach. Authors should also argue against the narrow view that rigor relates only to the application of sophisticated and complicated quantitative methodologies (cf. Houston, 2019 ).

In terms of future research effort on the topic of impact, we invite scholars to further develop the proposed criteria. The goal is that in the future, authors will more fully assess and explicate their efforts to improve the impact potential of their work. If marketing academics genuinely believe that impact matters, it should be afforded the same status as methodological rigor in academic publications. We hope that scholars will use, advance, and promote these criteria in helping to establish impact evaluation as an institutionalized practice.

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Jaakkola, E., Vargo, S.L. Assessing and enhancing the impact potential of marketing articles. AMS Rev 11 , 407–415 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13162-021-00219-7

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10 Truths About Marketing After the Pandemic

• Janet Balis

There’s no going back to the old normal.

The Covid-19 pandemic upended a marketer’s playbook, challenging the existing rules about customer relationships and building brands. One year in, there’s no going back to the old normal. Here are 10 new marketing truths that reveal the confluence of strategies, operations, and technologies required to drive growth in a post-Covid-19 world.

It’s safe to say that 2020 was a year like no other and that 2021 will certainly not revert back to the old normal. So, as marketers think about building brands during this year and beyond, what should we take away from the pandemic? What can we do to help companies grow faster? And how is marketing being redefined in the age of Covid-19?

• Janet Balis leads EY’s consulting professionals in the Americas focused on the customer agenda and revenue growth, including commercial excellence, customer experience and product innovation and also leads EY’s CMO practice. She has also served as a partner at Betaworks, publisher of The Huffington Post, and EVP Media Sales and Marketing at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Balis is on the global board of the Mobile Marketing Association and the International Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she is also an advisor to the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative. You can follow her on Twitter: @digitalstrategy.

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GRIT Report: Top Challenges in the Market Research Industry

Stop guessing at what Buyers want. The biggest disconnects between Suppliers and Buyers come from these unmet needs.

by Leonard Murphy

Chief Advisor for Insights and Development at Greenbook

Opportunities and Challenges in Market Research: A Look at Unmet Needs

In past editions of the GRIT Business & Innovation Report , we saw contradictory responses in participants’ views toward the greatest opportunities and challenges in the market research industry. What one segment considered to be a marketing research challenge, the other thought was an opportunity for innovation, and vice versa. There was no clarity on what the Opportunities and Challenges section hoped to achieve.

In this latest edition, we wanted a way to compare gaps between the actual and perceived needs of clients and suppliers. Our questions had to be cleaner if suppliers were to deliver on the needs of buyers. Thus the Opportunities and Challenges section evolved into Unmet Needs .

A Better Way to Ask

For the first time, we asked insights, Buyers, to describe their unmet needs, in particular, needs that could be filled by external Suppliers:

What, if anything, is the biggest need you have that could be filled by an external supplier, but currently is not?

We also asked Suppliers to articulate the needs that they think insights Buyers have that could be filled by external Suppliers:

What, if anything, do you think is the biggest need that insights buyers have that could be filled by an external supplier but currently is not?

If we don’t know there is a market research problem, we can’t fix it. But too often, we forget to ask what we don’t know. Defining unmet needs is the first step in filling them and moving the industry relentlessly forward.

The goals were to identify potential areas for innovation, as well as any areas of disconnect between Buyers and Suppliers. Areas of disconnect could indicate that Suppliers don’t understand what Buyers need, or it could mean that Suppliers have keen insights into the Buyer’s challenges that Buyers cannot see on their own.

Suppliers, for example, may have expertise that is quite different from a Buyer’s. They may have the objectivity of a participant-observer, and, most importantly, they likely have experience with a variety of Buyers and exposure to different ways that Buyers have addressed common insights challenges. Finally, if a Supplier has a different view of a Client’s market research challenges and the potential ways to address it than a client has….isn’t that why Clients hire them in the first place?

These were verbatim questions, and responses were coded and then further aggregated into categories. We have grouped the top ten topics in the accompanying chart for simplicity.

In fact, the entire set of needs is pretty well aligned across Buyers and Suppliers; the largest percentage differences are for creating business impact (Buyers are 7% higher) and innovative technology (Buyers are 5% higher). All other needs are mentioned within 3% of each other, which leaves us with the question of why there is a larger gap for Buyers’ most pressing needs.

Arguably, GRIT Supplier respondents are more diverse than Buyers, at least with respect to insight generation. Suppliers may specialize in particular areas and not have much insight into others, or perhaps they are jacks-of-all-trades but masters of none. In either case, they are likely to have a fragmented view of the insights world. Buyers, on the other hand, have the opportunity to “travel the world” by engaging different types of Suppliers and so on, gaining a more holistic, ringside view of the insights and analytics industry. Therefore, Buyers are more likely to be more homogeneous than Suppliers , to agree more, and, as a consequence, stand out more in a column or bar chart.

Suppliers differ with respect to creating business impact and innovative technology , and these differences are related to their areas of focus. If we consider only Strategic Consultancies and Full/ Field Service providers, the gap on creating business impact is only about 3% (28% for Buyers/25% for these Supplier types). If we consider only Technology providers, Buyers are actually 6% less likely to name innovative technology as a need. On the other hand, if we considered only Strategic Consultancies, Full/Field Service, and Data & Analytic providers, Suppliers look completely out of touch on innovative technology.

In fairness, however, these gaps are partially a function of limitations of the methodology. On average, Buyer comments touched 1.4 of these 10 categories while Suppliers averaged 1.3. Realistically, if you were a Strategic Consultancy or a Full/Field Service provider and you had one bullet, would you waste it on innovative technology or would you take a shot at business impact? If you were a Technology provider, would you take aim at creating business impact or innovative technology?

We mentioned that the verbatim comments were coded, then aggregated into 10 categories. If we peel off some of the individual topics, there’s another interesting finding.

Earlier in the report, we discussed how Buyers were more interested than Suppliers in new data sources, multiple data streams and so on. With respect to unmet needs, however, Suppliers are more than 3 times as likely as Buyers to name synthesis of results across multiple sources/types as an unmet need that a Supplier could fill. Further, this proportion holds pretty steady across Supplier types; each is at least 3 times more likely to mention this than Buyers, so this result is not driven by an outlier Supplier type.

There are possible explanations for this apparently counter-intuitive result. We could go back to the “single bullet theory,” but it doesn’t seem to fit this scenario as well as it did for creating business impact and innovative technology. If we flash back to the Organizational Success Factors section, we’d see that analyzing multiple data streams and synthesizing data from multiple sources were in the bottom half of Suppliers’ critical priorities. Fewer than half said synthesizing data was a best-in-class goal for them, and fewer than 40% said analyzing multiple streams was a critical priority. However, if only a third of those who felt these rated best-in-class attention mentioned synthesis of results across multiple sources/types as an unmet need, we’d easily achieve the 13% who mentioned it.

Why are Buyers so much lower than Suppliers? Perhaps synthesis of results across multiple sources/types is a salient issue for them, but they may have too many other priorities to mention before they get to this one. Or, perhaps they consider it to be an unmet need, but not an unmet need that Suppliers can fill. Fewer than half of Suppliers have made this a top priority, and many Buyers may not have met a Supplier that would be credible in filling this need.

It is interesting to note that many of the unmet needs mentioned aligning with priorities and benchmarking measures identified multiple times in earlier in this report. There is a definite theme that has emerged of both Buyers and Suppliers recognizing that consulting skills, analytics, and data synthesis, and more efficient insights generation are critical for the industry.

We also found it interesting to look at the ungrouped coded responses through the filter of Buyer organization positioning, which we identify in our GRITscape as strategically focused, tactically focused, or both.

Across all three groups, the use of technology and/ or innovative products is the most frequently mentioned unmet need.

The Top Unmet Needs

For Strategic & Tactical, the top 5 unmet needs are:

• Use of technology/product innovations
• Data Science / Statistics / Mathematics related
• Better insights
• Better samples/sampling/reach
• Understanding the client’s business/ Faster time to deliverables (tie)

For Tactical, the top 4 unmet needs are:

• Use of technology/product innovations and Better insights (tie)
• Better quality of research or data and Better samples/sampling/reach (tie)
• Understanding the client’s business
• Faster time to deliverables (tie)

Finally, for Strategic, the top 4 unmet needs are:

• Research and data automation
• Cheaper costs / Cost-effectiveness
• Behavioral science and related and Other research methods/approaches (tie)

Solving Market Research Problems Related to the Needs Gap

According to Buyers, Suppliers have roles to play in helping them fill unmet needs. Buyer needs range from business-focused to technology-related to analytics to core research skills; Suppliers happen to have specialties in strategic consulting, technology, analytics, and full-service research. On the surface, there may appear to be disconnects between how Suppliers see Buyer needs and the needs that Buyers actually have. However, if you focus on the perspective of the Supplier whose professional focus is best positioned to meet a particular need, Buyers and Suppliers are very well aligned.

Similar to arguments made elsewhere in this report and in the most recent GRIT editions, the key to closing the gap on unmet Buyer needs might be an “Avengers, assemble!” strategy: calling together the right portfolio of Supplier super-powers necessary to successfully combat specific and unique business challenges. Complex business challenges need to be met with the right set of skills and capabilities, and these are out there, but perhaps not under one roof. Someone must have the vision to diagnose the marketing research challenges, the ingenuity to define a solution, the knowledge to find the right skills and capabilities suited to the challenge, and the temperament to bring it all together.

Editor’s Note: This commentary is featured in the GRIT Business & Innovation Report . The latest Business & Innovation edition looks at the big picture of the insights industry and how individual organizations fit into this ecosystem. Learn how external changes (like COVID-19) are spurring innovation and how they impact business outcomes, expectations, and strategies. Also featured is the ‘ Top 50 Most Innovative Supplier’ list.

Read the full report>>

Leonard Murphy

100 articles

The views, opinions, data, and methodologies expressed above are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect or represent the official policies, positions, or beliefs of Greenbook.

Comments are moderated to ensure respect towards the author and to prevent spam or self-promotion. Your comment may be edited, rejected, or approved based on these criteria. By commenting, you accept these terms and take responsibility for your contributions.

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6.3 Steps in a Successful Marketing Research Plan

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• 1 Identify and describe the steps in a marketing research plan.
• 2 Discuss the different types of data research.
• 3 Explain how data is analyzed.
• 4 Discuss the importance of effective research reports.

Define the Problem

There are seven steps to a successful marketing research project (see Figure 6.3 ). Each step will be explained as we investigate how a marketing research project is conducted.

The first step, defining the problem, is often a realization that more information is needed in order to make a data-driven decision. Problem definition is the realization that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. An entrepreneur may be interested in opening a small business but must first define the problem that is to be investigated. A marketing research problem in this example is to discover the needs of the community and also to identify a potentially successful business venture.

Many times, researchers define a research question or objectives in this first step. Objectives of this research study could include: identify a new business that would be successful in the community in question, determine the size and composition of a target market for the business venture, and collect any relevant primary and secondary data that would support such a venture. At this point, the definition of the problem may be “Why are cat owners not buying our new cat toy subscription service?”

Additionally, during this first step we would want to investigate our target population for research. This is similar to a target market, as it is the group that comprises the population of interest for the study. In order to have a successful research outcome, the researcher should start with an understanding of the problem in the current situational environment.

Develop the Research Plan

Step two is to develop the research plan. What type of research is necessary to meet the established objectives of the first step? How will this data be collected? Additionally, what is the time frame of the research and budget to consider? If you must have information in the next week, a different plan would be implemented than in a situation where several months were allowed. These are issues that a researcher should address in order to meet the needs identified.

