Market Research Across Time and Space

By Jeffrey Henning

The newest season of Dr. Who is underway, and the series in general has a few lessons for market research. But what can we learn from a time-traveling, two-hearted alien obsessed with Britain?

The first thing that we can learn is the sheer constancy of human nature. Even humanoid nature. Wherever and whenever the Doctor travels in space and time, humans and humanoids act in the mix of rational and irrational ways that we’ve observed here on Earth.

Contrast this with the pundits who often make the mistake of identifying market research with its most popular methods, and saying that since surveys and focus groups will become obsolete therefore market research will become obsolete. In fact, it seems that, to be fashionable, any market research conference has to have at least one presenter making the case that “market research is dead!”

This would be like saying that transportation is dead because the dugout canoe is obsolete, or because the horse and buggy is obsolete, or because the gasoline-powered, requires-a-driver car is obsolete, or because the TT Type 40, Mark 3 TARDIS is obsolete. People will always want a method of traveling faster than their feet will carry them. And people will always yearn for a method of traveling through space and time.

So forget obsolescence. Only the methods go obsolete.

So let’s put your mind to rest about market research’s fate.

Currency will never be uninvented or forgotten. Even though the Doctor rarely carries money, the Time Lords, masters of time and space, use treazants as currency. And, so, since currency will never be obsolete, sellers are always going to want to better understand buyers.

Which basically means that there will always be a need for market research. Whether we call it consumer insights, MRX, or – well, whatever it’s called in Gallifreyan – sellers are always going to want to understand buyers.

Market research is eternal.

Well, maybe I’d better dial that back. Market research may not last at least as long as the universe does, though in one episode the Doctor does visit the end of the universe in the year 100 trillion and find the last civilization left standing.

Maybe I should dial that back a bit further.

In the year 5 billion, the last pure human is Lady Cassandra O’Brien.Δ17, who – through genetic engineering – becomes a piece of skin on a frame with her brain in a jar. She has a fondness for moisturizers, which may be the last topic of human market research in the Time Lord’s universe.

So market research may not be eternal, but it will be around for as long as humans are.