Research opportunity cost

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Department of inconvenient questions*: The opportunity cost of research.

In the brave new world of simultaneously unlimited and often unbelieveable customer information I am reminded of a topic which proved to be a recurring pain point throughout my career in marketing...the opportunity cost of research.

So just how much of a security blanket is research and how much does one need before feeling the chances of success are confirmed ?

Can we afford the investment required to do the required research properly, or can we really afford to not do the research?

As others have said over the years by way of a paraphrase: 'consumers neither say,believe or act the way they say they do in a research environment' ...so why do we bother ?

Over the years working for various blue chip packaged goods companies across several cultures and continents it has in my experience been consistently harder to justify expenditure on market research internally than even media, despite the fact that no one would argue with the far greater cost of failure to both brand equity and business reputation of subsequent ,poor investment of much larger sums of money.

Equally perverse I have often been unable to afford the fees that classic research engenders, something which is felt hardest on the smaller,often exciting new brands struggling with little or no budget within a bigger brand portfolio.

Today's marketers have greater access to consumer and customer information than at any time ( whether willingly provided or not and whether of real or questionable value) thanks to the changes in access,interractivity ,direct contact and touchpoint measurability. Another major challenge businesses and marketers in particular face relates to the increasingly dynamic competitive environment with the pressure on speed to market and iterative development( fastest launch, improve on the go and fail fast), something not recommended in food in my opinion.... a further source of pressure on marketing teams is to demonstrate measurable returns on every penny spent in the form of short term results , thanks in part to the latest fashion for so called zero based budgetting, as if marketers never ever had to demonstrate ROI before....really? And please, don't get me started on how procurement are marketers Best Friend Forever.......

So a bit like the ad industry , marketers now have both the means and encouragement to bring some of their market research closer if not actually in house, to 'disrupt ' or 'disintermediate ' the research industry. My historic experiences have lead me to believe that there is a case for some shake up here, by which I mean something more fundamental than a race to the bottom for the cheapest research fees, matched only by ever poorer quality of research.

Good research information provides invaluable ,impartial guidance and feedback to brand stakeholders at every stage of business , and can also reduce the risks of consequential ,costly failures. A big part of what makes it invaluable is the calibre of human expertise within the agencies and in house to sort the gold from the stones, knowing where to look,what to look for and what to to toss back into the water.

As to the habit in some teams of using research as a blanket, my advice would be don't; use it as your honest broker or conscience so that it informs rather than governs your actions.A big part of brand authenticity comes from the authenticity of the people behind it.


All of the above leads me to the conclusion that the imperative of competitive advantage through better serving consumer needs is unchanged, still relies on a better understanding of unmet needs and beliefs, same as it always has...it's just become simultaneously easier and yet more complicated to find the gold amongst the fools gold.

*100% untainted by evidence