Research is often classified as coming from one of two types of data: primary and secondary. Primary data is unique information that is collected by the specific researcher with the current project in mind. This type of research doesn’t currently exist until it is pulled together for the project. Examples of primary data collection include survey, observation, experiment, or focus group data that is gathered for the current project.

Secondary data is any research that was completed for another purpose but can be used to help inform the research process. Secondary data comes in many forms and includes census data, journal articles, previously collected survey or focus group data of related topics, and compiled company data. Secondary data may be internal, such as the company’s sales records for a previous quarter, or external, such as an industry report of all related product sales. Syndicated data , a type of external secondary data, is available through subscription services and is utilized by many marketers. As you can see in Table 6.1 , primary and secondary data features are often opposite—the positive aspects of primary data are the negative side of secondary data.

There are four research types that can be used: exploratory, descriptive, experimental, and ethnographic research designs (see Figure 6.4 ). Each type has specific formats of data that can be collected. Qualitative research can be shared through words, descriptions, and open-ended comments. Qualitative data gives context but cannot be reduced to a statistic. Qualitative data examples are categorical and include case studies, diary accounts, interviews, focus groups, and open-ended surveys. By comparison, quantitative data is data that can be reduced to number of responses. The number of responses to each answer on a multiple-choice question is quantitative data. Quantitative data is numerical and includes things like age, income, group size, and height.

Exploratory research is usually used when additional general information in desired about a topic. When in the initial steps of a new project, understanding the landscape is essential, so exploratory research helps the researcher to learn more about the general nature of the industry. Exploratory research can be collected through focus groups, interviews, and review of secondary data. When examining an exploratory research design, the best use is when your company hopes to collect data that is generally qualitative in nature. 7

For instance, if a company is considering a new service for registered users but is not quite sure how well the new service will be received or wants to gain clarity of exactly how customers may use a future service, the company can host a focus group. Focus groups and interviews will be examined later in the chapter. The insights collected during the focus group can assist the company when designing the service, help to inform promotional campaign options, and verify that the service is going to be a viable option for the company.

Descriptive research design takes a bigger step into collection of data through primary research complemented by secondary data. Descriptive research helps explain the market situation and define an “opinion, attitude, or behavior” of a group of consumers, employees, or other interested groups. 8 The most common method of deploying a descriptive research design is through the use of a survey. Several types of surveys will be defined later in this chapter. Descriptive data is quantitative in nature, meaning the data can be distilled into a statistic, such as in a table or chart.

Again, descriptive data is helpful in explaining the current situation. In the opening example of LEGO , the company wanted to describe the situation regarding children’s use of its product. In order to gather a large group of opinions, a survey was created. The data that was collected through this survey allowed the company to measure the existing perceptions of parents so that alterations could be made to future plans for the company.

Experimental research , also known as causal research , helps to define a cause-and-effect relationship between two or more factors. This type of research goes beyond a correlation to determine which feature caused the reaction. Researchers generally use some type of experimental design to determine a causal relationship. An example is A/B testing, a situation where one group of research participants, group A, is exposed to one treatment and then compared to the group B participants, who experience a different situation. An example might be showing two different television commercials to a panel of consumers and then measuring the difference in perception of the product. Another example would be to have two separate packaging options available in different markets. This research would answer the question “Does one design sell better than the other?” Comparing that to the sales in each market would be part of a causal research study. 9

The final method of collecting data is through an ethnographic design. Ethnographic research is conducted in the field by watching people interact in their natural environment. For marketing research, ethnographic designs help to identify how a product is used, what actions are included in a selection, or how the consumer interacts with the product. 10

Examples of ethnographic research would be to observe how a consumer uses a particular product, such as baking soda. Although many people buy baking soda, its uses are vast. So are they using it as a refrigerator deodorizer, a toothpaste, to polish a belt buckle, or to use in baking a cake?

Select the Data Collection Method

Data collection is the systematic gathering of information that addresses the identified problem. What is the best method to do that? Picking the right method of collecting data requires that the researcher understand the target population and the design picked in the previous step. There is no perfect method; each method has both advantages and disadvantages, so it’s essential that the researcher understand the target population of the research and the research objectives in order to pick the best option.

Sometimes the data desired is best collected by watching the actions of consumers. For instance, how many cars pass a specific billboard in a day? What website led a potential customer to the company’s website? When are consumers most likely to use the snack vending machines at work? What time of day has the highest traffic on a social media post? What is the most streamed television program this week? Observational research is the collecting of data based on actions taken by those observed. Many data observations do not require the researched individuals to participate in the data collection effort to be highly valuable. Some observation requires an individual to watch and record the activities of the target population through personal observations .

Unobtrusive observation happens when those being observed aren’t aware that they are being watched. An example of an unobtrusive observation would be to watch how shoppers interact with a new stuffed animal display by using a one-way mirror. Marketers can identify which products were handled more often while also determining which were ignored.

Other methods can use technology to collect the data instead. Instances of mechanical observation include the use of vehicle recorders, which count the number of vehicles that pass a specific location. Computers can also assess the number of shoppers who enter a store, the most popular entry point for train station commuters, or the peak time for cars to park in a parking garage.

When you want to get a more in-depth response from research participants, one method is to complete a one-on-one interview . One-on-one interviews allow the researcher to ask specific questions that match the respondent’s unique perspective as well as follow-up questions that piggyback on responses already completed. An interview allows the researcher to have a deeper understanding of the needs of the respondent, which is another strength of this type of data collection. The downside of personal interviews it that a discussion can be very time-consuming and results in only one respondent’s answers. Therefore, in order to get a large sample of respondents, the interview method may not be the most efficient method.

Taking the benefits of an interview and applying them to a small group of people is the design of a focus group . A focus group is a small number of people, usually 8 to 12, who meet the sample requirements. These individuals together are asked a series of questions where they are encouraged to build upon each other’s responses, either by agreeing or disagreeing with the other group members. Focus groups are similar to interviews in that they allow the researcher, through a moderator, to get more detailed information from a small group of potential customers (see Figure 6.5 ).

Link to Learning

Focus groups.

Focus groups are a common method for gathering insights into consumer thinking and habits. Companies will use this information to develop or shift their initiatives. The best way to understand a focus group is to watch a few examples or explanations. TED-Ed has this video that explains how focus groups work.

You might be asking when it is best to use a focus group or a survey. Learn the differences, the pros and cons of each, and the specific types of questions you ask in both situations in this article .

Preparing for a focus group is critical to success. It requires knowing the material and questions while also managing the group of people. Watch this video to learn more about how to prepare for a focus group and the types of things to be aware of.

One of the benefits of a focus group over individual interviews is that synergy can be generated when a participant builds on another’s ideas. Additionally, for the same amount of time, a researcher can hear from multiple respondents instead of just one. 11 Of course, as with every method of data collection, there are downsides to a focus group as well. Focus groups have the potential to be overwhelmed by one or two aggressive personalities, and the format can discourage more reserved individuals from speaking up. Finally, like interviews, the responses in a focus group are qualitative in nature and are difficult to distill into an easy statistic or two.

Combining a variety of questions on one instrument is called a survey or questionnaire . Collecting primary data is commonly done through surveys due to their versatility. A survey allows the researcher to ask the same set of questions of a large group of respondents. Response rates of surveys are calculated by dividing the number of surveys completed by the total number attempted. Surveys are flexible and can collect a variety of quantitative and qualitative data. Questions can include simplified yes or no questions, select all that apply, questions that are on a scale, or a variety of open-ended types of questions. There are four types of surveys (see Table 6.2 ) we will cover, each with strengths and weaknesses defined.

Let’s start off with mailed surveys —surveys that are sent to potential respondents through a mail service. Mailed surveys used to be more commonly used due to the ability to reach every household. In some instances, a mailed survey is still the best way to collect data. For example, every 10 years the United States conducts a census of its population (see Figure 6.6 ). The first step in that data collection is to send every household a survey through the US Postal Service (USPS). The benefit is that respondents can complete and return the survey at their convenience. The downside of mailed surveys are expense and timeliness of responses. A mailed survey requires postage, both when it is sent to the recipient and when it is returned. That, along with the cost of printing, paper, and both sending and return envelopes, adds up quickly. Additionally, physically mailing surveys takes time. One method of reducing cost is to send with bulk-rate postage, but that slows down the delivery of the survey. Also, because of the convenience to the respondent, completed surveys may be returned several weeks after being sent. Finally, some mailed survey data must be manually entered into the analysis software, which can cause delays or issues due to entry errors.

Phone surveys are completed during a phone conversation with the respondent. Although the traditional phone survey requires a data collector to talk with the participant, current technology allows for computer-assisted voice surveys or surveys to be completed by asking the respondent to push a specific button for each potential answer. Phone surveys are time intensive but allow the respondent to ask questions and the surveyor to request additional information or clarification on a question if warranted. Phone surveys require the respondent to complete the survey simultaneously with the collector, which is a limitation as there are restrictions for when phone calls are allowed. According to Telephone Consumer Protection Act , approved by Congress in 1991, no calls can be made prior to 8:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m. in the recipient’s time zone. 12 Many restrictions are outlined in this original legislation and have been added to since due to ever-changing technology.

In-person surveys are when the respondent and data collector are physically in the same location. In-person surveys allow the respondent to share specific information, ask questions of the surveyor, and follow up on previous answers. Surveys collected through this method can take place in a variety of ways: through door-to-door collection, in a public location, or at a person’s workplace. Although in-person surveys are time intensive and require more labor to collect data than some other methods, in some cases it’s the best way to collect the required data. In-person surveys conducted through a door-to-door method is the follow-up used for the census if respondents do not complete the mailed survey. One of the downsides of in-person surveys is the reluctance of potential respondents to stop their current activity and answer questions. Furthermore, people may not feel comfortable sharing private or personal information during a face-to-face conversation.

Electronic surveys are sent or collected through digital means and is an opportunity that can be added to any of the above methods as well as some new delivery options. Surveys can be sent through email, and respondents can either reply to the email or open a hyperlink to an online survey (see Figure 6.7 ). Additionally, a letter can be mailed that asks members of the survey sample to log in to a website rather than to return a mailed response. Many marketers now use links, QR codes, or electronic devices to easily connect to a survey. Digitally collected data has the benefit of being less time intensive and is often a more economical way to gather and input responses than more manual methods. A survey that could take months to collect through the mail can be completed within a week through digital means.

Design the Sample

Although you might want to include every possible person who matches your target market in your research, it’s often not a feasible option, nor is it of value. If you did decide to include everyone, you would be completing a census of the population. Getting everyone to participate would be time-consuming and highly expensive, so instead marketers use a sample , whereby a portion of the whole is included in the research. It’s similar to the samples you might receive at the grocery store or ice cream shop; it isn’t a full serving, but it does give you a good taste of what the whole would be like.

So how do you know who should be included in the sample? Researchers identify parameters for their studies, called sample frames . A sample frame for one study may be college students who live on campus; for another study, it may be retired people in Dallas, Texas, or small-business owners who have fewer than 10 employees. The individual entities within the sampling frame would be considered a sampling unit . A sampling unit is each individual respondent that would be considered as matching the sample frame established by the research. If a researcher wants businesses to participate in a study, then businesses would be the sampling unit in that case.

The number of sampling units included in the research is the sample size . Many calculations can be conducted to indicate what the correct size of the sample should be. Issues to consider are the size of the population, the confidence level that the data represents the entire population, the ease of accessing the units in the frame, and the budget allocated for the research.

There are two main categories of samples: probability and nonprobability (see Figure 6.8 ). Probability samples are those in which every member of the sample has an identified likelihood of being selected. Several probability sample methods can be utilized. One probability sampling technique is called a simple random sample , where not only does every person have an identified likelihood of being selected to be in the sample, but every person also has an equal chance of exclusion. An example of a simple random sample would be to put the names of all members of a group into a hat and simply draw out a specific number to be included. You could say a raffle would be a good example of a simple random sample.

