September 28, 2007
Research Results Drawn Into Question
It doesn’t make a lot of sense but apparently it happens more frequently than one might expect. The “it” in this case is the decision by marketers to conduct consumer research and then pay little to no attention to study findings.
“Marketers generally distrust research and data,” Greg Stuart, former CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau told AdAge.com.
Some of that distrust can be tied to the perception that consumers simply aren’t telling researchers the truth when being surveyed.
Tony Palmer, chief marketing officer at Kimberly-Clark, said, “It’s becoming clearer and clearer that what people say and what they do is different. So there’s a real need to drive research to newer techniques, toward research that deploys anthropology and observation.”
The AdAge.com article cited a number of studies that found a significant percent of consumers contradicting themselves in the course of being surveyed. In one online study, for example, consumers said a brand was worth paying for in one instance and not worth paying for in another.
A point of frustration among professional researchers is when studies are ordered that do not seem, at least to those conducting the research, to have a purpose.
“There is a general belief [among researchers] that over 50 percent of the research done at companies is wasted,” said Bob Barocci, CEO of the Advertising Research Federation. “They’re asked to do things that, even if the research project is perfect, won’t be useful.”
According to Mr. Barocci, some studies are commissioned simply to provide quantitative support for a decision that has already been made. “It’s covering-your-butt kind of thinking,” he said.
Not all the blame should go to marketers. “Often all we do is present numbers,” Mr. Barocci told AdAge.com. “We don’t present insights.”
Discussion
Questions: Do you also see evidence that marketers and researchers appear to
be operating on two entirely different wavelengths? What needs to be done to
ensure the various disciplines work together with greater cohesiveness? What
types of changes are needed to get accurate and actionable data from consumers?
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This problem stems from fear and the need to CYA. Marketers in search of decision support are often too vague in what they ask for from the researchers. That’s because they haven’t taken the time and enforced the discipline to define precisely what they are trying to find out, and why–i.e., what specific actions they will take based on the information they get. In this scenario, marketers are afraid to pose the “wrong” questions (for fear of being “wrong”), so they don’t focus. As a result, researchers give them unfocused answers that provide little in the way of genuine decision support. Companies where risk-taking is acceptable get far better research. Simply put, their marketing people aren’t afraid to focus and make the decisions necessary to get good research. As for consumers saying one thing and doing another, that’s been true forever. One of David Ogilvie’s first research projects in the 1950s had him out on the street asking people what they liked to read. Everyone told him they spent their evenings reading the Bible, and Shakespeare.
Hopefully I’m not the only one of us who TiVos “Mad Men,” the series about the Madison Avenue ad agency bidness in the early 60s (amc channel). In it, the cavalier attitude of marketers toward research is accurately portrayed, and was the attitude I observed and shared throughout my ad agency/marketing career. Here’s why: Researchers tend only to deliver numbers, not creative reactions or solutions. Imagine meetings in which the (traditionally) least creative team in the agency sits across the table from the most creative team in the agency and presents their numbers. They aren’t even speaking the same language.
That’s a gross oversimplification, of course, and was not intended to offend. But, the movers and shakers in advertising are the writers and art directors, and they tend to design emotional appeals, not intellectual ones (there are many exceptions, naturally). It’s also important to remember that pretty much the only research in which the creative team gets involved is focus groups; the through-the-looking glass, chaos-with-cookies, purely anecdotal, nominally-directional, easily manipulated exercise which reinforces the creatives’ preconception that research is often useless.
In grad school I learned the following about consumer research, which with few exceptions has been largely substantiated by real world experience:
Many more companies use research for PR purposes than for true information gathering.
Most companies have starting preconceived notions before even conducting their own research or hiring a research company.
Most savvy researchers know what that preconceived notion is.
Any attitude survey, questionnaire, interview, or poll can be worded and conducted to achieve the desired response.
Research subject or interviewee selection is often flawed or skewed, and often on purpose.
Most regular “targeted” people these days detest being surveyed both from a privacy and “takes up too much time” perspective. Many flat out refuse to participate.
