Here is an outsider’s view of the market research business – A question of questions – writes Rashmi Bansal. A jibe at QADR – Quick And Dirty Research – done by advertising agencies and clients to get a “feel” of the issue at hand – and also to cover their backside at the next presentation…. And some tips based on her experience with the Great Indian Survey Trick…
I have called it an outsider’s view – I am in the ‘inside’ – in the market research business…. And I am very interested in knowing your experiences with market research – surveys / interviews / focus groups… have any?
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Less than an hour after I wrote this, an interviewer paid me a call at home – with a questionnaire for DNA – and I was perfectly rotten about it – I wanted to see the questionnaire and had great difficulty in controlling my urge to tell him what I thought about the design…
But my experience was much like Rashmi’s – the boy asked for my name and some other details – and assured me that he would ask me only 1-2 other questions – while the questionnaire itself had around 10…
Boy : Which newspaper do you read now?
Self : TOI
Boy : Do you like it ?
Self : NO
Boy : Why ?
Self : * hesitation – where do I begin and why is he asking me open-ended questions *
Boy: Is it because it has too much glamour?
Self : * GET OUT *
A couple of thoughts
1. How glamorous can a newspaper get?
2. DNA is going to take this ‘research’ seriously and position themselves as a unglamorous newspaper?!
There was this episode of Yes Prime Minister, where Humphry tells Hacker how a survey could be designed to come up with the answer the surveyer wanted to hear……
🙂
yup! then what is the point in spending money and asking questions if you cannot even hear what you want to, at the end of it all 🙂
Charu (can I abbreviate it?), it’s all a way for ppl in middle-mgmnt positions to save their faces..JIC if something goes wrong. Ofcourse some surveys are useful, but I haven’t yet come across them. Sunil, you are right, many small time survey firms are already hinted about the results they should get. What’s more, even MBA guys get their surveys filled from their blog readers. What more could you ask ? It’s all a matter of selling an idea to the higher-ups. One fine afternoon I was once surveyed for the first icecream Kwality+Walls were about to launch together. The poor soul questioned me for an hour in my house. And I was happily giving him answers [coz I was more concerned if he’d gimme a sample at the end of it ;)] All the while repeating questions like “ok which brand of icecream do you like”, “how many times in the week you take it? weekdays? weekend? from where ? scoops ? candy ? cups ? cones? pots..pans.. tinkers… bells… whatamItalking. The poor guy just dint get it that I was not his candidate. I now think that if I had the kind of money then (his questions were abt familypacks icecreams too)… I wud hv rather bought a brand new bbok..or a pro-quality fullsized carrom-board with better rebound.
Isn’t it an unwritten rule that ” Never take a respondent from a Market Research Agency (same or rival)”. Wished the DNA guys were better trained…
As Gladwell says, market research can never give insights on a breakthrough product…heard about what the survey said about the Aeron chair?
Suhail, ouch! don’t agree that most surveys are useless – if designed and executed properly, market research can give the marketer a lot of insight into the consumer’s minds – and at a more immediate level, help plan / forecast / design and so on in a better manner… the keyword here is if… and yes, in many cases, it becomes a save your backside thingy – just in case something goes wrong!
yes Amit – it is a rule – usuallly people in advertising / market research and related fields are “thanked and terminated” right at the beginning…. but sometimes such things don’t happen!
nope, haven’t rad about the aeron chair (is this in his recent book? but do tel me more about it…) – but I don’t agree entirely with you, gautam – or with gladwell for that matter – market research can indeed add a lot of value at the product design stage – and by design I don’t mean only the aesthetic / visual part of it – the problem as with many things, is not with market research as a science (bet you will cringe at this word) but the way it is carried out usually – what I called QADR is what many clients want – and research service providers are ususlaly happy to oblige…
Charu, listen to Malcolm Gladwell speaking about Aeron chairs at http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail230.html and also the other two talks on Human Nature by Frans de Waal and Joel Garreau, esp. the latter since the interesting Q&A for all three talks is at the end of Garreau’s talk. It’s fascinating!
Btw, itconversations.com is a fantastic resource. We should do something like that for talks delivered in India. With sites like ourmedia.org providing unlimited free storage and bandwidth for ever, hosting is not an issue anymore. We only need to actually start recording the stuff.
Satya, itconversations sounds like a great idea… I’ve noticed that you often reproduce speeches / articles in your blog – why not acual voice recordings?
however, “Malcolm explores why we can’t trust people’s opinions — because we don’t have the language to express our feelings.” – that is why there is always rush for developing research techniques that go beyond and beneath the ‘stated’ – like using pictures or stories – qualitative research is much better suited for this…