Another probability sample type is a stratified random sample , where the population is divided into groups by category and then a random sample of each category is selected to participate. For instance, if you were conducting a study of college students from your school and wanted to make sure you had all grade levels included, you might take the names of all students and split them into different groups by grade level—freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. Then, from those categories, you would draw names out of each of the pools, or strata.

A nonprobability sample is a situation in which each potential member of the sample has an unknown likelihood of being selected in the sample. Research findings that are from a nonprobability sample cannot be applied beyond the sample. Several examples of nonprobability sampling are available to researchers and include two that we will look at more closely: convenience sampling and judgment sampling.

The first nonprobability sampling technique is a convenience sample . Just like it sounds, a convenience sample is when the researcher finds a group through a nonscientific method by picking potential research participants in a convenient manner. An example might be to ask other students in a class you are taking to complete a survey that you are doing for a class assignment or passing out surveys at a basketball game or theater performance.

A judgment sample is a type of nonprobability sample that allows the researcher to determine if they believe the individual meets the criteria set for the sample frame to complete the research. For instance, you may be interested in researching mothers, so you sit outside a toy store and ask an individual who is carrying a baby to participate.

Collect the Data

Now that all the plans have been established, the instrument has been created, and the group of participants has been identified, it is time to start collecting data. As explained earlier in this chapter, data collection is the process of gathering information from a variety of sources that will satisfy the research objectives defined in step one. Data collection can be as simple as sending out an email with a survey link enclosed or as complex as an experiment with hundreds of consumers. The method of collection directly influences the length of this process. Conducting personal interviews or completing an experiment, as previously mentioned, can add weeks or months to the research process, whereas sending out an electronic survey may allow a researcher to collect the necessary data in a few days. 13

Analyze and Interpret the Data

Once the data has been collected, the process of analyzing it may begin. Data analysis is the distillation of the information into a more understandable and actionable format. The analysis itself can take many forms, from the use of basic statistics to a more comprehensive data visualization process. First, let’s discuss some basic statistics that can be used to represent data.

The first is the mean of quantitative data. A mean is often defined as the arithmetic average of values. The formula is:

A common use of the mean calculation is with exam scores. Say, for example, you have earned the following scores on your marketing exams: 72, 85, 68, and 77. To find the mean, you would add up the four scores for a total of 302. Then, in order to generate a mean, that number needs to be divided by the number of exam scores included, which is 4. The mean would be 302 divided by 4, for a mean test score of 75.5. Understanding the mean can help to determine, with one number, the weight of a particular value.

Another commonly used statistic is median. The median is often referred to as the middle number. To generate a median, all the numeric answers are placed in order, and the middle number is the median. Median is a common statistic when identifying the income level of a specific geographic region. 14 For instance, the median household income for Albuquerque, New Mexico, between 2015 and 2019 was $52,911. 15 In this case, there are just as many people with an income above the amount as there are below.

Mode is another statistic that is used to represent data of all types, as it can be used with quantitative or qualitative data and represents the most frequent answer. Eye color, hair color, and vehicle color can all be presented with a mode statistic. Additionally, some researchers expand on the concept of mode and present the frequency of all responses, not just identifying the most common response. Data such as this can easily be presented in a frequency graph, 16 such as the one in Figure 6.9 .

Additionally, researchers use other analyses to represent the data rather than to present the entirety of each response. For example, maybe the relationship between two values is important to understand. In this case, the researcher may share the data as a cross tabulation (see Figure 6.10 ). Below is the same data as above regarding social media use cross tabulated with gender—as you can see, the data is more descriptive when you can distinguish between the gender identifiers and how much time is spent per day on social media.

Not all data can be presented in a graphical format due to the nature of the information. Sometimes with qualitative methods of data collection, the responses cannot be distilled into a simple statistic or graph. In that case, the use of quotations, otherwise known as verbatims , can be used. These are direct statements presented by the respondents. Often you will see a verbatim statement when reading a movie or book review. The critic’s statements are used in part or in whole to represent their feelings about the newly released item.

Infographics

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. For this reason, research results are often shown in a graphical format in which data can be taken in quickly, called an infographic .

Check out this infographic on what components make for a good infographic. As you can see, a good infographic needs four components: data, design, a story, and the ability to share it with others. Without all four pieces, it is not as valuable a resource as it could be. The ultimate infographic is represented as the intersection of all four.

Infographics are particularly advantageous online. Refer to this infographic on why they are beneficial to use online .

Prepare the Research Report

The marketing research process concludes by sharing the generated data and makes recommendations for future actions. What starts as simple data must be interpreted into an analysis. All information gathered should be conveyed in order to make decisions for future marketing actions. One item that is often part of the final step is to discuss areas that may have been missed with the current project or any area of further study identified while completing it. Without the final step of the marketing research project, the first six steps are without value. It is only after the information is shared, through a formal presentation or report, that those recommendations can be implemented and improvements made. The first six steps are used to generate information, while the last is to initiate action. During this last step is also when an evaluation of the process is conducted. If this research were to be completed again, how would we do it differently? Did the right questions get answered with the survey questions posed to the respondents? Follow-up on some of these key questions can lead to additional research, a different study, or further analysis of data collected.

Methods of Quantifying Marketing Research

One of the ways of sharing information gained through marketing research is to quantify the research . Quantifying the research means to take a variety of data and compile into a quantity that is more easily understood. This is a simple process if you want to know how many people attended a basketball game, but if you want to quantify the number of students who made a positive comment on a questionnaire, it can be a little more complicated. Researchers have a variety of methods to collect and then share these different scores. Below are some of the most common types used in business.

Is a customer aware of a product, brand, or company? What is meant by awareness? Awareness in the context of marketing research is when a consumer is familiar with the product, brand, or company. It does not assume that the consumer has tried the product or has purchased it. Consumers are just aware. That is a measure that many businesses find valuable. There are several ways to measure awareness. For instance, the first type of awareness is unaided awareness . This type of awareness is when no prompts for a product, brand, or company are given. If you were collecting information on fast-food restaurants, you might ask a respondent to list all the fast-food restaurants that serve a chicken sandwich. Aided awareness would be providing a list of products, brands, or companies and the respondent selects from the list. For instance, if you give a respondent a list of fast-food restaurants and ask them to mark all the locations with a chicken sandwich, you are collecting data through an aided method. Collecting these answers helps a company determine how the business location compares to those of its competitors. 17

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Have you ever been asked to complete a survey at the end of a purchase? Many businesses complete research on buying, returning, or other customer service processes. A customer satisfaction score , also known as CSAT, is a measure of how satisfied customers are with the product, brand, or service. A CSAT score is usually on a scale of 0 to 100 percent. 18 But what constitutes a “good” CSAT score? Although what is identified as good can vary by industry, normally anything in the range from 75 to 85 would be considered good. Of course, a number higher than 85 would be considered exceptional. 19

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Customer Effort Score (CES)

Other metrics often used are a customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer effort score (CES). How much does it cost a company to gain customers? That’s the purpose of calculating the customer acquisition cost. To calculate the customer acquisition cost , a company would need to total all expenses that were accrued to gain new customers. This would include any advertising, public relations, social media postings, etc. When a total cost is determined, it is divided by the number of new customers gained through this campaign.

The final score to discuss is the customer effort score , also known as a CES. The CES is a “survey used to measure the ease of service experience with an organization.” 20 Companies that are easy to work with have a better CES than a company that is notorious for being difficult. An example would be to ask a consumer about the ease of making a purchase online by incorporating a one-question survey after a purchase is confirmed. If a number of responses come back negative or slightly negative, the company will realize that it needs to investigate and develop a more user-friendly process.

Knowledge Check

It’s time to check your knowledge on the concepts presented in this section. Refer to the Answer Key at the end of the book for feedback.

• Defining the problem
• Developing the research plan
• Selecting a data collection method
• Designing the sample
• you are able to send it to all households in an area
• it is inexpensive
• responses are automatically loaded into the software
• the data comes in quickly
• Primary data
• Secondary data
• Secondary and primary data
• Professional data
• It shows how respondents answered two variables in relation to each other and can help determine patterns by different groups of respondents.
• By presenting the data in the form of a picture, the information is easier for the reader to understand.
• It is an easy way to see how often one answer is selected by the respondents.
• This analysis can used to present interview or focus group data.

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Ethical Marketing Research: What You Should and Should NOT Do

8/9/18 11:37 AM

By Intern Blogger on 8/9/18 11:37 AM

As a novice to the business world, I had no idea that there were so many  marketing  research standards and ethics in place. I have learned that research guidelines are designed to protect a company’s workers, its customers, and the validity of the information gathered — but the risk or reward for certain guidelines are not always clear. How can your small business get the cost-effective marketing research you need while still upholding multiple codes of ethics?

Defining Ethics

Ethics, in a broad sense of the word, is difficult to define. Personal ethics tend to vary greatly from person to person, however, each industry has a generally accepted, if not published, code of ethics. Infusing ethics throughout your business matters because it reflects both the beliefs your organization holds and on you personally.

Marketing research is such a ubiquitous function that it applies to the business, philanthropy, and academic worlds. For this reason, there are different codes of ethics for different types of marketing and research, such as social media marketing, marketing towards children, and public opinion polling.

The Importance of Research

Research is a large part of a successful marketing strategy. To market effectively, you should know your target audience, what they need or want, and the best means to reach potential clients. All of these require thoughtful, informed, and ethical research.

Unfortunately, research is often manipulated or falsified because it holds so much power to influence. We’ve all seen the stories on the news of faux market research (Crystal Pepsi, New Coke, the Ford Edsel, etc.) Falsified research can result in product recalls, misleading claims for investors, and threats to the safety of users.

These fears are why there are a variety of different ethical marketing research rules and practices in place. More specifically, marketing research is chock-full of ethical “dos” and “don’ts.”

Ethical Dos and Don’ts

There are important “dos” in ethical research, many of which are outlined by the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO):

• DO respect the rights of all research participants: confidentiality, transparency, and privacy. Ensure that all participants are voluntary, and that they have the right to withdraw their consent at any point during the research process. Respondents must also be informed if they are being filmed or recorded.
• DO establish with the firm you have hired to conduct the research that they are conducting it in your best interest, not theirs—that is, that the research being run is of no benefit to their personal or firm interests. It is best to come to an agreement about the means of research and the cost of the research before anything is begun.
• DO be sure to cite the name of the firm that conducted the research, the purpose, and the dates of the study in any reports. Through transparency, you’ll show your viewers that your research is trustworthy, and that the strategies you used were effective.

On the other hand, there are the “don’ts”:

• DON’T cite any research in which the responses have been influenced or coerced. This is junk research and use of it is ultimately ineffective for promoting your organization or product.
• DON’T ask the researchers for confidential information about the respondents or their responses.
• DON’T dictate the methods used by the firm you’ve hired to conduct the research — leave it to the research professionals — but they should explain the 'why' of their  recommendation .
• DON’T ask for quantitative analytics from a qualitative study, and vice versa. If you need a certain kind of data, make sure the study is done in a way whereas the results are useful for your organization and purposes.
• DON’T conduct primary research (new data) when you can purchase the results of a secondary study (already collected data) with the same purpose for much cheaper. Why pay for a costly survey or focus group when someone else has already done something with the needed results?

What Do Marketing Research Ethics Mean for Your Business?

As you can see, there are a lot of different ways marketing research can go wrong. Without a clear code of ethics, a mission-driven business could sponsor a focus group or other research project that can end up seriously harming them and their customers. Unfortunately, it happens all the time: the public catches wind of a suspicious business, said business is immediately denounced by many previous clients, and the business loses credibility, which can be difficult or even impossible to recover from.