You can pay, incent, or reward people for consenting to be researched. These people, while not dishonest, instinctively pick up on what they are “supposed” to say, and usually do so.
Most research projects end up with reports and charts producing evidence of the desired preconceived opinions the company started out with.
Most companies who fund consumer research waste their money.
Interesting, useful and highly valuable unsolicited consumer opinion (which is also free, by the way) in the form of blog posts, petitions, complaints, and letters to the company’s executives are usually ignored or underutilized as an informational or research tool, because they are not rounded up in a neat tidy executive summary package.
Research is often a “for hire” entity. Research is employed to support an opinion and questions are asked in a manner designed to elicit a predetermined response or a response that has no meaning (Are you still beating your wife?). While this is most evident in the political arena (where great care is taken to ask questions of those most likely to agree with you and support your positions) it is often used in the business world to support decisions that have already been made, but not publicized. Restaurant chains have to always be on guard for research that is conducted to support a particular product. Suppliers/Manufacturers often present “in house” research to support product claims. I personally would never accept any research unless I had access to the data. What was asked and how was it answered?
So, let’s see:
— It’s harder to get consumers to participate in research, and when they do, their answers are inconsistent with their behavior.
— Managers and executives order up research to support business decisions already made.
— Researchers don’t make good managers.
What else is new?
I agree with the fellow who said the best thing researchers can provide is insight. I also endeavor to provide wisdom, but there’s not much of a market for it.
I approach this question from several angles. First of all, I believe that respondents will tell researchers what they think they would like to hear, not how they truly feel about the question. I heard a speech by Dan Hill recently, author of “Body of Truth: Leveraging What Consumers Can’t or Won’t Say.” In Dan’s studies, he looks into respondents’ eyes to validate if they are telling the truth about their feelings. His findings are intriguing.
Secondly, having been educated to go into the Advertising Business, I learned how results can be twisted to say anything you want them to say. I won’t name names, but I believe that some research findings are used to substantiate the belief or hypothesis of the researcher, rather to discovery true, untainted results.
If you are writing a book, or preparing for a speech, what is more interesting, revolutionary research findings, something that supports your big idea, or information that everyone has already heard and believes?
Having been both a professional researcher and a brand marketer, I can fully appreciate both sides of this issue.
Consumer research, properly designed and executed in the context of the retail environment, can be extremely insightful and lead to innovative new solutions.
There are, however, many places this can go wrong. Much research is conducted for the wrong objectives such as to “support” someone’s pre-conceived notions or to CYA on a decision already made. Sometimes the researcher uses the wrong techniques to address the issue, such as an internet survey to understand in-store shopping behavior. Often, the results of the research are twisted to support an idea. It never fails to amaze me how observers will always find something in a focus group to support their prior opinions.
It is important to remember that individual research studies seldom provide answers to all the questions about any decision or issue. Rather, research is designed to provide insights which improve decisions and it is the body of research and learning that leads to good, informed decisions.
The most effective consumer research is presented with examples of customer letters or emails to make it all “come to life” for the company. Such use of real customer feedback illustrates the relevancy of research findings to executives and often brings home a point more than any chart or graph.
The other challenge is to make the research actionable. For supermarkets and other retailers, a collaborative effort between the consumer research department and the consumer affairs department results in better data for decision makers.
Unfortunately, too many companies want research to support their own preconceived conclusions and, from what I’ve seen time and again, many consultants and researchers are happy to accommodate.
Or, companies make a cursory attempt to understand consumers through in-house “research and marketing” However, hiring someone with an Hispanic or Asian surname, for example, is no guarantee of success in those segments.
As a journalist and editor, I can only tell you that good research is essential for uncovering not only the problem, but potential solutions. However,using a research report as a paperweight or massaging the conclusions to suit your needs is not money well-spent.
If you want to know what your customers are thinking–ask them and listen to what they have to say. However, as we’ve learned, what they say and what they want can be two different things. That’s why we need good, independent research–to find the truth in the chaos.
