The Future of Research: Some Intriguing New Perspectives

Jason Sherman of  Whyze Group, Inc. started a discussion on the Next Gen Market Research LinkedIn Group on the topic of  “What’s the future of marketing research?” . Of course, you have to be a member of the group to participate, but it’s a lively discussion that both reiterates many of the points made in my previous post and introduces some intriguing new perspectives.  It’s well worth following if you are a member.

Gordon Morris, Global Insights Manager at Sony Ericsson is an active participant in many discussions on this and other LinkedIn Groups. That level of engagement is relatively rare for client-side researchers, so when he speaks folks tend to pay attention. Here is the gist of what Gordon has to say on the topic:

The future of research will be the polarization of companies where one end are strategic partners, and the other are operational vendors. Those that make it will be more strategic than focused on projects. Those that don’t will continue to debate about how research could be more relevant while obsessing on process and results by projects.

Wow. That puts it in perspective, doesn’t it? Now the question is: how do we achieve strategic relevance. Unfortunately, many of the current vendors in the MR space won’t be able to make that leap for a variety of reasons. Those that do probably won’t look a lot like the majority of research companies in practice today.