Ethical practices in marketing research will create effective answers for your organization’s questions and build trust and credibility with your employees, clients, and stakeholders. A mission-driven, win-win approach!

Resources and related posts:

Definition of Target Audience

Definition of Buyer Persona

Best Means to Reaching New Clients

The Story of Crystal Pepsi  (Business Insider)

The Story of New Coke  (TIME)

The Story of the Ford Edsel  (Business Insider)

Katie Sheets is a rising senior and English major at the University of Vermont. Originally from Connecticut, she hopes to use her love for language and writing to help other mission-driven businesses in the future.

Written by Intern Blogger

Intern bloggers are student interns at Marketing Partners who are offered the opportunity to write about their experience and learnings of interest to our community of changemakers. Individual guest bloggers are linked to their LinkedIn profile.

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5 Factors You Should Consider When Doing Market Research

We’re sure that you know that no matter how big or small your company is, marketing is important for any sort of business success. That being said, approaching marketing the wrong way can be even worse for your business than not marketing at all, because a bad marketing campaign will attract the wrong people or nobody at all (or worse, make people dislike your company). Here are 5 market research factors you should consider.

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Market Research Factors

LEARN ABOUT:  Market research industry

1. Is the target market worth anything for my business?

The purpose of researching a market is to figure out how you can best attract those who are likely to buy your company’s products or services. But what if the target market even isn’t interested in, and has no need for the types of offerings that your company provides in the first place? This would be a waste of time for your marketing efforts. So consider this as the first of market research factors to research.

As such, it is  critical  that you carefully consider whether the market segment that you intend to research has a reasonable level of interest in or use for what you plan on selling them.

2. Is the target market manageable enough?

We know you want to sell your products to everyone with a remote interest in your company’s offerings. However, trying to research everyone at once isn’t practical. No matter your industry, the range of people who want or could find a use for your company’s products is too wide for you to effectively research them all at once.

In order for you rule a marker segment, you need to gain a thorough understanding of where they look, how they prefer to be approached etc. If you approach a crowd that is too diverse, then your market research results will be scattered and inaccurate. This could cause you to make marketing decisions that are no better than ones made without any research done at all.

Instead of using the shotgun approach by researching any and everyone who might be interesting in your company’s offerings, find out if your primary market fits in a niche. If this is the case, you should proceed with your research, because niche markets tend to fit together in a manageable way. If they do not, however, break them down into smaller market segments until you have a group that can fit into buyer personas.

3. Who will I be fighting to attract the target market?

You’re not alone in your industry. Even if your product is unique, there is something out there that can accomplish a similar goal for your customers; thus you have competition. You should account for this in your market research, because how consumers respond to your competition’s marketing efforts should influence how you market.

4. What do I want out of my market research in the first place?

Now that you know who you want to research, it is time to consider why. The ultimate goal of your market research is to improve your marketing campaign, but how? If you don’t carefully think about what you want out of your market research, you will quickly get caught up in time wasting, arbitrary analysis of data that you don’t even need. Make sure that your goals are clear cut before you brainstorm the questions in a single online survey .

5. Do I need help doing my market research?

If you aren’t careful, market research can quickly become an expensive, time-consuming endeavor. If you feel like your research could cause these types of problems, this doesn’t mean that you should cut back on it. Instead, you need to determine whether or not you need some help.

When you are done with the planning stages, take a step back and honestly consider what resources you can dedicate to your research; if they exceed what you can afford to give up, then outsourcing should be a serious consideration.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

Don’t approach your market research with a blindfold on

The purpose of market research is to open your eyes to what you need to do in order to get the most business benefits possible out of your marketing campaign. Making sure that you consider the five market research factors above will make sure that you aren’t approaching your research with your eyes wide shut.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

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4.4: Key concepts in market research

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While the research field can be full of complex terminology, there are four key concepts to understand before conducting your own research:

Research methodology

• Qualitative and quantitative data

Primary and secondary research

Research methodology refers to the process followed in order to conduct accurate and valuable research. The research process should involve certain steps.

• Establish the goals of the project
• Determine your sample
• Choose a data collection method
• Collect data
• Analyse the results
• Formulate conclusions and actionable insights (for example, producing reports)

Most often, market research is focused around specific issues unique to a business or brand. It is therefore not always possible to freely obtain comparable information to aid decision making. This is why it can be useful to start from a specific research problem or hypothesis when kicking off a research project. Your research question should guide your entire process, and will determine your choice of data collection method. We will discuss more on those later.

Another approach involves ongoing data collection. As discussed in the Data driven decision making chapter, unbiased decision making is far more accurately driven when aided by market insight. Many have argued that less expensive, ongoing data collection is increasingly a route proven to be useful to organisations.

Research can be based on primary data or secondary data. Primary research is conducted when new data is gathered for a particular product or hypothesis. This is where information does not exist already or is not accessible, and therefore needs to be specifically collected from consumers or businesses. Surveys, focus groups, research panels and research communities can all be used when conducting primary market research.

Secondary research uses existing, published data as a source of information. It can be more cost-effective than conducting primary research. The Internet opens up a wealth of resources for conducting this research. The data could have originally been collected for solving problems other than the one at hand, so they may not be sufficiently specific. Secondary research can be useful for identifying problems to be investigated through primary research.

The Internet is a useful tool when conducting both primary and secondary research. Not only are there a number of free tools available when it comes to calculating things such as sample size and confidence levels (see section 4.7 on Tools of the trade for some examples), but it is also an ideal medium to reach large numbers of people at a relatively low cost.

The Internet and secondary research

Research based on secondary data should precede primary data research. It can be used in establishing the context and parameters for primary research.

Secondary data can:

• provide enough information to solve the problem at hand, thereby negating the need for further research.
• provide sources for hypotheses that can be explored through primary research.
• provide information to inform primary research, such as sample sizes and audience.
• used as a reference base to measure the accuracy of primary research.

Companies with online properties have access to an abundance of web analytics data that are recorded digitally. These data can then be mined for insights. It’s worth remembering, though, that it’s usually impossible for you to access the web analytics data of competitors so this method will give you information only about your own customers.

Customer communications are also a source of data that can be used, particularly communications with the customer service department. Committed customers who complain, comment or compliment are providing information that can form the foundation for researching customer satisfaction.

Social networks, blogs and other forms of social media have emerged as forums where consumers discuss their likes and dislikes. Customers can be particularly vocal about companies and products. This data can, and should, be tracked and monitored to establish consumer sentiment. If a community is established for research purposes, the resulting feedback is considered primary data, but using social media to research existing sentiments is considered secondary research. The Internet is an ideal starting point for conducting secondary research based on published data and findings. With so much information out there, it can be a daunting task to find reliable resources.

The first point of call for research online is usually a search engine, such as www.google.com or www.yahoo.com. Search engines usually have an array of advanced features, which can aid online research. For example, Google offers:

• Advanced search: ( http://www.google.co.za/advanced_search?hl=en )
• Google Scholar: ( http://scholar.google.co.za/schhp?hl=en )
• Google Book Search: ( http://www.google.co.za/books?hl=en )
• Google News Archive: ( http://news.google.com/newspapers )

Many research publications are available online, some for free and some at a cost. Many of the top research companies feature analyst blogs, which provide some industry data and analysis free of charge.

Some notable resources are:

www.experian.com/hitwise

www.pewinternet.org (US data)

www.nielsen.com

The Internet and primary research

Primary research involves gathering data for a specific research task. It is based on data that has not been gathered beforehand. Primary research can be either qualitative or quantitative.

Primary research can be used to explore a market and can help to develop the hypotheses or research questions that must be answered by further research.

Generally, qualitative data is gathered at this stage. For example, online research communities can be used to identify consumer needs that are not being met and to brainstorm possible solutions. Further quantitative research can investigate what proportion of consumers share these problems and which potential solutions best meet those needs.

Quantitative and qualitative data

With larger sample sizes, qualitative data can be analysed quantitatively.

Data can be classified as qualitative or quantitative . Qualitative research is exploratory and seeks to find out what potential consumers think and feel about a given subject. Qualitative research aids in identifying potential hypotheses, whereas quantitative research puts hard numbers behind these hypotheses. Quantitative research relies on numerical data to demonstrate statistically significant outcomes.

The Internet can be used to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. In fact, the communities on the web can be viewed as large focus groups, regularly and willingly sharing their opinions about products, markets and companies.

In robust research studies, both qualitative and quantitative research can be applied at different stages of the study.

The main differences between quantitative and qualitative research are represented in Table 2 below.

Both quantitative and qualitative research can be conducted online.

Web analytics packages are a prime source of data. Using data such as search terms, referral URLs and internal search data can lead to qualitative information about the consumers visiting a website. However, when data is measurable and specific, such as impressions and clickthrough rates, it leads to quantitative research.

Read more about this in the Data analytics chapter.

Qualitative research is usually conducted with a small number of respondents in order to explore and generate ideas and concepts. Quantitative research is conducted with far larger numbers, enough to be able to predict how the total population would respond.

You should ensure the sample is representative of the population you are targeting as a whole. If your business transacts both online and offline, be aware that using only online channels for market research might not represent your true target market. However, if your business transacts only online, offline channels for your market research are less necessary.

Because quantitative research aims to produce predictors for the total population, sample size is very important. The sample size needs to be sufficient in order to make statistically accurate observations about the population.

For example, if you have 4 000 registered users of your website, you don’t need to survey all of them in order to understand how the entire population behaves. You need to survey only 351 users to get a sample size that gives you a 95% confidence level with a ±5% confidence interval. This means that you can be 95% sure your results are accurate within ±5%.

There are several sample size calculators mentioned in section 4.7 on Tools of the trade .

Home • Knowledge hub • The top five challenges in international market research solved

The top five challenges in international market research solved

Conducting market research on an international scale is an increasingly common requirement. Global markets are more critical than ever, offering growth to businesses facing domestic stagnation or saturation. But international market research can be a challenge to get right. This article explores the top 5 challenges in international marketing research and our top tips for overcoming these.

What are the top challenges in international marketing research?

#1 international markets are incredibly diverse..

Some brands fail to appreciate the diversity within a region or country. You can only get an accurate picture of what people value and whether your products and services might succeed by rooting out the nuances of different geographical areas, cultures, and consumers.

#2 There can be a temptation to go too broad.

Linked to this, sometimes, when companies set out on international marketing research projects, they make the mistake of going too broad and trying to understand a region as a whole. Another error we see is firms commissioning research to target one market and then using this as a jumping-off point into others with “similar” attributes. This inevitably leads to costly mistakes as brands map their assumptions about one market onto another.

To avoid this, be clear on the emphasis of your research. Where are you looking to focus and why? Looking too broadly across a region of different markets, or exploring how an entire product range might perform, can cloud the picture.

# 3 Finding the right research partner.

The next big question is whether you have the research capabilities to conduct meaningful projects internationally. Most brands and their research partners can run domestic research projects with ease. But if you’re in the US or UK, say, going as far afield as Japan, India, or Germany requires different sensibilities and capabilities. The more international you get, the harder you must look for that kind of experience and expertise.

#4 Bringing together local and global expertise.

Misalignment is one of the biggest challenges in international market research. To overcome this, there must be a collaborative effort and a shared understanding of the mission, methodology, and insights. A research team at HQ might work with a local marketing team to understand how to position a product for success in an emerging market. But if the teams are siloed and don’t have a consistent understanding of the brief, their approach to researching the market and their findings might not help deliver on the challenge.

#5 Ensuring the project is realistic from the outset.

