Leverage Existing Research

(part of Chapter 4: Leveraging Existing Research)

 

Before you jump into your primary market research head first, it’s important that you first seek out existing, relevant research. This not only saves your organization time, but also prevents wasted funding on a project that would have duplicated existing results.

If finding relevant research seems like a daunting task, don’t worry, there are multiple sources you can turn to. Read on to learn how to get started.

 

Before funding a new MR study, it is always wise to make sure you understand what relevant research already exists. Here are five reasons why:

Table 4.1 Cross-Tab Example
Satisfaction with Company A's customer service	Total responses (400)	Males (200)	Females (200)
Very high	230 (57.5%)	130 (65%)	100 (50%)
Neutral	120 (30%)	50 (25%)	70 (35%)
Very low	50 (12.5%)	20 (10%)	30 (15%)

1. The answers to your current questions might already exist. Perhaps with a little digging, you will find that the research already has been conducted within the company, but not shared very effectively. You might be surprised how often this happens.
   
   The last thing you want is to proceed with the research, complete it, pay the bills for it, and then find out at the final results presentation that previous research had been conducted. Everyone involved loses credibility when this happens—and it does happen.
   
   I have seen this happen in really ugly ways. Once I was doing a project for a large software company. At the final presentation, their MR manager and I presented some important findings, some of which we knew would be controversial. Imagine our dismay when an executive challenged some of these conclusions by citing similar research the company had done the year before! The MR manager and I had no knowledge of this research.
   
   As it turned out, the previous research had been based on a population with very different screening criteria, so we were later able to understand why the two studies had different results. But it was too late: the presentation’s momentum was completely destroyed.
   
   The lesson is this: You need to know about any other relevant research, if for no other reason than if it does refute your conclusions, (a) you will be able to explain why, and (b) if conflicts truly exist, you can offer a course of action to uncover why.


2. A research agency might already have a relationship with your firm, and might have an internal track record of performing well. Your company, even if a different division or business unit, might have a relationship that can be leveraged. A research agency that performed well in the past will have good contextual knowledge. An agency that already has insights into your markets, customer behaviors, product lines, and company culture, has an advantage over those that do not.
   
   As an added benefit, if your executives already perceive the agency as credible (or as a trusted partner), your project will gain an instant credibility halo that would be lacking if you use a new, unknown agency (which must prove itself to be a reliable source).


3. Important contextual data might be available that will help with the research’s design and execution. Perhaps in your research excavation, you dig up projects that don’t address the current questions but do provide important context. The following is a real-world example of how this helps you ensure project success:
   
   Let’s say you are planning a study of people who currently buy frozen entrees. After some research, you find a past study that showed attitudes and behaviors among this population vary notably by the number of entrees they buy per month (less than five, six to 10, or more than 10). Great! Now you know that in your current study, you need to consider including a quota that will distribute your sample along this parameter. Imagine if you had completed the study without knowing this. You might have—by sheer misfortune—ended up with a sample that was primarily people who buy fewer than five entrees per month. Or you might not have known to capture this variable at all, and you wouldn’t have been able to get a cross-tab on it at the end of the project.
   
   What is a Cross-tab?
   A cross-tab is a simple table that shows how answers to a question vary by different respondent subgroups. As the simple example in Table 4.1 shows, a cross-tab table is a great way to compare responses very quickly. In this case, one can readily see that females are less likely to have a very high level of satisfaction with Company A’s Customer Service, as compared to males.


4. Establishing triangulation points. Is research available to you on the same or even a related topic? If so, it could provide important triangulation points.
   
   Triangulation points are data that can help you to do the following:
   • Quantify a relevant customer behavior.
   • Confirm existence of a related customer attitude.
   • Size a potential demographic group.
   • Reality-check a result using a different data source (such as scanner data).
5. To identify potential risks. You might find that similar, past studies done by your company had encountered obstacles. What were they? Is the current study likely to encounter the same obstacles? If you are forewarned, can you become forearmed? How can you mitigate these risks?
   
   Let me give you an example of what I mean. I once worked with a client who had done some research in the past, and had a really hard time getting realistic data from its target market about actual purchase plans.
   
   This was a company that sold a specific category of IT equipment. Whenever it went out and asked people about their plans to purchase, the results came back too aggressive. The client was struggling to figure out how to use the data, given that the results were artificially high. Knowing that was a challenge in the past helped us to design a questionnaire and analysis approach that would provide a much more realistic view.
   
   (Getting people to realistically report purchase plans is a common challenge in many industries. Some categories are notoriously over-reported, and others are underreported. An experienced MR professional will be able to advise you of options for dealing with this.)

Hopefully I have made a convincing case that finding existing research will enhance the success of your current project. Now, where will you find it?

 

Finding Existing Research
As mentioned earlier, existing information is commonly found through both internal and external sources:

• Industry associations
• Company library/internal website
• Company consultants
• Internal market research department
• Other agencies (ad agency, PR agency)
• Trade magazines

Here are five examples that will help you get started with your search.

1. Previously funded custom research. First of all, find out if any primary MR has been sponsored by your company in the last three or four years.
   
   You probably do not care about anything older than that because MR has a shelf life. Still, if there has been any recent research done, it is definitely worth looking at the research results and the agency that executed it.


2. Secondary or off-the-shelf research from MR firms. In most industries, there is a host of analyst companies and other third-party sources of data. There are also scanner data, data released by large retailers and other third-party sources that could be available for purchase.
   
   Sometimes the data available for purchase are in the form of a report that might cost $2,000, or $5,000, or sometimes even $10,000. Other data are available in database form, and you may pay to access slices of the data.
   
   There are several websites to consult to find out whether or not such research already exists. Research aggregators like marketresearch.com and the-infoshop.com have databases that you can search.


3. Data from government sources. The U.S. Census is a great source of data, and the government makes it publicly available. Also, the fabulous CIA World Factbook has details on key facts by country, which is very handy if you are doing global research and need contextual information.
   
   Wondering how you would apply census data? Here’s an example: Let’s say you are doing a concept testing study to determine potential adoption of a new home security product. Let’s say the product is more concealable than a traditional system, and has some other cool, new features. You are trying to determine what percentage of the market is likely to buy it.
   
   For that type of product, you are going to be interested in households that have at least a minimum income level. You probably would not target households with, say, less than $50,000 a year in household income. The first thing you might want to do is simply determine from census data how many households fit in the desired range. Five million? 100 million? Well, the answer is actually about 56 million. Good to know, right?


4. Your competitors. Yet another place to look for existing MR is—believe it or not—your competitors. Sometimes companies do MR and then choose to publish some of it. That might be tipping their hand to competitors, but it can also help them fuel a thought leadership campaign.
   
   For example, if I work in the transportation industry, I might want to do research on telecommuting trends and publish it so that my clients know that we proactively seek to learn about customer needs. So, yes, I am publishing data that my competitors now have access to, but I am more interested in just making sure my customers know that we are the kind of company that invests in fresh thinking.
   
   Surprisingly, then, you might find some very good MR available for free on your competitors’ websites (check out the press release sections of their web sites for relevant announcements).


5. Professional associations. Another place to find existing, relevant data is with professional associations. Many professional associations fund research, sometimes even on an annual basis, as part of a membership benefits package. Such research is usually featured on association websites and in newsletters.

 

This is an excerpt from the book, "How to Hire & Manage Market Research Agencies," which is available on Amazon. Published by Research Rockstar LLC. Copyright © by Kathryn Korostoff. All rights reserved.