Quantitative research like that for the retail industry is a total waste of time and energy. The only thing marketers can do is observe past and current shopper behavior. Surveys and focus groups cannot accurately reflect what the customer is thinking. The customer does not know what to feel until they are in the shopping environment and presented with products on a shelf or in a bin. Most of my clients prefer when I present research that comes from the sales floor, not a boardroom. Backing up decision already made with quantitative research is just that, a cover-your-butt tactic. To really find out what the customer is thinking or feeling, interviews need to be done on the sales floor and shoppers need to be observed in action. The honest emotional response will only come out when on the sales floor.
Marketing research is a terrible thing to waste but there are a number of factors involved that drive the results and its usefulness. Here are just a few that I have observed and experienced in the consumer goods industry:
1. Don’t confuse me with the facts; I have already made up my mind: Often, marketing decision makers tend to be intuitive rather than scientific and therefore they are looking to market research not so much for answers but instead they are looking to confirm what they already believe to be true. If the marketing research doesn’t cooperate with their intuitive beliefs then many of the decision-makers decide to throw it out, discount it, or ignore it.
2. If it doesn’t fit, we’ve got to acquit: So much of its effectiveness is driven by how scientifically, or not, the research is conducted. There are a large number of potential flaws in the process that result in tainted or inaccurate results, in particular the human subject selection process and how questions and surveys are established and how they are executed. The first prudent step in marketing research is to apply adequate time and principles into the process itself to make certain that the study will be as accurate as possible. This often is truly not the case. Many times, market researchers use a boiler plate approach that doesn’t “fit” the right circumstances.
3. Back to the Future: I have seen too often where marketing research is based on what already happened rather than what might possibly happen in the future if consumers were given the right opportunities to understand possible new choices that they do not currently enjoy. So much of the marketing research I have read is behavioral rather than predictable, but in some cases marketing research teams are in fact able to dig into the right side of the consumer brain to predict what we really want to know, what we can change!
For any marketing decision-maker to surmise that marketing research doesn’t work would be like saying that scientific experiments don’t work, and such a conclusion would be ludicrous. The real deal is that marketing research is a science, and although not exact, it needs to be treated and conducted in a laboratory with clean and near-perfect conditions to get accurate results that can save or build fortunes, and often they really do.
As long time practitioners in shopper marketing, we have used quantitative online survey research finding in many effective ways, primarily to uncover understandings by looking at data differently. BIGresearch, MRI and Simmons are all sources that allow countless ways to cross-tab their databases by shopper segments, and those findings have been very useful to us and our clients over the years. Another way we gain information is to chart the data cross-tabbed by shopper segments over time to get a “heads up” on notable changes or shifts in behavior.
That, however, is part of a process that begins with a set of business objectives that are relevant to the shopper marketing situation. Many times quantitative findings are just one step in developing an overall learning plan that seeks to uncover the “why” behind the “what.” Anthropological research can certainly help uncover the “why” as well as “what would trigger the behavior change” that the marketer really needs to know.
For many companies, the issue is timing and budget allocation. Consumer research departments typically have longer lead times and a consumer focus. Today, however, the lead times and pace of shopper marketing is so accelerated that the true need for quick-turn around shopper insights that can impact programming recommendations can be hard to deliver. Another issue is that the customer teams don’t have funding for this kind of research, which means many learning plans don’t get executed, and marketers get frustrated because it is truly hard to support change based on just understandings, not true insights.
Maybe it is really time to rethink the model of how to enable the process to allow customer marketing organizations and their agency partners to “get it done.” Where we have been able to execute shopper-specific learning plans, the success rate for retail implementation has risen, as have results.
There are two big issues here–both of which we’ve discussed in a number of papers (feel free to write me for them)–the quality of researchers and the nature of consumers.
Marketers who ignore marketing research are doomed to failure. Sure, they’ll score every once in a while, but often the misses are much bigger. On the other hand, not every researcher is particularly good at their job. There is a general perception around the world that the quality of research has declined. It’s management’s job to set the ground rules, the standards, and recognize the training that’s required to make someone a good market researcher capable of helping the organization.