This is where all the other challenges in international market research come together: which markets, what purpose, the capabilities available, and the effectiveness of the output – all within a budget that makes sense. There will always be limits to what’s practical – and the last thing any client needs is to spend large sums testing international markets to no effect.

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Meeting the challenges in international marketing research – tips and tricks from our experience in the field.

Get the brief and the scope right..

The more you can nail down exactly what you need to know and about which markets, the better your international market research will be. The key here is to dismiss the idea that lessons from one market can be overlaid onto other markets. Your approach might not even work in the same region, much less globally. So ensuring the brief isn’t burdened with too many assumptions, and is very clear on objectives, is key.

For research into one new international market, the brief can be clear-cut. You’ve picked a new place to trade, and you probably have some specific questions. Will the branding work? Do we need to alter the packaging? Are there particular features we need to tweak? But as soon as you broaden the scope – to, say, three new markets covering a region – the nuances become more critical in the research brief.

One solution is to ask questions at every stage. Why these three markets? What are they like? What do we need to know about purchaser sentiment there? How will a research project change what we decide to do in each market? Companies that are open with their agencies on operational and marketing strategies – rather than prescribing research about the areas they know matter in their existing markets – will see more effective results.

Understand the cultural nuances you’ll face

Everyone knows instinctively that cultural differences are both a factor in conducting meaningful research internationally – and a major reason for doing that research in the first place. ‘Market immersion’ is a key concept, and that’s all about getting to grips with the cultural context. But local nuances  within new markets  can catch people out. 

In South Africa, for example, there are multiple cultural groups. Having local knowledge of how to tease those out is vital to breaking in South Africa.

That means one of our jobs as global research partners is challenging clients at the briefing stage to ensure these considerations are baked into the research approach and the analysis and interpretation of the results. The good news is that when you have research experts living and working in these markets as we do, cultural nuances are easier to plan around. We use this inside knowledge about people’s lives to help understand opinions, habits, and behaviors.

Don’t think language is just about translation.

Companies are often wise to the importance of understanding ‘culture’ and, as a result, adopt a cautious approach. But one mistake people make in international market research is to assume that ‘language’ is more straightforward – or that it’s just a question of running a survey or its results through Google Translate. But that’s never a good idea. It requires a much more nuanced approach. 

Language isn’t just what we say but how we say it. And local variations within international markets – think Swiss German or Quebecois French, but the list is endless – further complicate the issue. 

You’ll need the nuance: go regional.

Understanding local culture and language are essential in its own right. They’re also the gateway to getting out of the big cities and understanding the whole market. Tokyo is a true megacity – but it doesn’t reflect all of Japan. Paris is iconic – but its citizens have very different values to those in Marseilles, let alone rural France.

Here’s where you need to understand geography and supply chains. If you’re moving into a new international market in a limited way – or if the distribution is going to be impractical outside conurbations, say – then researching inside big city bubbles might work just fine. But for national penetration and in markets where businesses or consumers are more evenly distributed, understanding attitudes and behaviors across the country is a must.

For brands with an existing presence, existing assets on the ground are a hugely valuable resource for understanding these nuances. That could be local-office marketers or salespeople. Distributors and major customers can also offer insights. We love to work with chief marketing officers (CMOs) who have a helicopter view of a region and are clear about strategic objectives. But triangulating between them, their local marketing teams, and our local research teams in the field tends to generate better results.

Decide on the most effective methodology.

Another significant benefit of having local teams in place like ours is that they have expertise in the best methodologies to use in different markets. This is sometimes a subset of culture, but in other markets, it’s driven by the levels of technology adoption, geography, or working practices. Some examples:

• In Indonesia, face-to-face research is considered the norm; telephone in-depth interviews tend to deliver a poor hit rate.
• In Japan, groups respond better to moderators of the same gender, and people are more likely to undertake qual work at the weekends.
• It’s not acceptable for researchers to interview women in the home one-on-one in Saudi Arabia. And across the Middle East – and many other regions – mixed-sex focus groups tend to be a no-no.

You can read about others in  our guide to conducting online market research in Asia .

This is also why more open briefing processes can be valuable in international research. It’s too easy to apply a blanket methodology across a whole region and end up struggling to execute the research. Better to frame the key questions the organization needs to answer and tailor the research study to each key market.

Calibrate your responses.

Cultural and language shape the way you ask questions, and they’re huge factors in interpreting any research results, too. A keyword search on a crude translation of responses could mean missing crucial insights – or, worse, coming to incorrect conclusions.

And don’t think this only applies to qualitative, descriptive research where local idiom, slang, or cultural references might catch you out. International quantitative research also has to be calibrated by analysts with an appreciation for local nuance.

Respondents in some markets are more likely to agree with statements than others. For instance, you’re more likely to see people agree with statements in India than in Japan. Even the way you phrase questions – not just translate them, but the nuance in the question itself – will affect the consistency in scores you can achieve between different cultures.

That’s particularly important for big global brands with a very set idea about how they do their brand equity or NPS studies. The alternative is to develop a more organic approach so that the questions allow you to reflect local nuance. It might be as simple as using a four-point rather than a five-point scale in markets where respondents are most likely to sit on the fence.

Use market research as a tactical, not just strategic, lever.

It can be tempting to seek broad answers from international market research: “Will this product work in this market?” Or: “How should we tweak the service offering to meet this country’s needs?” These  will  help brands decide on strategic issues. But the more nuanced the approach, the more likely it is that the research will feed into local tactics for a brand, making its international investments work even harder.

That’s a common theme in research: properly granular insights ought to help with several decisions. It’s not just a ‘go/no-go’ binary, but research should inform everything from pricing to choice of distribution channel, support for local sales operations, to targeted advertising.

A new era for international research

We’ve moved on from an earlier era when global brands assumed continent-scale uniformity. Even if a business sees an opportunity in ‘Latin America,’ has an ‘Asian strategy’ or issues financial reports for ‘EMEA,’ serious decision-makers know they need to go, at the very least, to the country level for insights that will help their plans succeed. And they understand that it can be counter-productive to seek out ‘apples to apples’ comparisons between markets when a little nuance can go a long way.

More recently, one factor that’s complicated the picture is the global Covid-19 pandemic. Because so much commercial activity is managed remotely, there’s a temptation to run multi-market studies with a uniform online methodology. If everyone in the world is attending focus groups via the same videoconferencing app, what’s the difference?

The risk here is that the vast advantages of technological solutions are watered down in the hunt for low-cost, ‘big picture’ regional results. Online research  can  be conducted quickly and flexibly. And clients can immerse themselves in research projects more easily, gaining their own insights into consumer reactions on the other side of the world.

But research that is tailored, for example, to local respondents’ cultural norms will yield much better results. You can quickly adapt a methodology to a market when you have local research expertise and a clear idea of the brand’s mission. For instance, recognizing that in India, you’ll need to avoid any methodologies that rely on lengthy video inputs, and instead, combining text, image-based and short video tasks will get you the insights you need.

The most successful companies understand that an international project is more complex than handing a research agency a questionnaire and generating uniform results across every territory.

You know your product or service better than anyone. We know the right questions and methodologies to get you where you need to go. Our local teams understand the cultural norms, and good translations – culturally and linguistically – can bring it all together. Find out about the  regions where we can conduct international market research  or get in touch to speak to us about an international project

Helping brands uncover valuable insights

We’ve been working with Kadence on a couple of strategic projects, which influenced our product roadmap roll-out within the region. Their work has been exceptional in providing me the insights that I need. Senior Marketing Executive Arla Foods

Kadence’s reports give us the insight, conclusion and recommended execution needed to give us a different perspective, which provided us with an opportunity to relook at our go to market strategy in a different direction which we are now reaping the benefits from. Sales & Marketing Bridgestone

Kadence helped us not only conduct a thorough and insightful piece of research, its interpretation of the data provided many useful and unexpected good-news stories that we were able to use in our communications and interactions with government bodies. General Manager PR -Internal Communications & Government Affairs Mitsubishi

Kadence team is more like a partner to us. We have run a number of projects together and … the pro-activeness, out of the box thinking and delivering in spite of tight deadlines are some of the key reasons we always reach out to them. Vital Strategies

Kadence were an excellent partner on this project; they took time to really understand our business challenges, and developed a research approach that would tackle the exam question from all directions.  The impact of the work is still being felt now, several years later. Customer Intelligence Director Wall Street Journal

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• How to Define a Research Problem | Ideas & Examples

How to Define a Research Problem | Ideas & Examples

Published on November 2, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on May 31, 2023.

A research problem is a specific issue or gap in existing knowledge that you aim to address in your research. You may choose to look for practical problems aimed at contributing to change, or theoretical problems aimed at expanding knowledge.

Some research will do both of these things, but usually the research problem focuses on one or the other. The type of research problem you choose depends on your broad topic of interest and the type of research you think will fit best.

This article helps you identify and refine a research problem. When writing your research proposal or introduction , formulate it as a problem statement and/or research questions .

Table of contents

Why is the research problem important, step 1: identify a broad problem area, step 2: learn more about the problem, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research problems.

Having an interesting topic isn’t a strong enough basis for academic research. Without a well-defined research problem, you are likely to end up with an unfocused and unmanageable project.

You might end up repeating what other people have already said, trying to say too much, or doing research without a clear purpose and justification. You need a clear problem in order to do research that contributes new and relevant insights.

Whether you’re planning your thesis , starting a research paper , or writing a research proposal , the research problem is the first step towards knowing exactly what you’ll do and why.

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As you read about your topic, look for under-explored aspects or areas of concern, conflict, or controversy. Your goal is to find a gap that your research project can fill.

Practical research problems

If you are doing practical research, you can identify a problem by reading reports, following up on previous research, or talking to people who work in the relevant field or organization. You might look for:

• Issues with performance or efficiency
• Processes that could be improved
• Areas of concern among practitioners
• Difficulties faced by specific groups of people

Examples of practical research problems

Voter turnout in New England has been decreasing, in contrast to the rest of the country.

The HR department of a local chain of restaurants has a high staff turnover rate.

A non-profit organization faces a funding gap that means some of its programs will have to be cut.

Theoretical research problems

If you are doing theoretical research, you can identify a research problem by reading existing research, theory, and debates on your topic to find a gap in what is currently known about it. You might look for:

• A phenomenon or context that has not been closely studied
• A contradiction between two or more perspectives
• A situation or relationship that is not well understood
• A troubling question that has yet to be resolved

Examples of theoretical research problems

The effects of long-term Vitamin D deficiency on cardiovascular health are not well understood.

The relationship between gender, race, and income inequality has yet to be closely studied in the context of the millennial gig economy.

Historians of Scottish nationalism disagree about the role of the British Empire in the development of Scotland’s national identity.

Next, you have to find out what is already known about the problem, and pinpoint the exact aspect that your research will address.

Context and background

• Who does the problem affect?
• Is it a newly-discovered problem, or a well-established one?
• What research has already been done?
• What, if any, solutions have been proposed?
• What are the current debates about the problem? What is missing from these debates?

Specificity and relevance

• What particular place, time, and/or group of people will you focus on?
• What aspects will you not be able to tackle?
• What will the consequences be if the problem is not resolved?

Example of a specific research problem

A local non-profit organization focused on alleviating food insecurity has always fundraised from its existing support base. It lacks understanding of how best to target potential new donors. To be able to continue its work, the organization requires research into more effective fundraising strategies.

Once you have narrowed down your research problem, the next step is to formulate a problem statement , as well as your research questions or hypotheses .

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

All research questions should be:

• Focused on a single problem or issue
• Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources
• Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
• Specific enough to answer thoroughly
• Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of a paper or thesis
• Relevant to your field of study and/or society more broadly

Research questions anchor your whole project, so it’s important to spend some time refining them.

