I was carving a loaf of bread this weekend, with my new bread knife. For some reason, I didn't look at the knife and think to myself, 'Wow, that's some knife skills you have, maybe you could be a surgeon'. I've also never put on a white coat and thought I was a vet (at least, not since the age of 5), or thought that football looks like such an easy game that I'll try out for Chelsea at the next opportunity.
So why do people seem to think that just because they are able to use a question mark at the end of a sentence and with the help of a few free pieces of software from Google, that they are market researchers?
I appreciate that there is a world of difference between academic research and market research. Not least the commercial sponsorship behind the latter, which some may believe can bias the outcome. I have a huge amount of respect for academics, who need to gain ethical approval for their work. A road I was forced to go down once, and it was a very intimidating process. Nevertheless, does this mean that just because the market research world is commercial it should be less rigorous? We need to not only aspire to the standards set by others but passionately believe them and put this forward. We do ourselves no service by dumbing down the process and providing data which is not rigorously collected.
Are we some evil, commercial industry trying to manipulate opinions into what we want to hear? I don't think so. No, there is something more fundamental going on.
Now why is this? Are we some evil, commercial industry trying to manipulate opinions into what we want to hear? I don't think so (and by the way, I also don't believe chatting to a handful of people on Twitter is crowd sourcing). No, there is something more fundamental going on.
After all, everyone has access to cameras today, but there is still a role for professional photographers. So I am not blaming Google and the freely available DIY software.
According to the GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) 2011 report, 42% of those in the market research industry do not believe that 'market research' is an accurate description of what we do. We also call ourselves a whole host of different things Market Researchers, Marketing research, Market Analytics, (just analytics), Business Intelligence, Customer Intelligence, Strategic Intelligence, Consumer Insights, Insight Manager, Management Scientists, Consultants etc. And we try and broaden our capabilities out, some days talking about technology and mobile phone apps, the next day social media and net scraping. When was the last time we talked about good (old) market research? We are all too busy looking at the latest thing, and trying to differentiate in a changing environment
Why are we as an industry so scared about standing up for our core beliefs and owning our own territory? There are many PR, technology and marketing companies out there who are running their own studies in their own way, without the rigours we apply. Some of the ones I have seen are truly shocking, but they don't seem to care. I doubt they would lie down quietly if we walked on their territory in the same way.
My call to action is simple. I am asking market researchers to stop being afraid that their industry is dull or boring, to stop trying to be something we are not. To stand up for what we believe and to really drive home the commercial value of evidence based decision making. Let's be proud, ownership of a question mark does not a researcher make!