On the consumer side, there is a false belief that if you ask consumers questions, they’ll give you “true” answers. There are many reasons why this is false, even among our most sacred of measures–Purchase Intent. A good researcher validates their measurement instrument, making sure it measures what it purports to measure.
Great researchers don’t just present numbers, they actively assist businesses to make optimal decisions. The best researchers are passionate about making retailers and brands successful. Yes, many marketers ignore research results they don’t like. Yes, a lot of research simply isn’t worth doing at all. Yes, a lot of research is based on asking the wrong questions, asking the wrong people, asking at the wrong time, giving the wrong multiple answer choices, etc. Research is no different from all other management tools, like IT, accounting, budgeting, logistics, real estate location analysis, etc. All management tools can be used well or poorly. It comes down to the leadership abilities, vision, intelligence, and passion of those in charge.
Way too complicated a subject to deal with briefly, but if this is a surprise to anyone, it isn’t because it’s a new problem, or an unreasonable problem. Years ago I left the clinical laboratory field because 95% of all laboratory results were never used in any way in patient management, but simply filed as CYA. I have seen costly consultant proposals (custom research included), unopened weeks after delivery to the client, all copies intact in a box on a very high shelf. A year ago, a major retailer reported substantial lift when an aisle was redesigned in collaboration with a major brand. However, at least a year later, even though the desired lift had been achieved in test, no implementation by the retailer had ever occurred.
There are reasons why these things routinely happen, even if the reports and results are objectively flawless, included clearly stated steps to implement them. And of course objective flawlessness is NOT the norm, but that’s only a compounding factor in the wholesale burning of billions of dollars.
This is not cynicism but pragmatism.
Of course research is not of uniform and consistent high quality. There are researchers who execute ill thought out methodologies which provide dubious results, and those who have a greater level of experience of both the subject matter and business issues and are able to design and execute far more effective studies to meet their clients’ needs. Inevitably, the former tends to command a lower price point on the whole compared to the latter and clients are often influenced by financial issues–a recipe which often leads to disappointment and ultimately, a mistrust of research as a discipline.
However, as a researcher who hopefully fits into the latter category, I have encountered situations on occasion where the internal stakeholders are unprepared to accept the results of a study purely on the basis that those results do not back up the actions that they wish to take. This is a problem of both personality (no one likes to be told they are wrong) and a reliance on a fall back position of better the devil you know, i.e. if the research is telling you to do something radically different from what you’ve done in the past then regardless of how compelling the argument, some people are not inclined to take the risk.
The solution to this is not an easy one. It relies on the building of trust and understanding between the client and the researcher which can only be achieved with an appropriate level of investment in terms of both time and money coupled with a willingness on both sides to share pertinent information and discuss business issues candidly. In other words, the client needs to allow the researcher to act not only as a provider of information but as a consultant and the researcher needs to be capable of fulfilling this role. In these situations there is a significantly better chance of research generating insight which will lead to good business decision making.
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This problem stems from fear and the need to CYA. Marketers in search of decision support are often too vague in what they ask for from the researchers. That’s because they haven’t taken the time and enforced the discipline to define precisely what they are trying to find out, and why–i.e., what specific actions they will take based on the information they get. In this scenario, marketers are afraid to pose the “wrong” questions (for fear of being “wrong”), so they don’t focus. As a result, researchers give them unfocused answers that provide little in the way of genuine decision support. Companies where risk-taking is acceptable get far better research. Simply put, their marketing people aren’t afraid to focus and make the decisions necessary to get good research. As for consumers saying one thing and doing another, that’s been true forever. One of David Ogilvie’s first research projects in the 1950s had him out on the street asking people what they liked to read. Everyone told him they spent their evenings reading the Bible, and Shakespeare.
Hopefully I’m not the only one of us who TiVos “Mad Men,” the series about the Madison Avenue ad agency bidness in the early 60s (amc channel). In it, the cavalier attitude of marketers toward research is accurately portrayed, and was the attitude I observed and shared throughout my ad agency/marketing career. Here’s why: Researchers tend only to deliver numbers, not creative reactions or solutions. Imagine meetings in which the (traditionally) least creative team in the agency sits across the table from the most creative team in the agency and presents their numbers. They aren’t even speaking the same language.