In general, they should be:

• Focused and researchable
• Answerable using credible sources
• Complex and arguable
• Feasible and specific
• Relevant and original

Your research objectives indicate how you’ll try to address your research problem and should be specific:

A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.

Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.

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State of Grocery Europe 2024: Signs of Hope

For the European grocery industry, 2023 was a challenging year. Inflation led consumers to tighten their belts, leading to a drop in volume and significant downtrading. As a result, industry growth was significantly below food price inflation. Food price inflation in Europe was 12.8 percent in 2023, 1 Based on Eurostat data, January 2024. while grocery sales grew at a rate of only 8.6 percent. 2 Based on Europanel data. Discounters and private labels benefited from this market environment and were yet again the winners of the year.

In 2024, we expect macroeconomic uncertainty to persist, but at the same time, our research indicates the first small signs of recovery. The pressure on margins, costs, and prices remains a key concern for grocery retail CEOs, but leaders are less pessimistic than they were in previous years. In addition, thanks to initial signs of economic recovery and wage increases in many countries, consumer confidence is returning. Still, our consumer research shows that recovery of consumer behavior is very polarized for 2024. While most consumer segments are still price sensitive and trading down, some segments show an increased appetite for uptrading and innovations.

2023: Again all about price

Grocery sales in Europe 3 Includes Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. grew by 8.6 percent in 2023. This growth was a result of 12.8 percent food price inflation, a downtrading effect of 1.8 percent, and a 2.0 percent volume decline. This implies that grocery sales in real terms (that is, adjusted for inflation) declined again in 2023 and are now 4.5 percent below 2019 levels. This decrease from 2019 is driven by a small volume increase of 0.3 percent and a decline of the price per item in real terms by 4.8 percent.

About the authors

While inflation eased significantly over the course of 2023, it was still the dominant factor affecting the industry. Overall inflation came down from a historic high of 10 percent in October 2022 to a stable 3 percent at the end of 2023. European food price inflation was even higher, reaching a 19.0 percent peak in March 2023 and an average of 12.8 percent for the full year. Producer prices in the European Union started to decline in early 2023, following agricultural prices with a delay of six months. Food prices for consumers saw minimal decline at the time, in part because grocery retailers’ price contracts with suppliers remain in effect and labor costs increased significantly. 4 Eurostat, January 2024.

Real wages were compressed during 2022 and most of 2023. This has put severe pressure on many household budgets and curbed consumer purchasing power. Wage increases of 6.3 percent in the EU-27 in the second half of 2023 brought some relief for consumers, but not all countries returned to 2019 wage levels in real terms. For instance, real wages are still below 2019 levels in France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. On average, real wages in the EU-27 were 1.2 percentage points below 2019 levels at the end of 2023. 5 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), January 2024.

As a result, consumers traded down significantly in 2023, and private labels and discounters benefited. The private label share increased substantially by 1.8 percentage points, to 38.0 percent of sales in 2023 from 36.2 in 2022. Discounters gained another 0.8 percentage points in market share on average, and at least 1.0 percentage point in Belgium, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The overall market share of supermarkets remained stable at 37.2 percent in Europe. Supermarkets in Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain found strategies to succeed despite high price pressure and even achieved market share increases of 0.5 to 0.8 percentage points. Online sales remained stable at 6 percent of total grocery sales, with significant differences among countries. France had the highest online gain with 0.5 percentage points, while the online channel lost market share in Sweden (–1.2 percentage points), the United Kingdom (–0.7), and Italy (–0.5), as well as in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal (–0.2). 6 Europanel, March 2024.

With inflation easing toward the end of the year, the development of the grocery market also improved. Downtrading and declines in volume slowed from quarter to quarter and came close to zero in the fourth quarter of 2023 (Exhibit 1).

2024: Signs of hope?

Our data shows signs of hope for 2024. While the first few months of 2024 may still be challenging as the economy contends with the aftereffects of high inflation, the fundamentals are slowly improving. Overall inflation is expected to stabilize around 2 percent, with food inflation slightly below in the short to medium term. Real wages are expected to grow. Grocery volume stopped decreasing toward the end of 2023 and even started to increase in some markets. In addition, in our survey, consumers tell us that they plan to trade down less than they did in 2023, and a few consumer groups even intend to start trading up again (Exhibit 2). If this trend holds, we expect grocery volume in Europe to return to growth in the second half of 2024.

Our data also shows large differences among countries and consumer segments. In some countries, including Germany, consumers report a strong intention to reduce downtrading and to start trading up again selectively. In other markets, consumers are still less optimistic about the future (for example, in Italy and Switzerland). We therefore expect market performance in Europe in 2024 to be quite heterogenous, with significant differences between countries. We expect the same to be true for consumer segments. For example, low-income households are still trading down, while high-income households intend to trade up again on specific occasions or in selected categories.

Grocery CEOs remain concerned—although less so than last year. Seventy-six percent of European grocery retail CEOs in our survey remain concerned about challenging market conditions (Exhibit 3). Thirty-six percent expect market conditions to become worse than in the prior year (down from 44 percent in 2023 and 60 percent in 2022), while 40 percent expect them to remain the same (up from 33 percent in 2023). CEOs are particularly concerned about prices and inflation. That said, CEOs in Central and Eastern Europe are somewhat less pessimistic than their peers in Western Europe. Only 29 percent of Central and Eastern European CEOs expect market conditions to become worse, compared with 50 percent in Western Europe.

The 2024 grocery CEO agenda remains similar to last year’s. Increased margin pressure and downtrading take the top two positions again, well ahead of other priorities (Exhibit 4). However, four priorities gained between seven and 12 ranks compared to last year: talent, food to go, government regulations, and loyalty programs.

Based on our CEO and consumer surveys and further research, we identified eight trends that we believe will shape the grocery industry in 2024. Some of the trends build on last year’s, while others are new and will shape the strategies required to win in the grocery industry in the coming years (see “ Key Trends ”).

1. Cost and margin pressure

The profitability of grocers declined further in 2023, and the pressure will not go away in 2024.

Margins decreased for both grocery retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies between 2019 and 2022. While grocery retailers lost 0.4 percentage points of EBITDA margin in that period, CPG companies lost 1.3 p­oints. However, 2023 followed a different trajectory. Retailers were losing another 0.3 percentage points because of additional cost increases, while CPG ­companies gained back 0.8 percentage points as they passed their cost increases on to retailers (Exhibit 5).

In 2024, grocery retailers will continue to feel margin pressure. The main driver in 2024 is rising rent and labor costs. According to our CEO survey, cost and margin pressure is a top three priority for 70 percent of CEOs (compared with 67 percent last year).

To improve their margins, retailers are expected to intensify supplier negotiations, buying-alliance activity, and consolidation efforts in 2024. In 2023, we saw intense supplier negotiations during which some leading products were temporarily not available in stores. This year we expect to see even more intense negotiations. Buying alliances are gaining strength, and selected new ones are emerging—such as the recently announced partnership between Auchan and Intermarché. “This will be a real game changer,” Auchan CEO Yves Claude told us during an interview (see “ A growth journey toward green and local” ). Meanwhile, M&A activity is expected to stay high as retailers seek economies of scale, building on the 2023 record of 21 transactions in Europe, 7 GlobalData, March 2024, data available for past ten years for Europe. including Reitan’s acquisition of the majority of the ALDI store network in Denmark.

Back to all trends

2. The return of polarization

Most consumer groups still intend to trade down in 2024, while high-income households are starting to trade back up.

More than 45 percent of respondents to our European consumer survey said they are still looking for ways to save money when shopping in 2024. Still, this number is lower than it was last year, while it continues to be similar across income groups (Exhibit 6). While downtrading is still highly prevalent across low-income households, we saw initial signs in 2023 that high-income households are uptrading again. The net intent of high-income households to buy more high-quality or organic products further increased at the beginning of 2024 and is now clearly positive. We therefore expect to see downtrading and uptrading at the same time, depending on the consumer group and the geography. The consumer survey results vary greatly across countries, leading us to expect significant differences in market development across Europe.

Private label growth continues and is expected to persist, even if the economy improves. Both private labels and discounters experienced strong growth across Europe, gaining 1.8 and 2.9 percentage points, respectively, and consumers continue to have positive experiences with private label offerings. According to our consumer survey, 83 percent of consumers rate private label products of equal or better quality than branded options. Therefore, we do not expect shoppers to switch back even if the market environment improves.

The quest for health and longevity is the only premiumization trend that has not been negatively affected by inflation. The intent of shoppers to buy healthier products has remained constantly high for several years. According to our consumer survey, consumers also prioritize products perceived as “good for myself” over those “good for the planet.” Functional food claims such as “boosting energy” and “supporting health” continue to gain traction.

3. Food to go: A wrestling match for share of stomach

As consumers spend more time on the move, the food-to-go market is surging.

The food-to-go market declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has recovered and continues to grow. Food to go encompasses various channels: prepackaged ready-to-eat meals, ready-to-heat convenience meals, counters and kiosks, restaurant takeaways, and meal delivery. The growth of these channels is driven by the return of workers to offices and consumers’ increasingly busy lifestyles. According to our CEO survey, food to go is one of the top five trends for 2024; CEOs expect food to go to drive traffic, raise margins, and generate cross-selling opportunities.

In Paris, half the population now lives alone, so they prefer packaged meals and smaller portions. Our new concept stores will help us gauge the demand for ready meals. Yves Claude, CEO, Auchan Retail

Foodservice providers such as restaurants, takeaway players, and meal delivery services are gaining share from grocery retailers. Despite the inflationary environment and consumers trading down, the foodservice industry outpaced the grocery retail industry by nearly three percentage points. While foodservice grew at 11.5 percent, 8 Eurostat foodservice turnover. grocery achieved a growth rate of only 8.6 percent last year. France and Italy now have higher foodservice volume compared with prepandemic levels, while Germany and Spain are still below those levels. 9 Eurostat, February 2024; McKinsey, growth in sales value adjusted for change in Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices for catering. Going forward, food to go is expected to grow at roughly 8 percent per year over the next five years in Europe, 10 GlobalData: Away-from-home food in retail channel 2023, sample of 23 European countries. while the grocery retail market is expected to grow at roughly 3 percent.

Grocery retailers are expanding their food-to-go offerings to capture this growth. Grocers are expanding their offerings of traditional ready-to-eat, ready-to-heat, and ready-to-cook products. They are also increasingly experimenting with foodservice offers such as hot food to go, cafeterias, and seated restaurants, either through third-party concepts or by offering them directly.

4. Sustainability: Progress made, still a long way to go

A step change for sustainability in grocery requires bold actions from retailers; our 2024 consumer research does not show increasing pull from consumers.

In fact, the share of consumers who want to buy products that are more sustainable in the next 12 months decreased by one percentage point from 2023. Also, the intent to buy more alternative-protein products remains stable at the low levels of 2023. Only members of Generation Z and millennials signal a high intent to buy more environmentally friendly products in 2024.

The window of opportunity to reach 2025 sustainability targets is closing. All of the top ten European grocery retailers have set sustainability goals for 2025, covering a variety of sustainability dimensions (Exhibit 7). 11 The top ten European grocers are Schwarz Group, ALDI Süd, Ahold Delhaize, Tesco, Edeka, Rewe, Leclerc, Carrefour, Sainsbury, and Casino; Euromonitor, accessed February 2024. Many of the dimensions still have sizable gaps to close to reach these targets. We therefore expect to see accelerated sustainability efforts across the industry in 2024. For targets on Scopes 1–3, 12 Scope 1 is direct emissions generated by an organization. Scope 2 is emissions generated by production of purchased energy. Scope 3 is indirect emissions from up and down the value chain. working toward these presents a dual opportunity to reduce carbon emissions and capture cost savings; we have found that, depending on the category, up to 40 percent of emissions can be reduced in a way that also reduces cost.

