Research Gets Social

by Sharon K. Hatzel, Market Researcher, The Anderson Group  

Market research is a discipline that positions itself as the voice of the customer. To do this, researchers must be exactly where the customer is. As the Internet became more commonplace in the 90’s, quantitative research shifted from telephone interviews to online interviews. Today, 90% of research firms offer online research and it accounts for 50% of all research revenues.

Change is again sweeping the research community through the explosive consumer participation in various types of social media. Once again, market researchers must start to consider how to capture insights from the ever-changing world of digital interaction. Today, only 17% of research firms are practicing social media research, and it accounts for 5% or less of their earnings. Larger research firms are further ahead on the curve, but there are some firms focusing on social media research and it is accounting for 15-50% of their earnings.

Understanding the new mobile, social world is challenging. Like everyone, researchers are creatures of habit and change is difficult. Research must provide information that is reliable; so testing and figuring out how to best capture and analyze information from social media should be an increasing part of your researcher’s job. When you ask about evaluating social media, is your researcher reasonably cautious regarding appropriate evaluation approaches?  Are they reading  and thinking about experimenting with the new methodologies?  Are they preparing themselves to utilize what 66% of research suppliers think will be a whole new field of research?