That’s a gross oversimplification, of course, and was not intended to offend. But, the movers and shakers in advertising are the writers and art directors, and they tend to design emotional appeals, not intellectual ones (there are many exceptions, naturally). It’s also important to remember that pretty much the only research in which the creative team gets involved is focus groups; the through-the-looking glass, chaos-with-cookies, purely anecdotal, nominally-directional, easily manipulated exercise which reinforces the creatives’ preconception that research is often useless.
In grad school I learned the following about consumer research, which with few exceptions has been largely substantiated by real world experience:
Many more companies use research for PR purposes than for true information gathering.
Most companies have starting preconceived notions before even conducting their own research or hiring a research company.
Most savvy researchers know what that preconceived notion is.
Any attitude survey, questionnaire, interview, or poll can be worded and conducted to achieve the desired response.
Research subject or interviewee selection is often flawed or skewed, and often on purpose.
Most regular “targeted” people these days detest being surveyed both from a privacy and “takes up too much time” perspective. Many flat out refuse to participate.
You can pay, incent, or reward people for consenting to be researched. These people, while not dishonest, instinctively pick up on what they are “supposed” to say, and usually do so.
Most research projects end up with reports and charts producing evidence of the desired preconceived opinions the company started out with.
Most companies who fund consumer research waste their money.
Interesting, useful and highly valuable unsolicited consumer opinion (which is also free, by the way) in the form of blog posts, petitions, complaints, and letters to the company’s executives are usually ignored or underutilized as an informational or research tool, because they are not rounded up in a neat tidy executive summary package.
Research is often a “for hire” entity. Research is employed to support an opinion and questions are asked in a manner designed to elicit a predetermined response or a response that has no meaning (Are you still beating your wife?). While this is most evident in the political arena (where great care is taken to ask questions of those most likely to agree with you and support your positions) it is often used in the business world to support decisions that have already been made, but not publicized. Restaurant chains have to always be on guard for research that is conducted to support a particular product. Suppliers/Manufacturers often present “in house” research to support product claims. I personally would never accept any research unless I had access to the data. What was asked and how was it answered?
So, let’s see:
— It’s harder to get consumers to participate in research, and when they do, their answers are inconsistent with their behavior.
— Managers and executives order up research to support business decisions already made.
— Researchers don’t make good managers.
What else is new?
I agree with the fellow who said the best thing researchers can provide is insight. I also endeavor to provide wisdom, but there’s not much of a market for it.
I approach this question from several angles. First of all, I believe that respondents will tell researchers what they think they would like to hear, not how they truly feel about the question. I heard a speech by Dan Hill recently, author of “Body of Truth: Leveraging What Consumers Can’t or Won’t Say.” In Dan’s studies, he looks into respondents’ eyes to validate if they are telling the truth about their feelings. His findings are intriguing.
Secondly, having been educated to go into the Advertising Business, I learned how results can be twisted to say anything you want them to say. I won’t name names, but I believe that some research findings are used to substantiate the belief or hypothesis of the researcher, rather to discovery true, untainted results.
If you are writing a book, or preparing for a speech, what is more interesting, revolutionary research findings, something that supports your big idea, or information that everyone has already heard and believes?
Having been both a professional researcher and a brand marketer, I can fully appreciate both sides of this issue.
Consumer research, properly designed and executed in the context of the retail environment, can be extremely insightful and lead to innovative new solutions.
There are, however, many places this can go wrong. Much research is conducted for the wrong objectives such as to “support” someone’s pre-conceived notions or to CYA on a decision already made. Sometimes the researcher uses the wrong techniques to address the issue, such as an internet survey to understand in-store shopping behavior. Often, the results of the research are twisted to support an idea. It never fails to amaze me how observers will always find something in a focus group to support their prior opinions.
It is important to remember that individual research studies seldom provide answers to all the questions about any decision or issue. Rather, research is designed to provide insights which improve decisions and it is the body of research and learning that leads to good, informed decisions.