So far, none of the top ten European grocers are reporting any progress on Scope 3 emission reductions. 13 Scope 3 refers to all greenhouse gas emissions that happen in the value chain before or after grocery retailers (that is, suppliers and consumers). This is mainly because measuring these emissions accurately is very difficult. However, pioneering retailers have started to build Scope 3 accounting capabilities that use actual emissions by product and supplier instead of global averages across all suppliers. This shift will enable grocers to measure and reduce their Scope 3 emissions more effectively. For example, by understanding the real emissions associated with each supplier, grocery retailers can switch to suppliers with lower emissions or agree with suppliers on concrete reduction targets.

Regenerative agriculture 14 Regenerative agriculture includes farming and grazing practices that improve soil health, crop resilience, nutrient density, water management, and biodiversity, as well as the livelihoods of farmers. could become the new ‘organic.’ Most of grocery retailers’ greenhouse gas emissions are driven by agriculture. About 50 percent are driven by dairy and meat alone. Regenerative agricultural practices are therefore the key to meet the net-zero ambitions proclaimed by many retailers. Introducing regenerative agricultural labels in their assortment as an alternative to organic labels can be a big opportunity for retailers to differentiate their offerings while working toward their sustainability targets.

5. Online: Liberation from offline

Online grocery is returning to growth, and it is increasingly evolving into an independent, profitable format with its own differentiated value proposition.

Online grocery lost market share in 2023, but consumers are starting to return as spending power recovers. The net intent of consumers to buy more food online has returned to positive, increasing by eight percentage points in the first quarter of 2024. We expect e-grocery to grow faster than the overall grocery market over the next years. Meal delivery from restaurants might grow even faster than e-grocery (Exhibit 8). Pure players in particular show extraordinary growth rates as they expand into new regions. For instance, Picnic grew at more than 30 percent per annum over the past five years, 15 Picnic company accounts, February 2024. driven by rapid expansion.

Pure players are starting to reach profitability. For instance, Rohlik is profitable. 16 Zosia Wanat, “Brunch with the founder of Rohlik — a profitable disruptor of a trillion-dollar grocery industry,” Sifted, December 12, 2023. Picnic claims to be “operationally profitable in mature markets,” 17 “Online supermarket Picnic gets €355 million capital injection from shareholders,” NL Times , January 9, 2024. and Ocado returned to profitability in 2023. Moreover, leading meal delivery players have also reached breakeven (DoorDash and Deliveroo over the course of 2023), thanks to a successful shift of priorities from growth to rightsizing. 18 Company financials; Corporate Performance Analytics by McKinsey, March 2024.

Increasingly, consumers expect different value propositions from online and offline channels. It is becoming progressively clear that the two channels satisfy different shopping needs. For example, 37 percent of consumers in our UK survey (two percentage points higher than 2023) always shop at a different banner online than offline because they exhibit different needs by channel. In addition, UK consumers see promotions as more important than price for offline store selection, while for online, price is more important than promotions.

6. Retail media: Click here to boost the bottom line

Retail media (RM) undoubtedly remains a substantial profit driver for grocery retailers, with 20 of Europe’s top 30 grocery retailers now active in the market.

Grocers view RM as a fundamental driver of profitability. In Europe, the RM market was worth €11 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow at a rate of 15 percent annually in the coming years. With EBIT margins reaching 65 to 70 percent within three years of launching, RM presents an attractive opportunity for grocery retailers. 19 IAB Europe, Statista, January 2024. In our survey, grocery retail CEOs confirmed this opportunity, naming RM as one of the top five opportunities for the year ahead.

2024 will be marked by a bold expansion of retailers’ RM footprint. The name of the game for RM is scale—only the largest players are expected to remain relevant for CPG advertisers in the long run, especially in light of Amazon’s large share in the market (Exhibit 9). This will prompt smaller players to consolidate and form partnerships to maintain relevance in the RM world. Alliances, such as the Unlimitail partnership between Carrefour and Publicis, and the growth of ad network aggregators such as Amazon Ads are expected to shape the market this year.

Standardization, impact measurement, and ad diversification are critical for engaging CPGs on RM. Regulatory changes have increased the difficulty of targeted digital marketing, boosting the appeal of RM for CPG companies to engage with consumers at the point of purchase. Transparency and standardization of impact metrics, such as return on ad spending, are essential for RM success, and CPG companies rank these as the top barrier to further investing in RM. 20 Retail Media Standards Survey 2023, IAB Europe, 2023. To address this, Ahold Delhaize, for example, has launched a self-service platform for suppliers to manage and track the impact of RM campaigns. Moreover, retailers are expected to expand their offerings beyond classic paid search and website banners to include video, connected TV, shoppable (video) content, and innovative in-store activations in order to stay relevant to CPG advertisers.

7. Conversational commerce: The next wave of analytics

Advanced analytics and traditional AI still account for most of the impact, but conversational commerce enabled by generative AI has the potential to reimagine how we shop.

Retailers have started to experiment with generative AI but have yet to unlock real value. From the total advanced analytics and AI impact pool in grocery retail, an estimated 10 to 20 percent of value potential stems from generative AI. In grocery, six revenue-enhancing and efficiency-driving use cases are expected to drive value: hyper-personalized content, smart search, copilots for category management (for example, supplier negotiations), copilots for support functions (such as software development), content creation, and conversational commerce (Exhibit 10). By engaging shoppers with a human-like chatbot as a personal shopping assistant, conversational commerce can significantly improve the on- and offline shopping experience. For instance, US-based Walmart launched its Text to Shop proposition last year, allowing consumers to shop for groceries by texting. They can also get inspiration for recipes, make restocking suggestions, and schedule delivery or pickup times.

Advanced analytics and traditional AI are still the largest sources of technology-driven value creation in retail. Eighty to 90 percent of future value creation for grocers is driven by advanced analytics and traditional AI. For grocers, assortment, pricing, and promotion optimization are the largest opportunity areas. Rigorously leveraging advanced analytics and traditional AI across the organization has the potential to improve EBIT margins in retail by up to one percentage point. Most large retailers in Europe have adopted a range of advanced analytics use cases by now and started to capture a significant share of that potential. The remaining opportunity resides in expanding to further use cases, increasing adoption of use cases, and using the new capabilities to localize and personalize the offering for each store and consumer.

8. Talent: Making retail a career again

Grocers across Europe face an unprecedented number of job vacancies, and the average employee tenure is shrinking.

Vacancy and fluctuation rates are high. In the third quarter of 2023, 2.2 percent of all retail jobs were vacant, a 29.4 percent increase from 1.7 percent prior to the pandemic. 21 Eurostat EU-27 countries. While retailers work hard to fill open positions, they are also confronted with high turnover rates—especially in frontline positions. In addition, there is a shortage of skilled talent, particularly in supply chain activities, as well as for jobs that require digital and technological know-how. The aging of the population further exacerbates the situation. The number of citizens of working age in the EU-27 will decline by approximately one million people per year going forward. Hiring and developing talent is one of the top three priorities of European grocery retail CEOs, according to our survey. Yet only 21 percent of retail employers in Germany say they have a professional retention program in place, and even fewer—11 percent—say they have the tools in place to survey employee satisfaction regularly. 22 Study: Talents4Retail 2023/24 , EHI Retail Institute, January 2024.

As automation and digitalization progress, the roles and job profiles of retail employees will change significantly over the next decade. Social, emotional, cognitive, and technological skills will become more important as the need for physical activity decreases. Our analysis shows that by 2030, the time workers spend using social or emotional abilities will increase by 32 percent, and the time they spend leveraging technical skills will increase by 64 percent. Physical and manual activity, on the other hand, will decline by 17 percent as a result of technological advancements.

Attractive grocery employers offer careers, not just jobs, in combination with the right work–life balance. Forty percent of retail employees in Germany and 33 percent of retail employees in the Netherlands are considering changing their jobs. 23 McKinsey HR-Monitor Germany 2024; Distrifood 2023. Respondents cited unmet needs of applicants, compensation, and working times among the top five factors in ongoing retail vacancies in Germany. Flexible work arrangements and a multitude of career paths gain in importance. Yet only 16 percent of retail employers in Germany say they offer work–life benefits to frontline retail employees, and more than 50 percent of retail employers in Germany say they do not offer individual career opportunities to their employees. In the United Kingdom, the retail sector ranks in the bottom third in terms of offering career progression opportunities compared with other sectors. Meanwhile, retailers such as Walmart have started acting on these developments by offering different types of career paths and trainings depending on employee preferences.

Implications for grocers

The state of grocery continues to present challenges, but—supported by stronger consumer sentiment—there are opportunities for executives to build new sources of competitive advantage. We see three strategic priorities for grocery retailers that will help them strengthen their assortments, increase profitability, and leverage the momentum for RM networks.

Future-proofing the assortment

Confronted with polarized consumer behavior, grocers seek to balance affordability with value-adding products while rationalizing the assortment to optimize costs. To defend their market share, supermarkets and hypermarkets will want to keep strengthening their private label offerings. At the same time, growing demand for healthy products and for food-to-go, ready-to-eat, and ready-to-heat options provides further opportunities for uptrading consumers. Retailers that can differentiate assortment by store depending on local needs will be best positioned to win in this market environment—especially given that different countries, regions, and neighborhoods will show varied recoveries in 2024.

Driving nontrivial efficiency savings

As margin and cost pressure remains high, grocery retailers need to take rigorous mitigating actions to achieve cost savings. With low-hanging fruit already captured, cross-functional and nontrivial cost positions need to be addressed in 2024—for example, operating model redesign, end-to-end supply chain optimization from supplier to store, rent renegotiation, or design-to-value for private label assortment.

Monetizing retail media

When it comes to building and scaling a RM business that drives profits in 2024 and beyond, grocers have no time to lose. To go from good to great in RM, players need to think like ad agencies and secure the right leadership commitment, business autonomy, and resources dedicated to RM business development. Grocery retailers enjoy a privileged position in today’s media landscape. However, to remain relevant to advertisers over time, RM players should consider improving their impact measurements, as well as continuously enhancing and renewing their advertising offerings.

Christel Delberghe is director general of EuroCommerce, where Anton Delbarre is chief economist. Dirk Vissers is consumer insights director for Europanel. Daniel Läubli and Franck Laizet are senior partners in McKinsey’s Zurich office, where Alexandre Kleis is an associate partner, and Rickard Vallöf is a partner in the Gothenburg office.

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Money latest: The age when the average Briton pays off their mortgage revealed

The average Briton is 61 when they pay off their mortgage - a drop of two years. Meanwhile, Spotify is raising prices again. Read about this and the rest of today's consumer and personal finance news in the Money blog, and leave a comment in the form below.

Thursday 11 April 2024 22:26, UK

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• Spotify to hike subscription price by up to £24 a year
• Minimum income for family visa rises by £10,000
• Italy mourns 'end of Italian waiters in London' as visa rule brought in
• Wendy's creating 400 jobs as part of UK expansion
• The age when the average Briton pays off their mortgage
• 'WTF is going on with the price of olive oil?'
• Could I build a home gym for less than my gym membership?
• Basically...  Tax codes
• Cheap Eats : Great British Menu legend shares ultimate toastie recipe

Ask a question or make a comment

Fake flights and caravans are the two most common items being sold by fraudsters in relation to travel, Lloyds Bank's research has found.

As Britons head online to book deals for the upcoming bank holidays and summer, they have been urged to "remain vigilant", with the average holiday scam victim being conned out of £765.

Amid rising flight costs post-COVID, people have been flocking to social media and other lesser-known websites to secure cheaper deals.

