What does the future hold for market research in 2019?

Christian Super

Vice President, Technology Solutions
Engine US

"Increased demand from brands for high-quality, timely, fit-for-purpose data integration to help them understand the ROI of their programs and actions. 

Brands and their MR suppliers will collaborate to create cloud-based solutions – supported by solutions frameworks – that are agile and can deployed quickly to meet research needs.

Brands realize that Customer Experience isn’t just transactions, but a holistic experience. They will work to combine and harmonize customer experience, brand research, product research, and employee engagement to create a more complete measure of customer satisfaction. "

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Galina Mitchelhill

Insights and Design Manager
IAG

"Without a doubt, technology and digitization (including social) is going to drive through change in 2019 across many industries – not just market research. With more focus on customer journeys, plus the desire of clients to see ROI of business investment in research, there will be a push to more automation of standard reporting and basic research tasks, more integration of research with customer analytics and AI.

We'll also see more VoC platforms driving business prioritization of enhancements of the customer journey, and the continued blurring of CX and Research professionals."

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John Bird

Executive Vice President, Client Development
Infotools

"As an industry that provides the data-driven foundation for clients to make important business decisions, we are deplorably behind in providing the data necessary to prove our own worth. While this is often easier said than done, clients with shrinking budgets and C-level pressure will continue to demand that we demonstrate clear ROI for our services. We can start to get closer to providing these metrics by bridging the gap between the data and the insights, focusing on outcomes that provide a competitive edge, and providing honest evaluations on methodology and budget. A deep understanding of the business, customers and the market is vital."

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Jonathan Symons

Marketing Director
TVNZ

"I think there's always been a difference between "market research" and "insights". They're not necessary mutually exclusive – but they can be!

True insights that lead to truly identifying a market gap or a business opportunity that delivers value are hard to come across and they always have been.

In my experience, these insights "pop-up" at the intersections of different sorts of information;

• Collect market research of all sorts, primary surveys, tracking information, observations (call it ethnography if you want to get fancy), desk research, longer term trend analysis.
• Combine these with strong business data (customer behavior data – 1st and 3rd party, purchase behavior, complaint/compliment logs, product dynamics)
• Add in some experience of a mix of people internally and externally... And insights may materialize.

So for me, 2019 should be more of what we all know we should be doing: "How do you join together many different sources and types of data to gain true insights?"

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Lucy Davison

Managing Director
Keen as Mustard Marketing Ltd

"2019 is going to be all about automation and data integration. Everyone is going to be falling over themselves to deliver more agile research and to pull together different data sources. However, what I think people should (still) be focusing on is communication! MRX has long been seduced by the latest shiny new gadget. However, insights need to deliver impact, regardless of whether you are using traditional methodologies or brand spanking new bleeding edge tech. Technology will provide cheaper, faster research but if the resulting insight isn't being used, or enabling better decisions, then we are just creating more faster, cheaper, research and less impact from what we do."

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Rebecca Brooks

Founder and Chief Marketing Officer
Alter Agents

"In the coming year, brands will be under increasing pressure to keep up with changes in consumer behavior. Lack of brand loyalty is now exacerbated by a division between shopping for necessity and passion. Our research has shown a fundamental gap between the ways people shop depending on the category of their purchase – necessary items, like financial services or food, and more "passion" items like technology or automobile, which are seen to help define an individual's "personality." Many brands can also exist in both worlds, but it is crucial they understand how and when they do. Market research will need to ask different questions and become even more nimble in keeping up with a consumer that defies traditional definition."

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