The most effective consumer research is presented with examples of customer letters or emails to make it all “come to life” for the company. Such use of real customer feedback illustrates the relevancy of research findings to executives and often brings home a point more than any chart or graph.
The other challenge is to make the research actionable. For supermarkets and other retailers, a collaborative effort between the consumer research department and the consumer affairs department results in better data for decision makers.
Unfortunately, too many companies want research to support their own preconceived conclusions and, from what I’ve seen time and again, many consultants and researchers are happy to accommodate.
Or, companies make a cursory attempt to understand consumers through in-house “research and marketing” However, hiring someone with an Hispanic or Asian surname, for example, is no guarantee of success in those segments.
As a journalist and editor, I can only tell you that good research is essential for uncovering not only the problem, but potential solutions. However,using a research report as a paperweight or massaging the conclusions to suit your needs is not money well-spent.
If you want to know what your customers are thinking–ask them and listen to what they have to say. However, as we’ve learned, what they say and what they want can be two different things. That’s why we need good, independent research–to find the truth in the chaos.
Quantitative research like that for the retail industry is a total waste of time and energy. The only thing marketers can do is observe past and current shopper behavior. Surveys and focus groups cannot accurately reflect what the customer is thinking. The customer does not know what to feel until they are in the shopping environment and presented with products on a shelf or in a bin. Most of my clients prefer when I present research that comes from the sales floor, not a boardroom. Backing up decision already made with quantitative research is just that, a cover-your-butt tactic. To really find out what the customer is thinking or feeling, interviews need to be done on the sales floor and shoppers need to be observed in action. The honest emotional response will only come out when on the sales floor.
Marketing research is a terrible thing to waste but there are a number of factors involved that drive the results and its usefulness. Here are just a few that I have observed and experienced in the consumer goods industry:
1. Don’t confuse me with the facts; I have already made up my mind: Often, marketing decision makers tend to be intuitive rather than scientific and therefore they are looking to market research not so much for answers but instead they are looking to confirm what they already believe to be true. If the marketing research doesn’t cooperate with their intuitive beliefs then many of the decision-makers decide to throw it out, discount it, or ignore it.
2. If it doesn’t fit, we’ve got to acquit: So much of its effectiveness is driven by how scientifically, or not, the research is conducted. There are a large number of potential flaws in the process that result in tainted or inaccurate results, in particular the human subject selection process and how questions and surveys are established and how they are executed. The first prudent step in marketing research is to apply adequate time and principles into the process itself to make certain that the study will be as accurate as possible. This often is truly not the case. Many times, market researchers use a boiler plate approach that doesn’t “fit” the right circumstances.
3. Back to the Future: I have seen too often where marketing research is based on what already happened rather than what might possibly happen in the future if consumers were given the right opportunities to understand possible new choices that they do not currently enjoy. So much of the marketing research I have read is behavioral rather than predictable, but in some cases marketing research teams are in fact able to dig into the right side of the consumer brain to predict what we really want to know, what we can change!
For any marketing decision-maker to surmise that marketing research doesn’t work would be like saying that scientific experiments don’t work, and such a conclusion would be ludicrous. The real deal is that marketing research is a science, and although not exact, it needs to be treated and conducted in a laboratory with clean and near-perfect conditions to get accurate results that can save or build fortunes, and often they really do.
As long time practitioners in shopper marketing, we have used quantitative online survey research finding in many effective ways, primarily to uncover understandings by looking at data differently. BIGresearch, MRI and Simmons are all sources that allow countless ways to cross-tab their databases by shopper segments, and those findings have been very useful to us and our clients over the years. Another way we gain information is to chart the data cross-tabbed by shopper segments over time to get a “heads up” on notable changes or shifts in behavior.
That, however, is part of a process that begins with a set of business objectives that are relevant to the shopper marketing situation. Many times quantitative findings are just one step in developing an overall learning plan that seeks to uncover the “why” behind the “what.” Anthropological research can certainly help uncover the “why” as well as “what would trigger the behavior change” that the marketer really needs to know.