A food delivery company claims to have created an  "unshakeable bag" to avoid spillage in transit.

Bolt, which owns the Bolt Food delivery platform, said its design is based on gyroscope technology and will keep food stable "during the most abrupt movements".

In a post to its website, the firm said it would make the design available to its competitors as it is "too powerful to be owned by any one company".

"We believe everyone should enjoy a perfect meal, regardless of which app they order it from," it said.

Assaulting a shopworker is to be made a separate criminal offence after a government U-turn following pressure from campaigners.

The government previously said "more legislative change" was not needed to tackle the "intolerable violence and abuse" faced by shopworkers, arguing it did not think it was "required or will be most effective".

But Rishi Sunak is now set to announce his government will be amending the Criminal Justice Bill to bring in the new offence.

The drugmaker was on its knees when Sir Pascal Soriot took over in 2012. 

But under his leadership it now does just about everything the UK wants from a business - creating high value-added jobs and developing products that improve people's lives.

The FTSE 100's performance has lagged that of many of its peers, both in the United States and Europe, more or less since the Brexit vote in 2016.

That poor performance has reflected the poor valuation of many UK-listed companies - resulting in numerous foreign takeovers of UK businesses in recent months and years.

It has also led to a scarcity in the number of companies floating on the London Stock Exchange, most notably the  Cambridge-based chip designer ARM Holdings , which last year opted to list in the US instead.

The situation has alarmed the government, which has announced a number of reforms  aimed at raising the UK's attractiveness .

An imminent shareholder vote on Sir Pascal's pay makes a particularly interesting test case because few would dispute that he has been the most outstanding FTSE 100 chief executive of his generation.

This rise could take his potential earnings to £18.5m this year - which critics say is excessive.

Read my full piece here ...

England's average house price has risen by £103,000 over the last decade, while the average annual wage has risen by £7,734.

But some areas have seen homeownership affordability decline more than others... 

The London borough of Barking and Dagenham has seen the most significant fall, according to moving platform Getamover. 

The platform found the area has seen house prices more than double to £380,000 in the last 10 years - but wages have only risen by £2,182. 

Hillingdon in West London took the second spot, with the average property shooting up by £230,000 to £495,000, while the average income increased by just £143. 

While London remains the most unaffordable region, the East Midlands has also seen a notable fall. 

Oadby and Wigston in Leicestershire ranked fifth in the table, with the average house price increasing by £129,000 and the median annual income growing by £2,644.   

Gedling ranks sixth among the areas of England where the affordability of buying a home has declined most. 

The Nottinghamshire region has seen house prices soar by 84.8% to £231,000, while the average income has risen by just 13.11% to £33,454. 

You can see how other areas fared in the table below...

Rishi Sunak's post-Brexit rules for foreign workers are getting tough press in Italy this week - with claims they could mark the end of Italian waiters in London.

April saw the minimum salary requirement for a skilled worker visa increase from £26,200 to £38,700 - a near 50% rise as the government tries to reduce immigration.

Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica published an article on its site headlined "Italians in London, the long goodbye" after the new rule was brought in this month.

There were an estimated 342,000 Italians living in the UK in 2021, according to the latest Office for National Statistics census data.

La Repubblica said the new rule change would lead to the "end of the story" of Italy's "ancient roots" in the capital, which was founded by the Romans in 43 AD.

Separately, Italian journalist Antonio Polito wrote in the Corriere della Sera newspaper that the new salary for skilled workers was "an amount that no young novice can realistically earn".

"Thus London gives up one of its great assets, the fact of being an offshore and cosmopolitan city," he said.

Mr Sunak's post-Brexit rule change has worried hospitality bosses who are still struggling to get to grips with a post-COVID reality and rising costs. 

Conor Sheridan, founder of Nory and Mad Egg restaurant chain, previously told the Money blog that roughly 14% of his 15,000 UK employee base were on working visas that could be affected.

Trade body UKHospitality also said the changes would "further shrink the talent pool that the entire economy will be recruiting from".

As the migration law came in, Home Secretary James Cleverly said it was "time to turn off the taps and end the flow of cheap workers from abroad".

"We are refocusing our immigration system to prioritise the brightest and best who have the skills our economy needs, while reducing overall numbers," he said.

Several of the UK's biggest supermarkets closed their gender pay gap in the last year - while Morrisons saw the biggest rise, figures show.

Ocado and Lidl reduced their gap by the largest amounts in 2023-24 compared to the previous year, while Tesco, Asda, Aldi, Co-op, Iceland and Waitrose owner John Lewis also saw a reduction.

The data comes from the government's gender pay gap service and states the difference in hourly rates of pay. 

In contrast to other big-name brands, Morrisons saw its mean pay gap widen to 12.5% from 7.6%. M&S also saw a slight increase from 12.5% to 12.6%.

The mean figure gives the best overall view of the gender pay gap but includes extreme values which could skew the average.

Of the 11 biggest UK supermarkets, Co-op has the largest pay gap with 13.2%, followed by M&S and Morrisons.

An M&S spokesperson said: "We're committed to driving equal opportunities and making M&S a great place to work for women. Encouragingly our median pay gap has decreased, and women now make up more than 50% of our UK store management population, but we know there is more to do. 

"We're making progress with the launch of new initiatives, talent programmes, and policies, including our flexible working offer – Worklife, a Job Share Finder, and our industry-leading family leave offer."

A spokesperson for Co-op said: "We are committed to treating our colleague member owners fairly, and this includes driving equitable outcomes for female colleagues. We've seen a significant reduction in our gender pay gap since we started to report data in 2017, and this year's data shows further progress towards closing it.

"It's important to reiterate that we don't pay people differently based on their gender at Co-op. The gender pay gap is caused by us having fewer females in leadership role, where salaries are higher.

"Our focus on improving representation remains, as we know this is one of the key drivers causing the gender pay gap. Today, 40% of our leadership population are female - this is not enough, which is why we’ve launched a series of development programmes and have a coaching and mentoring offer to support women with career progression.

"We know there’s still much to do in this space and will hold ourselves to account and continue to strive for gender equality."

Morrisons has also been contacted for comment.

Every Thursday we look at a different savings option, explain the pros and cons, and reveal the best deals on the market (see table below for that).  This week we're talking about the best notice accounts. Savings Champion founder Anna Bowes  says this...

As with the rest of the savings market, the top notice account rates have started to fall. However, there are stalwarts like the Investec 90-day notice account that are holding steady and as a result offering savers an opportunity to earn a little more, while not having to tie up their cash for too long.

A relatively unused aspect of the savings market, notice accounts offer a bit of a halfway house, with the best rates available generally paying more than the top easy access rates, but will more flexibility of access than a fixed term bond.

Just as it sounds, these savings accounts require you to give notice in order to access your money without a penalty. The usual notice period ranges from 30 to 120 days, although there are some accounts on the market that require six months or even a year's notice.

By Sarah Taaffe-Maguire , business reporter

Another record month for Heathrow. Last month was the busiest ever March for the UK's biggest airport, the second record-breaking month in a row. 

It was also the busiest Easter weekend as Good Friday became the busiest ever direct departure day, when 118,000 people began their journey at the airport. 

It shows, despite cost of living pressures, lots of Britons were going on holiday.

More good news for Heathrow came earlier this week as planned strike action by 600 border force officers was called off to allow for negotiations in its dispute over working patterns. 

Oil prices are still high, hanging around $90. A barrel of Brent crude oil, the benchmark for oil prices, costs $90.66. The last time prices were this high was in the wake of the 7 October attacks and fears of conflict spreading throughout the Middle East. 

On the currency front, £1 buys $1.2538 and €1.1678.

How old is the average Briton when they buy their first home, or finish paying their mortgage, or retire?

These are some of the questions answered in a "Journeying Through Life" data dump from the Office for National Statistics.

Here are some of the key takeaways...

Home ownership - including the one life event that's happening earlier

People are buying homes later in life, perhaps unsurprisingly given how house prices have risen in the last decade or so.

In 2022, more than half of people owned their own home (either with a mortgage or outright) by the age of 36. 

That's a significant increase on 2004's figures - which showed the average age for home ownership was 32. 

This graph shows what proportion of people own homes at what age.

It isn't all doom and gloom on the homes front, however, with the age at which people own their home outright (ie mortgage paid off) dropping from 63 (in 2004) to 61 in 2020. 

This is pretty much the only life event happening earlier, however.

Retiring later

Again, this probably won't come as a huge surprise, but people are retiring later. 

The age where more than half of people were retired increased from 64 in 2011 to 66 in 2021. ​

There has been a bigger increase in average retirement age for women (from 61 years in 2011, to 66 years in 2021) than for men (from 65 in 2011 to 66 in 2021). 

The ONS says this is because the state pension age for women was increased from 60 to 66 during this time to match men.

Gender pay gap shrinking but still present

The latest data shows that men are still, on the whole, being paid more than women - although the gender pay gap is shown to be shrinking. 

For all employees, the gender pay gap was 14% in 2023 - compared with 20% in 2013.

Despite the gap shrinking, this graph shows that men's hourly wages are higher than women's at nearly all ages. 

The grey shaded area represents the pay gap. 

Another part of the data shows that males start work a touch earlier than women - with half of males in full-time employment by the age of 23 (compared with females at 24) in 2021. 

That data could be explained by the fact that more women attend university - some 319,000 females compared with 285,000 males in 2022.  

Moving out, marrying and having children

The age at which young people move out of their family homes is increasing, too.

In 2011, half of people were not living with their parents at the age of 21 - compared with 24 in 2022. 

More men live with their parents than women, with 61% of adults living at home in 2021 were male.

When it comes to having children, the average age at which women have their first baby has risen to 29.

That's up from an average of just 23 in 1970. 

And finally, marriage.

The median age at first marriage has been steadily increasing since the 1960s. 

For opposite sex couples married in 2020, the median age was 32 years for men and 30 years for women. For those entering into same-sex marriage, the median age was older, at 36 years for men and 32 years for women.

As well as getting married older, fewer people are getting married. In 2019, marriage rates had fallen to their lowest on record. For men, there were 18.6 marriages per 1,000 never-married men; for women, there were 17.2 marriages per 1,000 never-married women.

Spotify has announced it is hiking its subscription prices by up to £24 a year.

It is the second time in less than a year that the music streaming giant has increased its prices.

Here's how the prices will change...

Individual: £11.99 a month (up from £10.99 a month)  

Duo: £16.99 a month (up from £14.99 a month)  

Family: £19.99 a month (up from £17.99 a month) 

When will the change kick in?

The subscription price will change from May and if you are an existing customer Spotify will email you and give you one-month's notice of the change.

If you are on a free trial you will pay the old price for one month once your trial ends.

A Spotify spokesperson told Sky News: "So that we can keep innovating and delivering value to fans, the music industry, and creators on our platform, we occasionally update our prices. 

"We've begun communicating with existing subscribers in the UK to explain what this means for their account."

American burger chain Wendy's will be recruiting for over 400 job roles as part of its expansion across the UK.

The chain returned to the UK in 2021 after a 20-year break and has since opened just over 30 sites, including drive-throughs in Colchester, Peterborough, Derby and Brampton Hut.

But the chain, which was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1969, plans to open a further nine sites this year in Liverpool, Middlesbrough, and a second location in Sheffield.

New locations will include Liverpool, Middlesbrough and a second site in Sheffield.

Wendy's franchisee GH Burgers will open a first restaurant in Wood Green, London, this year.

There will also be restaurants in Southend-on-Sea, Colchester, Cambridge and Newcastle.

Michael Clarke, UK managing director for the Wendy's Company, told The Caterer : "We've seen great momentum in building Wendy's fandom in the UK, and the love and excitement for this iconic brand grows stronger with each new restaurant opening."

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