For many companies, the issue is timing and budget allocation. Consumer research departments typically have longer lead times and a consumer focus. Today, however, the lead times and pace of shopper marketing is so accelerated that the true need for quick-turn around shopper insights that can impact programming recommendations can be hard to deliver. Another issue is that the customer teams don’t have funding for this kind of research, which means many learning plans don’t get executed, and marketers get frustrated because it is truly hard to support change based on just understandings, not true insights.
Maybe it is really time to rethink the model of how to enable the process to allow customer marketing organizations and their agency partners to “get it done.” Where we have been able to execute shopper-specific learning plans, the success rate for retail implementation has risen, as have results.
There are two big issues here–both of which we’ve discussed in a number of papers (feel free to write me for them)–the quality of researchers and the nature of consumers.
Marketers who ignore marketing research are doomed to failure. Sure, they’ll score every once in a while, but often the misses are much bigger. On the other hand, not every researcher is particularly good at their job. There is a general perception around the world that the quality of research has declined. It’s management’s job to set the ground rules, the standards, and recognize the training that’s required to make someone a good market researcher capable of helping the organization.
On the consumer side, there is a false belief that if you ask consumers questions, they’ll give you “true” answers. There are many reasons why this is false, even among our most sacred of measures–Purchase Intent. A good researcher validates their measurement instrument, making sure it measures what it purports to measure.
Great researchers don’t just present numbers, they actively assist businesses to make optimal decisions. The best researchers are passionate about making retailers and brands successful. Yes, many marketers ignore research results they don’t like. Yes, a lot of research simply isn’t worth doing at all. Yes, a lot of research is based on asking the wrong questions, asking the wrong people, asking at the wrong time, giving the wrong multiple answer choices, etc. Research is no different from all other management tools, like IT, accounting, budgeting, logistics, real estate location analysis, etc. All management tools can be used well or poorly. It comes down to the leadership abilities, vision, intelligence, and passion of those in charge.
Way too complicated a subject to deal with briefly, but if this is a surprise to anyone, it isn’t because it’s a new problem, or an unreasonable problem. Years ago I left the clinical laboratory field because 95% of all laboratory results were never used in any way in patient management, but simply filed as CYA. I have seen costly consultant proposals (custom research included), unopened weeks after delivery to the client, all copies intact in a box on a very high shelf. A year ago, a major retailer reported substantial lift when an aisle was redesigned in collaboration with a major brand. However, at least a year later, even though the desired lift had been achieved in test, no implementation by the retailer had ever occurred.
There are reasons why these things routinely happen, even if the reports and results are objectively flawless, included clearly stated steps to implement them. And of course objective flawlessness is NOT the norm, but that’s only a compounding factor in the wholesale burning of billions of dollars.
This is not cynicism but pragmatism.
Of course research is not of uniform and consistent high quality. There are researchers who execute ill thought out methodologies which provide dubious results, and those who have a greater level of experience of both the subject matter and business issues and are able to design and execute far more effective studies to meet their clients’ needs. Inevitably, the former tends to command a lower price point on the whole compared to the latter and clients are often influenced by financial issues–a recipe which often leads to disappointment and ultimately, a mistrust of research as a discipline.
However, as a researcher who hopefully fits into the latter category, I have encountered situations on occasion where the internal stakeholders are unprepared to accept the results of a study purely on the basis that those results do not back up the actions that they wish to take. This is a problem of both personality (no one likes to be told they are wrong) and a reliance on a fall back position of better the devil you know, i.e. if the research is telling you to do something radically different from what you’ve done in the past then regardless of how compelling the argument, some people are not inclined to take the risk.
The solution to this is not an easy one. It relies on the building of trust and understanding between the client and the researcher which can only be achieved with an appropriate level of investment in terms of both time and money coupled with a willingness on both sides to share pertinent information and discuss business issues candidly. In other words, the client needs to allow the researcher to act not only as a provider of information but as a consultant and the researcher needs to be capable of fulfilling this role. In these situations there is a significantly better chance of research generating insight which will lead to good business decision making.